Burn: (Michael Bennett 7) Page 4

  “Good morning to you, too, Father,” I said merrily as Mary Catherine finally got the Bennett train rolling out the door.

  “And you’re welcome for the coffee,” I said. “And my mug.”

  CHAPTER 4

  AFTER WAVING EVERYONE GOOD-BYE in the lobby and getting into the unmarked Chevy the department had dropped off for me on the corner the day before, my first stop was a no-brainer.

  I rolled down West End Avenue to Ninety-Sixth and double-parked and went into the no-name deli-grocery on the corner. I could have hugged the Middle Eastern gentleman behind the counter when he gave me his regular gruff “Hey, boss,” along with my too-hot, probably-not-fair-trade coffee and my buttered roll.

  As I sat in the double-parked cop car eating my breakfast, I stared out, fascinated at the passing crosstown buses and Verizon vans and town cars and taxis. It was overcast, the September wind wafting the few trees West End still had lining the block to the south. I guess absence really does make the heart grow fonder, because all of it—the awnings on the buildings, the handymen hosing the sidewalks, the Sanitation Department street sweeper scraping the curb—seemed fresher, somehow more vibrant, more there.

  The kids aren’t the only ones excited about their first day back, I thought as I tightened my tie in the rearview. I had a morning meeting with the police commissioner down at One Police Plaza. After my western adventures, I was more than eager to go back to my desk at Major Crimes, but my old boss, Miriam, had explained that the commish wanted to talk to me about a brand-new position opening up.

  Is it a new homicide squad? I wondered as I drink-holdered my coffee and dropped the tranny into drive. An antiterror assignment? I didn’t care what it was as long as it was something juicy, something I could sink my teeth into.

  After half an hour of threading my way around delivery trucks and suicidal bike messengers on the narrow downtown Manhattan streets, I pulled around a bomb barrier and up to the security booth at NYPD headquarters at One Police Plaza.

  Only VIPs got to park in the front lot, but since I was meeting with the commissioner, I thought, what the hey? I’d give it a shot.

  “Yeah?” the old cop in the booth said, thoroughly ignoring my shield.

  “Got a meeting with the big guy,” I said. “The commissioner.”

  “Yeah, right,” the craggy-faced lifer said, trading his Post for a clipboard. “Name?”

  “Bennett,” I said.

  He flicked up a sheet, flicked it back down, and then re-lifted his Post.

  “Sorry, Charlie. You need to park on the street because I guess you ain’t on the A-list this morning.”

  CHAPTER 5

  AS IT TURNED OUT, the old cop in the parking lot was righter than rain about me not being on the A-list. The only list I was on that morning, I was about to learn, was one of those four-letter ones that start with the letter s.

  My not-so-warm welcome back into the bosom of the department family continued in the marble HQ lobby after I told one of the cops at the formidable security desk that I was there to see the commissioner.

  “Are you sure?” said a tall, gray-haired black cop beside the security turnstile. “I was told the commissioner was on his way down to Washington this morning to testify before Congress about gun violence.”

  “Well,” I said, “my boss told me to come down for a nine-o’clock meeting with him.”

  “Maybe I’m wrong,” the congenial cop said, lifting his phone with a smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time. What’s your name? I’ll check with his secretary.”

  The veteran cop hung up a minute later.

  “The secretary said the commissioner apologizes about the last-minute change of plans, but your meeting has been shuffled over to Chief of Detectives Starkie. He’s on the tenth floor.”

  “Chief of Detectives Starkie? Raymond Starkie?” I said.

  “That’s the man,” the cop said with a nod.

  “What happened to Ronnie Child?” I asked.

  “Child retired three months ago,” he said.

  I nodded as I headed for the elevators, trying to think.

  Dealing with any COD, the NYPD’s second-in-command, was notoriously hazardous. The Chief of Detectives was usually the commissioner’s hatchet man, the court strangler, the guy who assigned the kinds of unpleasant tasks that the commissioner didn’t want to dirty his hands with.

