Like a buttoned-down Ivanhoe, he now picked up the black iron poker and stabbed at the heart of the fire he’d built, not to kill the thing but to give it more air. And that’s when it hit me just how much Mike Quinn enjoyed igniting blazes in my hearth.
Hmmm . . .
Considering the occupation of the man’s cousin and younger brothers, I figured the desire to play with fire was probably a Quinn thing. Or maybe it was just some gene buried deep in the alpha-male string, a primal urge leftover from the DNA of grunting cavemen.
As I settled into the carved rosewood sofa, my gaze caught on his well-worn shoulder holster now hanging off the delicate lyre back of one of Madame’s heirloom chairs. Tucked inside the leather was his rather large handgun. Yet another kind of fire stick . . . ?
“You look a little funny, sweetheart. Do you need a drink?”
“I need to eat.”
I would have chowed down sooner, but I hadn’t been able to stand those reeking clothes another minute; so while Mike had taken care of parking my old Honda, I’d headed upstairs for a hot, soapy shower.
I could see from the shopping bag now sitting on the coffee table—not to mention the aromas of cooked meat assaulting my sensory receptors—that Mike had taken care of food, too. But what was it exactly?
The large, glossy bag didn’t look like your typical brown paper take-out sack. Vivid orange with a laminated exterior and nylon rope handles, it looked self-consciously hip, which was hardly ever a good thing when it came to authentically tasty takeout.
“UFC?” I said, reading the logo. “KFC I’ve heard of, but UFC?”
“It’s Korean-style fried chicken,” Mike said, putting down the poker.
I looked closer at the small print under the large UFC logo. “Unidentified Flying Chickens? I never heard of them.”
“There are only three stores in the metro area,” Mike said, rising to his full height, “one in Elmhurst, one in Brooklyn, and one in North Jersey. Sully swears by them, says he’s addicted. He just dropped it off.”
“Sully was here?”
Finbar “Sully” Sullivan worked closely with Mike on the OD Squad, a special task force Mike supervised out of the Sixth Precinct here in Greenwich Village. Sully was one of the nicest men I knew—an openly cheerful forty-something guy with ready quips delivered in a native Queens accent.
“I left my car back in Elmhurst,” Mike explained. “I asked Sully and Franco to swing by, bring it back to Manhattan.”
“Wait, back up. Did you just say Sully and Franco? As in Sergeant Emmanuel Franco?”
Mike nodded and I tensed. Detective Sergeant Franco was the complete opposite of Finbar Sullivan. Edgy and volatile, the man was about as subtle as a ball-peen hammer to the forehead (something I had learned over this past holiday season).
Where Mike and Sully wore suits, ties, and their methodical patience on their sleeves, the younger Franco displayed cocky confidence and a street-tough attitude, with a wardrobe to match: a Yankee jacket, cowboy boots, and an in-your-face red, white, and, blue ’do rag.
Despite the guy’s bulldog approach to law enforcement, however, I did not dislike him. What concerned me was Franco’s interest in my daughter. He’d taken Joy out a number of times while she was visiting me on her last holiday break. But, thank goodness, my girl was back in Paris.
I didn’t relish the idea of Joy meeting and falling for another French line cook, which could sway her to remain in Europe indefinitely, but I was even less happy with her developing an attachment to a detective whose persona seemed to fall somewhere between Dirty Harry and Rambo.
“I can’t believe you’re working with Franco,” I said.
“Why not?” He crossed his arm. “I needed the manpower.”
“The construction site investigation?”
Mike nodded. Over the past two weeks, he’d been following up on recent OD cases, one of which had ended in death. Working closely with the DEA, he and Sully had supervised a covert investigation of a popular nightclub on the Lower East Side, near the Williamsburg Bridge, where both victims had ingested the drugs.
Unfortunately, the place came up clean. No dealing had been uncovered on the premises. Now a source claimed the selling was being done at an adjacent construction site, where someone working on the site itself was dealing recreational drugs like ecstasy and Liquid E to club-goers.
“Well . . .” I tried to focus on the positive. (After all, I could