Red Alert_An NYPD Red Mystery by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company
Published: 2018-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 39

I was back in the office when my cell phone rang. The caller ID said Silvercup Studios. I picked up.

“Zach, it’s Bob Reitzfeld. How’s your day going so far?”

I looked at my watch. It was 3:00 p.m. “Let’s see: I’ve been at it for twelve hours, and so far I’ve had to suck up to a Haitian drug lord in the back room of a supermarket in Brooklyn, been chewed out by a billionaire, lied to by a lawyer, and wait…I know there is one more thing. Oh yeah: despite the fact that I had a six-man backup team, I managed to lose a hundred thousand dollars of the DA’s money. On the plus side, I got to spend some time on the High Line. It’s quite spectacular. I’m hoping next weekend I can go back there with Cheryl. And how’s your day going, Bob?”

“I need your help.”

“Why? Did someone zip-tie you to another water pipe?”

“I think I know who hired those two lowlifes who pulled off the poker game robbery.”

I inhaled sharply. “Hold on a minute.”

Kylie had gone to the break room for coffee, but she’d be back any second, and this wasn’t a phone call I wanted to have with her sitting at the next desk. I took the stairs up to the fourth floor, found an empty interview room, and shut the door.

“Bob, I’m sorry if I sounded like a jerk. It’s what happens when you ask an overworked cop how his day is going. Who do you like for the robbery?”

“Is Kylie within earshot? I don’t want her to pick up on your reaction.”

“No, we’re good. I’m alone.”

“I’m pretty sure it’s her boyfriend who planned the whole operation. His name is C. J. Berringer. Do you remember meeting him the other night?”

Did I remember meeting him? I’d dug deep into Clyde Jerome Berringer’s past, hoping to find something I could use against him, but since Reitzfeld had told me to mind my own business, I couldn’t admit to him how much I knew. “Yeah, I met C.J.,” I said. “Tall guy, professional poker player—what makes you think it’s him?”

“Because it’s clearly an inside job. At first I thought it might be someone connected to the hotel—a desk clerk, someone from room service, a bellman—but I interviewed anyone and everyone at the Mark who knew about the game, and they all come up clean. So I decided to focus on the people in the room.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, leaving out the fact that I’d gone down the exact same road two nights ago. “And how did you land on Berringer?”

“Zach, the man sticks out like a boner in a Speedo,” Reitzfeld said. “Everyone else is a regular—same faces month after month, year after year. This Berringer character starts dating Kylie, gets her to introduce him to Shelley, plays twice, which is all it takes to get the routine down pat, and bingo—the third time he’s in the room, the game gets hit by a couple of bozos who couldn’t organize a two-car funeral if you spotted them a hearse and six pallbearers.

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