Kendall kept the phone pressed to his ear, hoping for an answer. It had been a strange and challenging day so far—even by city measures—and he just needed to hear her voice.
“Hello?” Ellen finally answered.
Kendall was so relieved that he couldn’t form a sentence.
“Jim? Is that you?”
“Yeah… sorry, hon. Bad connection. I just wanted to make sure you and Deb got there OK.”
“Actually, we just got in. Traffic out of the city was insane. It seems that a lot of folks had the same idea.” Ellen’s tone was matter-of-fact. Kendall recognized it as the one she often used with her students.
“Is everything OK?”
Silence.
“Is Deb all right?” he pushed.
“What exactly do you want me to say, Jim?”
“The truth.”
“She’s scared.”
“But you’re out of the city now.”
“You’re a cop. You know damn well fear doesn’t work that way. It isn’t tied to a zip code. She knows something bad is going on. School is closed… kids are sick… we’re here in New Jersey and you’re not with us.”
“But—”
“You asked, so I’m telling you how it is. That’s Deb. Should I even bother to tell you how scared I am? Deb was plugged into her iTunes so I had the news on for the drive. You know what I heard?”
Kendall didn’t respond. He already knew the answer.
“I heard what sounded like an awful lot of bullshit. No one has any confidence that they have a handle on this. The CDC is just ducking and weaving. They’re still at the ‘Is it bigger than a breadbox?’ questions. Do they think people won’t notice? Well, I’ve been looking around… people are noticing and they are just as scared as me. This virus is spreading and you’ve decided to stay at ground zero. Now they have set this perimeter without any explanation as to why they think it is a good idea.”
“It is just a temporary solution.”
“Really? And who was the genius who thought it was a good idea to literally draw a line in the concrete between those who are safe and those who aren’t? That line is going to be a physical flash point. Tell me I’m wrong, Sergeant Kendall.”
This wasn’t good. Ellen called him that only when she was good and pissed. But he knew he had made the right decision. Ellen needed to make some effort to at least try to understand that. “No,” he said. “You’re not wrong and that is precisely why I asked for perimeter duty, so I can—”
“You what?”
“I asked to be assigned to supervise the perimeter. I need to be there.”
Kendall heard Ellen blow out a lungful of disappointment. “You win, Jim. I give up. You go do your knight thing. I need to get Deb settled. You can call her later.”
Kendall heard the line click dead and resisted the urge to throw the phone.
Of course he had requested perimeter duty. If someone was going to tell his people that they couldn’t take their dogs with them when they went out into the city at large, he wanted to be that someone. Judgment was critical because words were the only tool he had in his arsenal. The precinct captain had been very clear about their instructions at the emergency meeting: those on perimeter patrol were to advise and, if absolutely necessary, detain and call for backup. “No firearm will leave the holster and no baton will leave the belt,” the captain had said. “Any use of force in the absence of a direct and serious threat to your physical person will result in charges.”
A few of the knuckleheads in the room had barked and howled in the usual attempt to bring levity to an uncertain situation. But then the captain stepped off the podium and walked among them—something that had never happened during Kendall’s time in the precinct. “I can’t begin to tell you how much this situation frightens me,” he said quietly, so that everyone in the room had to strain to hear him.
Thinking about it now, Kendall realized the captain had sounded a lot like Ellen.
“We’ve all done perimeter duty before, Cap. What’s the big deal?” one cop said.
“This isn’t like keeping a bunch of drunken New Year’s Eve revelers from pissing on the sidewalk, or moving people away from the mayor’s car,” he said. “You’re going to be telling people who want to leave the area for an hour or a day or even a week that they can’t take their animals with them. You ever done that before, Wilson?”
The cop looked at the ground. “No, sir, I haven’t.”
“And you’re going to be telling people who want to cross the barrier into the quarantine area with their dogs that it is a one-way trip because some piss-head politico or scientist said so.”
“But everyone is gonna understand. They’ve seen the news,” Wilson said hopefully.
