Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

Some joker from the cottage across the street gave a cat-calling whistle out the window at my shirtless bod as I stepped up the stairs.

“Daddy, get in here!” Chrissy commanded. “You can’t walk around in just your underpants.”

“You’re right, Chrissy,” I said, actually managing a smile. “Daddy forgot.”

Chapter 10

I LEFT FOR WORK early the next morning. Which, if you’re vacationing in the ass end of Queens and want to avoid the traffic back into the city, means being in the car by a bleary-eyed five thirty.

I hadn’t gotten much sleep thanks to the late-night cinder-block delivery from the Breezy Point welcoming committee. My guys were pretty shaken up, and though I didn’t want to admit it, so was I. The kid Flaherty really did seem kind of crazy, and I, more than most, knew what crazy people were capable of.

After the incident, I had called the local One Hundredth Precinct, or the 1-0-0 in cop parlance, who’d sent over a radio car about half an hour later. We’d filled out a report, but from the shift commander’s ho-hum expression, I didn’t get the impression that finding the culprits was too high on his night’s priority list. So much for professional courtesy. The best we could do was have a guy come fix the window later today and hope that was the end of it.

I checked my BlackBerry in the driveway before leaving and learned that the morning’s case meeting locale had been changed from NYPD’s One Police Plaza headquarters to the fancy new NYPD Counterterrorism Bureau on the Brooklyn/Queens border. Though I was glad I didn’t have to drive as far, I didn’t like how quickly the case was escalating. My dwindling hopes of salvaging the remainder of my vacation seemed to be diminishing at an increasingly rapid clip.

As I was coming in, Miriam suggested we meet for breakfast at a diner near the Counterterrorism HQ beforehand to get on the same page. I arrived first and scored us a window booth overlooking an expansive junkyard vista.

A muted Channel Two news story about the bomb threat was playing on th

e TV behind the counter. An overhead shot of the cop-covered public library was followed by another one of a pretty female reporter standing by a police barricade.

A truck driver in the adjacent booth glared at me as I loudly groaned into my white porcelain cup. I knew this was coming. Media heat meant heat on the mayor, which I knew through bitter experience would roll quickly in one direction—downhill, straight at me.

About ten minutes later, I watched from the window as my boss, Miriam, got out of her Honda. Stylish and athletic and irritatingly serene, Miriam looked more like a hot upscale soccer mom than a razor-sharp city cop.

Despite the fact that she had ordered me back from my vacay, I still liked my feisty new boss. Running the Major Case Squad, the Delta Force of the NYPD, was a near-impossible job. Not only was Miriam’s head constantly on the chopping block with high-profile cases, but she had the added challenge of having to garner the respect and loyalty of the department’s most elite detectives, who were often prima donnas.

Somehow Miriam, a former air force pilot, managed to pull it off with wily intelligence, humor, and tact. She also backed her people unconditionally and took absolutely no one’s shit. Including mine, unfortunately.

“What’s the story, morning glory?” my boss said as she sat down.

“Let’s see. Hmm. Today’s headline, I guess, is ‘Vacationing Cop Gets Screwed,’ ” I said.

“Hey, I feel you, dawg. I was up in Cape Cod, sipping a fuzzy navel when they called me.”

“Who’s was it? Anyone I know?” I said

“A gentlewoman never tells,” she said with a sly wink. “Anyway, hope your shoes are shined. Sander Flaum from Intel is going to be at this powwow, as well as the counter-terrorism chief, Ciardi, and a gaggle of nervous Feds. You’re today’s featured speaker, so don’t let them trip you up.”

“Wait a second. Back up,” I said. “I’m primary detective on the case? So now I’m on vacation when? Nights?”

“Ah, Mike,” Miriam said as the waitress poured her a coffee. “You Irish have such a way with words. Yeats, Joyce, and now you.”

“For a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, you’re not too bad at throwing the blarney around when you have to,” I said. “Seriously, two chiefs? Why all the heavies on a Sunday?”

“The lab came back on the explosive. It’s T-four from Europe—from Italy apparently. You know how squirrelly the commissioner gets about anything remotely terrorist-related.”

The new commissioner, Ken Rodin, was a pugnacious, old-school former beat cop who still wore a .38 in an ankle holster above his Italian wingtips. With crime down in the city, his primary directive—some said his obsession—was to prevent another terrorist act during his watch. Which wasn’t as paranoid as it might sound, considering NYC was still terrorist organizations’ Top of the Pops, so to speak.

“Though it’s still far from conclusive that this is a terrorist thing, we have to go through the DEFCON One motions for the time being. There’s been smoke coming out of my BlackBerry all night.”

“Is McGirth going to be there?”

Tom McGinnis, or McGirth, as he was more casually known due to his not-so-girlish figure, was the department’s chief of detectives, Miriam’s boss and perhaps the most egregious power-hungry ballbuster in the NYPD.

Miriam rolled her eyes in affirmation.

“What’s up with bullshit internal politics?” I said. “What happened to the commissioner’s pep talk last month about how the mayor wanted a new role for Major Case? ‘Kick ass, no politics, just results?’ Ring a bell?”