New York first lady Chirlane McCray—if a city can have a “first lady,” as the mayor’s wife so grandly insists on styling herself—is probably right to upbraid her husband for hiring William J. Bratton as police commissioner. She is probably right to believe, as she reportedly said (but now denies), that “we can’t trust him.” But I am not sure she understands just how dangerous a powder keg her husband and she—his closest adviser, he boasts—are sitting on.

Once you tug at the loose ends of the Rachel Noerdlinger story, the whole administration of New York Mayor Bill de Blasio seems to unravel in your hands.