Not in the Cards

by Alex Westmore

Turning to face her, Captain Henry still had a smirk on his face. For a moment, he just stood there, grinning and shaking his head. “You are just like she said you would be.”

  This caught Delta off guard, and her left eyebrow raised in question. “She?”

  “District Attorney Pendleton. Hers was the first phone call I received when I sat down behind this desk. It appears she keeps herself abreast of your career moves.”

  Delta did not respond. Alexandria Pendleton had been indirectly involved with the Zuckerman case. She had needed an arrest, and Delta gave her one—well, would have, if he hadn’t fallen ten stories. If Alexandria had called the captain on Delta’s behalf it could only mean that she had been forewarned about Delta’s impending transfer and was using her considerable clout to keep it from happening.

  “The DA said she’d heard that I was inquiring about the personnel I was taking over and thought I might like her input. Your name came first. It appears she has a great deal of confidence in you and asked me to reconsider IA’s recommendation to remove you from the streets for a while.”

  Delta did not move. She knew IA would use her as an example of what happens to rulebreakers, but she never imagined they would actually take her off the streets.

  “Delta, I’m no fool. The DA called because you saved her ass by coming up with the suspect who killed that little girl. You made her and the whole department look sweet on that one. Yes, a man died. But the taxpayers just see that as a fitting end. No court costs, no prison expenditures. You gave them what they wanted; a dead suspect. I saw the polls right after that and the DA’s reelection chances are looking pretty good because of it. It would take a miracle for Wainwright to beat her now. It’s obvious she feels she owes you, so she made a call on your behalf.”

  “And?” Delta wanted this conversation to end. If he was going to take her off the street or put her on Training Patrol, then he just needed to do it.

  “And, given your record, I have considered a lot of things. While I can’t just ignore IA’s recommendation to take you off the streets, I also can’t sit a good cop with an arrest record like yours behind a desk. It was Pendleton’s idea to put you on TP.”

  “I’ll be sure to thank her,” Delta replied sarcastically.

  Captain Henry picked at his moustache. “She and I both know you’re far too valuable on the streets to stick behind a desk pushing paper around. However,” he paused for emphasis, “IA demands some action and I can’t ignore the fact that there are so many `incidents’ in your file. I want those to stop. Period. End of the line. My officers will follow the regulations or they’ll work for someone else. This place is under my command now, and I will see to it that it runs smoothly.”

  Delta slowly rose from the chair and rammed her fists into her pocket. “And you think making an example of me will allow you to do that?”

  Captain Henry rose. Delta wondered if they were playing some kind of chess game where one body changes position and the other counters.

  “Rest assured, Stevens,” the captain said, smiling again, “I am not using you as an example. I’m doing what I believe is best for this department, not to mention what I think is the right thing for you. It’s either a rookie or a desk. One keeps you on the street, the other is pushing paper. I don’t think the latter is something you’d enjoy very much.”

  Delta clenched her fists tighter in her pockets. How was it that she’d helped end a string of killings, yet, because she didn’t do it “by the book,” she was suffering the consequences instead of receiving praise? God, the politics of this job made her crazy sometimes.

  Captain Henry continued. “I want you working for me, Delta. Make no mistake about that. But to do that, you have to do things my way, and that means you need to mellow some.”

  Mellow. The word banged like the echo of a brass drum off her temples. Cheese mellowed. Wine mellowed. Cops who mellowed lost their edge; that edge made Delta so good and kept her alive. Without it, being on the street would be like facing a machine gun armed with a water pistol.

  “Mellow, sir?” Delta asked, trying to maintain some calm in her voice. “You’re putting me on TP to mellow me?”

  Smoothing his moustache again, the captain nodded. “That’s right. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I believe that teaching a rookie to do things the proper way will reinforce those policies and procedures that you seem to frequently forget.”

  Licking her lips, Delta chose her next words carefully. “I haven’t forgotten anything, sir. I admit I bend the rules every now and then, but only when they keep me from doing my job.”

