Chapter One

 

"Fucking chinks."

Jamie rolled her eyes sideways to her current temporary partner (the more temporary the better, she thought) Michael Cooper.

"If they can't drive they should fucking take the subway!" he snarled, honking the horn.

She sighed and looked out the window to watch the pricey looking stores go by. She had been temporarily assigned to the Two-Six, the Twenty-Sixth precinct's Anti-Crime squad. The Two-Six took in the extreme north end of the wealthy Upper West Side. And to its east and north was Harlem.

It made for an often uneasy mix. Especially when Columbia University and Barnard College, which were both in the precinct, were added to the mix. All those entitled young college students, often drunk, wandering into Harlem and getting into trouble caused no end of paperwork. Though most of the problems in this precinct came from the young men and women of Harlem coming in the opposite direction.

"Oh yeah!? You gonna give me the finger!?"

She turned her eyes forward again where a hand had been thrust out the window of a Black Lexus SUV and was energetically pumping up and down.

Cooper cursed traffic as he tried to pull up alongside the Lexus.

"Remember, rich people have lawyers who file complaints," she said.

"Fuck em! I don't have to take that from some fuckin' chink!"

Cooper was tall, broad-shouldered, and dumb as a post, as far as Jamie was concerned. She had no idea how he'd gotten on the job, much less been assigned to Anti-Crime - which was a choice posting. He had to have pull somewhere.

He had a weak chin, a somewhat flat face, small brown eyes, and at twenty-six, already had a receding hairline.

He flipped on the lights in the grille and window and glowered at the Lexus ahead of him as Jamie sighed and thought of all the paperwork likely to ensue.

The black Chevy Impala was an unmarked car - not an undercover car. It had lights behind the grille and back bumper and light bars inside the front and back windshields. The arm jerked in ahead of them but the Lexus didn't show any sign of pulling over, at first. Given the traffic on Broadway he certainly had no chance of getting away, though.

Cooper burped the siren, and the Lexus pulled over, but to the wrong side of the street. Broadway was six lanes wide at this point, divided by a broad grassy and treed median. The Lexus had pulled over to the median - in the passing lane.

"What an asshole!" Cooper shouted.

Cooper, she thought, was way too excitable for this job.

He leaned out his window and waved his hand. "Turn off onto a side street, you moron!"

The Asian man driving instead got out of his car and started running. Cooper cursed again and jumped out of the car, cleared the fence around the median and raced after the man. The Asian man cleared the fence, too - the first fence. Then when he tried to jump over the one on the other side of the median caught his ankle and hit the pavement face first.

He scrambled to his feet, turning to look at Cooper, then darted across the next lane in front of a delivery truck.

Jamie had been slowed because Cooper had forgotten to put the car in Park. She'd had to stretch her long leg across to the drivers' side to step on the brake and then put the car in Park before getting out herself. She had just started to round the front of the car when the man became airborne.

She followed his flight path to where he landed on his head fifty or sixty feet further down the road. He went sailing across a Ford which had been driving ahead of the truck, hit the road just ahead of it, and then got run over.

"That's gonna hurt," she said.

Cooper had stopped and was staring, open-mouthed.

"I sure hope he actually did something illegal," she said.

Cooper ran down the street to where the man was sprawled and Jamie went back into the car and called for a supervisor and ambulance, then pulled out and started to follow. That was when she heard a sound coming from the Lexus ahead.

Frowning, she pulled out her Glock and approached it carefully. It had tinted windows, which made her nervous so she moved slowly, circling it until she could see in through the open driver's door and window. She moved closer to the door, Glock extended, watching for signs of movement, then leaned over the seat.

The back seat was empty. She shifted the gun to the trunk area, then pulled back outside, moved further down the car, and opened the rear door. She looked in, then pushed the Glock forward, leaning in slowly until she could see over the seat.

There was nothing in the back except a black duffel bag. Which was moving.

"Okay," she said beneath her breath.

She backed out, then ducked into the drivers' door. She found the trunk release and pressed it, and the back hatch began to slowly rise. She moved back behind the car until the hatch was up above her head.