  But the fact that the new one was Raymond Starkie was particularly worrisome, since he and I had some history. Back when we were rookies, we had been friendly rivals of sorts, working the same evening shift at the Bronx precinct where I started my career. Both of us ambitious and gung-ho, we’d competed to see who could come up with the most collars.

  But that wasn’t our only competition. Starkie had been first to meet my wife, Maeve. Long before Maeve lost her courageous battle against ovarian cancer, she had been an emergency room nurse at the Bronx hospital near the precinct. In fact, Maeve had agreed to go out with Starkie before she met me, and I made her cancel on him.

  Starkie never forgave me for that or for the fact that I was named Bronx rookie of the year over him, and our rivalry became a lot less than friendly. It got physical once at a retirement party at a bar on Norwood Avenue, where he gave me a cauliflower ear and I gave him a chipped tooth.

  After that painful parting of ways, Starkie had gone the administrative route in the department. He attended NYU law school and had risen quickly through the ranks. He was an effective and efficient manager, they said, if a tad heavy-handed.

  As I stepped into the elevator and hit ten, it suddenly occurred to me how out of touch I’d been. The power structures and politics in the department could change in a New York minute, to borrow a cliché, and here I’d been away for nine months.

  After all my morning’s enthusiasm at being back, it suddenly occurred to me that I was a man without a country, with no turf, no rabbi, and maybe no immediate prospects.

  CHAPTER 6

  EVEN AFTER ALL THESE years, Starkie was a still a tall, strapping, good-looking guy. He had short-cropped white-blond hair and twinkly blue eyes. When I spotted his friendly, open smile at his office door, I was actually hopeful, for a beat, that maybe Starkie was ready to let bygones be bygones.

  But then his smile soured as he elaborately checked his watch. It was a Rolex, gold and shiny as the four spit-shined brass stars winking from his tailored dress uniform’s shoulder.

  “Late, huh, Bennett?” he said, shaking his head instead of my hand. “But I guess, what’s a few more minutes after nine months, right? This way.”

  Bennett? I thought, following him into his spacious office. By using my last name, Starkie was immediately letting me know that history or no history, he was my superior. Uh-oh.

  There was a bank of computers behind Starkie’s walnut desk, a flashing six-screen array like an investment banker’s. Staring at the monitors, I suddenly remembered that Starkie was a vocal champion of CompStat, the computer- and statistics-based method of policing that the NYPD had first spearheaded in the ’90s. Because of this, his nicknames included Numbers, Compstarkie, and HAL 9000 for his sometimes emotionless, single-minded devotion to the computer-driven stats.

  There were stacks of paper on another desk in the corner, obscuring a commanding view of the Brooklyn Bridge. There was a chair opposite his desk, but he didn’t offer me a seat, so I just stood there.

  As Starkie sat, he lifted a white file folder off his desk and leaned back in his big tufted leather chair, licking a thumb as he leisurely went through it. It was my file, I realized. It wasn’t too hard to pick up on his ham-handed theatrics. My career was literally in his hands.

  “So, how was California? Did you enjoy your leave of absence?” Starkie said, glancing at me over the edge of the file after a long minute.

  Leave of absence? I thought, perplexed. Why did he somehow make my being forced into witness protection with my family seem frivolous, like I was trying to take a stab at landscape painting?
r />   “Busy,” I said.

  Between tanning sessions, I teamed up with the feds and helped bring down the cop-killing Mexican drug cartel kingpin Manuel Perrine, I thought but didn’t say. Maybe you heard about it?

  “Well, since you haven’t been around,” he said, finally setting down the file, “you’ll find that there are a lot of new things happening here in the department. I know in the past you’ve benefited from loosened departmental guidelines, from superiors looking the other way. So let me be the first to inform you that those days are over.

  “This is the new NYPD, Bennett,” he said, gesturing at the computers behind him. “That’s why I’m here. To shake things up, to usher in a new era of accountability and a new emphasis on chain of command.”