  Grinning and shaking his head, the captain’s eyes sparkled a bluish tint. “Damn it, Delta, you even admit it.” Moving back behind his desk, he folded his hands together and rested his chin on them. “I’ve heard plenty about you, Delta Stevens, right down to your nickname ‘Storm.’ But nothing prepared me for your brash honesty.”

  Delta shrugged, but remained silent.

  “You amaze me. Your butt’s on the line here, and yet you admit to breaking the rules. I don’t know whether to respect the hell out of you or kick your ass right outta here.”

  “I think my record speaks for itself, sir. Good, bad, or indifferent, if we followed every rule, we’d never catch anybody. And anyone who says she can is a lying fool.”

  Captain Henry studied Delta for a moment before responding. “Our job is to follow the rules and bust those who don’t. Surely, you don’t stand there justifying your rather obvious attempts at vigilantism.”

  Delta shrugged again and dug her fists even deeper into her pockets. She felt hemmed in and didn’t know how to get out. “Not all the time. Sometimes, the regs limit my ability to do the job well. Tell me you haven’t broken procedure in order to bust some scumbag, Captain.”

  “My actions aren’t in question here.”

  “And mine are?”

  “Yes.” Lowering his hands, the captain fixed his eyes hard on Delta’s. “You were an athlete in college, is that right?”

  Delta nodded, puzzled by the non sequitur. “I was, yes.”

  “Then you should understand the concept of teamwork. Police work is a team enterprise, Delta, and if you’re going to have a place on my team, you’ll play by the rules. I will not have any of my officers hot-dogging it out there.”

  Delta bristled at the implication that that was what she was doing. “I do not ‘hot-dog’ it out there, sir. Ask anyone.”

  “I don’t need to. You don’t seem to understand that it isn’t your past exploits that concern me. It’s your future—a future, I might add, that is hanging by a thread. My job, what we are discussing right now, is whether or not we can fit you into my program. I want you to be on the field and not sitting on the bench. But if you’re going to play, then it must be by the rules, both the department’s and mine. The choice is yours.”

  Inhaling slowly, Delta pulled her hands from her pockets and sat on the edge of the chair. As much as she hated the idea of carting a rookie around, she hated the thought of being stuck behind a desk even more. Like eating and sleeping, Delta thrived on the action of her beat. She needed the thrill of the chase and the pump of adrenaline that comes from bringing down a pusher or a wife beater. That was why she’d become a cop in the first place. She loved the action—the ten minutes of a shift when the air becomes so thick she can’t breathe, when her heart pounds so hard it’s all she can hear, when she battles her own fears and trepidation in order to succeed. And it wasn’t just the excitement, the power, that gave her a rush. Delta loved helping people who needed her assistance. She liked the feeling of knowing she helped a child escape an abusive parent, or a rape victim watch her captor being sentenced. She loved knowing that she acted as the arm of justice, reaching out to grab those who disregarded the law. There were so many sides to what she did, she couldn’t imagine her life without it. Delta had spent six fast-paced years on the streets, and if she had to lug around some novice in order to continue doing what she loved doing most
, then so be it.

  Sucking in her pride and determination, Delta ran her hand through her wavy brown hair. “I want to be on the street, sir. If TP is the only way I can be there, then I don’t see that I have much choice.”

  “Good.” Taking the file and scribbling something in it, Captain Henry slammed it shut. “I was hoping you’d say that. I’d hate to lose a good cop because your pride couldn’t handle a reassignment. In the long run, I really think it will do you and the department some good.”

  Delta shrugged and rose. “Well, I don’t know about that, sir, but I do know that I’m ready to get back out on the street. This time off is killing me. If I see one more soap opera, I’m going to sell my TV.”

  “Then you’ll start with your first rookie tomorrow.”

  “Which beat?”

  “I see no reason why you can’t stay on your own.”

  Delta’s eyebrows shot up. “My beat isn’t exactly the place for a rookie.”

