NYPD Red 6 - James Patterson Page 0,82
him. He was the groundskeeper.
CHAPTER 72
WE SEPARATED GARY BANTA from the others and poured him into the back of a squad car. He didn’t say a word for the entire forty-five-minute ride back to Manhattan. He didn’t have to. Guilt, shame, and remorse were etched on his face.
We got to the precinct just at the change of tour, so the place was humming with the energy of a big-city police station. Kylie and I walked through the door, our pants and shoes caked with mud, and all the cops in the room stopped what they were doing. But they weren’t looking at us.
They were staring at one of their own, still in uniform, wrists shackled, head hung low, eyes unable to meet theirs. I gave the desk sergeant a quick nod. Paperwork later. We rushed Banta upstairs and out of the line of fire before some wiseass cop said something that would send him into a tailspin.
“That was rough,” I said as soon as we got him into a chair in the interrogation room. “You okay?”
He gave me a stoic nod. But I knew the stony façade couldn’t last long. Everyone has a breaking point, and for Gary Banta, all it took for the dam to burst were seven words.
You have the right to remain silent.
Translation: Life as you know it is over.
His body heaved; he slumped in his chair and wept uncontrollably.
I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “We’ll help you get through this, brother.”
Brother. It wasn’t a sign of respect. It was a tactic. When you want someone to talk, treat him like gold.
We gave him water, tissues, and time to cry it out. He declined a lawyer. He had too much he needed to get off his chest.
“Gary,” I said in my best father-confessor voice, “you have a record anyone would be proud of. This isn’t you.”
He looked up, grateful that I had a hint of the man he used to be.
“Tell them that,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “The family. Tell them how sorry I am. It was supposed to be a victimless crime. Insurance was going to reimburse them. We never meant for anyone to die.”
“We?” I said.
“Me, Diggs, and Ramos. It was just the three of us.”
“What about the crew at Yankee Stadium?”
He cracked half a smile. “They’re clean. The only thing they’re guilty of is giving me a heads-up that a cop was lying about knowing me. Hunter made you when he said I don’t drink coffee and you bought it. I drink it by the gallon.”
I returned the smile and shrugged. “FDNY, one; NYPD, zero.” I put my hand on his shoulder a second time. “I saw a picture of the fire commissioner pinning a medal on you,” I said. “It was only two years ago. How’d you get from there to here?”
He closed his eyes for about ten seconds as he reconstructed a life gone wrong. “I’m a single dad,” he said when he opened them. “Two years ago I was on top of the world. My daughter finished college, she got a great job, and I had some money in my pocket. Same with the other two guys. So we bought a house in Peekskill, worked on it on our days off, and flipped it six months later. We cleared fifty-seven grand, and we were hooked.
“We bought another house. Bigger, much more money, but we were like addicts. We were going to get rich flipping houses. And then Murphy’s Law kicked us in the balls. First it turned out the electric wasn’t up to code, then we had to spend ten grand on a truss to support the second floor, and finally, the crusher—mold.
“The place was a money pit. We were in over our heads, and we couldn’t scrape together enough to get out. And then one day Diggsy and I catch a call, a guy hit by a car on Bainbridge Avenue. We pick him up in the bus, and we’re cutting his shirt off, and we see them. Bags of coke taped to his chest. Turned out to be five kilos—street value was like eighty, ninety grand.
“The guy says to us, ‘Don’t rat me out to the cops. Just hang on to the blow for me for a few days, and there’s fifteen grand in it for you.’ Diggs and me, we’re straight shooters, but we’re hemorrhaging money on this house, and we can’t say no to fifteen large. Two days later, the