She could hear a siren coming closer now. She eased forward, but waited until the sector car screeched to a stop beside them. She gestured at the car and they pulled their guns, so she holstered hers, then moved forward and undid the buckle across the top of the bag. With the two uniforms on either side of her, she reached forward and gripped the zipper, then jerked it back.

A wide brown eye looked up at her.

She pulled the zipper the rest of the way down, then sideways and pulled the flap up, and found an Asian girl in her late teens or early twenties who was severely hog-tied and gagged.

"Who's got a knife?"

The uniforms carried a ton of gear on their belts, and one of them put his Glock away and pulled out a knife. Jamie cut away the main line between the girl's wrists and ankles and grabbed the girl's arm to pull her upright. The cop on her left reached in and grabbed the side of the bag to push it back as she pulled the girl out of the bag and, with the help of the other cop, sat her on the tailgate of the car.

She peeled the duct tape over her mouth away and the girl gulped in several large, ragged breaths before bursting into tears.

The second cop was leaning in and took the girl's arm, pulling it back and then cutting the rope, and as soon as her arms were free she threw them around Jamie and grabbed her in a bear-hug, still sobbing freely.

A second blue and white pulled in behind the first. Traffic was backing up now that two lanes were blocked, and the sidewalks on either side were filling with gawkers.

"Let's put her in the back of my car," she said.

The girl was probably less than five feet tall and likely weighed less than a hundred pounds. Jamie was in good shape but she didn't do heavy lifting, and the cop on her right moved in and easily picked the girl up, then carried her in his arms as Jame moved back and opened the rear door.

He put the girl inside and Jamie got in beside her and closed the door as more sirens sounded.

The girl looked around with wide, teary eyes, and Jamie got the tissue box from behind the seat and handed it to her.

"Do you speak English, honey," she asked?"

"I-I...I speak... eengrish!" she gulped, wiping her eyes and blowing her nose.

Her name was Ming Wa. She was from Vietnam and had been smuggled into the US in a container vessel along with her boyfriend. Supposedly they were going to get jobs in a restaurant. But because Ming was young and pretty the triad had decided she would be a prostitute. Her boyfriend had objected too much and been killed.

She had no idea where they were taking her, but given the only other things the back of the Lexus contained were chains and loose weights, Jamie's own suspicion was she was destined for the Hudson River, having seen too much.

The girl reached out and touched her hair in fascination.

"Your hair is so red!" she exclaimed in wonder.

"Not a lot of redheads in Vietnam, I guess," Jamie said dryly.

The girl shook her head as if that was a question.

The uniform sergeant showed up and opened the door and the girl shrank back in fear.

"It's all right," Jamie assured her.

She stepped out and closed the door.

"What's the story, McCloud?" the sergeant asked.

Jamie didn't recognize him, but then she'd only been in the Two-Six a week. As in other precincts she'd been assigned to, though, everyone seemed to know her on sight.

Apparently six-foot-tall female redheads were a rarity in New York as well as Vietnam.

"She says her name is Ming Wa, and she's from Vietnam," she said. "She came in a container ship the other day. Her boyfriend got angry when they wanted her to be a prostitute and he got killed."

"She knows this to be the case?"

"She saw it. But she doesn't really know who anyone was."

"Why didn't they just kill her then and there?"

Jamie shrugged.

A patrol lieutenant arrived, who called for another ambulance. Finally, a pair of detectives from the 26^th precinct arrived and took charge of the girl.

Since traffic was now backed up for miles they hurriedly took the Lexus away - along with the body of the driver, and cleared the road. She and Cooper drove back to the precinct house to do paperwork, with him grumbling most of the way.

"It's not like I killed him!" he protested.

"You chased that poor minority into traffic, you cruel white man," she said.

He glared at her.

"I can see the headline in the Times now: Poor Asian immigrant harassed and terrorized by racist NYPD is killed by a racist truck."

"The Times can suck my dick!"

Since she wasn't really involved in chasing the perp Jamie's paperwork was a lot simpler than his. She handed it to the sergeant and sat down again, feeling a sense of satisfaction. This was the great thing about anti-crime. All you had to do was deal with the here and now. It was up to the detectives to figure everything out and see if they could find the others involved - not to mention the body of Ming's boyfriend.

