The story so far: Nina arrested a notorious gangster, Fitz O’Patrick, but O’Patrick obtained incriminating photos of Mayor Richard and used the photos to blackmail the mayor. The mayor told the DA to drop all charges against O’Patrick. Captain Newton has just told Nina that O’Patrick is going to be freed.
Nina finishes another delicious dinner prepared by her grandmother and asks to be excused from the table. She goes up to her room, closes the door and turns on her Eric Clapton CD to the “Rock ‘n Roll Heart” track. She stares at the ceiling, thinking about her day.
The next morning Nina wakes up, takes a shower, gets dressed and heads to work at the police station. As she cruises down the road, listening to the calming hum of her engine, her attention is drawn to her police radio announcing, “a 211 robbery in progress at CVS.” Two police cruisers speed by and Nina realizes the CVS is only two blocks away. Although she moved up from homicide a while back, she decides to tag along and see some of her friends catch the bad guys. As Nina approaches in her unmarked car, she sees the two empty cruisers in front of the CVS. None of the officers are visible. Suddenly, she hears shots ring out and her radio blares, “Officer down! Officer in need of assistance.”
Nina wonders, where is the backup? More shots are fired. “Damn!” she mutters. “Not the way I thought this day was going to start.” Not having any choice, Nina gets out of her car, runs across the street to an alley on the side of the CVS, and stops to listen. Suddenly, a man with a ski mask runs around the corner from behind the CVS. He waves a gun and turns to fire back toward where he came from. Nina realizes he is turning toward where she is standing. She draws Harry from its holster and squeezes off two quick, perfect shots to the chest. The man in the ski mask falls backward, dead before he hits the ground.
Onlookers from across the street approach the alley and see Nina put Harry back in its holster. “You didn’t give him a chance,” one of the onlookers says to Nina.
“You’re right. Next time I’ll let an armed bandit get a good look at me. I’ll politely ask him to stop shooting at police officers and to drop his gun.” With that, she walks away, crosses the street, gets back in her car and heads off to the station to start the long process of filing reports on what just happened at the CVS.
Three minutes later her phone rings, and Captain Newton is asking whether she is okay. “Sure, Captain,” she says. “Just a quiet morning of running into a robbery and having to kill a bad guy running at me waving a gun.” The captain thanks her for her quick action.
While Nina and Captain Newton are on the phone, the vice squad is raiding a gambling house for bookmaking and numbers running. It just so happens that Mick-the-Tick, a well known pimp, is caught up in the raid, handcuffed, and taken to jail with everyone else frequenting the
gambling house at the wrong time. Coincidentally, Nina walks into the police station at the same time Mick-the-Tick and the others arrested in the raid are being paraded in to be processed. Nina watches the parade and remembers busting Mick for pimping a few years ago. Mick also recognizes Nina. “Hello, beautiful,” Mick calls out to Nina. “You can shoot me with the big pistol anytime.”
“Dream on, Mick,” Nina responds. “You still pimping underage girls?”
“No ma’am. You got me all wrong. Those girls just give me their money because I’m so cute.”
Nina smiles and turns to the stairs to her office. By now, all the detectives know Fitz O’Patrick isn’t going down. When Nina walks in, a fellow detective says, “Cheer up, Nina. Someday you’ll get him.”
Nina sits at her desk, takes Harry out and starts the process of cleaning her gun. As her mind wanders she begins to wonder why a street pimp like Mick-the-Tick would be hanging out in a mob-run gambling house. She knows the mob guys hate the pimps. She hits a few keys on her computer and soon a smile emerges on her face. Mick-the-Tick already has a pandering charge pending. Now, he’s got a gambling charge. That’s real prison time, she realizes.
