Before she could protest, I pointed at the aggressive cop.
“You,” I said.
“Me?” the strapping twenty-something said.
“Yeah, you. Go back to your desk and turn off the Tetris, and while you’re there, tell the rest of the mopes in this unit that Daddy’s home and he wants everyone standing in line in the hall by my office until further notice. Everyone except for you, that is. You can take off for the rest of the day, too, Dr. Pepper Spray.”
As he reluctantly walked off, I turned toward the line of exhausted, frustrated people behind me.
“I’m sorry, everyone, but this office is closed for the day,” I announced.
If I thought the people were pissed off before, they were twice as steamed now. There was a lot of groaning and cursing. Someone kicked the wall hard enough to shake the banner. I wondered for a scary second if I was going to need to call for some real cops.
“This is bull!” someone called out loudly.
Yes, it is, I thought. “This is bull” was today’s theme. It was New York City’s theme pretty much every day, when you came to think of it. If the politicians were honest, they’d put it on billboard-size signs at the city line.
WELCOME TO NEW YORK. IT’S BULL!
“Sorry, but it can’t be helped,” I called back. “Hopefully, we’ll be open tomorrow, but I can’t make any promises. The Project for Outreach Relations with the NYPD apologizes for any inconvenience.”
“Man, you even got the name wrong,” a thin black man in a UPS uniform said, pointing at the wall banner with a loud “Tsssk.”
“My mistake,” I said, going over and ripping the banner off the wall. I crumpled it loudly in my hands as I stepped behind the counter and methodically stuffed it into a wastepaper basket.
“Whatever we are, we are now under renovation!” I called out. “Thank you and I’m sorry and good-bye.”
CHAPTER 12
I SPENT THE NEXT hour in my new office trying to get my bearings.
The office itself was a nice surprise. It was a recently redone, roomy corner space that had new furniture and an extensive view of tree-lined Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard to the north. It even had a washroom and a coffeemaker, which I promptly filled and got percolating before I started stacking the massive pile of in-box files on my desk.
First order of business was to read through the squad’s operational details folder. In some ways, the unit was like a mini-precinct. In addition to a locker and interview rooms, the office space had an on-site armory, cruisers in the underground lot, Kevlar vests and radios. Coordination had been set up with the Twenty-Eighth Precinct house a couple of blocks away for backup and lockup as needed.
But in other ways, the unit was like a much more agile, roving detective squad consisting of a handful of officers and a couple of clerks. The officers were what was known as white badges, plainclothes cops recently taken from patrol to see if they had the wherewithal to become permanent detectives.
Managed correctly, the squad could be an effective tool, I realized. It would just be a matter of prioritizing cases and laser-focusing on a few cases at a time like any other squad. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. I was actually a little excited.
Until I got to the assigned officer personnel files.
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“OK, now I get it,” I mumbled to myself as I skimmed through the records.
It wasn’t just the most frustrating cases that were being shunted here, I realized. It seemed that some of the department’s most frustrating cops had been sent here, too. Instead of confusing myself further, I decided to put names to faces and meet my new charges one by one.
“Arturo Lopez!” I called out to the cops lined up outside the door.
A friendly-seeming young Puerto Rican officer came in. I recognized him as the big-boned cop who’d been sleeping at his desk. Arturo was about five-ten and about five hundred pounds. Well, maybe not five hundred, but easily thirty pounds overweight.
“Lopez, are you interested in being a good cop?” I said after I introduced myself.
“Yes, I definitely am, sir. It means everything to me.”
“Good deal. Let me ask you a question. How fast are you?”
“How fat am I?” he said, hurt. “C’mon, that’s pretty cold, sir.”