  This brought an enigmatic grin to the captain’s face. “Well, now it’s your job to see that he gets ready for beats just like yours, isn’t it? If you have any questions, feel free to see me. My door is always open.”

  Taking the captain’s outstretched hand, Delta firmly shook it. “No offense, sir, but I’d prefer a subtle distance between myself and this office. If you know what I mean.”

  “I understand.”

  “I’ll give it my best, but I can’t promise anything. I’ve never taught anyone anything and I don’t even know if I have the patience for it.”

  “Your best is good enough for me. From what I’ve heard, you’re pretty damned good at just about everything you set your mind to.”

  Delta nodded. “You heard right on that one.”

  “Great. Now all we have to do is smooth out some of those edges and we should have a championship team. Take a look at some of the old timers. They’ve mellowed and they’re still excellent cops.” Captain Henry patted her on the back. “You’ll see. In the long run, you’ll be a better cop.”

  As the door closed securely behind her, Delta shook her head. Mellow? Delta ‘Storm’ Stevens, mellow?

  Maybe. Then again, maybe not.

  Walking away from the captain’s office, Delta felt that she was being watched. It wasn’t uncommon for everyone to see her straggling out of a captain’s office, but this time, she was the first officer to be called in by the new guy. An inauspicious beginning for Delta, to be sure.

  Glancing at the awaiting crowd, Delta grinned and shrugged. “He’s a hell of a lot better than Williams ever was.”

  With that, the room resumed its bustling nature. Everyone seemed so relieved that Delta had not received a hatchet job on the new captain’s very first day that a collective sigh escaped from the room as everyone returned to their duties.

  Everyone except one short Mexican woman poised at her computer terminal. With prying eyes, she studied Delta’s movement across the room and waited, with arms folded, for Delta to sit down next to her. “I can tell by that look in your eyes it was worse than you thought, huh?”

  Delta sat backwards and rested her chin on the chair back—a habit she picked up during her childhood when her father had her press her gaping front teeth against the chair back. It had been his answer to the “fad” of braces. Somehow, it worked, but Delta was stuck with the habit of turning her chair around backwards whenever she sat down.

  “Worse is an understatement.” Watching her best friend turn the computer monitor off, Delta sighed. “I don’t know what I was expecting. I guess...”

  Rising from her chair, the woman gently touched Delta’s shoulder. “Come on. Let’s talk.”

  After following her into the bathroom, Delta turned and locked the door. “I feel like such an idiot.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. What did he say?”

  At five feet nine inches, Delta towered over the diminutive woman. Delta studied her deep brown eyes and knew it there’d be no use trying to disguise the frustration and humiliation boiling beneath the surface. Connie would know. Connie always knew. And what Connie didn’t inherently know, she felt, and she would most certainly feel the anguish Delta was experiencing.

  Connie Rivera was knew Delta better than Delta knew herself. This made sliding anything past her best friend a real challenge, and more often than not, Delta just coughed up the truth.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Delta began, walking over to the sink and staring at her reflection in the mirror.

  “Try me.”

  Turning around to face her, Delta tried to avert her eyes from the ones drilling into hers. Consuela Dolores Maria Rivera knew Delta well enough to know when to ask questions and when to just listen. Through their six-year friendship, Connie had done both more times than Delta dared count. She could pry even the deepest, darkest secrets from Delta. Connie had an IQ of 160, was fluent in five languages (working on her sixth), held a black belt in karate, and could see right through the people she cared about. She certainly could see into Delta’s soul, and had on many occasions.

  “He’s bucking me back to Training Patrol. Training Patrol, Con, can you see it? Me trying to teach some green-eared rookie how to survive the streets?”

  Stepping up to Delta, Connie smiled. Two rows of perfect teeth glistened against her smooth caramel complexion. If it weren’t for the crow’s-feet around her eyes crinkling every time she grinned, she could easily pass for late twenties rather than her late thirties. “First of all, the phrase is wet-behind-the-ears and secondly, not that you’ve asked my opinion, but I think you’d be a very good FTO.”

