Free Alert: (Michael Bennett 8) by James Patterson Page B

Trying to get a mechanical engineering degree on the side, as I thought it might be good to have a backup plan if my dreams of becoming Beckham don’t turn out. I don’t drink, so that hampers the ol’ social life a bit at school. I like kids and staying busy, and, um, I could use the money.”
    “Any experience?” I said.
    “Plenty, since I was one of the oldest in my family. No one died on me. I also worked at the town camp since I was sixteen, so I got all my first aid stuff and all that.”
    “Do you cook?” Seamus asked.
    “Oh, sure. Breakfast, lunch, dinner,” he smiled. “All at the right times, too, if you want. Only kidding. Nothing fancy, but I can keep kids fed.”
    “You know how to do laundry?” I said.
    He took off his glasses and polished them on the edge of his track jacket.
    “I can iron a crease in a pair of trousers you could shave with,” he said as he slipped the glasses back on. “Actually, that’s not true. I read that somewhere. But I’ve done laundry before. Separate the whites and the colors or something, right? Hell, I’ll do the windows, if ya want. Improvise and overcome, that’s me motto. Bring it on.”
    “Martin, there’s ten kids out there. Ten,” I said. “What would you do with them? What would be your strategy?”
    “There’s a park around here, right? Riverside, is it? Well, weather permitting, after their homework and whatnot, I’d keep ’em out there, run ’em around, like we do at camp. Get ’em tired, wear ’em down, and then dinner and off to bed while I hit the chores.”
    I smiled. I didn’t like this kid. I loved him.
    “When can you start?”
    Martin shrugged and smiled again.
    “I don’t know. When can I start?”
    “Tomorrow? Say, six a.m.?” I said.
    “See ya then,” he said as he stood up.
    “Just a second,” I said as I saw him off at the door. “The trains are out. How’d you get here from the Bronx?”
    He zipped up his track jacket.
    “I ran,” he said.
    “You ran here from the Bronx?”
    He nodded.
    “And now I’m going to run back. Got to keep in tip-top for track. Why?”
    It was my turn to smile.
    “No reason, Martin,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

CHAPTER 25
     
    IT WAS DARK and nasty and raining cats and dogs the next morning. The dim, dreary, churning East River beneath the Brooklyn Bridge looked about as scenic and lovely as a field of freshly poured cement as I crossed over it in my department Impala, heading to work.
    Even so, my day had started at top speed. Martin Gilroy hadn’t been on time. He’d been early. All the kids seemed excited to see him, especially the older girls, who seemed particularly ready and mysteriously dolled up to go to school.
    Seamus had stayed over and was on hand as well to show Martin the ropes. The lovely old codger was looking pretty good, too, I thought, after all he’d been through. Pink and healthy and cheerful. Back in form.
    I was pleased. All men are mortal, and Seamus, at eighty-plus, was more mortal than most, I knew, but I doggedly refused to think he was ever going anywhere except to say Mass.
    On the other side of the bridge, I found the first exit for DUMBO and took it. My trip to the hipster-paradise neighborhood of Down Under Manhattan Bridge Overpass wasn’t because of a burning desire for an ironic beer T-shirt but a work location shift. With all the media hoopla over the mayor’s assassination, case headquarters had been changed from the Thirty-Third Precinct to the NYPD’s discreet new Intelligence Division building in Brooklyn.
    On a dark, narrow cobblestoned street just off the river, I parked in front of the large nondescript old brick building that I’d been to only twice before. I shielded my way past three armed-to-the-teeth SWAT cops manning the plain, dingy lobby and then two more stationed at a stainless steel console in the hall on the second floor.
    On the other side of the security checkpoint, through a metal door, the transformation from the