The Midnight Club by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Tags: FIC022020, Police Procedural, Fiction, Mystery & Detective
ISBN: 0446676411
Publisher: Vision
Published: 2007-06-30T16:00:00+00:00

55

Isiah Parker; Trump Plaza

THE TELEPHONE ON Isiah Parker’s bed stand started to ring. His eyes slid open and he reached for the jangling phone.

“Isiah! Somebody hit the penthouse at Trump’s,” he heard, recognizing the voice of Jimmy Burke.

“Say again?”

“They went in with submachine guns. FBI agents and cops are all over the hotel,” Burke continued.

“Who went where with machine guns? What are you saying?”

“We have to get out of Atlantic City. We ought to leave separately, like we came in. I’ll take care of Aurelio.”

“All right. I hear you,” Parker said. He thought Burke was making sense, though he wasn’t sure.

Parker finally jumped out of bed. He lunged into the hotel bathroom, where he stuck his head under the tap, letting the cold water revive him.

All his worst fears and suspicions rose to the surface again. Why hadn’t Charles Mackey called him? What about Burke and Aurelio Rodriquez? How could someone else have hit Trump’s? Who?

Ten minutes later, Parker was one of several hundred spectators in a crowd outside Trump Plaza. Many of the people were still in their nightclothes. Some wore shoes or slippers, some were in bare feet. All the faces seemed in shock.

Police cars and EMS ambulances were crowded four and five deep across Mississippi and Arkansas avenues. Police cruisers were parked up and down all the other narrow side streets.

Parker stared at the blockaded lobby entrance to Trump’s. He gazed toward the top floor, where entire picture windows had been blown out by the shooting.

He desperately tried to sort out what had happened. It struck him that he had never been told his target in Atlantic City. Deputy Commissioner Mackey hadn’t called after eleven, as he’d promised to several times.

Undertones of terror and black humor circulated through the boardwalk crowd. The comedy was part high-roller irony, part Saturday Night Live tastelessness.

“Who the hell got shot?” a fat man in a garish bathrobe asked. “Wayne fucking Newton?”

“Wayne Newton? He deserved to be shot, show he did last night at Caesar’s.”

Parker finally began to inch away from the restless, milling crowd. As he did, he saw Lieutenant John Stefanovitch. Stefanovitch was leaving Trump’s, pushing his wheelchair forward with grim determination. He looked numb and drained.

What was happening?

Parker finally walked down the steep stone steps dropping away from the boardwalk. He had to think in straight lines. Nothing but straight lines of logic.

Parker heard a soft cry…low, obviously uttered in fear and confusion. It took him a few seconds to realize that the sound had been his own voice.

He touched the .22 revolver concealed under his sports jacket. Then Parker continued down the eerie, darkened street, which was filled with obscure, almost solid black shapes. He could sort out street-sign poles, hydrants, garbage cans, the hulks of parked cars, the serrated outlines of trees.

He found that he couldn’t get past the wall of his own shock. Not right now, anyway.

He had been undercover. He’d been waiting for special orders from New York, directly from Police Plaza. Somebody had hit Trump’s.

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