The Cold Moon

muster.
    “So,” Amelia Sachs said, her shoulders sagging, “what’s the scenario here?” She gave a grim laugh. “The inspector kills me and then kills herself. You plant some money in her house. And . . .”
    “And Dennis Baker dies in jail—he messes with the wrong inmate, falls down the stairs, who knows? Too bad. But he should’ve been more careful. No witnesses, that’s the end of the case.”
    “You think anybody’s going to buy it? Somebody at the One One Eight’ll turn. They’ll get you sooner or later.”
    “Well, excuse me, Detective, but we have to put out the fires we’ve got, don’t you think? And you’re the biggest fucking fire I’ve got at the moment.”
    “Listen, Robert,” Flaherty said, her voice brittle, “you’re in trouble but it’s not too late.”
    Wallace pulled on gloves. “Check the street again, tell them to get the car ready.” The deputy mayor picked up Sachs’s Glock.
    The man walked to the door.
    Wallace’s eyes turned cold as he looked over Sachs and took a firm grip on the pistol.
    Sachs stared into his eyes. “Wait.”
    Wallace frowned.
    She looked him over, eerily calm under the circumstances, he thought. Then she said, “ESU One, move in.”
    Wallace blinked. “What?”
    To the deputy mayor’s shock, a man’s voice shouted from the darkened back room, “Nobody move! Or I will fire!”
    What was this?
    Gasping, Wallace looked into the doorway, where an ESU officer was standing, his H&K machine gun’s muzzle moving from the politician to Henson at the front door.
    Sachs reached down and grabbed something under the table. Her hand emerged with another Glock. She must’ve clipped it there earlier! She spun to the front door, training the pistol on Henson. “Drop the weapon! Get down on the floor!” The ESU officer shifted his gun back to the deputy mayor.
    Wallace, thinking in panic: Oh, Christ, it’s a sting. . . . All a setup.
    “Now!” Sachs shouted again.
    Henson muttered, “Shit.” He did as he was told.
    Wallace continued to grip Sachs’s Glock. He looked down at it.
    Her eyes on Henson, Sachs turned slightly toward Wallace. “That piece you’re holding’s unloaded. You’d die for no reason.”
    Disgusted, he dropped the gun on the table, held his hands up.
    Mystified, Inspector Flaherty was scooting back in her chair, standing up.
    Sachs said into her lapel, “Entry teams, go.”
    The front door crashed open and a half dozen cops pushed inside—ESU officers. Following them were Deputy Inspector Halston Jefferies and the head of Internal Affairs Division, Captain Ron Scott. A young blond patrolman entered too.
    The ESU officers muscled Wallace to the floor. He felt the pain in his hip and joints. Henson was cuffed as well. The deputy mayor looked outside and saw the two other officers from the One One Eight, the ones who’d been standing guard in front. They were lying on the cold sidewalk, in restraints.
    “Hell of a way to find out,” Amelia Sachs said to no one as she reloaded her own Glock and slipped it back in her holster. “But it sure answers our question.”

    The query she’d referred to wasn’t about Robert Wallace’s guilt—they’d learned beforehand that he was one of Baker’s partners; it was about whether Marilyn Flaherty had been involved too.
    They’d set up the whole thing to find out, as well as get a taped admission from Wallace.
    Lon Sellitto, Ron Scott and Halston Jefferies had established a command post in a van up the street and hidden the ESU sniper in the backroom to make sure Wallace and the cop with him didn’t start shooting before Sachs had a chance to tape the conversation. Pulaski was supposed to take the front door with one team, and another one would take the back. But at the last minute they learned that Wallace had other officers with him, cops from the 118, who might or might not be crooked, so they’d had to change plans a bit.
    Pulaski, in fact, nearly walked right into Wallace’s cops outside the storefront and ruined the whole thing.
    The rookie said, “Inspector Jefferies pulled me into the command van just before those guys outside saw me.”
    Jefferies snapped, “Walking down the street like a Boy Scout on a fucking hike. You want to stay alive on the streets, kid, keep your goddamn eyes open.” The inspector’s rage seemed tame in comparison with yesterday’s tantrum, Sachs noted. At least he wasn’t spitting.
    “Yessir. I’ll be more careful in the future,