Ambush

Chapter 22

Two days later, at exactly nine in the morning, I entered the office building that housed Manhattan North Homicide. It was on Broadway near 133rd Street, across the street from an elevated number 1 train. There was nothing to indicate that the building, owned by Columbia University, housed specialized units of the New York City Police Department, including Homicide and Intel.

We sometimes joked that Intelligence was where the really smart cops went — smart enough to go there so they wouldn’t get in fights or be shot at.

The unit was so good at its job that it often gave a heads-up to the feds about changing crime trends or specific threats. Of course, that was something the FBI would never admit.

I still felt tired and moved a little slowly. This was what I needed. I had to get back into the rhythm of life.

It took almost twenty minutes to reach my office, on the seventh floor. I was greeted by everyone from the building maintenance man to the inspector, who kept his office there. A quick word and handshake or just a pat on the back made me feel comfortable, happy to be back.

An officer-involved shooting touches all cops. A fallen cop reminds each of us of our mortality and that being a cop is more than just a job. I understood it was hard for the public to comprehend something like that. Most people didn’t have jobs that occasionally involved someone trying to murder them.

I couldn’t help but look over at Antrole’s empty desk. No one had touched anything. Photographs of his family still sat on the corner. It wouldn’t surprise me if no one moved them for months. No one is too eager to move on after a cop dies in the line of duty.

The public information office of the NYPD had released Antrole’s name to the media. I was simply listed as “another detective who sustained injuries.” I was good with that.

I was also good with the fact that I had returned to work. Being busy kept my mind off things. It also made me feel like I could make a difference in the world. At least in New York City.

I hadn’t been at my desk five minutes when Harry Grissom stopped by to say hello, then asked me to follow him into his office. He closed the door behind us, then leaned on the edge of his desk when I took the chair in front of it. I had learned over the years that this was a sign he was worried about me. If he was mad, he’d sit in his chair behind the desk. But when he was concerned about a detective’s state of mind, he thought leaning on a desk made the meeting feel more personal.

He said, “You didn’t have to rush back to work.”

“I was out long enough. I feel fine. I got my head on straight. You don’t need to worry about that.”

The lanky lieutenant just stared at me. He was hard to read. I was glad we never played poker. Finally he said, “I want you to ease back into operations. Don’t take on any specific cases. Take a good look at all the homicides in Manhattan and the Bronx. See if you can find any important patterns. That’s the sort of thing we should do more of.”

I was able to suppress a smile. My lieutenant, the senior officer in my unit, was breaking the rules without saying it overtly. He was allowing me to look into the ambush that killed my partner by trying to find out if it was connected to any other homicides. He didn’t say it. He couldn’t. But he was giving me leeway to work in both Manhattan and the Bronx.

Because a cop was involved in the shooting, Internal Affairs was working with Homicide on the case. They wouldn’t want me anywhere near it. I was a witness and was too close to Antrole to ever officially be allowed to directly investigate the ambush.

I took my new mandate seriously and quickly gathered all the information I could on every homicide for the past three months. Most of them would be considered “usual.” A domestic that ended with the wife stabbing the husband. An armed robbery of a jewelry store where the robber panicked and shot the sixty-eight-year-old wife of the owner. The usual series of drug killings. Nevertheless, there were a few that caught my eye.

The first, of course, was the killing of the Dominican gunman who had survived our ambush. He was in the hospital and expected to make it. The cop on duty said someone Tasered him, then he was immobilized with a heavy dose of tranquilizer.

The details on the killer were sparse. The cop thought it was a female but couldn’t swear to it because he never saw her face. It could’ve been a short man. The baggy surgical scrubs and his foggy memory from the tranquilizer didn’t help with his description.

I also noted that someone had disabled the video surveillance at the hospital. That was not the sign of a rash and hasty killer.