No Way Back(Jack McNeal #1)(2)

“You’re not a cop. You’re not a man. You’re a fucking coward. A psychopath. An alcoholic. And a bastard. Your son should have been safe in his home. Safe with his father. It’s your fucking job to keep him safe. This bullshit that you can’t remember a thing . . . I’m not buying it. No one is buying it. Your little game is over. You’re done. You’re a disgrace to the uniform. To the badge.”

The cop blinked away tears.

McNeal fixed his glare on the cop. He suppressed an urge to grab the fucker by the neck and beat the living daylights out of him. “We’re done for today.”

When the interview had finished and the guy and his attorney left the building, McNeal headed back to his desk and slumped down in his seat. His gaze fixed on the TV. A Fox News reporter stood outside the White House. “The President just returned from a private memorial service for the wife of an old friend, Henry Graff. He has no further engagements today.”

McNeal picked up the remote and turned off the TV. His thoughts turned to the boy terrorized by his cop father. He had read the reports of the boy’s bravery. It took some guts to stand up to such a monster.

He had long since become desensitized to the stuff he heard. He found that was the best way to deal with it. He had a three-month backlog of cases: alcoholic cops, psychotic cops, womanizing cops, bad cops, good cops who had gone bad, veteran detectives watching porn instead of surveillance videos, cops illegally accessing the cell phone numbers of informants, cops punching out children on the subway, cops stomping on panhandlers . . . on and on. Most New York cops were good, hardworking, decent people. McNeal dealt with the small percentage of dregs. That’s what he did. That’s all he did.

Aisha walked slowly up to McNeal’s desk, resting her manicured honey-brown hand on his computer monitor. “A quick word, Jack?”

“Sure.”

“You need to ease up on the gas. You were going at him pretty hard.”

“Maybe.”

Williams grimaced. “Definitely. I think you crossed the line. More than once.”

McNeal sat and pondered. It was true. He had crossed a line in the interview.

“Just try and ease up in the future. I’m just saying.”

“I hear you.”

“I don’t want you getting in trouble, Jack. Shit like that ain’t worth it.”

McNeal smiled. “What can I say?”

Williams shook her head and smiled. “Take it easy next time.”

Aisha had only recently transferred to Internal Affairs from Robbery. McNeal knew she was right. His gaze lingered on the pile of manila folders and files on his desk. It had to be months of work before him. She turned and headed back to her desk.

Lieutenant Dave Franzen waddled into view, munching on a doughnut and carrying a coffee. “Buckley was looking for you earlier.”

“What did he want?”

“Don’t know. Was just asking where you were.”

McNeal shrugged. “I was here, interviewing. Where the hell is he? It’s been days since I’ve seen him.”

“He’s around sometimes. I hear he was interviewed by the New York Times last week.”

McNeal groaned. “Swear to God, he’d be a great politician.”

“You know how he is.”

McNeal shook his head. He knew only too well what Assistant Chief Bob Buckley, head of the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau, was like. He had reported to him for four years. He was a good guy. A good detective. But in the last year, Buckley’s appearances at Internal Affairs on Hudson Street, over on Manhattan’s West Side, seemed to grow few and far between. It seemed to the team that Buckley enjoyed spending increasing amounts of time in the Commissioner’s office. He reveled in talking with journalists, on and off the record. Chatting with the mayor. He also appeared more and more on TV.

McNeal understood why he was doing it. Buckley said that he wanted the Internal Affairs Bureau to have a higher profile in the city. It would attract more resources. More favorable headlines. That was all probably true. Buckley was also leading a “reorientation” of the Internal Affairs Bureau. He seemed to be talking more about the Internal Affairs Bureau “becoming a force for good.”

It grated on McNeal and the other officers in the Bureau. McNeal always thought the point of the Internal Affairs Bureau was really simple: establish criminality among officers alleged to have committed crimes and then punish them, whether by disciplining them or firing them.

McNeal didn’t have any problem reaching out to minorities to attract the best candidates to work in the Internal Affairs Bureau. None at all. He wanted the best investigators. Who could argue with that? But McNeal and other officers, some he would call old-school cops, believed Buckley was also using his agenda for his own political aims. It was clear that was the purpose of the “reorientation.” It was all about currying favor. His face was known throughout the city, more than any of his predecessors.

The New York Post and New York Times had both speculated that Buckley was a favorite to become the next commissioner. It seemed like every week he was having lunch with the mayor at Cipriani Downtown, hanging around city hall, or pressing the flesh at business breakfasts and luncheons with “influencers.” Which was all fine. But it seemed to be taking precedence over the record number of cases, cutbacks, and low-level disgruntlement in the ranks of Internal Affairs.