Just for peace of mind, she had put in an earlier call to Jerzy, her building super, and he cheerfully agreed to keep tabs on it. So instead of going home, she set out for the Twentieth Precinct to crash for the night. Rook had made use of his long wait in the staging area to check on his loft as well. Then he called his mother to make sure she was OK. After receiving a blustery vow that no piffling storm would dare take on Margaret Rook, star of Broadway, summer stock, and Sardi’s, he rode back to Manhattan with Heat.
He dozed against the passenger door. Heat craved sleep, too, but the task of holding her lane in the wind lash crossing the East River kept her plenty alert. It felt about the same as her trip over, but something new had been added to the swirl of skyscraper-devouring clouds and the buffeting of the car: a humid scent of the tropics. It made her reflect once more on inevitability. And how you can name a beast and even know it’s coming, but little can be done to stop it.
Early the next morning, after four hours of openmouthed sleep on the break room couch and then raiding her file drawer for the emergency wardrobe she kept there, Nikki made a breakfast of peanut butter on an apple she had sectioned. Rook came in looking too rested for a man who’d slept in an empty jail cell. He held two Grandes of Starbucks heaven. “Is that home cookin’ I smell?”
She slathered a slice of her apple and held it out. “Offer you a Pink Lady?” she asked, knowing full well she was setting him up.
“In a heartbeat, if we had more privacy. But hold the thought about the peanut butter.” He took the apple and they sat there in the lounge watching Channel 7’s coverage of Superstorm Sandy. “I liked it better when they were calling it the Frankenstorm,” he said. “Monster hurricane, Halloween…So what if it sounds too flip? I say, if we’re going to get pounded by a hurricane two years in a row, we’re allowed to laugh it off.”
He saw Keith Gilbert on-screen, live from the Port Authority Emergency Management Office. “Shutting up now,” said Rook, using the remote to turn up the volume.
“Landfall,” said the commissioner, “is predicted to come about twelve hours from now, give or take. Best guesstimate for location is still slightly south of New York metro, but that would still put the city and the harbor in the powerful upper-right quadrant of the cyclone. Port Authority is therefore closing LaGuardia Airport at seven-fifteen P.M. JFK, Newark Liberty, Teterboro, and Stewart International will remain open, but with all flights canceled. Maritime facilities are closed.…”
Nikki watched her prime murder suspect smoothly presenting his best face and virile composure in the looming crisis. As if reading her mind, Rook said, “You do know that all this macho chill only enhances his appeal as a candidate. Hell, watching this, it’s a shame he can only run for senate in one state. I’ll bet he could get elected from New Jersey, too. He’s a slam dunk.”
“Not everything is inevitable, Rook.” With that, she picked up her Starbucks and strode to the bull pen to get to work.
Her squad had already assembled when she got there. She invited them to coffee-up fast and then gather at the Murder Board. While they hustled out to empty bladders and re-caffeinate, her desk phone rang. “Peace offering,” were the first words she heard. It was Zach Hamner. “So, please don’t hang up.”
“Go ahead.”
“I just processed an order to relieve you from duty.”
Nikki sat on the edge of her desk. “Am I being dense here? In what world is that a peace offering?”
“Because I am turning this over to your precinct commander.”
“I don’t have one. He’s dead.”
“That’s my point. But you will have one tomorrow. An interim white shirt they’re plucking from cubicle land. This order to place you on administrative leave came through my office from the deputy commissioner of Personnel. But you know how it works here in the Puzzle Palace. Somebody else squeezed somebody else’s balls up the food chain, and, suddenly, you’re tapped for the sidelines.”
“What sidelines?”
“Specifically, your orders are for desk duty on Staten Island, TFN. So that is my peace offering to you. A gift of twenty-four-hours’ notice.” The implications took a lap in Nikki’s head. Gilbert or his lawyers got to somebody at City Hall or One Police Plaza, and this is the monkey wrench that got thrown in to the gears of her case.