Consumed

The chief didn’t respond. Then again, no doubt this was like a good meal, something to be savored.

“I want you back on shift. But you’re on probation.”

Danny shook his head like he had to reset his ears. “What?”

“You heard me. Because of Emilio being out, I’ve shuffled the crew at four-nine-nine around, and you need to finish today’s shift out, off tomorrow and Sunday.”

The chief picked up a piece of paper, his eyes scanning back and forth. Then he looked up. “Why are you still in here? You’re late for roll call at the four-nine-nine.”

Danny was aware of a shaft of anxiety hitting him in the chest. “I don’t get it.”

“I think I’m being clear enough.”

“Why aren’t you firing me?”

“You really want to argue this point?”

Danny shook his head. “I’m confused.”

“That’s because you think it’s personal between you and me. It’s not. The therapist’s report stated that she felt you were suffering from severe trauma and undiagnosed depression. She’s advocating for a three-month suspension and mandatory follow-up. She also believes you have a problem with alcohol and is recommending that you address this.”

“So why are you putting me back on shift.”

“If I waited for a clean bill of mental health for all my firefighters, I’d have engines with no engineers, lines with no one to hold them, ladders with nobody to climb.”

Danny clasped his hands together because he had a case of the shakes he didn’t want to share. “Thank you.”

The chief’s eyes went back and forth on the paper, but in the same position as he read the same line over and over again. After a moment, he said gruffly, “Payback. We’re equal now.”

“I wasn’t aware we had a debt to discharge.” That was a lie. There was Anne. “A recent one, at any rate.”

“Chavez.” Tom glanced up. “If you hadn’t said anything, I wouldn’t have . . . anyway. Yeah.”

In the back of his mind, Danny did the math on switching one unstable man for another, but he was not going to argue. Something was finally breaking his way.

“There’s a condition.”

Here it comes. “Which is.”

“Not one violation of any procedure or policy. Everything will be by the book, and yes, I’m putting this in your personnel file. I am not fucking around. I will fire you and to hell with the personnel shortage.”

Hard to argue with that standard, Danny thought.

“So. Don’t miss roll call.” Tom got to his feet. “And shake my hand. So we both know we have an agreement.”

• • •

Boston traffic was a thing.

As Anne passed another marker on 93, she checked her clock on the dash of her municipal sedan. She’d called Ripkin’s office first thing and informed them she would be arriving at nine sharp. She wasn’t going to make it, but they’d said they didn’t expect the big man in until nine thirty.

New Brunswick had its share of big buildings, but it was JV next to the pros when it came to Beantown’s glass-and-steel forestland. The fact that Ripkin owned an entire building was testament to his wealth, and she was impressed.

She wasn’t ever going to know what that kind of money was like. Then again, she wasn’t going to be a ballet dancer, a mathematician, or, with her hardware, a world-class juggler. Golf was also out of the question.

Fly-fishing wasn’t.

The lanes of the highway were congested, making her think of clogged arteries, sump lines that were full of silt, gutters that had yet to be cleaned of autumn leaves. She also thought of all the lives in all of the cars, the details, the timelines, the beginnings, middles, and ends. In this respect, every morning and every evening, in every major city across the globe, biographies gathered on the asphalt, books lined up one to another as if on a shelf, the pages at once anonymous within the collection and totally personal between the covers, within each automobile.

Humanity was a galaxy, countless, unfathomable, too vast to comprehend.

Not that she’d ever wanted to be God.

When she finally pulled into the Ripkin Building’s underground parking garage, it was 9:20. She got her ticket, found a slot on the third of the six levels, and was not surprised to learn that Ripkin’s office was all the way up at the building’s top floor, a king surveying the world he had conquered.

When she stepped off the elevator, there was no question which way to go. Down to the right, a wall of glass bearing the Ripkin logo cordoned off a reception area that seemed to be built around an enormous crystal R.

Anne entered and went over to the black granite desk. The attractive blonde was like any other piece of art, dressed in a black, her hair slicked back into a bun that gave Anne a headache just looking at it.

“I’m Inspector Ashburn,” she said. “I’m here to see Mr. Ripkin.”

Flashes of Bud Fox showing up at Gordon Gekko’s office and getting put on the back burner for hours made her thank Don. He was on Soot duty for however long this took.

“But of course. He’s expecting you.”

“But of course”? When was the last time she’d heard that expression? But she wasn’t going to argue with the access.

“Please come this way.”

The blonde didn’t so much stand up as levitate, and as she led the way down a long gray hall, Anne wondered whether she was a fembot or something. She moved like she had no bones and ball bearings for joints.

Utterly bizarre, Anne thought as she looked around at all the closed doors. She didn’t hear any phones ringing. There were no voices. Nobody else striding the corridors.

“Mind if I ask you something?” she said.

The blonde glanced over. “As you wish.”

As I wish? Is this an Alfred Hitchcock movie? “Is this Ripkin Development headquarters?”

“Ripkin Development takes up the top ten floors. This floor is for Mr. Ripkin.”

“An entire floor. Wow.”

“Mr. Ripkin is a very busy man.”

“Well, I would think he would be with all the buildings he owns.”

“You are very lucky Mr. Ripkin decided to see you. Ordinarily, he is booked months in advance.”

“Arson is a priority. Especially when it happens on property you own.”

“Mr. Ripkin is not worried about meeting with you.”

Okay, Bob Vance, Vance Refrigeration. “I didn’t catch your name?”

If she said Phyllis, Anne was going to believe for sure God existed.

“Persephone.” The future Stepford wife stopped in front of a pair of dove-gray doors that were tall as a waterfall. “Please wait here. I will announce you to Mr. Ripkin.”

As she was left to her own devices, she wondered if Mr. Ripkin was sleeping with good ol’ Persephone/Phyllis. It was a fair bet that was a yes. Loyalty like that either had to be bought with a good wage, or it had to be seduced with the promise of a good lifestyle. Besides, hadn’t the original Mrs. Ripkin died a few years back?

The doors opened again. “Mr. Ripkin will see you now.”

As the woman stood to one side, Anne entered a room she knew she was never going to forget. The ceilings were even higher than the doors, and the square footage was nearly that of a hotel lobby. Everything was covered in gray marble, great sheets of the stone covering the walls and the floor. No rugs, no paintings, just windows on three sides, and three or four sitting areas with conference tables.

Framed against a view out to the vast ocean, Mr. Ripkin was seated behind a gray marble desk that was uncluttered by even a phone. The man was seventy, but he looked sixty, no doubt the result of some very expensive, very subtle plastic surgery. His hair was snow white and thick as a snow drift, and his expression of calm professionalism reminded her of a hockey goalie’s mask.

He was protecting a lot behind that composure, making sure no one pucked him in the face.

She instantly mistrusted him, and she thought about that stationhouse the man had bought the department.

“Inspector Ashburn.” Voice was even, the townie in the vowels mostly brushed out, like stain from a cloth. “How nice of you to come.”