And Jamie could get back to patrol. Or could when Cooper finished up his paperwork and interviews, which was going to take a while.

"McCloud," the Sergeant called.

She looked up.

"Go with Spencer."

She waited for more but Sergeant Adams was not the communicative type, and regarded anyone without service stripes on their sleeves as a lackey. You got a service stripe after serving five years. It would be another four years before she got her first.

She sighed and followed Jessie Spencer downstairs and outside to the car.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"Harlem."

She looked at him in surprise.

"Why in the hell would we do a thing like that?"

He rolled his eyes. "Inspector Morrow says to go."

She got in the passenger side, and he accelerated away from the curb.

"What's in Harlem he's interested in?"

"Some scumbag that got paroled recently he wants us to watch."

"Uh... he knows that's not our precinct, right?"

"Yeah, well, Morrow doesn't let little things like that get in his way."

"What's the Captain say?"

"I don't think Morrow asked."

Deputy Inspector Morrow had a habit of handing out assignments to people at random without considering what their actual supervisors might have in mind.

"He's aware there's Anti-Crime units in Harlem, right? And that they tend to have black people in them?"

He shrugged.

"Because you and me don't really fit in there."

"Ya think?"

"Especially me."

He snorted. "I don't know. Put you in a tight little plastic miniskirt, six-inch heels and a tight, low cut top..."

"Spare me your fashion fantasies."

"Just saying there's a certain type of white girl you might see in Harlem."

"Well, I don't think I'm dressed for the part."

"We could stop somewhere and you could shop."

"No thanks."

***

Whore!

Jamie looked at the message on her phone and then hit reply.

What's your point?

She wiggled around in her seat. It was a good seat, and very comfortable. She'd pushed it back as far as it would go, but she'd been sitting in it for two hours now, and her legs really wanted to stretch out.

I'm pointing out your moral deficiencies, the next text said.

See my last message, she replied.

She glanced up the street, then across at Spencer. He was a brooder. She didn't really get brooders. She figured they put too much time into thinking about things. You needed to make a decision, then act on it, not keep torturing it in your mind.

He was looking at his own phone, reading something political. He put a lot of time into politics, which puzzled her. Politics was a waste of time. Everyone involved in it was a lying, self-serving moron. Spencer was a reasonably smart guy, and he had a lot of cutting things to say about the Democrats which she mostly agreed with. But somehow he was blind to the equal defects of Republicans.

She'd never understood that sort of rah-rah, my-side mentality.

Her phone beeped again.

What are you doing?

I'm watching a door, she typed.

Is it an especially pretty door?

Nope.

Then you would seem to be wasting your time.

Not my decision.

She picked up her mini binoculars and looked at the door again. It was the door to a run-down brownstone on 137th street. Inside it was one Kirvens Lamarre, age twenty-seven. Lamarre had gotten into a dispute with another gentleman four years ago. And upon meeting him later, he had drawn a butcher knife from under his clothes and thrust it completely through the other gentleman's throat.

Since that had happened in Morningside Park - which happened to be in the 26^th Precinct, Morrow had taken an interest.

Jamie didn't have a law degree. And if her father hadn't been a lawyer she would more easily be able to dismiss them all with the same sneers and insults as most of her colleagues did. But it still seemed to her the world would be a better place if the entire legal system was torn down and replaced with something which made more sense.

That would be a system where a man who walks around with a butcher knife under his clothes and stabs someone through the throat, killing them, gets found guilty of murder, not manslaughter. And then goes away for life, rather than nine years.

Lamarre had been paroled after just three. Deputy Inspector Morrow had decided that it was unlikely Lamarre had been completely rehabilitated.

Morrow had a God complex, as far as Jamie was concerned, and thought it was his sacred duty to right all wrongs. He had decided Lamarre had not been properly punished and wanted him put back in a cage for a few more years.

The problem, from Jamie's point of view, was that Lamarre was currently living in the 25^th precinct in East Harlem. Harlem was full of poor Black citizens, many of them suspicious, if not actively hostile to the police. There were very few white people living here, so a six-foot tall redhead and a slightly chubby, six foot three guy with a beard tended to stand out like the proverbial black sheep - only in reverse.

Because of this they'd parked almost two blocks up from Lamarre's house and were using mini binoculars and a camera with a zoom lens to watch it.

