Malone stepped away from the desk. "All right," he said. "Go ahead."
Lynch took a deep breath. "Malone, I'm not trying to queer your pitch," he said. "If I were going to pull a raid, here's what I'd have to do: get my own cops together, then call the precinct that covers that old warehouse. We don't cover the warehouse from here, Malone, and we'd need the responsible precinct's aid in anything we did down there."
Malone said, "Well, all I—"
"Not only that," Lynch said. "I'd have to call Safe and Loft, and get them in on it. A warehouse raid would probably be their baby first of all. That means it takes this precinct, the warehouse precinct, and the Safe and Loft Squad, all together, to raid that warehouse. Malone, would I pull a raid at this stage, if I had to go through all that, without knowing what the hell I was going to find down there?"
"Oh," Malone said.
"If those kids can just appear and disappear at will," Lynch said, "I'm not going to pull a raid on them, and end up looking like a damn fool, until I've got some way of making sure they're there when the raid goes through."
Malone coughed gently. "Okay," he said at last. "Sorry."
"There's only one thing I want," Lynch said. "I want to be able to move as soon as possible."
"Well, sure," Malone said apologetically.
"And that means I'm going to have to be informed," Lynch said. "I want to know what's going on, as fast as possible."