Final Winter

That brought a smile from Monty. But Darren continued to ignore everybody, while the good doctor still looked like he was trying to retain an enema in his bowels. Brian looked around at his fellow members of Federal Operations and Intelligence Liaison Team Seven, a/k/a Tiger Team Seven, and he remembered how it had all begun.

~ * ~

Months earlier there’d been a note on Brian’s cluttered desk, at the First Precinct on Ericsson Place at the southern tip of Manhattan. ‘See me soonest. L.’

L. Officially known as Lieutenant Lawrence Lancaster, known to everyone in the squad as Ellie but who was never called that to his face. Brian crumpled up the note, tossed it in a nearby wastebasket, and thought about going outside for a nice second cup of coffee. But he decided that wasn’t going to solve anything. There. A detective joke — not going to solve anything — and he hadn’t even tried. He looked at his cluttered desk, at the sparse collection of family photographs there, his ex-wife Marcy and their boy Thomas, and another one, showing a much younger Brian Doyle, a rookie in his fresh NYPD uniform, standing next to his dad Curt, wearing a NYPD sergeant’s uniform, and a goddam proud look on his face. Across from his desk was another desk, just a shade cleaner, but empty. His partner, Jimmy Carr, coming in late from the dentist or something.

Brian got up from his desk, went over to the small office on the east side of the building. The lieutenant was sitting behind his own messy desk — Brian almost smiled at the memory of the biting memo that the Chief of Detectives had sent out last month, about how cluttered desks led to cluttered cases and court dismissals — and he rapped his hand on the side of the door.

‘Looking for me?’

The lieutenant looked up, gazing at Brian over his half-rim glasses, which were kind of sissified for a squad lieutenant. But those nearly bloodless blue eyes behind the lenses never let anybody call the lieutenant sissy, even though his nickname was Ellie. He was squat, like a man whose intended weight and girth had been shoved into a frame built six inches too short. He waved a thick hand up at Brian and said, ‘Yeah, Bri. Come in and close the door.’

Brian nodded, still hating the nickname Bri, wondering what in hell had gotten into the lieutenant that he needed an office visit. He sat down, noted the filing cabinets filling the office — at least those were neat, like they were part of the goddam wall system or something — and the lieutenant picked up a thin file folder, opened it up as he sat back. Brian kept quiet, kept his mouth shut. Better not to offer anything before knowing what the hell was going on.

The lieutenant was no longer looking at the file folder. He said, ‘Last December.’

‘Yes, sir?’

‘There was a test we all took. Remember?’

‘Vaguely.’

‘It was an intelligence test, that’s what most of us thought. Odd questions. Puzzles. Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb. Crap like that.’

Brian nodded. ‘Yeah, I remember now.’

The lieutenant tossed the folder on his desk. ‘Okay, Bri, we’re now in confidential land, got it? Confidential such you don’t tell your partner, you don’t tell the ex, don’t tell nobody. Understood?’

‘Sure, boss,’ Brian said, feeling better that the meeting wasn’t for something he had screwed up on but was for some-thing else.

‘Okay. Deal is, we all thought the test was just another pysch bureau bullshit project, but it wasn’t. Maybe it was bullshit after all, but it wasn’t ours. It’s the Feds.’

‘What do they want?’ Brian asked.

‘You.’

‘Huh?’

The lieutenant grimaced. ‘Don’t like it at all, and you’re gonna like it even less. The Feds are looking for people, on temporary duty. Six months, maybe a year, maybe longer. You’ll be detached from the precinct, full pay and benefits and seniority accruing, plus you’ll get a twenty percent pay bonus to make up for whatever OT you lose. Plus the usual travel and per diem goodies.’

‘Lieutenant, I got cases to close, court appearances set for the next month, and—’

‘It’s all been taken care of.’

Brian heard his voice get heated. ‘It has, has it? Excuse me, lieutenant, but what the fuck, okay? Don’t I get a say in this? Don’t I?’

The lieutenant seemed to choose his words. ‘Apparently not. Because I’ve been raising a shit storm, too, losing a guy like you, but I’ve gotten the word, inscribed in granite letters ten feet tall from One Police Plaza, that it’s a go. For some reason the Feds like the answers you gave on the test and what they saw in your personnel jacket. And don’t take this the wrong way or the hard way, and you can be a royal Irish pain in the ass, Bri, but I’m gonna hate losing you.’

Brian clasped his hands together. ‘Shit, boss, what the hell do they want me for, anyway?’

Lancaster opened up the thin folder, bent his head down and said, ‘Something called Federal Operations and Intelligence Liaison. FOIL. Duties and responsibilities to be announced once you report in and sign a standard non-disclosure form, yadda yadda yadda.’