Burn (Michael Bennett 7)

CHAPTER 21

FIRST UP ON THE day’s agenda was a squad meeting I called and held in the small conference room next to my office.

By a little after nine, around the battered laminate table that was almost too big for the room sat the squad’s full retinue of unusual suspects.

Gung-ho Jimmy Doyle was present and accounted for on my left, beside a happy Arturo Lopez and the stylish Noah Robertson. On my right was wired-a-little-too-tight Naomi Chast, sitting beside a new female cop who’d been in court testifying the day before.

The new cop’s name was Brooklyn Kale, and she was a nice-looking and very tall young black woman. I’d read in her file that the six-three Brooklyn had played basketball with the University of Connecticut Lady Huskies and was one of the point guards on the 2009 NCAA championship team. She was also a Harlem native who’d grown up six blocks north up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard.

Which I liked. Brooklyn knew the area, the community, had some skin in the game. I just hoped her policing skills were comparable to her accuracy from the three-point line.

I started off the meeting by handing out the current docket of complaints I’d had Ms. Ramirez print up.

“Now, before we get started looking these over,” I said to everybody, “I think it’s important to let you know what I expect out of this squad. What I expect is nothing short of doing this job absolutely as well as anybody can possibly do it, OK? We prioritize the cases and we work ’em and work ’em and work ’em until they’re done.

“So I don’t want to hear excuses. We set our goals, and we methodically accomplish them. And then we go home and go to sleep and wake up and do it again.”

I looked everyone over. They mostly seemed to get what I was saying. Arturo even gave me a happy little thumbs-up.

Was I being too harsh? Too drill sergeant? Maybe a little, but that was probably better in the beginning with these newborn baby cops. I could show them my good cop side once the ground rules were laid down and I started seeing some results.

I looked over the complaint list. At the top were a lot of strange but not really police-related complaints. People were wondering things like why weren’t their radiators working and what school district were they in and what was up with their food stamp application.

“Ms. Ramirez, Ms. Tyson,” I said to the two clerks, who were hovering in the conference room’s doorway. “Do you see all these housing complaints and whatnot at the top of this list? Can I put you two in charge of redirecting non-police complaints to the proper city agencies?

“I’m not trying to diminish these issues. I might want to call the cops if rats were infesting my building, too. But we don’t fix streetlights or fill in potholes. We just deal with actual crimes. Help out people who are in danger, that sort of thing. If you have something questionable, by all means leave it on the docket, but my boss is a nut about numbers, and we can clear a lot of these by proper redirection.”

“On it,” Ariel Tyson said, leaving the room with Ms. Ramirez.

I quickly kept reading until I found something valid. “OK. Look here on page two, folks. The third complaint from the top. A woman named Holly Jacobs is being harassed by her ex-boyfriend. She states that her boyfriend threatened to murder her, cut her up, and feed her to the seagulls out at Coney Island. See, this is a police matter. Just threatening to murder someone is a crime called—”

“Yes, simple assault. We know. We learned this at the academy. Have mercy,” said Naomi Chast testily beside me.

“Very good, Naomi,” I said after a long wide-eyed moment. I nodded at her calmly before licking my thumb and turning the page. “It is called simple assault. You’re right. Now, see, we’re starting to get somewhere.”

CHAPTER 22

“DETECTIVE? MIKE? I MEAN, SIR?” Arturo Lopez said, raising his hand like a very overgrown third grader.

“Yes, Arturo?”

“Did you happen to see this strange, um, cannibal thing down on the bottom of page three?”

I went down the list. At the bottom, there wa

s a complaint. And Arturo was right on the money. It was pretty strange, all right.

A complainant with the curious name of Hudson Du Maurier III claimed that early in the morning Thursday last, he observed something odd from his sixth-story apartment window on Lenox Avenue. He was looking out the window when a brown hatchback pulled up in front of an abandoned building on the corner of 145th.

He said several men exited the vehicle and entered the premises. He also said that through a large hole in the roof of the abandoned establishment, he made out a large, blazing grill. He said he also spied a large black man in chef’s whites, and what looked like a girl bound like a “leg of lamb.”

Du Maurier concluded his account by stating that he was afraid the girl had been eaten by these men, and that he could be contacted at his apartment to provide more details, such as the vehicle’s license plate number, which he’d jotted down.

“And then Mr. The Third woke up and rolled over and finished his last rock of crack and lived happily ever after,” said Doyle from the other end of the table.

“Actually, I think I know this man from when I was on patrol,” Naomi Chast piped up. “He’s got some mental issues, schizophrenia, I believe, but he’s not a crackhead.”

“Oh, he’s just schizo,” Doyle said, nodding. “Sorry for doubting his addled, er, I mean riveting account.”