Chapter One

 

Walking through Times Square was not one of Jamie's favorite tasks. Her normal walk, wherever she went, was a long, brisk stride that accomplished the dual aims of getting her where she was going as fast as possible, and discouraging strangers from interrupting that journey.

She had discovered the need for that brisk stride when she was just shy of fourteen, and already five feet nine. Looking older than her years, and with an already well-developed body she had found the attentions of boys and men to be uncomfortable and threatening. Once she grew older, and got her black belt, she found them to be merely irritating.

It wasn't that she didn't accept that she was an attractive looking young woman, and not that she wasn't reasonably content with that, but the impact her looks had on men, even in fairly conservative clothing, bemused and often annoyed her, especially when they made their interest known in particularly rude ways.

A brisk stride, especially with earphones on, let her ignore comments about her body, catcalls, and even the more restrained and polite efforts of men who might want to meet her and gain her attention with a smile and witty phrase.

She had enough boys after her attention, ones she knew. She didn't need to deal with strangers.

It wasn't that she was exceptionally beautiful, but that her face was particularly striking in its arrangement of enormous green eyes, unusually thick, soft hair, and smooth, ivory skin over a small snub nose and delicate cheeks and chin.

She'd become something of a tomboy, constantly fighting with her brothers, and her long legs had gotten her involved in track and field, volleyball and basketball at school. Because of this she'd become lithe, toned and graceful in her movements, and her long strides and challenging stares reminded some of a feral animal, definitely a predator, moving over the plains.

That challenging stare had been known to stop approaching men in their tracks, be they would-be romantics, smirking adolescents, or salesmen. It was an intimidating, heavy lidded warning to not mess with her. Unfortunately, it seemed wholly lost on Asians.

And it was Asians she had come to dread in and around the Times Square district. In particular, Asian tourists, who, she gathered, found a six foot tall woman with flaming red hair to be far more worthy of recording on their ever-present cameras than any of the super heroes and cartoon characters who paraded within their confined spaces eagerly seeking dollars in exchange for poses.

A long, brisk stride was not what was called for in her work here. She was required to blend in and act perfectly normal, draw no attention - or at least, no more than any other six foot tall redhead would, and keep an eye open for pickpockets, frauds, thieves and perverts as part of Manhattan North's anti-crime squad.

She was fairly new in anti-crime, and new to plainclothes work. She'd worked as a uniformed member of the NYPD in Staten Island until a couple of month or so earlier. Rookies were rarely transferred to plainclothes work, unless it was due to a specific need, such as the Vice squad needing attractive young female officers for undercover work.

But she'd gotten the department great publicity when she'd saved several children from a fire one day, and it had been recorded by a neighbor and put on You Tube. Her grandfather, one of the department's Assistant Deputy Commissioners, had used that as a pretext to transfer her to one of the gem jobs for police in New York.

Anti-crime officers didn't have to wear uniforms, nor did they dress in business-wear like detectives. They dressed however they felt like dressing to fit in wherever they went. And if that meant shorts and tank tops, that was what they were authorized to wear. They didn't answer routine calls, such as for domestic disputes either, either. If they were in cars they answered what calls they felt like answering.

The rest of the time they prowled high-crime or 'sensitive' areas watching for criminals who had no idea they were present, or did surveillance on known repeat offenders trying to put them away again.

The Times Square district was one of the precinct's higher crime areas, though little of it was violent. Still, the city didn't like tourists having a bad time, and getting hustled or having their purse or wallet stolen was bad for business. It was also considered a top target for terrorists. So the area was heavily patrolled by both uniformed and plainclothes police.

Jamie didn't mind the area, though she'd spent very little time there when growing up in Brooklyn. Still, she had the native New York attitude of amused contempt for tourists combined with a casual insouciance about the things those tourists found so exciting.

The streets around Times Square were a bustling mix of tourists and office workers, with hotels, office towers, stores, restaurants, theaters and residential housing all tossed together higgledy-piggledy.

Her job was to notice things the uniformed cops wouldn't because their visibility caused criminals to mind their behavior whenever a blue uniform was around. As such, she had to stroll, rather than stride, and she was raised to be reasonably polite with people.

When Asian men and women eagerly approached her, jabbering in barely comprehensible English wanting to have their pictures taken with her, she had first been taken aback and confused. Now, after more time around the tourist areas she took it with barely concealed annoyance and the smallest of forced smiles.

As long as they were quick about it, anyway. Standing behind Japanese or Chinese tourists whose heads came up to mid-chest made her feel somewhat like a freak of nature being photographed for the family back home, but being rude to tourists wasn't what the city paid her for.

It was a warm day in August. There were few places to conceal a gun or handcuffs when wearing light summer outfits. Especially for women. She had chosen a men's basketball jersey for today, along with a pair of white shorts that would be invisible under it.

Of course, there were women's jerseys, but they tended to be too short for her, and hug the hips too closely. She wanted a jersey that wouldn't show the distinct bulge of a holster underneath. The men's jersey was looser across her back and hips, but tighter across the chest, but she was willing to accept the trade-off.

She'd chosen a New Orleans Pelicans jersey, not because she was a fan of the team, which she thought of as having the stupidest name in basketball, primarily because it would look more touristy to have an out-of-state jersey on, and because purple went well with her red hair.

Unfortunately, strolling around Times Square in a tight basketball jersey left her less able to deter the come-ons of men with a simple hard stare. Which, along with the Asians goggling at her and taking pictures, was doing nothing good for her temper.

