“Family meeting,” Matt said.
Ben turned his phone over on his thigh. His corner of the car went dark. He felt Jakey shift in the seat behind him, heard Engo give a grunt of intrigue. They’d all been sitting in the car down the street from the jewelry store for about fifteen minutes before Matt said the words, but that was routine. Matt would say “family meeting” right in the middle of a shift, and what it meant was to shut up and pay attention because he’d worked out what he was going to say, and it was serious, and he was only going to say it one time.
“We gotta replace Titus,” Matt said.
Engo groaned from the seat.
“Shut the fuck up, Engo,” Matt said.
“You knew it was coming,” Ben agreed.
Ben had been thinking about it, too. About how Matt’s size and reputation for sudden violence, and what had happened to him on 9/11, bought the guy a lot of special treatment. Matt’s crew were never pulled up on uniform sloppiness, the occasional bout of unshavenness, or the stink of alcohol that came off them on some early-morning shifts after big fires. Nobody seemed to mind that Jake had been a probie well past the nine months he was supposed to take to get signed on, and that Matt was keeping him on low pay and a dog leash just to see how long he could before the kid cracked. The rest of the firehouse staff kept away from Matt’s guys, sharing the almost sacred ritual of the firehouse dinner together and generally leaving Matt’s crew to do their own thing. Since the accident that took Titus, Matt’s crew had been riding without the appropriate number of team members on their engine, initially so that they could enjoy a grief period and then, as the weeks dragged on, because nobody wanted to pressure Matt to replace Titus. That meant they’d ridden short on second-due jobs and on callouts to get cats down from trees, which happened to every crew sometimes. But they’d also done it on the kind of jobs where being shorthanded was illegal and frankly dangerous, like the fabric-store fire. Everybody was waiting for someone from Command to show up and walk into Matt’s office and tell him he needed to stop beating around the bush about getting his crew remanned. But that hadn’t happened yet. Because whoever’s job that was, he had to know he might as well walk in front of a moving freight train as do that.
“It’s too late to hire somebody new,” Engo said. “We’ve adapted. In the old days, they used to give you a new guy the next day. None of this ‘grieving period’ bullshit. That’s how they should still do it, if you ask me. Shows you that people are replaceable.”
The car fell silent, all of them waiting for Engo to tell a story he’d told a thousand times already.
“We used to have painter’s tape on the lockers, you know,” Engo said. “Back at the Forty-Second.”
“With your names written on in marker,” Ben sighed.
“Yeah.”
“Because that way, you could just rip the name tag off when a guy died,” Ben said. “No point getting a proper nameplate printed up. Bolted on. The painter’s tape and the marker was a reminder: A guy could die any day on the job. No one’s permanent.”
“That’s exactly right,” Engo said.
“We know, Engo. We know.”
“We’re all nice and comfy operating as a four-man team now,” Engo whined. “Suddenly we’re at five guys again? We’ll be tripping over our own feet, double-handling everything. It’s dangerous is what it is.”
Jake braved a contribution. “It’ll probably be clunky for a while.”
Everybody shouted for Jake to shut up at the same time. Ben thought of dogs barking behind fences.
“There’s more,” Matt said. “We just got a new job.”
“What new job?” Ben looked over. Matt was chewing gum, his jaws popping. Ben could smell the nicotine.
“I’ll tell you all at the barbecue Saturday. It’ll take some explaining,” Matt said. “Point is, right now, we got another guy coming. We keep everything quiet till we figure out if he can be trusted or not. It had to happen. You can’t ride short forever.”
“Why not? Command can stick it up their asses. They’re not gonna tell you, of all people—”
“You’re right, they’re not.” Matt’s voice was icy. “But they’ve sent a good rec. I might as well grab the good guy before someone else gets him.”
“Who is he?” Jake asked.
“Just some guy.” Matt shrugged.
“Where’s he from?”
“Do I look like I give a fuck where he’s from, probie?” Matt leaned back and glared at Jakey in the rearview mirror. “You think I sat there on the phone to Command tryin’ to find out what kinda soda the guy likes so I can stock the fridge? Jesus!”
“Aww, Lil Jakey wants to know whether the new guy likes his balls tickled while he gets head.” The car rocked while Engo leaned over and ribbed Jake. “You just want to make a good first impression, don’t you, Jakey-boy?”
Ben turned his phone back over while Engo made dick-sucking noises and Jake fought him off. He was waiting for Andy’s next text, trying to make like he wasn’t. Their first exchange, which played out exactly as her script had dictated, sat on the screen.
Just woke up, he’d texted. Where did u go? U get a cab ok?
Got places to be, baby, she’d texted back. Fun night though.
Crazy good.
Next time we can meet closer to your place.
Next time, huh?
His text had gone unanswered, as it was supposed to. Ben guessed it would look like he was waiting all day to hear back, sweating on her hard-to-get act. He wondered if Andy had written the script herself. Whether there were other people behind this. Fifty goddamn people, he’d suggested in the diner, the day they met. Had he been right? The idea that there were others; undercover officers, detectives, specialists, who knew what he was doing made his stomach plunge. He looked out at the night and saw movement in every shadow. Her text came now, right on time. It made his stomach twist again, in a different way, calling up those old memories of him and Luna texting after they’d first met.
You free Thursday?
He had a minute to respond. He put his thumbs to the keys, waited. A thought came out of nowhere, a thin thread spinning downward from a tangled web of wonderings about what Andy had planned for him on Thursday. He saw her lying naked beside him in the bed, her face turned away, the light falling on her lean throat.
He rubbed his face and shook the thought away. He was past the response time by thirty seconds.
Matt was pulling down his balaclava, getting out of the car. “Phones off, people.”
“Wait.” Ben typed furiously. “Just a sec.”
“Speaking of people getting head.” Engo popped his door.
Ben sent his text back to Andy and turned off the phone and hid it under his car seat. He pulled down his balaclava and got out with the crew, fishing in his pocket for his miner’s light.
“Was that her?” Engo seemed to be grinning, even in the dark, even through the black wool covering his face. “The chick from last night?”
“Shut up. Get moving,” Matt said. “This is a job, not a fucking ice cream social.”