Read Burn (Michael Bennett 7) for Free Online

not-so-warm welcome back into the bosom of the department family continued in the marble HQ lobby after I told one of the cops at the formidable security desk that I was there to see the commissioner.
    “Are you sure?” said a tall, gray-haired black cop beside the security turnstile. “I was told the commissioner was on his way down to Washington this morning to testify before Congress about gun violence.”
    “Well,” I said, “my boss told me to come down for a nine-o’clock meeting with him.”
    “Maybe I’m wrong,” the congenial cop said, lifting his phone with a smile. “Wouldn’t be the first time. What’s your name? I’ll check with his secretary.”
    The veteran cop hung up a minute later.
    “The secretary said the commissioner apologizes about the last-minute change of plans, but your meeting has been shuffled over to Chief of Detectives Starkie. He’s on the tenth floor.”
    “Chief of Detectives Starkie? Raymond Starkie?” I said.
    “That’s the man,” the cop said with a nod.
    “What happened to Ronnie Child?” I asked.
    “Child retired three months ago,” he said.
    I nodded as I headed for the elevators, trying to think.
    Dealing with any COD, the NYPD’s second-in-command, was notoriously hazardous. The Chief of Detectives was usually the commissioner’s hatchet man, the court strangler, the guy who assigned the kinds of unpleasant tasks that the commissioner didn’t want to dirty his hands with.
    But the fact that the new one was Raymond Starkie was particularly worrisome, since he and I had some history. Back when we were rookies, we had been friendly rivals of sorts, working the same evening shift at the Bronx precinct where I started my career. Both of us ambitious and gung-ho, we’d competed to see who could come up with the most collars.
    But that wasn’t our only competition. Starkie had been first to meet my wife, Maeve. Long before Maeve lost her courageous battle against ovarian cancer, she had been an emergency room nurse at the Bronx hospital near the precinct. In fact, Maeve had agreed to go out with Starkie before she met me, and I made her cancel on him.
    Starkie never forgave me for that or for the fact that I was named Bronx rookie of the year over him, and our rivalry became a lot less than friendly. It got physical once at a retirement party at a bar on Norwood Avenue, where he gave me a cauliflower ear and I gave him a chipped tooth.
    After that painful parting of ways, Starkie had gone the administrative route in the department. He attended NYU law school and had risen quickly through the ranks. He was an effective and efficient manager, they said, if a tad heavy-handed.
    As I stepped into the elevator and hit ten, it suddenly occurred to me how out of touch I’d been. The power structures and politics in the department could change in a New York minute, to borrow a cliché, and here I’d been away for nine months.
    After all my morning’s enthusiasm at being back, it suddenly occurred to me that I was a man without a country, with no turf, no rabbi, and maybe no immediate prospects.

CHAPTER 6
     
    EVEN AFTER ALL THESE years, Starkie was a still a tall, strapping, good-looking guy. He had short-cropped white-blond hair and twinkly blue eyes. When I spotted his friendly, open smile at his office door, I was actually hopeful, for a beat, that maybe Starkie was ready to let bygones be bygones.
    But then his smile soured as he elaborately checked his watch. It was a Rolex, gold and shiny as the four spit-shined brass stars winking from his tailored dress uniform’s shoulder.
    “Late, huh, Bennett?” he said, shaking his head instead of my hand. “But I guess, what’s a few more minutes after nine months, right? This way.”
    Bennett? I thought, following him into his spacious office. By using my last name, Starkie was immediately letting me know that history or no history, he was my superior. Uh-oh .
    There was a bank of computers behind Starkie’s walnut