The earphones she was wearing - actually hooked into the radio on her hip not an iPod, kept her in touch with her partner, sergeant Mueller, and two other anti-crime cops patrolling the district on foot just then, Geraldo Batista, and Lyle Jeffries.

And it was the radio that gave her the opportunity to take out her temper on someone, when a thief mistook the slight bulge at her side, and her headphones for evidence of something easy to steal and re-sell while she was posing with an Asian couple.

He was a slight, young Hispanic teen and had very light fingers, lifting up the side of her loose jersey and grabbing the narrow miniature radio before she'd even felt his movement. He wasn't light-fingered enough, though, and she spun on him as he turned to run. He yanked the radio hard enough to pull the earplug out but only made it a dozen feet away before her arm grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back.

"Fuck off, beetch!" he snarled, turning and swinging at her.

She shifted her grip to grab the front of his shirt and let her momentum shove him back hard as she jerked her elbows up, lifting him off his feet and body slamming him against the wall behind him before dropping him heavily to the sidewalk.

She dropped atop him, grabbing his arm and yanking it up behind him as she forced her knee into the cursing teen's back and pinned him there despite his struggles. She had a lot higher muscle mass and thus weight than most women, and his struggles accomplished very little.

"Put your hand behind your back, you little shit. You're under arrest," she snarled.

"Fuck you, puta!" he yelled, continuing to struggle.

He screamed and cursed as she twisted his arm and dug her fingers into the pressure point of his wrist to cause him pain.

"I don't respond well to that word," she growled, grinding her knee into his spine. "Now put your fucking arms behind your back!"

She would have preferred to get a little more physical, as in reach down between his legs and give his balls a hard squeeze. That usually took the struggle out of most males. But she was mindful that the Japanese tourists weren't the only ones with their cameras out now eagerly videoing what was happening.

Besides, the area around Times Square was one of the most heavily patrolled and had the heaviest security video coverage in the city, and she was reasonably sure she was being watched by one or another of them.

She rode her struggling suspect until she finally jerked back on his long, stringy hair and then yanked his right arm up behind his back far enough to pin with her right knee. She released his hair, letting his face hit the sidewalk and quickly drew her cuffs out and snapped them around his right wrist.

"Give me your other hand."

He cursed at her instead, but she hadn't expected obedience. Using her right knee to pin his right wrist she forced her left foot down between his right arm and his body, then sank fully down, letting her knee force its way between them so she could grab it and pull it up behind him.

She had just managed to cuff him when a pair of uniforms rushed up, probably directed by the people monitoring the CCTV, she got up, handing him over to them as she retrieved the radio from where it had fallen on the sidewalk.

I hate cell phone cameras, she thought irritably as she let the uniforms frog march her suspect back to the Times Square sub-station. She followed along behind, adjusting her radio and checking to see if it was still working.

She was able to spend some time there doing the paperwork on the computer stations there, then got back to work, and almost immediately ran into another problem, practically under her nose.

***

"Wow, look at the crowds!" Josh said, staring around them.

Erin shook her head as she pulled him down off the bench he'd been standing and took his hand, winding her way through the crowds to where her mother Kristin was waiting in line before one of the tour buses. Seeing New York had been an incredible experience, but it was also tiring, especially with a complaining mother on one hand and an eager nine year old on the other.

Still, it would be good for Josh to see something of the bigger world which was out there. Watertown was pretty small change comparatively speaking, and the closest real city was Syracuse, an hour away, and it wasn't very big.

He might see images of bigger cities on the internet, but seeing them in person made it real, even if New York City was an hour drive and they had to stay in New Jersey because of the outrageous hotel costs in New York.

Her mother climbed onto the bus, and then, beaming happily, settled into the front seat.

"Can't we go upstairs, mom!" Josh exclaimed, eagerly looking at the stairs.

"The sun is too hot," her mother said stubbornly.

Erin groaned inwardly. The trip had been like this the whole way, and while she didn't want to split them up she was going to go upstairs with Josh, no matter how sulky her mom got. She prepared to put this diplomatically, when a man jumped onto the front of the bus.

Unlike city buses, the tour bus front seat faced forward, just behind the door, with the large glass windshield only a few feet away. The man had jumped onto the bumper and plastered his body against the windshield!

He was almost naked, but his body was painted blue, and he had long blue dreadlocks, with his lips painted black. He was also wearing a bathing suit with an enormous blue, mercifully flaccid penis attached to the front.

Her mother screamed, and Erin barely halted her own as Josh's eyes bugged out! The man was grinding his pelvis into the glass and licking the windshield! Then a redheaded woman in a purple basketball jersey walked up behind, grabbed him, and yanked him off.

The blue man sprawled on the road temporarily but the woman grabbed his dreadlocks and yanked him up, pulling him off the road and over onto the sidewalk where a gaping crowd snapped pictures.

"Wow!" Josh said, rushing to the window to stare.

"It's my act! It's my act!" the man cried.

"Stay off the road and don't harass the tourists!" Jamie snapped. "You know you have to stay over on the blue zone."

"But I'm practically invisible!"

She shoved him and then kicked his ass so he went staggering forward a dozen yards.

"Move!"

"Was that a police woman, mom?"

"I'm going upstairs!" her mother said, getting up and hurrying to the stairs. "This city is full of freaks."

"I think so, dear," Erin said, leading up after them.

***