McDERMOTT is twenty minutes late to work, but he figures he has it coming after working late into the night on the Ciancio homicide. The desk sergeant says, “Hey, Chief,” as he walks past. McDermott curls in his lips, winks at the guy. The coffee in the Styrofoam cup, dark roast from Dunkin Donuts, is hot in his hand, but he’s betting he won’t have the first sip until it’s cold.
“Morning, Chief.” Kopecky, another detective, hits him on the arm.
“Enough with the ‘Chief’ shit.” McDermott says it loud enough for everyone to hear, but it’s probably a bad idea to sound pissed off with this bunch, it only encourages them. He places the coffee on his cluttered desk, half of which is taken up by the new expensive Dell computer that he can barely use.
“Hey, Chief, Streets and San found a Vicky in a Dumpster.” Collins this time, a big Irish guy like McDermott. “I’m taking Kopecky.”
McDermott lets his eyes wander through the buzzing station house to the lieutenant’s office. The lew must be having a bad day. That’s why Collins is asking McDermott. “Sure, Collins, sure.”
McDermott isn’t chief of anything. The detectives at Area Four, Third Precinct, answer to Lieutenant Coglianese, who has seen better-more sober-days of late. Four months now since the lew’s wife passed away, and the cops at Four could smell it on him the day he returned from bereavement. He’d gone a few rounds with the bottle in the past, like his father, and there was a debate within the detectives’ squad about what to do. They turned to the senior detective, McDermott, who had made the call to get the lew through the next six months, until he had his thirty and could retire full.
Which is fine, but now McDermott has much of the lieutenant’s administrative work to go along with his own paperwork. In between, he’s expected to solve a crime here and there, too.
He looks at the “leader board” and counts the number of unsolved violent crimes. More to come today, starting with the Dumpster girl. Business at Four is booming. The summer months are the best for business. Rapes and muggings double from May to September. Gang shootings triple; some say because of the heat, its effect on emotions. McDermott thinks it’s because of the extended daylight hours. More time for the bangers to look at each other wrong.
“Collins,” he says, opening the lid on his coffee, breathing in the rich aroma. “Where’s the Vicky?”
Reason he’s asking, three weeks ago on Venice Avenue, a gang sniper opened fire on a crime scene, a cluster of at least eight officers and detectives. Turned into a full-scale assault on the Andujar housing project. Since then, most of the detectives have taken to wearing vests, like the patrol officers.
Turned out the sniper was an eleven-year-old kid with a 30.06 rifle.
“East side.” Collins hangs his shield around his neck. “LeBaron and Dillard.”
LeBaron and Dillard. Not a bad area, so reinforcements not needed. “That’s my neighborhood,” McDermott says. “Clean it up.”
19
By THE TIME I get back to my office, I’m relatively sure an army of tiny gnomes has taken up residence inside my head, hacking my brain in search of gold. At ten-eighteen precious minutes from now-I have twelve partners and senior associates waiting in a conference room for our monthly update on every piece of litigation related to BentleyCo or one of its subsidiaries. Last I checked, we have sixty-nine open matters. It will be a long meeting. Yesterday, I had everyone draw up summaries of the cases, so that I wasn’t walking into the meeting cold. I probably should have read them.
I pass a couple of female associates who are chatting outside an office. They call me “Mr. Riley,” which means they are probably among the crop of summer associates-second-year law students from the top schools around the country who spend a summer interning at the firm. By “interning,” I mean that they get taken out to expensive, two-hour lunches almost every day and attend functions at night like baseball games or cocktail parties or boat cruises, all on the firm’s dime. The firm, of course, is wooing them, not the other way around. Each of the ten members of the summer associate class at Shaker, Riley & Flemming will be offered a full-time associate position upon graduation, unless they do something incredibly stupid like have sex with a paralegal on top of a desk after hours. I use that example because one kid, law review from Columbia, actually did that last year after a party we had at some museum.
I pass the cubicle where Betty, my assistant, is typing on her computer. Betty is the queen of the law firm, the senior partner’s assistant. She’s been with me since I was at the county attorney. My relationship with Betty has lasted longer than any in my life, save my daughter, if you call that a relationship.
“Morning, Bettina,” I say.
I’ve been with Betty through her divorce and mine, her remarriage and my confirmed bachelorhood, from our first suite of offices on River Drive that housed only eight people to our new place, our palace, that Betty says “lacks charm.” Betty is not shy about her opinions. She is a tough woman who grew up with a healthy suspicion of all things human, which makes us a pretty good match.
“Paulina,” she says, not missing a beat with the typing but keeping her voice low. She doesn’t like being called by her full name, which is why I do it, and she typically answers with a female version of my name. But she wouldn’t say it in front of others, because that would be showing disrespect to the boss. She demands the utmost respect for herself and for me. We are a team, and the team sticks together in public, much like Vito Corleone wouldn’t tolerate disagreements among the family in front of outsiders. The analogy is apt, though sometimes I wonder which one of us is the Godfather.
She follows me into my office. “You didn’t sign that card for Judge Benson,” she advises me. “So now his gift is going to be late. And don’t say I didn’t remind you, because I did.”
“Okay, I won’t say that” I hang up my suit jacket behind my door and look around for the present. Betty keeps track of the birthdays of judges, politicians, and, most important, clients and buys them small gifts and a card for me to sign. The best way to market yourself to clients is little things that let them know you’re there. Birthday and holiday cards, constant status letters if there’s a pending case. Clients want attention. Betty makes sure I give it to them.
My desk gives new meaning to organized chaos. Chaos, because I have a bachelor’s habit of leaving stuff lying everywhere, and organized, because Betty comes in here, first thing every morning, and sorts it into piles. It isn’t clean, exactly, but it isn’t haphazard, either.
I realize Betty is still standing by my desk, hands on her hips. If you didn’t know her, she’d look nondescript enough, a small woman with wide hips, a stout face, hair pulled tightly into a bun-or whatever they call a bun these days. Betty is four years older than me, which puts her at fifty-five, but she typically speaks to me like I’m her son-
“I’m still waiting for the present.”
– a son she disapproves of. I begin to look around for whatever it is I’m giving Gordy Benson for a present, checking around the accordion folders against my wall, the drawers of my old desk. I have no idea what the object of my search is, which makes it fairly difficult, but I don’t want to tell Betty that. The only person more afraid of Betty than me is, well, everyone else at the law firm.
“You have a meeting with the group,” Betty reminds me, looking over my calendar.
“Right. I have a few minutes.” I touch the back of my head, where I got hit. I probably need stitches, but I hate things like that. More likely, I will put it off until there’s an infection of some kind, and then I’ll consider doing something about it.