The Quickie by James Patterson

cop killers. I wondered suddenly if this was such a good idea. Actually, I knew it wasn’t.
    “We’re here,” Trahan called from the wheel as the van slowed. “Lock and load, ladies.”
    There was a heady metallic smell in the van’s enclosed space. Adrenaline probably. Or maybe testosterone. Things were happening way too fast. The click of weapons echoed off the stark, steel walls.
    We were parked on East 141st Street somewhere off Willis Avenue. I guessed the Manhattan real-estate bubble had yet to blow in this direction, looking out at the weed-filled lots and crumbling buildings.
    Anything to keep my mind off what was happening now.
    Across the desolate street, a wind-blown page of
El Diario
caught against the skeletal bumper of a stripped-to-the-bones Escalade. The only structures that looked semi-sound around here were the housing projects across the gun-metal strip of the Harlem River behind us.
    Trahan pointed at an ancient, listing, four-story walk-up midway down the block.
    “There she blows,” he said. “That’s the club.”
    Club?
I thought, confused. What club? What Trahan was pointing at were just two graffiti-covered steel shutters bookending the shadowed doorway of an anonymous-looking storefront. The crumbling tenement windows above it were empty. Not just of people. Of glass and aluminum frames, too.
    Trahan caught my dumbfounded look.
    “You have to see this place inside,” he said with a rueful shake of his head. “It’s another world.”
    Trahan took out his cell phone and made a call. He
tssked
after a few seconds, snapped it shut.
    “Damn confidential informants,” he said. “She’s not picking up.”
    “It’s a woman?” I said.
    “Of course,” Detective Marut said. “She was sleeping with Mark Ordonez until he left her for another lady. There’s no better informant than a woman scorned.”
    “When did you last hear from her?” I asked.
    “Right before we picked you up,” Trahan said. He bit the antenna of his radio in frustration.
    “I wanted to hit it fast, flash-bang through the front door, get everybody down. Now I’m not so sure. My CI there said that the place was packed. We can’t risk somebody getting hurt, especially us, unless the Ordonez brothers are definitely in there. Then, fuck everything!”
    “Hey, wait a second,” I said. “Where’s the Emergency Service Unit? They live for this kind of stuff. Why don’t we let them handle it?”
    “Scott was our brother,” Khuong said gravely, his eyes hard and dark as coal. “This stays in the family.”
    Good lord. I didn’t like the sound of that. I was getting a scary vibe off everyone, actually. These guys were too keyed up. Letting their emotions get the best of them. This thing felt more like a war party than an arrest procedure. Whatever happened to removing the emotionally involved from the case? Like I of all people should talk.
    “Did somebody say that the place was packed?” I said, staring dubiously at the desolate establishment. “It’s coming on nine a.m.”
    Thaddeus’s gold tooth winked. At least I think that’s what I saw. He racked his 10mm Smith & Wesson.
    “Some people never want the party to end, girl,” he said.
    “Wait a second. How are we going to do a recon?” Detective Marut chimed in. “If these guys killed Scott, then they’re going to be superparanoid about anybody who looks suspicious. We’ve all been on surveillance. Who knows if they made us.”
    “I have an idea,” I said.
    I stared at the club. It looked evil, like an inner-city entrance to Hell. But I was the one whose charade had put us here, and I could barely live with myself at that moment. If somebody else got hurt, I didn’t know what I would do.
    “Wire me up,” I said.
    Trahan shook his head. “No way.”
    “What are you, nuts?” Mike said. “No way are you going into that pit alone. I’ll do it.”
    I stared into my partner’s eyes. He meant what he’d just said. Like I said, he’s
the