regulations by living in the same precinct where he worked, but he had been assured that petty stuff was not what IAB was looking for. What they were looking for was Esposito, though Nick didn’t know until later how hard they were trying.
There had been nothing especially wrong with the squad where Nick had started his detective career, but it had not been in the same Bronx precinct where he had worked as a cop and had expected to go when promoted. He’d been moved because of manpower issues, it had been explained, due to retirements, resignations, and promotions. It was temporary, he’d been assured, and he’d believed them. That belief may have figured into why he’d never settled in, never connected to the people and place as he might have, and his sense of transience and separation, made emphatic by the same qualities in his off-duty life, had begun to corrode the sense of fulfillment and fun he’d come to depend on. No matter its burdens, work had been a refuge, his last one of late, and Nick had not wanted to test his capacity to withstand the equal aversions he’d felt for going to the office and coming home. He had not wanted to be at either, and he had not known where else to go. When he’d judged that he had done his time, he’d put in for a transfer to Manhattan.
But months passed without even the rumor of movement, and Nick could foresee the months turning into years. He had no significant friends or relatives to intercede for him; his personnel file would molder and yellow in a cabinet downtown. He could picture it, and he knewhow it felt. As he waited, one less-than-stellar colleague was transferred to a suburban corner of Queens because he couldn’t keep up with his cases; another, notoriously abrasive, found himself reassigned to Manhattan overnight when a chief didn’t like how he answered the phone—“What do you want?” Nick had no desire to be as incompetent as the one or as impolitic as the other, but when they called to crow variously about the better restaurants, the lighter workload, the ease of the commute, he left the office in a foul temper. Hours were spent in acrid speculation over whether he was being refused or merely ignored, and which was the preferred insult. When he asked for a robbery assignment with steady tours, he was passed over for a junior man, the sergeant’s favorite. His considerate treatment of a tearful perp he locked up for a fight—ex-wife, hooking up with the ex–best friend—led to what should have been a professional coup, a data dump on a gang of home invaders—names, addresses, phone numbers, past and planned jobs. Kilos and machine guns were ultimately recovered, but Nick wasn’t there for the takedown. It happened on his day off, and the sergeant had forgotten to call him in. Junior took the collars. Nick had always had his bleak side, but after this, he was becoming bitter.
On his next day back, he confided his frustration to one of the veteran detectives, a shrewd and decent old Barbadian. What Nick took at first to be magnificently sympathetic indignation proved to be the onset of a stroke. At the emergency room, he met a neighborhood acquaintance from lnwood, a former partner of the ailing man, now a lieutenant at IAB. “Don’t hold that against me,” he joked, and Nick didn’t. The man had always been affably unserious, almost boldly so, noted mostly in his youth for running naked through a church picnic on a twenty-dollar dare. They went out for a beer and had at least eight, at which point the offer was casually tendered, impetuously accepted.
“What do I do?”
“Nothing, really. Just keep your eyes open. Some of the shitheads I work with have a real hard-on for some guy,” he said, laying out the allegations by Malcolm Cole and Babenco, hinting he didn’t take them at face value. “Who knows? You don’t have to be best friends with the guy. Nick, I never worked really hard at anything, but I never did less than what I do
There had been nothing especially wrong with the squad where Nick had started his detective career, but it had not been in the same Bronx precinct where he had worked as a cop and had expected to go when promoted. He’d been moved because of manpower issues, it had been explained, due to retirements, resignations, and promotions. It was temporary, he’d been assured, and he’d believed them. That belief may have figured into why he’d never settled in, never connected to the people and place as he might have, and his sense of transience and separation, made emphatic by the same qualities in his off-duty life, had begun to corrode the sense of fulfillment and fun he’d come to depend on. No matter its burdens, work had been a refuge, his last one of late, and Nick had not wanted to test his capacity to withstand the equal aversions he’d felt for going to the office and coming home. He had not wanted to be at either, and he had not known where else to go. When he’d judged that he had done his time, he’d put in for a transfer to Manhattan.
But months passed without even the rumor of movement, and Nick could foresee the months turning into years. He had no significant friends or relatives to intercede for him; his personnel file would molder and yellow in a cabinet downtown. He could picture it, and he knewhow it felt. As he waited, one less-than-stellar colleague was transferred to a suburban corner of Queens because he couldn’t keep up with his cases; another, notoriously abrasive, found himself reassigned to Manhattan overnight when a chief didn’t like how he answered the phone—“What do you want?” Nick had no desire to be as incompetent as the one or as impolitic as the other, but when they called to crow variously about the better restaurants, the lighter workload, the ease of the commute, he left the office in a foul temper. Hours were spent in acrid speculation over whether he was being refused or merely ignored, and which was the preferred insult. When he asked for a robbery assignment with steady tours, he was passed over for a junior man, the sergeant’s favorite. His considerate treatment of a tearful perp he locked up for a fight—ex-wife, hooking up with the ex–best friend—led to what should have been a professional coup, a data dump on a gang of home invaders—names, addresses, phone numbers, past and planned jobs. Kilos and machine guns were ultimately recovered, but Nick wasn’t there for the takedown. It happened on his day off, and the sergeant had forgotten to call him in. Junior took the collars. Nick had always had his bleak side, but after this, he was becoming bitter.
On his next day back, he confided his frustration to one of the veteran detectives, a shrewd and decent old Barbadian. What Nick took at first to be magnificently sympathetic indignation proved to be the onset of a stroke. At the emergency room, he met a neighborhood acquaintance from lnwood, a former partner of the ailing man, now a lieutenant at IAB. “Don’t hold that against me,” he joked, and Nick didn’t. The man had always been affably unserious, almost boldly so, noted mostly in his youth for running naked through a church picnic on a twenty-dollar dare. They went out for a beer and had at least eight, at which point the offer was casually tendered, impetuously accepted.
“What do I do?”
“Nothing, really. Just keep your eyes open. Some of the shitheads I work with have a real hard-on for some guy,” he said, laying out the allegations by Malcolm Cole and Babenco, hinting he didn’t take them at face value. “Who knows? You don’t have to be best friends with the guy. Nick, I never worked really hard at anything, but I never did less than what I do
Similar Books
