“Yeah?”
“First of all, that’s King Lear, not The Tempest. And second? Put a sock in it?”
“You didn’t tell me to put a sock in it when I hit Alicia Delamater with the old Zoo Lockup.”
“No, that was…That was timely,” Heat exited the bridge onto Broadway and looped back toward the East River passing Peter Luger’s.
“I was thinking you’d say ‘inspired.’ See what history gives us?” He twisted to Feller in the backseat and explained the bluff he had pulled out of the Nikki Heat playbook.
Detective Feller gave him a thumbs up. “I do the same thing to spook the amateurs, except I call it Cellmate Lice Buddy.”
“Ew,” blurted Rook. “I’ll confess now to anything.” Which made all three laugh, at least until they saw the roadblock of flashing lights up Kent Street.
At the staging area beside the defunct Domino Sugar plant on South Third, Detective Ochoa shook hands with Senior Investigator Dellroy Arthur. “Pleasure to meet you in person,” said the BCI lead. Heat immediately noticed the plainclothes detective’s badge, the state police’s distinctive “golden stop sign,” which had a mourning band across it just like hers. He told them all he was sorry for their loss, never mere words among the law enforcement brotherhood. Heat thanked him for the wishes and the solidarity, and then they did what cops do—got to work.
“Here’s how it came down,” began the SI. “NYPD got a call that someone had cut through the fence around the bicycle course they’re creating over there.” They all turned toward Havemeyer Park, a vacant lot that was in the process of being developed into a BMX pump track complete with moguls and dirt berms. “Patrol showed up and observed two men drinking beer and riding the course. The pair evaded the officers on their bikes, but the unis pursued and saw them enter that construction site.” Heat and her group pivoted up Kent, where the concrete skeleton of a ten-story building jutted up into the blustery night.
Heat asked, “What put them on your radar?”
“Simply put, shots fired. That brought out the incident squad from the Ninetieth, which interviewed the responding officers, who ID’d Earl Sliney as one of the perps based on our APB. His companion fits the general description of his known associate, Mayshon Franklin.” The state detective fired up his iPad and they gathered around while he stylus-walked them through the street map to indicate street closures and exit chokes. “We’ve got them boxed on the ground. Unfortunately in this wind we can’t bring air support.”
“How do you know they’re still in there?”
“More shots fired. They’re somewhere on an upper level from the round I heard.” Arthur laid out his plan, which was to employ a dual SWAT team pincer incursion, starting at ground level and clearing each floor to the roof. The construction company had e-mailed him PDFs of the architectural plans and he indicated each phase, and the timing, of each team’s movement so they didn’t cross fire each other. When he’d finished, the BCI man asked, “Any questions?”
“Just one,” asked Heat. “Can you take them alive?”
“Guess that’s up to them.”
If it hadn’t been for his customized vest, which proclaimed JOURNALIST instead of NYPD, Rook might have made the cut. But the New York State Police senior investigator was “not playing games,” as he put it, and the writer got ordered to wait at the staging area. “It’s my own fault. The bling did me in,” he said to Heat, indicating the two Pulitzer medals embroidered onto his body armor.
“Plus no badge, no gun, no training.”