"I wish this fucker would do something," Spencer said.

"He's probably inside playing Fortnite," she replied.

Her phone beeped again.

I'm bored as shit, it said.

Wanna trade places? she typed. What are you doing anyway?

Looking through files in the basement.

She smirked. At least you're getting lots of fresh air.

Eat me.

Again?

She'd met Danny during another stake-out earlier in the year. She'd actually arrested him as he worked an undercover job. He was a federal agent, and he'd wound up recruiting her into his job simply because it involved a modeling agency and she was that rarity- a very attractive, very young, very tall female police officer.

Working a case or just catching up on paperwork?

Working a case.

Sucks to be you, loser!

Bitch!

Jamie once again felt thankful she was in Anti-Crime and not a detective.

There were a lot of plainclothes units in the NYPD. Narcotics was one, prostitution another. The most sought-after plainclothes job, though, was Anti-Crime. Anti-crime cops patrolled their precincts in unmarked cars wearing ordinary street-clothes - not the business suits detectives had to suffer.

They didn't answer routine calls and didn't have to write traffic tickets. Nor were they restricted to a particular sector of the precinct. Anti-Crime patrolled wherever crime was considered the most problematic. They went in on whatever calls sounded interesting, especially those involving weapons.

They also focused on repeat offenders who were known to be committing crimes, or likely to soon be committing crimes - like Lamarre. Usually all that took was watching them for a short period of time. It wasn't like these were organized criminals, after all. And their parole usually came with some fairly sweeping conditions like not doing drugs and alcohol, and not associating with other criminals.

Keep an eye on a recent parolee and chances are he'd violate at least one of them.

Jamie didn't like surveillance. It was boring. Most people, especially those without a job, did virtually nothing almost all the time. Or at least, whatever they did, they did it in their own homes. But on the other hand, there was no pressure. Nobody could blame her if nothing happened.

Detectives, and federal agents, were expected to get results.

She raised the little binoculars again, then jabbed Spencer in the ribs.

"What?"

He picked up the camera with the zoom lens and took a few pictures of the guy at Lamarre's door. Then he looked at the screen and zoomed in on them.

"Don't recognize him," he said. "I'll send it to Adams and see if he knows him."

Adams was the sergeant in charge of the 26^th Anti-Crime squad.

"You don't think maybe the 25th's Anti-Crime guys might have a better chance of identifying this guy?"

"Sure. I also think they'll be pissed off we're hunting on their turf."

"Nah, they'll laugh at us for getting a shit job. They sure won't want it."

"You know anyone on the 25ths Anti-Crime?"

The 25^th and 26^th precincts shared no border and there wasn't much contact between them.

He thought a moment. "I think Rollins is in the 25th."

"So why don't you send him the picture?"

"Because eventually the 25th is gonna find out we're here, and that's gonna work its way up to Deputy Inspector Bernson, and he's gonna get pissed off."

"So?"

"So I don't want the reason for them discovering we're here to be me."

"We been here two hours already," she said. "We're already pushing our luck. The first sector car that drives past is gonna see us and ask us who we are."

Unmarked cars were not undercover cars. They were obvious if you knew what to look for, like the lights under the grille and the light bars in the windows. They were intended to be discrete, not disguised. Besides, they were almost all black Chevy Impalas and Ford Explorers. Any cop would recognize one in a second.

"That's fine. Let them. And after they find us then I can text Rollins."

Jamie rolled her eyes but she didn't argue. Nobody wanted to get in the middle of a pissing match between a pair of deputy inspectors. She was fairly well-protected since her grandfather outranked them both, but most cops had a lot less cover than her.

Where are you? Danny asked.

Harlem.

WTF you doing in Harlem?

Morrow has a bug up his ass about some scumbag here.

You ask me, Morrow has a lot more than a bug up his ass.

You just have an ass fetish.

Yeah? Maybe I'll stick myself up yours tonight and show you how much.

I probably have to do my hair or something else exciting.

My cock is exciting.

I'm sure you think so.

Someone is looking to get punished.

Oh, are you gonna sing to me?

She glanced through the mini binoculars again but whoever that had been was inside and the door closed.