He opened the door enough to scan the streets again, then stepped out of the store and blended in with the passersby on 72nd – once again, just another anonymous guy in the crowd. But he headed straight for the westbound side of the street and hailed the first cab he saw. He instructed the turbaned driver to take him to the Port Authority Bus Terminal, then settled back in the seat and took out the Treo.

“Ralph Lauren Clerk” was the first item that came up on the screen. He deleted it from the list and checked his watch. The operation had taken just two minutes from start to finish, plus he’d caught a cab right off the bat – all even smoother than he could have hoped.

He wasn’t just the Teacher. He was the man.

At nine that morning, I called my office to take a personal day. It was another no-brainer. If half a dozen sick kids wasn’t a personal crisis, what was? Then, after Mary Catherine and I made sure the troops were accounted for and tended to, I did something I hadn’t done in over a week. I pulled on my FULL-BLOODED IRISH T-shirt and a pair of sweats and went for a run.

As usual, I huffed it up to Grant’s Tomb at 122nd and Riverside to pay my respects to the general. It would have taken magic to make me resemble the lean Manhattan College Jasper center fielder I’d once been, but I managed to keep a steady, strong pace the entire way.

I studiously avoided newspaper stands that would have thrown last night’s debacle in my face, and not a single person started shooting at me. It was by far the nicest morning I’d had in recent memory.

When I got back home, I started at the top of my priority list – substituting a dollar bill for the tooth that Fiona had lost and left under her pillow. In the confusion last night, I’d forgotten all about it. The tooth fairy’s job performance ratings, like a lot of other things around this place, had gone way downhill since we’d lost Maeve.

With that taken care of, I brewed a pot of coffee and went on to less important tasks, like paying bills online. I took my time, letting my thoughts wander as I poked along. It felt great playing a little hooky for a change. Maybe I should have felt guilty about all those DD5 incident reports I needed to file, but they could write themselves as far as I was concerned. I was home with my own crew, feeling the love, and especially ecstatic to be taking care of people who weren’t trying to kill me for it.

For about the billionth time, I found myself thinking about how I’d been burning myself at both ends lately – burning myself out, really. That, in turn, led me to contemplate some of the job offers I’d gotten in the past few months, since a major hostage incident at St. Patrick’s Cathedral had made me into a sort of celebrity cop.

The best prospect was a corporate security management position at ABC. The job consisted of coordinating security at the local news studios they had over on Columbus Avenue in the Sixties. The commute was easy, the hours were human, and it paid about twice my current salary.

But I still had five years to go until my twenty-year pension, and frankly I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to hand in my shield just yet. The main problem was that I loved being a cop, especially a homicide detective. It was who I was.

Then again, I also loved my family, who needed me more now than ever. A job where I could count on being home every evening and weekend would be a godsend, and so would the extra money. What to do?

As usual, no clear, easy decision came to me. When I finished with the bills and some other busywork, I rounded up my sick kids and sat everybody down in front of the TV for a game of Harry Potter: Scene It?

Then my cell phone rang. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to be good news. Still, I couldn’t ignore it.

“Mike Bennett,” I said.

“Hi, Mike. This is Marissa Wyatt. Would you hold for Commissioner Daly?”

I sat up, blinking. I knew that calling in for a personal, after the chaos of last night, might cause a few grumbles. But a call from the commissioner’s office? What did he want with me? Had the Harlem fiasco turned that bad that fast?

“Mike?” Daly said.

I’d met Daly at a couple of upper-level meetings I’d been invited to. He seemed like a straight shooter, at least as straight a shooter as could be found in the puzzle palace that was One Police Plaza. I decided I might as well make my case right away.

“Hi, Commissioner,” I said. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about the way things went last night? -”

He cut me off brusquely. “We’ll talk about that later. I need you on the bricks, right now. Strange things going down this fair morning. A couple of psycho assaults, including somebody pushing a young woman in front of a subway. Then an ugly shooting at the Polo store on Madison about fifteen minutes ago. Since today looks like a catastrophe in the making, and you happen to be the department’s only former CRU section chief, I’m handpicking you to coordinate our team.”

Damn, I thought. Not fair. The commissioner must have been looking through my personnel file. In another life, back when I was single, I’d spent some time working for the CRU, or Catastrophic Response Unit, a federal forward-response team that helped out and investigated disasters, especially ones that seemed to have a criminal element.

But to call me a section chief was ridiculous. Because of my Irish gift o’ gab, they just put me out in front to distract everyone while the real heroes – my team of forensic anthropologists, environmental engineers, and clinical psychologists – made me look good.

“C’mon, Commissioner. That was a long time ago. I’ll admit it. I lost my head and worked for the Feds for a few years. You can’t use that against me,” I said. Besides, doesn’t the Nineteenth Precinct have detectives anymore?

“Oh, yes, I can. You’re my star, Mike, like it or not. And this one’s a big red ball. Make me look good, okay? There’s a payoff for you, too – you’re on assignment, so you don’t have to write reports about the Harlem thing, or deal with the media jackals. The office of information has just about lit on fire with requests to interview you.”

The truth, I knew perfectly well, was that Daly didn’t want anybody talking to the media about last night until all the facts were in. But he was using it to make me think he was doing me a favor. Add public relations savvy to his skill set, I thought.

“Get on your horse and go straight to Seventy-second, ASAP,” he finished. “Chief of Detectives McGinnis will fill you in.”

Get on my what? I thought, listening to the dial tone. No wonder he was commissioner. The man was a professional manipulator. Not only did he show no respect for my personal day, he hadn’t even given me a chance to tell him about my sick kids.

I put the phone away, pissed off at Daly and at all the idiots out there who used guns to solve their problems, but mostly heartbroken because my rare quality time with my kids was ruined. At least Mary Catherine was here to take over, and they’d probably have more fun with her, anyway. I was the big loser.

I decided I’d better take a quick shower. I hadn’t washed off the sweat from my run, and I might not get another chance for a couple of days. Distracted by thoughts of the crime scene I was about to face, I stepped into the bathtub without looking – until my toes squished in the vomit-choked drain.

I’d failed at playing hooky from work, and I couldn’t even get away with it here at home, I thought, reaching for the toilet paper.