You’re avoiding, my shrink would say, the shrink the department made me see during my “vacation” from the force—paid administrative leave while the department shook out from the scandal, indictments, calls for reform, reassignments. I was the hero and the villain in the story, depending on your point of view, though most of my comrades on the force put me in the latter category. They couldn’t fire me after my one-man wrecking ball to the police department that made Sherman’s march through Atlanta look like a sightseeing tour. I’m the face of reform now!
“More like the face of death,” I mumble, getting a load of myself in the bathroom mirror. Hair standing on end, dark circles, pale complexion. I have…what, twenty minutes to look presentable? But how presentable do I have to be, sitting behind some desk or assigned to traffic duty? Who knows what the superintendent’s going to do with me? I’ll be about as welcome in his office as an IRS audit.
“You don’t have to go back,” I say to my reflection. “But what else are you gonna do? Work private security? Roam the earth as a shepherd?”
I’m not sure which side won that debate, but twenty minutes later, I’m driving to headquarters, at 35th and Michigan, still considering that shepherd thing. Does it have to involve sheep?
Police headquarters is a long low-rise building that looks like a high school. Not a bad analogy, because this mandatory meeting feels like being sent to the principal’s office, though far less pleasant. I’d rather be visiting my proctologist, and he has a criminal record.
Most people don’t notice me as I walk the halls in my sport jacket and blue jeans, shield on, just another cop, not one who opened the wrong closet door and found a bunch of department skeletons inside. Not one who got a bullet to the head and a murder indictment for his trouble. And my biggest crime? That I overcame all of it. I was supposed to go away, surrender, but instead I fought back and won—if returning to a job where you’re persona non grata counts as a victory. Good thing I’m not bitter.
“Detective Billy Harney for the superintendent,” I say to the receptionist when I enter the vaunted anteroom of the Chicago top cop’s office. He might also be Chicago’s top asswipe, though a lot of people are competing for that prize.
I glance at the clock to make sure I’m not late. I’m late by two minutes. Aces.
“You’re late,” says the supe before I’ve even entered the room. He’s alone behind his desk. Makes sense. No eyewitnesses.
I think you can be a shepherd without sheep. You just wear flowing robes and say something deep once in a while. Fear not what you do not know but that which you do not endeavor to know. That’s not half bad, and I just pulled that out of my keister.
“Have a seat, Detective.” Superintendent Tristan Driscoll, though the top cop in full dress this morning, isn’t a cop in any real sense of the word. He’s a politician. He somehow managed to survive the destruction I caused, which also took down the person who appointed him, the mayor of Chicago. Not to mention the top prosecutor in town, the Cook County state’s attorney. It was a big wrecking ball.
But Tristan, who must have had sadistic parents for giving him that name, managed to stay in the graces of the new mayor and avoid the chopping block himself. And all while Chicago is making a name for itself as the murder capital of the free world—Beirut-by-the-Lake. His knees must be sore. The walls surrounding us are lined with framed photographs of him standing next to people whose asses he’s kissed.
“We can forgo the pleasantries,” he says to me.
“That’s a relief,” I say. “I couldn’t think of any.”
His mouth zips into a tight smile. “Always that mouth, Harney.” He looks down at a file on his desk. “Your psych evaluation says you’re ready to return to the force.”
“I was always ready. I wasn’t put on leave because I couldn’t work. I was put on leave while you figured out if you could fire me. Then you realized you couldn’t, because it would look like retaliation against the reformer. The media would have you for lunch.”
Never hesitate to say that which is true over that which is comfortable but false. Shit, I’m really getting the hang of this. Where do I buy flowing robes?
Driscoll grins and leans back, rocking in his high-backed leather chair. “I own you, Harney. I can put you on traffic duty. I can make you Officer Friendly, wanding high school students and patrolling crosswalks.” He shrugs. “All I have to do to make that happen is to say you’ve been damaged psychologically. Forget about the union filing a grievance. Nobody’s taking your side. Nobody would challenge me. As long as I don’t fire you—so the media doesn’t ‘have me for lunch.’” He uses air quotes, playing my words back to me. “I can make your life a nightmare. And I will.”
My hands ball into fists, blood rushing to my head. My head was already hurting; now it feels like it’s going to burst.
“So whaddya say, Harney? You retire, you get a full line-of-duty pension, and I don’t have to deal with your fucking bullshit for one…more…day.”
He actually maintains his smile throughout.
The part that really stings—he’s not far off. Do I really want back in? With a shitty assignment and nobody wanting to work with me? The line-of-duty pension isn’t half bad, and I’m still in my midthirties—I could think of something. A fresh start.
But maybe it took this moment, this opportunity to walk away with a clean bill of health and some money in my pocket, to realize it: I still want to be a cop. If I did something wrong to deserve getting the ax, I’d own up to it. But I didn’t. I did my job. Why should I leave?
And those flowing robes? They’d be a bitch to keep clean, I bet.
“No deal,” I say. “Put me where you’re gonna put me.”
Driscoll loses that smarmy smile. He Frisbees a file across his desk. I catch it in my lap and open it. I read it. I read it again.
Then I say, “You’ve gotta be freakin’ kidding me.”
Chapter 3
I stare at my transfer papers, still unable to believe it, rechecking that it’s my name and star number at the top of the page, that there hasn’t been some kind of mix-up.
“Believe me, Harney,” says Driscoll, “it wasn’t my idea.”
The Special Operations Section. I’ve been assigned to SOS.
“We just announced it last month,” says Driscoll.
I saw the presser, Superintendent Driscoll making the announcement with the mayor by his side. The Special Operations Section is an “elite strike force” assigned to major crimes throughout the city. But its focus will be the West Side, terrorized by all the shootings that have given Chicago a nationally recognized black eye and made a lot of local politicians nervous.
Ah, the new mayor. He must be the one who made this assignment happen. Never met the guy, but he must’ve said, Hey, that Harney guy, let’s put him in this unit, show everyone how committed to reform I am. Ever the suck-up, Driscoll would’ve heartily endorsed the idea. He probably even gave the mayor a congratulatory hand job even though he privately wanted to coerce me to retire. He took a shot at getting me to quit just now, but I didn’t take the bait. So now he has to bite his tongue and promote me to one of the best assignments on the force. It must be killing him.