MANNING [DETECTIVE JAMES T.] wrestles every morning for exercise. It’s part of his fitness routine. He enters the wrestling gym in the basement of the Midtown Athletic Club in Manhattan at five forty-five sharp. He has two friends, both former college wrestlers, as he was. They work out together.

Manning leaves his cell phone in a secure locker while he wrestles. He will not respond to any communication or text during that hour or the shower and towel-off time immediately after.

I have been present in the wrestling gym on several occasions when departmental emergencies have compelled me to collect Manning in person from the club. He never speaks. He doesn’t even grunt. He immerses himself completely in the competition and the exertion.

The Midtown Athletic Club [216 W. Sixty-Eighth Street] is the downscale cousin of the Metropolitan Athletic Club [East Side House, 236 Madison Avenue]. Until a few years ago, the Met AC accepted no blacks, Jews, Hispanics, or, God forbid, Filipinos. The club has been sued repeatedly over the decades and only ameliorated its policy, when it did, grudgingly and belatedly. In contrast, the Midtown AC takes everybody.

Manning, if he had read these last sentences, would order me to strike them as “editorializing” and “unprofessional.” He would not, in truth, order me. He would simply give me a look.

My name is Detective Third Grade Covina Duwai. I am called “Dewey.” Third Grade means I’m a grunt. The ranks above me are Second Grade and First Grade. In pay I make more than a patrol officer but less than a sergeant. Manning’s rank is First Grade. He gets the salary of a lieutenant, though in his case he’s got so much seniority, being a twenty-seven-year veteran, the final tally would probably almost double that.

I am one of three women in Division Six of the NYPD’s Detective Bureau. DivSix is the special homicide investigative arm of the seven mid- and uptown Manhattan precincts as well as Precincts 12 and 13 in South Harlem. In 2027, responsibility for the investigation of all cases involving sensitive and high-profile homicides—terrorism, hate crimes, killings of police officers, politically motivated murder, etc.—was taken from the individual precincts and consolidated under Division Six. (Investigation of federal crimes committed in Manhattan is the responsibility of the FBI, reporting to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.) DivSix reports to the New York County District Attorney’s Office. The division’s responsibility, as with that of a conventional homicide bureau, is not only to investigate crimes and make arrests but also to prepare cases for prosecution by the district attorney.