NYPD Red 4 by James Patterson Page A

the ashes of her dead husband as she rifled through the wigs, props, and collection of uniforms that had helped the con man pass as anything from a meter reader to an airline pilot.
    Two minutes later, she had what she needed, raced out of the apartment, and then checked every parked car on Hoyt Avenue. Twenty-four minutes after that, Teddy Ryder walked through the front door of his mother’s building in plain sight.
    Annie was positive that there were no cops watching, but even if there were, she doubted they’d realize that the man with shoulder-length blond hair wearing a bright orange safety vest and carrying a red insulated pizza bag was the one every cop in the city was looking for.

CHAPTER 25
    Teddy put the pizza box on the kitchen counter, pulled out a slice, and grabbed a can of Bud from the refrigerator.
    “Alcohol dehydrates you,” Annie said, snatching the beer out of his hand and dumping it into the sink. She opened one of the bottles of orange Gatorade she’d brought home from the Pizza Palace and handed it to him.
    Teddy inhaled half the slice and took a swig of the neon-colored drink. “You ever patch up a bullet wound when you were a nurse?” he asked.
    “ Nurse? I was a candy striper. I learned a few things from watching the nurses, but mostly I stole morphine ampoules to sell to the junkies in my neighborhood. Now take off that stupid wig and strip down to your shorts. I’m going next door to borrow a few medical supplies.”
    She took a tote bag from the hall closet and left. By the time she got back, Teddy was three slices into the pie, and his jeans and shirt were on the floor.
    “That’s the beauty of living in a building full of old people,” Annie said, setting down the tote bag. “It’s like an all-night pharmacy. They have everything you need for a do-it-yourself gunshot wound repair kit.”
    She handed him a bottle of pills. “Amoxicillin,” she said. “Take four now, and then we’ll space them out, four a day.”
    Teddy didn’t argue. He popped four of the antibiotics and washed them down with Gatorade. Annie spread a sheet on the sofa and pulled a bottle of Smirnoff vodka from the tote bag. “It’s not the pricey stuff,” she said, “but it’ll do.”
    “I thought you said no alcohol,” Teddy said.
    “This isn’t for drinking. Lie down so I can see where you got hit.”
    Teddy stretched out on the sofa, and Annie studied his bloodied left side. “You’re lucky,” she said. “It’s a clean shot. The bullet went in the front and out the back, but I’m sure it dragged pieces of fabric from your dirty shirt along with it. We have to kill the bacteria before it spreads. Bite down on that throw pillow.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it’s going to hurt like hell, and I don’t want you to wake up the neighbors when you start screaming.”
    “Ma, I’m not going to scre—”
    She poured the eighty-proof Smirnoff disinfectant on the wound, and Teddy let out a piercing shriek that he managed to stifle with the pillow.
    “Next time maybe you’ll listen to your mother,” Annie said, dabbing his skin with a soft cloth. “When I tell you it’s going to hurt, it’s going to hurt. And when I told you Raymond Davis was no good for you, I was right. But no, you had to wait for him to shoot you before you took my word for it.”
    “Don’t talk bad about Raymond, Ma. He didn’t shoot me. He’s dead. The guy who shot me shot him first.”
    “Jesus, Teddy. What the hell were you two involved in that someone would want to kill you?”
    “This guy Jeremy hired us to steal some shit, so we did, and then when it was time to pay us off, he decided to kill us instead.”
    Annie reached into her tote bag and took out a box of adult diapers. She opened one and placed the absorbent fabric so it covered both sides of the wound. “Stand up and hold this so I can wrap it,” she said.
    Teddy did as he was told.
    “What did you steal?” Annie asked as she began wrapping an ACE