“Three more kids hospitalized in the last hour,” the captain answered. “Two more moved to ICU and not expected to make it through the day. No answers about what this thing is or why it hit here. If I was living in Riverside and had kids, I wouldn’t trust anything I hear at this point. And guess what?” the captain continued. “You’ve got nothing better to tell them other than ‘go/no go.’ I hate that I’ve got to put you all in that situation. But that’s all I’ve got to work with today. And all you’ve got to work with today is your training, experience, and professionalism.”
“Captain?” Kendall raised his hand. “Why is the governor bringing over the Guard?”
“I don’t have an answer for you that is explainable by anything other than one word,” the captain replied. “Politics.” He spit out the word like it was pus from a tooth infection.
After the meeting, the morning had compressed into a blur of kinetic energy. With a speed learned from numerous anti-terrorism exercises, the NYPD used its familiar blue-and-white sawhorses to establish a perimeter around the city blocks that comprised the Riverside neighborhood. The eastern perimeter ran on Broadway between 103rd and 108th, and Riverside Drive was the western border. Central Park lay four blocks east of the perimeter—an inviting but for now off-limits 843-acre playground of woods, bike paths, and hidden places. Kendall thought that the whole setup looked like a bizarre Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade route except that the pattern was roughly square, there were no floats or ginormous balloons, and no one was laughing.
All vehicular traffic out of the perimeter was funneled through a barricade at 106th street and Broadway. The police searched all cars and trucks crossing the perimeter to ensure that no one was trying to take a Riverside dog out of the area.
Kendall and his men had explained, joked, smiled, and nodded, and in the end, no one traveling on foot or by auto had made a serious challenge. That was the value of experience and familiarity. His shoulders had even begun to unknot.
Then the National Guard had arrived, and the tenor of the exercise changed. The lieutenant in charge of the Guard unit, a career pro named McGreary, seemed competent and friendly enough, but most of his “men” were just kids in their early twenties. They had little or no history dealing with real New Yorkers, and the automatic weapons these soldiers carried, while intimidating, were a poor substitute for judgment. Kendall felt as if he had been holding his breath since the Guard arrived. He had thought talking to Ellen might make him feel better. Hopefully, that was his one bad idea for the day.
Kendall put his phone in his pocket and watched a heavyset man in his fifties exit a BMW sedan waiting in line for clearance at 106th. Although Kendall didn’t recognize the man, he could tell from the way he held himself that an attitude was coming. Kendall wasn’t wrong.
The big man reached the front of the line, where two of Kendall’s cops waited. “I’ve been waiting for twenty-five minutes,” he told them. “I need to get to my office.”
“We understand, sir,” a young cop named Tully answered respectfully. “We apologize for the inconvenience, but we need to search the cars. We will get you out as soon as we can.”
“That’s not good enough,” BMW shot back.
Kendall’s cops were prepared to ignore him under the heading of typical NYC self-important bullshit. Kendall’s standing advice to his cops about blowhards, even before the quarantine, was to let them blow. But one of the soldiers, a big kid—no more than twenty-one or -two—with “OWENS” stenciled on his uniform, walked over to the man. “Please return to your vehicle, sir.”
“Look,” BMW said, “I don’t even own a fucking dog. This is bullshit.”
“Return to your car,” Owens ordered in clipped speech.
“Who the hell do you think you guys are?” BMW challenged. “You don’t tell me what to do. This is the United fucking States of America! My taxes gave you a job, you ungrateful, unemployable bastard.”
Owens adjusted the shoulder strap on his M4. “Sir,” Owens said, straightening to his full six feet three inches, “this is your last warning. Return to your car.”
Kendall looked for Lieutenant McGreary but couldn’t find him. Crap. He didn’t want to get into a turf war with the Guards, but he couldn’t let this escalate either.
BMW took a step back, apparently suddenly aware of the gravity of his situation; he turned and walked to his car as quickly as he could without breaking into a run. Owens followed and leaned into the passenger side window until he was directly in the driver’s face. “You’re going to insult me for doing my duty? You really have no idea what a bad idea that is, sir. No idea.”
“OK, I think that’s enough,” Kendall said from a step behind.
“Just a friendly conversation, that’s all, Officer,” Owens said.
“Let it go,” Kendall answered. “We don’t need that shit here.”
Owens stepped away from the car smiling while the terrified man quickly rolled up the window and moved up the line.
Breathe, Kendall reminded himself. Just breathe.