Jack knew working the Ninth Precinct, the 0-Nine, wouldn’t be like working anticrime in Brownsville, or East New York, where killings were commonplace, and cops were used to tabulating bodies on a weekly basis. The 0-Nine, according to the Compstat analysis, didn’t have a lot of homicides, but kept pace with other precincts with regards to all other types of incidences, like armed robberies, burglaries, domestic disputes, teen violence, and drug dealing.

He grabbed at and massaged the knotted cords in the back of his neck, taking a deep boxer’s breath through his nose.

The 0-Nine house seemed to be a good fit for him, a welcome surprise. He wasn’t expecting any of the problems he’d had in the Fifth Precinct. He figured that his exploits there, which had earned him a gold shield, would have preceded him to the new stationhouse, earning him a small measure of respect.

Jack got up from the desk and went toward the rear window, smoothly swinging his hips and legs down into a long bridge squat, a Shaolin-style stretch. His lower joints and ligaments popped as he straightened up, watching the frozen gray Alphabet City morning seep in through the window.

One call came into the precinct. A junkie from the projects had been found dead of an apparent drug overdose in an Avenue D shooting gallery, but Narcotics swept it up as part of a larger operation. The dead junkie was their CI, their confidential informant.

The remainder of the shift passed quietly, punctuated only by crackling voices from the squad radio at the duty desk out front. Nobody killed anyone in the precinct on this overnight shift, but on the Lower East Side, Jack knew, violence was only one wrong look, one bad intention away.

Out by the duty desk, the uniforms of the day shift rolled in.

Jack signed out as they started to muster for roll call. He was thinking of the hot chowder at Kim’s when the first frigid gust of East River wind slapped him in the face.

Bodega Koreano

Kim’s Produce was a mom-and-pop Korean deli on Tenth Street, a few blocks from the Ninth Precinct stationhouse. It was 9:18 AM on the Colt 45 display clock, well past his twelve-hour tour, when Jack joined the cashier’s line with his take-out container of hot clam chowder. A small television set showed the Thanksgiving Day parade. He sipped the steaming soup as he waited, watching the TV. Jack had mixed thoughts about the holiday seasons in the city. These were celebrations, but for many people the seasons were very sad times. There were two cities here—one rich, one poor, each spiritually if not physically segregated from the other.

Jack watched the Macy’s Parade march down Central Park West, past the stately and formidable buildings whose names rolled out: Majestic, Prasada, Dakota, San Remo, the landmarks of the rich and fabulous, private balconies with front-row views. The majorettes fronting the marching bands moved briskly down through the Twentieth Precinct, toward the old Mayflower Hotel, then on past Trump International, where top-shelf guests reserved midlevel suites for holiday packages at a thousand a night, so that their children would be thrilled by the giant cartoon balloons floating past their floor-to-ceiling double-paned glass windows. The Pink Panther. The Cat in the Hat. Barney the Dinosaur. Sonic the Hedgehog, who had an appetite for lampposts along Central Park.

Down below, at street level, two million of the hoi polloi gathered along the parade route, crowded and penned-in along the sidewalks, in the bitter cold. Tourists and middle-class families from the outer boroughs saw the floats rolling by—Big Bird and Santa Claus, and comic-book heroes floating in the sky.

The parade moved south toward Times Square, passing through the Midtown Commands, Manhattan North and Manhattan South. It would all end, Jack knew, at the Macy’s store at Herald Square, where there would be backup from the Tenth and Thirteenth Precincts, and, of course, plenty of overtime uniforms managing the crowds, working the barricades and the subways.

Much farther downtown, Jack knew, there were no luxurious hotel rooms, no balloons or floats. On the Lower East Side, Loisaida, the holidays found citizens of the 0-Nine at soup kitchens and food pantries, at the Bowery Mission, where the hungry, homeless families and the poor eagerly awaited a traditional hot turkey meal with all the trimmings, with the rest of the citizenry giving thanks, There but for the grace of God go I. Holy Cross, St. Mary’s, St. Mark’s Shelter: Soup kitchens scattered throughout the precinct gave them all something to be thankful for, even for one day.

The holidays were a humbling time for them; the displays of cheery celebration, and religious and commercial spectacles were not theirs. To them it was only another year of struggle passing by.

In Chinatown, most Chinese people didn’t celebrate a traditional Thanksgiving, but the holiday provided an excuse for them to get together and feast on a meal of seafood, pork, chicken, and baby bok choy. Lobster Cantonese instead of turkey, rice instead of mashed potatoes, with winter melon and lotus root soup. Extended families gathered around da bean lo, hot-pot casserole-style cooking.

Jack didn’t have fond memories of the holidays. Pa had never felt he had a lot to give thanks for, and hadn’t been a big believer in Christmas either, so Jack rarely received gifts. His one big thrill had been getting something from the Fifth Precinct PAL, when he’d line up with all the other “deprived” Chinatown kids hoping for a holiday handout. He remembered one year getting trampled in the mad rush of the older kids and parents to get a free toy. Trampled for a Popeye-the-Sailorman figure. He cried, but was still happy to have the free gift. When he brought it home, Pa had derided him for getting run over for a stupid gwailo doll.

Jack reached the cashier at the same time that his cell phone jangled and broke his reverie. He paid for his soup, and flipped open the phone.

It was the dayshift duty sarge, telling him patrol had responded to a call and found multiple bodies, very dead, at One Astor Plaza, down from the Barnes & Noble bookstore.

Sergeant Donahoe was in the blue-and-white downstairs at the scene.

Manhattan South was responding to holiday road rage auto fatalities on the Westside Highway, so they were reaching out to Jack.

“On my way,” Jack said, pocketing the phone.

He finished the soup in a big swallow, turned up his collar, and emerged onto the frozen street. He made his way west, through the East Village, the icy wind already tearing at his face, icy needles prickling his eyes every step of the way.

Face and Death

One Astor Plaza was a twenty-story curved glass tower, a luxury high-rise condominium building seamlessly shoehorned into the middle of a neighborhood crossroads that spread out to include the Public Theater, the NYU and Cooper Union campuses, the East Village and NoHo. It was a doorman residence, had security in the lobby, and a concierge behind a black marble counter. A Commercial Bank branch anchored the rest of the main street floor. A two-bedroom unit cost 1.5 million dollars and the project had sold out during construction.

The sculpted neo-modern glass building towered over the main avenues that ran north-south through Manhattan, over the major eastside subway hub, and dominated that entire commercial corner of Cooper Square.

A big overweight man, Sergeant Donahoe, stepped out of the squad car.

“I’ve got Wong up there,” he said.

Police Officer Wong, Jack knew, was a rookie patrolman, a Chinese-American portable who could speak several Chinese dialects.

“Eighteen-A,” Donahoe continued. “You got the building manager, the security guard, the grandmother, all up there. The fire lieutenant’s at the fireboard in the lobby. Talk to him first.”