CHIEF OF POLICE Warren Jacobi is big and gray-haired and he walks with a limp because of two bullets he took to the hip on a bad night in the Tenderloin. I was also shot that night, but unlike Jacobi, I remained conscious and called for help. That night Jacobi and I bonded for life.
Over the last dozen years, Jacobi has been my partner, my subordinate, and now my boss. I stood up when he entered Brady’s small office. He reached out and folded me into a gentle hug.
My eyes welled up and I dried them on his jacket.
“I’m OK. I’m really OK.”
He released me and shook his head.
“Boxer, I want you to listen to me. You’re a target. I don’t know why, and from what I hear, you don’t know, either. And I know you weren’t careless or stupid. Regardless, you’ve been beat up and chased and shot at, and next time these guys get you in their sights—I don’t need to spell it out, do I? So don’t fight me. Don’t make me pull rank. Just do what I say. Take some time off. Leave town until we nail these guys.”
As I listened to Jacobi’s litany, something inside me heated up and boiled the hell over. I went off. I just blew.
“With all due respect, Jacobi, that’s a load of bull. It was bad, but I handled it. That’s what the job is. I hardly have a scratch on me. So stop treating me like a victim. I’m fully functional and absolutely sane. This is my case and I’m on it. OK? OK?”
I went to my desk and typed up a report. I handed it to Brady, then went down to the street and emptied my glove box and got my bag out of the front footwell before my fatally crippled Explorer was loaded onto a flatbed truck and taken out to the forensics lab.
Conklin drove me home. I didn’t talk during the ride, but I grabbed his hand and squeezed it before I got out of his car. And then he came around and opened the passenger door. I gave him a look that should have stopped him.
“Shut up,” he said. “I’m going in with you.”
Once inside my apartment, I greeted our nanny and said good night and good-bye to my partner. I showered, then ate something with tomato sauce, I don’t remember what.
I played blocks with my daughter and put her to bed. After that, I rechecked the locks and the security system and looked out at the patrol cars parked down on the street. I put my gun on the night table, and then I got into bed with Martha and fell asleep. I didn’t think and I didn’t dream.
When I woke up in the morning I was madder than I’d ever been before in my life. I understood now that I was being treated like an orphaned kitten not just because I had been repeatedly attacked and almost killed. It was also because Joe had left me without a word.
The men who’d tried to kill me would answer for what they’d done if it was the last thing I did in my life.
And that went for my husband, too.
CHAPTER 66
OFFICER EVELYN FINLEY drove me slowly and carefully to the Hall that morning, as if she were transporting vintage glass Christmas ornaments. She also walked me through the lobby and waited with me until the elevator came.
“Following orders,” she said.
Damn it.
“Thanks, Finley,” I said. “I can take it from here.”
I rounded Brenda’s desk at the entrance to the bullpen and saw that Conklin, Chi, McNeil, and Brady were in some kind of huddle near Chi’s desk. Apparently, a meeting was in progress. Maybe I hadn’t been purposefully excluded. Maybe it just felt that way.
Conklin waved me over and both he and Brady scrambled to get me a chair. I almost laughed. Instead, I muttered, “Thanks. I’ve got it. I’ve got it.”
Cappy McNeil is almost fifty, carrying too much weight around his middle, but he’s a steady old hand and a very good cop.
His partner, Sergeant Paul Chi, is ten years younger and one of the sharpest cops in the city. The two of them were getting their first look at my face of a million cuts, but they’d already heard about the turkey shoot last night.
Cappy said, “Ahh, sheet, Boxer. This is just wrong.”
He patted my arm and passed me one of his two untouched donuts.
Once I was settled in, Chi resumed his briefing.
“Lindsay, to bring you up to speed, I have a CI who lives over a grocery store on the corner of Jackson and Stockton. He called me last night to say he’s seen about four Asian businessmen, well dressed, driving deluxe vehicles, coming and going at odd hours. They’re apparently based in a crappy apartment building right here.”
Chi pulled up a map on his computer, street view. He stabbed a location on Stockton, middle of the block, east side.