Page 17 of Delusional

Maggie and I drove back to the same construction site in lower Manhattan near the FDR I’d been to before with Terri Hernandez. I even found the same guy who told me that Jimmy Pinter liked to eat at the sandwich place named Mr. Submarine.

The guy looked at me, then looked at Maggie. “Where’s the other lady? The really mean one?”

“You want me to get her to come down to talk to you?”

“Oh, God no. Give me one minute and I’ll find out where Jimmy is.” He scurried toward a trailer near the front of the site.

Maggie and I waited outside. She asked me, “You don’t think the guy is trying to warn Pinter, do you?”

I smiled. “I’m pretty sure he’s being straight up with us. One of the detectives I work with from the Bronx might have been a little harsh with him yesterday. I think it made an impression.”

Less than a minute later, the construction worker came out of the trailer and sprinted directly to us. “Jimmy’s away at some kind of class at LaGuardia Community College for the rest of the day.”

I tried not to send a smirk toward Maggie, but he’d been about as cooperative as I’d expected.

As we walked back to the car, Maggie quizzed me. “What did you do yesterday to make this guy so cooperative?”

“It was all Detective Hernandez. She explained to him how impolite it is to harass women. He was trying to make things right.”

Maggie didn’t ask any more questions about the incident. But I heard a few whistles and calls directed at her as well. She ignored them. We navigated the construction site’s potholes as well as a number of puddles obviously caused by a leak in a main at some point recently.

Just as we were about to exit onto the street where I had parked, a worker walking toward us gave Maggie a serious visual evaluation and said, “Nice curves, baby.”

The ATF agent didn’t say a word. She didn’t change her pace or even look toward the man. Instead, she simply stuck out her arm and stiff-armed the man like a running back. He stumbled backward, slipped into one pothole, and fell on his ass in a deep puddle.

I bit my lip so I wouldn’t smile. I didn’t even mind the droplets of water that splashed up as high as my head. Maggie kept walking like nothing had happened. She didn’t turn toward the man or me.

Then I heard the theme to Green Acres and grabbed my phone out of my pocket. As soon as I answered, I heard Juliana’s strained voice.

“Dad, I might’ve messed up. We need your help.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“Me and the girls are okay. We’re in Queens.”

“That’s where I’m headed. Where are you?”

“A few blocks from Mount Sinai Queens.”

“That’s not too far from where we’re going. We’ll be there soon.” I knew not to ask too many questions of my oldest daughter. She didn’t sound panicky now or even upset. As Mary Catherine often said, Juliana was one cool cucumber. I knew she wouldn’t ask for me to come unless she really needed help.

I may have pulled away from the curb a little abruptly.

CHAPTER 20

I COULD SEE the blue flashing lights a couple of blocks before I pulled up to the address Juliana had given me for the free health clinic, almost in the shadow of Mount Sinai Queens. The sight of police activity right where my daughter had called me from was alarming.

I parked the car and tried to gather my wits as I jumped out and approached a tall, young uniformed officer. Maggie trailed behind me.

A second officer from another cruiser stood off to the side with a white man in his early forties. The man was disheveled, with his shirt half out of his pants, blood running from his nose and from a cut over his right eye.

Juliana stood with Rob Trilling’s five Pakistani roommates—Sylvia, Sabiha, Ayesha, Katie, and Fareeha—on the other side of the young patrolman’s car. The women all looked fine from a distance.

Before going to them, I approached the patrol officer cautiously. I pulled out my police ID and said, “I’m Mike Bennett. My daughter Juliana is standing with that group of women over there. I just want to find out what’s going on.”

The young Black man’s smile threw me off. It wasn’t a greeting or a polite gesture. It was a broad, bright smile. “You don’t recognize me, do you?” the young patrolman asked.

I took a closer look at him. There was something about him that seemed familiar.