I am only slightly breathless, only slightly nervous.
“Listen to me. It’s all here, where I am. I know it.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she says.
“A newsstand between Madison and Park. Kenny’s. I’m less than two hundred feet away from you guys. Leave one person at Taylor Antiquities and get everyone over here. Now.”
“How-?”
“The two vans, the garage…that’s all a decoy,” I say. “The real shit is being unloaded here…in cartons of candy bars.”
“How do you know?”
“Like the case in Pigalle. I know because I know.”
Chapter 5
One month later. It’s another sweltering summer day in Manhattan.
A year ago I was working in the detective room at the precinct on rue Achille-Martinet in Paris. Today I’m working in the detective room at the precinct on East 51st Street in Manhattan.
But the crime is absolutely the same. In both cities, men, women, and children sell drugs, kill for drugs, and all too often die for drugs.
My desk faces Maria Martinez’s scruffy desk. She’s not in yet. Uh-oh. She may be picking up my bad habits. Pas possible. Not Maria.
I drink my coffee and begin reading the blotter reports of last night’s arrests. No murders, no drug busts. So much for interesting blotter reports.
I call my coolest, hippest, chicest New York contact-Patrick, one of the doormen at 15 Central Park West, where I live with Dalia. Patrick is trying to score me a dinner reservation at Rao’s, the impossible-to-get-into restaurant in East Harlem.
Merde. I am on my cell phone when my boss, Inspector Nick Elliott, the chief inspector for my division, stops by. I hold up my “just a minute” index finger. Since the Taylor Antiquities drug bust I have a little money in the bank with my boss, but it won’t last forever, and this hand gesture certainly won’t help.
At last I sigh. No tables. Maybe next month. When I hang up the phone I say, “I’m sorry, Inspector. I was just negotiating a favor with a friend who might be able to score me a table at Rao’s next week.”
Elliott scowls and says, “Far be it from me to interrupt your off-duty life, Moncrief, but you may have noticed that your partner isn’t at her desk.”
“I noticed. Don’t forget, I’m a detective.”
He ignores my little joke.
“In case you’re wondering, Detective Martinez is on loan to Vice for two days.”
“Why didn’t you or Detective Martinez tell me this earlier? You must have known before today.”
“Yeah, I knew about it yesterday, but I told Martinez to hold off telling you. That it would just piss you off to be left out, and I was in no rush to listen to you get pissed off,” Elliott says.
“So why wasn’t I included?” I ask.
“You weren’t necessary. They just needed a woman. Though I don’t owe you any explanations about assignments.”
The detective room has grown quieter. I’m sure that a few of my colleagues-especially the men-are enjoying seeing Elliott put me in my place.
Fact is, I like Elliott; he’s a pretty straight-arrow guy, but I have been developing a small case of paranoia about being excluded from hot assignments.
“What can Maria do that I can’t do?” I ask.
“If you can’t answer that, then that pretty-boy face of yours isn’t doing you much good,” Elliott says with a laugh. Then his tone of voice turns serious.
“Anyway, we got something going on up the road a piece. They got a situation at Brioni. That’s a fancy men’s store just off Fifth Avenue. Get a squad car driver to take you there. Right now.”
“Which Brioni?” I ask.
“I just told you-Brioni on Fifth Avenue.”
“There are two Brionis: 57 East 57th Street and 55 East 52nd Street,” I say.
Elliott begins to walk away. He stops. He turns to me. He speaks.
“You would know something like that.”
Chapter 6
What’s the one question that’s guaranteed to piss off any New York City detective or cop?
“Don’t you guys have anything better to do with your time?”
If you’re a cop who’s ever ticketed someone for running a red light; if you’re a detective who’s ever asked a mother why her child wasn’t in school that day, then you’ve heard it.
I enter the Brioni store, at 57 East 57th Street. My ego is bruised, and my mood is lousy. Frankly, I am usually in Brioni as a customer, not a policeman. Plus, is there nothing more humiliating than an eager detective sent to investigate a shoplifting crime?
I’m in an even lousier mood when the first thing I’m asked is, “Don’t you guys have anything better to do with your time?” The suspect doesn’t ask this question. No. It comes from one of the arresting officers, a skinny young African American guy who is at the moment cuffing a young African American kid. The minor has been nabbed by store security. He was trying to lift three cashmere sweaters, and now the kid is scared as shit.
“You should know better than to ask that question,” I say to the cop. “Meanwhile, take the cuffs off the kid.”
The cop does as he’s told, but he clearly does not know when to shut up. So he speaks.
“Sorry, Detective. I just meant that it’s pretty unusual to send a detective out on an arrest that’s so…so…”
He is searching for a word, and I supply it. “Unimportant.”
“Yeah, that’s it,” the young officer says. “Unimportant.”
The officer now realizes that the subject is closed. He gives me some details. The kid, age twelve, was brought in for petty robbery this past February. But I’m only half listening. I’m pissed off, and I’m pissed off because the cop is right-it’s unimportant. This case is incredibly unimportant, laughably unimportant. It’s ridiculous to be sent on such a stupid little errand. Other NYPD detectives are unraveling terrorist plots, going undercover to frame mob bosses. Me, I’m overseeing the arrest of a little kid who stole three cashmere sweaters.
As Maria Martinez has often said to me, “Someone with your handsome face and your expensive suit shouldn’t be sent on anything but the most important assignments.” Then she’d laugh, and I would stare at her in stony silence…until I also laughed.
“We have the merch all bagged,” says the other officer. The name Callahan is on his nameplate. Callahan is a guy with very pink cheeks and an even pinker nose. He looks maybe thirty-five or forty…or whatever age a cop is when he’s smart enough not to ask “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time?”
“Thanks,” I say.
But what I’m really thinking about is: Who the hell gave me this nauseatingly petite assignment?
I’m sure it’s not Elliott. Ah, oui, the inspector and I aren’t exactly what they call best buds, but he’s grown used to me. He thinks he’s being funny when he calls me Pretty Boy, but he also trusts me, and, like almost everyone else, he’s very pleased with the bust I (almost single-handedly) helped pull off at Taylor Antiquities.
I know that my partner, Maria Martinez, puts out good press on me. As I’ve said, she and I are simpatico, to say the least. I like her. She likes me. Case closed.
Beyond that, anyone higher than Elliott doesn’t know I exist. So I can’t assume that one of the assistant commissioners or one of the ADAs is out to get me.
“There’s a squad car outside to bring him in,” Callahan says.
“Hold on a minute. I want to talk to the kid,” I say.
I walk over to the boy. He wears jeans cut off at midcalf, very clean white high-top sneakers, and an equally clean white T-shirt. It’s a look I could live without.
“Why’d you try to steal three sweaters? It’s the goddamn middle of summer, and you’re stealing sweaters. Are you stupid?”