Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

“And how ironic. Here we are without any time,” Miriam said. “So what’s it going to be, Mike? Are you going to catch these guys for me or what?”

I flipped through the file some more. Then I put it down and stood and stared out the window at Chinatown for a moment, the swirl of traffic, the bright Chinese signs beside the gray tenement fire escapes.

“After all you’ve done for me, Miriam?” I finally said, grinning at her. “It’s the least I could do. After all, diamonds are a girl’s BFF, right?”

CHAPTER 50

YOUNG DOYLE WAS UNCHARACTERISTICALLY demure and silent and looking none too happy as I drove him back uptown toward Harlem later that afternoon.

“Come on, Doyle, just say it,” I said as I weaved around a cackling, shirtless homeless guy doing jumping jacks in the middle of the intersection of Spring Street and the Bowery.

“Say what?” he said.

“How pissed you are that I’m abandoning the ombudsman squad ship.”

“Well,” Doyle mumbled from where he was scrunched up against the door, “you said it, not me.”

“Come on, Doyle, you heard what Miriam said. A new senior supervising detective will be reporting for ombudsman duty first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, a new one? Great. The fifth one this month. That’s just dandy,” Doyle said. “Pardon me for not partaking in your hopeful optimism there, Mike. You were the only one to ever even attempt to lift a finger to get the unit to do something useful. And here I was getting psyched because we were actually doing some investigating. What an idiot.”

I did feel pretty bad for the kid. He was a good, talented, hardworking cop. I remembered what it was like trying to make the leap from patrol, how difficult it was to find a challenging investigative gig.

“Come on,” I tried. “Never say never. They could send somebody good.”

“Yeah, right,” Doyle said. “Believe me, tomorrow morning some ass-covering lifer is going to get in there and go into that office, close the blinds, and bust out a pillow. It’s going to be nothing other than Harlem situation back to normal, straight back to all screwed up.”

My phone rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize, and I was going to let it go until I realized with a cold jolt that I did recognize it.

It was the number of Holly Jacobs, the lovely Harlem woman who was being stalked by her psychopathic boyfriend.

I fumbled Accept and stuck the phone up to my ear.

“Holly? I’m here. It’s Mike Bennett. Are you there? What’s up?” I said.

There was silence on the line. I checked to see that the connection was still good and was putting the phone back to my ear when she spoke, her tense, terrified voice barely higher than a whisper.

“He’s here,” she said. “In the hall right outside my apartment’s front door. Help me, please. God help me. I don’t want to die.”

I gunned it north up to Holly’s apartment. I slalomed through the logjam of Midtown midday traffic with the siren blazing while Doyle worked the phone, calling the other members of the ombudsman unit and the local precinct.

We got to 116th and Morningside Park in what had to be a record-breaking twenty minutes. Two precinct cars and an unmarked were already double-parked out in front of Holly’s building.

Please, God, let this lady be OK, I thought as I screeched up beside them and hurried in with Doyle.

“Hey! What is this? What the hell is this?” some officious silver-haired Hispanic guy in the middle of the lobby, holding a little yelping black dog, wanted to know. “I’m the super. Who the hell are you people?”

I didn’t have time to explain, so I just juked around him and took the stairs two at a time. When I reached the top landing and heard the radio chatter and saw a bunch of uniformed cops and Arturo Lopez and Brooklyn Kale standing in the hall out in front of Holly’s apartment, my heart sank. I thought, That’s it. I’m too late. She’s dead.

But I was wrong.

Thank goodness.

Holly came out of her apartment a second later with a bulging garment bag and a set of keys. They jangled in her shaking hand as she attempted to lock her apartment door.

“Holly,” I said gently, taking her keys and locking the door for her. “Thank God you’re OK. What happened?”

“I’d just come home and was putting on some pasta when I heard something at the front door, like some rattling and clicks at the lock.”