Raging Heat

“You’re sorta blindsiding me here. I’m still herding my ducks.” He chuckled, trying to regain footing. “Can you meet at our usual deli for breakfast, say, tomorrow or early next week?”

The seasoned interrogator kept his feet to the fire. “Background on me for what? Tell me now, or I’ll start asking around.”

Nasal breeze crossed his phone’s mouthpiece. Then came the creak of executive leather as he sat. “A job, since you insist on squeezing me. A promotion. Again.”

His “again” carried some stank. Three years before, Zach identified Heat as a rising star and campaigned for her to take command of her precinct after the death of the beloved Captain Montrose. The ugly politics of the process gave her second thoughts, however, and she left him at the altar, declining both her promotion to captain and the command, to remain a street detective. A gamesman has a long memory, she decided. And yet, he still played the game. Why this time?

It had to be Wally Irons. The man who took the precinct command Heat had declined proved himself to be an inept self-promoter with no copsense nor any clue how to manage people. Captain Irons’s sole talent rested in his astonishing ability to survive in the face of his gaffes, usually buffoonish or egregious. The whole squad bet that the exposure of his secret affair with one of his homicide detectives, Sharon Hinesburg, would trigger the end of his command. Especially since his lover turned out to be a mole for a terror organization. Yet, after two weeks of intensive meetings downtown and a monthlong leave of absence, the Iron Man returned to flip on the lights in his precinct commander’s office without so much as a wink about his transgression — or a hint of how he kept his post.

The tongue-in-cheek speculation ran to holding blackmail photos of the mayor. Rook theorized Wally was like Kafka’s Gregor Samsa, “a human cockroach, only freakishly mutated. Like that deviant species they discovered that survives chemical spills, nuclear meltdowns, and Real Housewives marathons.”

These were Nikki’s thoughts as she eyed the empty desk in the bull pen. The desk that had been assigned to Sharon Hinesburg’s replacement, a grade-three who transferred from the Organized Crime Unit, a gifted, instinctive investigator whose single drawback turned out to be her bust size. And when years of innuendo from Captain Irons turned to harassment, and finally, an “accidental” grope, Detective Camille Washington just didn’t show up one day last week. Now, Nikki assumed Irons was out and she was Zach Hamner’s candidate — again.

She was mistaken.

“The commish directed the head of Counterterrorism to create a new task force, and he wants you on it. You do remember Commander McMains?”

Of course she did. Nikki especially recalled how he stepped in to help her shut down that bioterror plot. “Good cop. Good person.”

“He thinks the same. Which is why your name tops his short list. This is big, Heat. We’re definitely thinking outside the boroughs with this job. We need someone who can liaise with our foreign law enforcement partners to meet the challenges of all cross-border criminal activity that impacts New York City.”

Nikki wondered, was he reading this? Probably not. Most likely, Zach wrote it and accessed his talking points from memory.

“Under McMains, you would be the NYPD point person working directly with Interpol, New Scotland Yard, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group, and a slew of others. And I hope you know where your passport is, because you’re going to be spending a lot of time in London, Hamburg, Tel Aviv, Lyons, Mexico City, Rio…” The implications resonated immediately and Hamner’s words fuzzed while she watched Rook fiddling with the espresso maker across the squad room. Something cold and melancholy poked her gut.

“…You there? Hello?”

“Uh, yeah.” She gathered herself and tried to reset the course of the call. “Listen, you still haven’t explained why you spied on me.”

“Due diligence is not spying, Detective Heat.” The Hammer was not only back in his wheelhouse but strutting the deck. “This is proper vetting for a key position. We needed to see who you are associating with to make sure we don’t have any surprises. Like gym rats turning up naked and dead on your parlor floor.”

Heat wished Zach was there so she could throttle his face to a bloody pulp with the phone. Don — a hero and ex-Navy SEAL — had no longer been her no-strings sex partner that night he came over to shower after a combat-training workout. Instead of rising to the bait, though, she calmly replied, “My personal life is my own. But we both know that man took a shotgun blast instead of me, and I’m here now because of him.”

“Un-fucking-flappable. See, this is why we need you, Heat.” Maybe it would be worth the drive to headquarters to give him a beatdown there. “And so you know, I’ve taken the step of confidentially clearing your transfer with your precinct commander.”

“What? Irons knows?”