The Long Black Hand by J. E. Fishman

Author:J. E. Fishman [Fishman, J.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: NYPD, realistic cops, New York, police, explosives, conspiracy, terrorism
Publisher: Verbitrage
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

ON HER WAY TO THE LIRR station in Bayside, Queens, Michelle Steinberg made her usual stop at Martha’s Country Bakery for a cup of coffee—light, one sugar—and a wedge of marble pound cake. Her hips didn’t need the pound cake, but she had a spring in her step this morning and decided to indulge. She ate on the train, taking pinches of the pound cake from the bag one at a time and making them disappear into her mouth almost surreptitiously. On her iPod she had Vivaldi playing, which anyone in the opera department might have found tacky if they’d known. And on her Nook she was reading a Harlequin romance—another matter of low culture that she planned to share with no one.

Sadly, she’d grown accustomed to feeling vulnerable to the others on matters of taste. She was the lone full-time support staffer among experts in a department that prided itself on cultural cachet. Xaviera, Rolando, Norma, Richard, Henrietta, and the rest—they didn’t hold her in contempt but they pitied her in some small way, a woman of modest talent destined at best to appreciate great art at a distance, at worst to be too busy shuffling papers to make it to the concert hall with regularity. Yet in the next breath they relied upon her—to have the spare key when they forgot theirs, to keep their schedules straight, to protect them from presumptuous students, to get them their paychecks on time, in general to free them of drudgery.

Yes, she was the drudge, she thought. And she’d yielded to that fate long ago. In college, every humanities major went through a brief period, at least, when she thought she’d one day learn to write as well as Joan Didion or paint as well as Renoir. But not Steinberg. She knew from day one that she’d eternally be a fan of art, not a creator of it. And she’d accepted that. It had made her a great assistant for twenty-eight years, the rock upon which stood a department that mostly consisted of near-miss maestros and petty prima donnas.

Her coffee drained, she placed the empty cup inside the paper bag that had held her pound cake, folded it neatly and stuffed it inside her canvas tote bag to be discarded later. She was ever the good girl—to this day she didn’t litter. Her mother, God rest her soul, had taught her to be a responsible citizen. To be the reliable one. To take the safe path.

She closed her eyes and let the strings of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the rocking train carry her off for a moment. How ironic, she thought, that all of her safe choices should lead to a place where she’d become the first line of defense against threatening letters, her new boss the target of potential violence. And yet the prospect of working with this great man instilled her with a pride that could almost chase the demons away. She’d spoken with him three times on the phone by now and met him once.

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