  Delta’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be kidding. With all the shit that happens on my beat, I can’t afford to stop in the middle of a chase or a bust and teach some rookie how it should be ‘properly’ handled. We’ll both get killed.”

  The smile on Connie’s face softened. “You were a rookie once yourself, Storm.”

  Connie’s nickname for her assuaged Delta’s anger. “I know.”

  “I remember how you were. You’d go storming up to a rabid dog with its leg caught in a trap if you thought it would help make a collar. There was nothing you wouldn’t do to make even the smallest bust.”

  Delta grinned. “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing. You shot out of the academy at the top of your class determined to single-handedly rid the world of all its evils. More times than not, that dog took a big chunk out of your butt that first year. If it hadn’t been for Miles Brookman and some very patient FTO’s, you’d be hamburger by now.”

  Delta shrugged, knowing that arguing with Connie was a waste of time.

  “You were idealistic and obsessed with fighting crime. But it was those ideals that made you work so hard to do your best. You came out like a bullet from a gun, and sometimes, you were on the mark. Other times, you missed by a mile. Stop me if I’m wrong.”

  Looking down into Connie’s face, Delta couldn’t help but shake her head. She had come out of the academy like a car taking a corner on two wheels; so eager to put everything she had learned into practice, she often took shortcuts to make that all important bust. Rules, Penal Codes, policy and procedures were of little interest to her. She was not a theorist, but a practitioner, and too often, Delta felt the rules were overly prohibitive. So what if she found loopholes or used a little creative problem-solving to yank a crook off the street? As far as Delta was concerned, the laws too often protected the perpetrators, and neither victims nor cops benefitted from the archaic “innocent until proven guilty.” Too many times, some creep caught with his pants down standing over a raped woman had walked because of a “technicality.” Delta simply knew how to avoid such technicalities and send criminals to prison. If policy allowed a criminal to be set free, then she would do whatever she had to counterbalance the scales. Beat cops understood that much. Unfortunately, desk officers, the media, and the public did not. They all wanted to believe cops could maneuver under such heavy constraints and still be su
ccessful in apprehending criminals.

  Delta knew better. And she was willing to take risks to ensure her own successes on the street.

  “You might have ended up behind a desk or worse if Miles hadn’t straightened you out some. You were a little too idealistic for your own good.”

  Delta smiled gently at the memory. Yes, Miles, her first and best partner, had shown her how to do things the right way. He had taught her how to polish her craft and move around the rules without really breaking them. He taught her all the subtle nuances that made a good cop a great cop. He had shown her that the real way cops work the streets had little resemblance to the textbook ways she’d learned at the academy. Miles had prepared her for almost everything.

  Almost.

  When he was gunned down, Delta didn’t care what regulations she had to break to apprehend his killers. That kind of thinking helped her nail the creeps who blew him away. How could anyone expect her to change now?

  “But we’re not talking about me as a rookie. We’re talking about me having the patience to teach one.”

  Connie grinned. “Where would we be if every Field Training Officer had thought that way?”

  Heaving a loud sigh, Delta flopped down on the worn wooden bench. “But my FTO’s wanted to be there, Con. It was their choice. They obviously felt confident in their ability to teach. I’m no teacher, Con, I’m a cop.”

  “You make it sound like that’s all you can do. You’ll never know unless you try.”

  “I’ve never tried bungee-jumping, but I know I wouldn’t like it. Come on, Connie, you know as well as I do that Henry is just trying to get in good with Internal Affairs. No one said he had to follow their recommendation. The choice is his and he’s burning me.”

  Connie folded her arms across her chest. “Captain Henry doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who sucks up to other people.”

  Delta cocked her head. She knew by Connie’s tone of voice that her impression was based on some good old-fashioned dirt digging. “You’ve been checking him out?”

  Nodding, Connie pulled a slip of computer paper from her pocket and unfolded it. “You think I’d have let you go in there today if I thought he was going to crush you? Oh, Delta Stevens, sometimes you forget the wonders Eddie and I are capable of.”