The Palm Beach Murders by James Patterson (the read aloud family .TXT) 📕

fresh air—as fresh as Manhattan air gets. A place to hang. On nights like tonight, it’s an after-work gathering space for us kindred spirits.

Got to get to the bank first, down on Canal Street. I grab my attaché and catch a cab on Second Avenue. “Canal and Broadway,” I tell the driver. “Wait for me, okay? I’ll be in and out in a flash.”

“Sure,” she says, and off we go.

Thirty minutes down and back, and I’m on the roof in another fifteen. Ramon’s already there with a handful of other agency types, each one with a beer in hand from various coolers downstairs.

It will take an hour or so for me and Ramon to be left up there, alone.

Chapter 4

Tough night. Couldn’t sleep. Since when does this kind of stuff get to me?

Now I’m in the kitchen at three a.m. when my wife, Jean, comes up close behind me and puts her arm around my waist.

“You okay?” She’s asking because I’m never like this. I’m the calm at the center of the storm.

“Yeah, sorry. Had a crazy day. Crazy good, most of it. Worked late, you know? No big deal. Just need to unwind.”

She heads back up to the bedroom and I look in on the kids, stop by the bathroom, pop a rare Xanax and shuffle back to bed, reminded again that I am part of a wonderful, loving family. A gift.

I crawl in under the covers and the love of my life slides over next to me.

“Honey?” She’s not convinced I’m okay.

“Don’t worry, baby. Got this important interview tomorrow at lunch, great opportunity, a job I really want.” Little does she know how much I need this job.

“Anyway, I can hang in here a little later in the morning.”

She’s already asleep again.

The alarm erupts at seven a.m. and it feels like I’ve been struck by lightning. Shower, shave. Pull on some selvedge denims and a cashmere sport coat, both black, out of the closet along with an Essex multi-check lavender shirt and the hand-painted tie I bought down in the Village.

First impressions are important. Never thought of myself as a slave to fashion, but this is the advertising business and I’m headed for a critical interview.

The office doesn’t expect me in until early afternoon, which means I have time for a rare breakfast with the kids before Jean takes them to school. A second cup of coffee with the New York Times and I’m off to the train station.

I’m about to experience the kind of day that most people could never imagine, not in their wildest dreams. Or nightmares. Neither could I.

Chapter 5

The 8:57 Hudson Line express from Croton-on-Hudson into the city gives me enough time to make a quick stop and grab one more cup of coffee downstairs at Grand Central Station, so I can get focused on my meeting with Kaplan.

But now, pitching myself for a job I absolutely must have, there’s a thousand conflicting thoughts spinning around inside my head that have nothing to do with the agency business.

She’s familiar with my résumé. This is about chemistry.

Me…in a single sentence…?

“That’s a damned good question,” I say to this agency superstar, snapping back to the here and now. “I’ve thought about how best to describe what I do, who I am. And here’s my answer, if you’ll pardon my French: I’m a guy who makes shit happen.”

“That’s certainly to the point.” She chuckles. “Especially in our business. And especially for an account guy. Great attitude.”

The waiter sets our salads in front of us, escarole for me, farro and quinoa for her, and asks if we want any more iced tea. Tea? I want a martini.

“Read this column in Adweek right after I started at Marterelli. Headline was ‘Making Stuff Happen,’ but what the columnist wrote about was making shit happen. Especially for account leaders. That was all I needed. It spoke to me.”

“You’ve got a great track record,” she says, “a strong, unique résumé, that’s for sure. Loaded with references.”

“Thank you! Hey—I’m an ex-Marine. Heard the call, 9/11 changed my whole perspective on life. Signed on for two years right out of Columbia University, and ended up in Iraq, 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines, Platoon Leader.…”

“Thank you for your service! Where?”

“Fallujah. Second Battle—the bloodiest conflict of the entire Iraqi war. We lost a lot of soldiers. They lost more. Tough stuff. I saw things I’ll never be able to erase from my mind. But we ran the insurgents out and took the city back. And I helped make it happen.”

“Your résumé isn’t quite that…colorful.”

“That was a lifetime ago. Honorable discharge, and I leverage my journalism degree and my leadership experience from the real world into a starting job with Marterelli. Fabulous, for a little while. Did the CrawDaddy thing. Then we lost the account—no fault of ours, hell, we made history with that spot, blew their business through the roof! Anyway, back then the agency was far from flush, had to pare down. So I jumped ship, painful for both Paul and me. Landed the job at Thompson—where I ended up running the Burger King business, as you know.

“Couple of lifetimes later Paul and I reconnect, over beers. They’ve grown to a fabulous midsized agency by now, and we simply had to get back together! We did, ‘partners,’ in theory, and now I’ve got the biggest job in the agency—unless they want to make me president.”

“Maybe they should…”

“If it were up to me…but, Paul’s not ready to go, not even close. So, there’s nothing left for me to accomplish there. Time to move on.”

The waiter’s back with our main courses—strozzapreti for Linda and the seared scallops pour moi.

My iPhone’s in my pocket, and vibrates with a text message. Of course, I ignore it.

“Another question: what’s the biggest mistake you’ve made in this business?”

She’s good.

“Oh, man, where to start?” I say, which evokes the laughter I was hoping for. “The biggest mistake? Giving up box seats for the 2007 Super Bowl, when the Giants, the wild-card