The Ultimatum: A Jeremy Fisk Novel by Dick Wolf Page A

up here.
    Lin left the building empty-handed. Two hours later, a truck labeled MANHATTAN TREE TRIMMING turned off Broadway, double-parked on West Eighty-Seventh, and set to work on a spruce tree that reached just past the target’s window. The leaves, which indeed needed a trim, provided cover for one of the men wearing white coveralls and a Manhattan Tree Trimming helmet to climb into Chay’s apartment.

CHAPTER 13
    BODY OF MANHATTAN MAN FOUND IN BATTERY PARK
    By Chay Maryland
            Published: June 30, 2015 2 Comments
                     NEW YORK —Police are conducting an investigation following the discovery of the body of Walter Doyle in Battery Park late Tuesday night.
    Doyle, 69, a retired schoolteacher, was found under bushes behind Castle Clinton by sanitation workers at about midnight, according to the NYPD. He appeared to have suffered a gunshot wound. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
    The police have released no other information about the case.
    F isk read the story in his office—actually, the office belonging to Detective Dan Werner, who was on medical leave. Fisk’s regular office had a window that overlooked Ninth Avenue, or rather offered a decent shot to a gunman who might have been on Ninth Avenue, or in an office or on a rooftop across the street. So Fisk had relocated temporarily. Story of his life lately.
    “I liked your piece in today’s paper,” he told Chay when she arrived.
    “I’m glad to hear it.” She took the seat facing his desk—glided into it, actually, her every movement fluid. Her gray business suit was matronly, he thought, the boxy skirt dipping well below herknees. But it worked, particularly now, as she crossed her legs, giving prominence to a calf muscle that looked to have been sculpted from amber—
    He reminded himself that she was an obstacle; his objective was to get rid of her.
    From her bag, she produced a Krispy Kreme box. “I don’t mean to be cliché, arriving at a police station with doughnuts,” she said, “but would you like one?”
    Fisk’s culinary leanings generally extended only so far as trying to mix a dinner other than a slice of pizza into his diet. On occasion, though, he found himself going out of his way to patronize the twenty-four-hour Krispy Kreme store on West Thirty-Second Street. He decided to decline, until she opened the box. Warm air rose from it, carrying the enticing aroma of chocolate frosting and reminding him that he was starving.
    “It is cliché, and terribly offensive,” said Fisk, helping himself to one of the chocolate glazed doughnuts.
    “You’re welcome,” she said.
    “So what do you have in mind for shadowing?” he asked.
    She sat back. “I’ll follow the story, ideally, until the case is closed.”
    “The Zodiac case in San Francisco has been open since 1969.”
    “If this case lasts that long, then I suppose I’ll get to write a book after all.”
    “What about your other work? Or has your desk been cleared for this exclusive?”
    She looked across the desk, as if reading his mind, eyes like lasers. “My job is to follow the story. I followed it right here.”
    “I’m not the story,” Fisk said.
    “You’re part of it.”
    Fisk frowned, showing her his displeasure. “Do you know how few NYPD officers fire a gun in the line of duty in a given week?”
    “No, but let me guess. The Department has, what, about thirty-five thousand four hundred officers?”
    “Give or take.” She was off by all of twelve officers, he thought. Or, more likely, she’d read a more recent Department personnel profile than he had. “And they discharge their weapons an average of six hundred times per year . . .”
    What didn’t she know? “Where did you get that figure?” he asked.
    “I’ve seen the totals posted at the police range in Astoria.”
    He’d seen them too, the annual printouts, taped to the front door at the range. They listed the number of rounds expended in the line of duty by