  He knocked twice on my file with his chunky NYU law school ring before smiling again.

  “That’s why, in the spirit of shaking things up, I’ve ordered your transfer. Let me congratulate you on your new assignment, running the NYPD’s brand-new Ombudsman Outreach Squad at a Hundred and Twenty-Fifth Street in Harlem.”

  CHAPTER 7

  I STOOD THERE BLINKING, trying not to topple, as I sifted through the rubble of the ten-story building that had just collapsed on top of me.

  I’d thought I would be getting a plum assignment after my hard work of bringing down Manuel Perrine. At the very least, I thought I’d be returning to my desk with the Major Crimes Division. What the heck was an Ombudsman Outreach Squad? I didn’t know. And definitely didn’t want to find out.

  “The ombudsman squad is the mayor’s idea,” Starkie said, reading my mind. “Its mission is simple: to help the city’s most vulnerable victims. It’s a second chance for the department to laser-focus on victims whose concerns have fallen through the bureaucratic cracks. It’s up and running, but there are still some glitches that need ironing out.”

  Starkie blinked at me elaborately to show how badly I was being screwed. “But nothing that a veteran investigator like yourself can’t handle,” he said, smiling. “When I heard about the fledgling squad’s challenges, and the fact that you’d just come back, I couldn’t think of a better match.”

  I stood there staring at Starkie. We both knew what was going on. This wasn’t a promotion. If anything, my new assignment, some mayoral pet project that sounded like a disaster in the making, was a massive demotion, a bald, backhanded slap right across my face.

  I’d put in over twenty years on the job racking up collars, crushing case after complicated case. I’d risked my life, the lives of my family, and now, as a reward, I was being ramrodded to some backwater political pet project?

  Over what? A silly twenty-year-old rivalry? One little chipped tooth?

  I kept staring at him across the desk. Starkie stared back serenely with his cold, twinkly blue eyes. He wasn’t smiling now, but I could tell he wanted to. I could also tell he wanted me to freak out and scream bloody murder about my transfer. I definitely wanted to. I would have loved nothing better than to chip another tooth for Starkie, or maybe resign.

  Instead, I took a deep breath. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. It took everything I had to cool my engines, to keep my powder dry, but I managed it. Barely.

  “So, any questions?” he said in a pleasant voice as he reached across the desk and handed me my transfer papers.

  “None, Chief,” I said, accepting the sheets.

  I folded them neatly and tucked them into my jacket pocket before I extended my hand. I even put a happy salesmanlike ear-to-ear grin on my face that hopefully masked the fantasy of crashing a chair over his head that I was having.

  “In fact, I’m raring to get started serving the department in my new capacity, with your permission, of course, sir,” I continued, offering my hand with a happy wink of my own.

  After a long, puzzled moment, Starkie stood. He finally took my hand warily.

  “OK, then. Um, carry on, Bennett,” he said.

  “Will do, Chief. Thanks for meeting with me. Bye now,” I said before turning and walking out the door.

  CHAPTER 8

  THERE WAS A TICKET on my cop car when I got back to it.

  Of course there was. I’d parked it in the only free spot available in Lower Manhattan during a workday, namely in front of a fire hydrant. If I hadn’t put my police business placard on the dash, it would probably have been towed.

  I was kind of sorry it hadn’t been, I thought as I got in and started it. At that point, a day at the tow yard seemed preferable to dealing with the rank garbage Starkie had just gleefully dumped into my lap.

  Harlem is toward the north end of Manhattan Island, a pretty direct shot from southern Manhattan, where I currently was. But since this was the new NYPD, as Starkie had described it, I decided to take an alternate route over the Manhattan Bridge into Brooklyn.

  I drove around on the BQE and then around the maze of Queens side streets, weighing my new situation. My first and most tempting option was retirement. Having over twenty years in, I could easily put in my papers and just wash my hands of the whole thing.

  Because I had accomplished what I had set out to do in life: be a pretty damn good cop. Like my father before me, I’d sent some monstrous people away to prison, a few of them even to the graveyard.

