“Less so for me,” she said. “I’ve only been in the job a week. Not even.”
“Yes, and the push I’m getting is that are there are some issues. Telltales. Shall I enumerate?” He barely paused; the question was rhetorical. “Not informing chain of command about high-profile cases. Upsetting community leaders by brooming meetings. Flouting the CompStat process—the CompStat process, for chrissakes—by blowing off the weekly meeting. In your own shop there is leadership unrest due to your perceived lack of commitment to naming your successor as homicide squad leader. And you are spending too much time in the field doing casework instead of sending your people to wear down their shoe leather and report back, like a good administrator should. You still with me?”
“Listening, yes. With you, no.” Reeling as she was from hearing that the same guy who had gone out of his way to offer his condolences and full support was now caving to pressure and squeezing her, Heat still managed to keep her head. When she had taken the job, she knew it meant facing down the machine at various intervals, so she saw this as an early test. One she could have done without, but there it was. If Nikki came back at him whiny or defensive, she’d be finished. So she gave professional resistance, aka tossing the ball back in his lap. “You and your downtown buddies are sending me mixed messages. One chief says, Stay on the case so he can brief the commissioner, but then you say I’m not delegating enough. You want leadership? I made a leadership decision to skip those meetings to follow events in the double homicide that the chief of detectives personally ordered me to stay on top of. Which I am trying to do right now. But here’s the thing, Zachary. I am not only running my precinct to the best of my ability, I am also working my damndest to save a man’s life, and I am going to see that through. If somebody wants me out, I am not quitting. You can fire me and then see where the blowback lands when the press jumps on that, and you know it will.”
In the brief interval that followed, Heat was pleased to hear some throat clearing on the other end. Maybe Zach Hamner, senior administrative aide to the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters, wasn’t accustomed to pushback from lowly precinct commanders. “Well,” he finally said, sounding less like the shark running the table. “This has to be explored further, I see.”
“This is a load of horse crap, and you know it.” She decided to get something out of this annoying call by asking the question begging to be asked. “Who sent you to see if I’d resign my command? Where is this coming from? Who’s trying to get me off this case?”
“That’s absurd.”
“Not how I read it, Zach. Who?”
“Hear this clearly: There is no effort to hinder your speedy closure of this case.”
“‘Speedy.’ Sounds a lot like Swift, doesn’t it?”
He ignored that. “There was merely some concern here at the Plaza that you might be having a difficult time keeping pace with your duties, given the distraction.”
“The distraction?” Her foot nearly slipped off the brake, but she kept her cool, even as she seethed. “If you are characterizing my efforts to resolve the kidnapping of a citizen off the streets of New York—regardless of my relationship to him—as a distraction instead of the very definition of my job as a sworn police officer, you need to take a walk out of that administrative dreamworld and breathe some real-world air. And you can start by taking your head out of your ass.”
Nikki hung up.
Then she threw her typewriter at the wall, causing faces in the bull pen to whip her way. While she had everyone’s attention, she marched to the doorway and said, “Raley. Ochoa. Murder Board update. Now.” If ever there was any ambiguity about her resolve, this third attempt to get her off the case had only stiffened it. Her only hope was that her dogged perseverance wasn’t sealing her fiancé’s doom.