  Maybe this was it, I thought. Maybe it was time to hang it up.

  But after a while, I started thinking about it, about Starkie and his petty bullshit. I couldn’t let him win that easily. I had outmanned him when we were rookies, and I would outman him now. I’d take anything and everything Starkie could dish out and throw it back in his face. Somehow. As with our little head-to-head in that Bronx bar, I definitely wasn’t going down without a fight.

  I was actually a little excited, at least about the idea of the new squad. Despite the glitches Starkie had mentioned, and the fact that the mayor was involved, the idea of a squad devoted solely to helping the city’s most vulnerable people sounded somewhat intriguing.

  I looked around for a sign back to Manhattan to find out what exactly was an Ombudsman Outreach Squad.

  CHAPTER 9

  WHEN I ARRIVED A little before lunch, 125th Street, Harlem’s version of Main Street, was busy with people and activity.

  There were sidewalk vendors and bustling clothing stores and lines of people in front of curbside food carts. There was also a lot of scaffolding and cranes from new construction and building renovations. I even saw a Times Square–style double-decker bus go by filled with wide-eyed tourists.

  It was nice to see the historically run-down area busy, I thought as I parked. At least Harlem’s future was looking up.

  My new work location was the ninth floor of a new stone-and-glass government building on the corner of 125th and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard. There was a surprise waiting for me when I got through lobby security and walked off the elevator onto the ninth floor. And it wasn’t a happy one by any stretch.

  It was even worse than I’d thought. Which was saying something, since I didn’t even really know what to think yet.

  There was a long line outside the office. We’re talking waiting-on-line-for-Yankees-playoff-tickets long. But instead of elated fans, this one was filled with quite pissed-off-looking citizens. The crowd ran the demographic gamut of New York’s working-class whites and blacks and Hispanics and Asians. There were a lot of young women, a lot of them single moms, I’d be willing to bet, with squirming preschool kids in tow.

  Instead of storming up front and immediately demanding to find out what the insane holdup was, I decided to take another tack. I got on the end of the line. Heck, I was pretty pissed off, too.

  When I turned the first office corner twenty glacially slow minutes later, I saw the office’s official name for the first time. A long plastic banner on the wall said WELCOME TO THE SPECIAL PROJECT OFFICE FOR COMMUNITY RELATIONS WITH THE NYPD. Underneath it in smaller type was the peppy assurance, IT’S A BRAND-NEW DAY.

  The SPOFCRWTNYPD, I thought, shaking my head. Rolls right o
ff the tongue. I mean, even a Polish radio announcer couldn’t pronounce that one.

  “This is bull,” said a young black woman in a red hoodie in front of me as she shifted the bright-eyed two-or-three-year-old girl she was holding onto her other arm.

  “You can say that again,” I said.

  “You taking off work?” she said, turning back toward me.

  “No, not really.”

  “You’re lucky,” the mom said. “I’m wasting a personal day on this.”

  “I wouldn’t call it lucky,” I mumbled. “Why are you here?”

  “Drug gang just moved into my next-door neighbor’s apartment, an eighty-three-year-old woman. Just took it over. I told the local precinct three times but ain’t nothing been done. They told me to come here. I been standing here has to be an hour now. This city. I should have known.”

  I spoke to some other people. It seemed like every aggravating case the local precincts didn’t want to deal with was being sent here to my new world.

  And what a not-so-wonderful world it was.

  What I saw firsthand over the next hour of waiting was unbelievable, unforgettable. There was one female clerk behind the DMV-like counter. One!

  Not that there weren’t more personnel present. On the contrary. Through an open doorway behind the clerk, I saw a wide-assed male cop first sleep, then read the newspaper, then sleep again. The only other cops I could see were sitting at desks as far away from the reception desk as they could get, heads down, idly clicking at computers, shopping sites probably.

  Everywhere phones were ringing. Everywhere no one was answering them. What a completely maddening New York bureaucratic disaster, I thought. No, worse, I remembered.