by Faye, Amy
"We'll try not to keep you," the man said solemnly.
She nodded, pulled a jacket off the rack and stepped out through the front door, locking it behind. Shannen's sexy little coupe sat out front, though the patrol car blocked her in. She opened the garage, slipped into her car, and by the time she had it pulled halfway down the drive the cops had already cleared out for her, and were waiting a few hundred yards down the road.
She followed behind and tried to think of why anyone would be worried about Dad's shop. The whole place was shuttered up, for one thing, and for another it was just a cobbler's shop. There was no reason to break in and steal anything. Shoes were valuable, she supposed, but not other people's shoes, and not a shop that had finished all the work that had come in months and months ago, when he'd gone in.
And yet, as she followed them through the back alley and the shop finally came into view, she couldn't deny that someone had clearly done exactly that. The entire place was a mess, and one that would take days or weeks to clean up entirely, with her schedule.
The front door and front window were both shattered. It looked like someone had taken a hammer to the security shutter until it dented enough to break free of the lock at the bottom, and then they'd pulled it up and gone inside. She didn't know why it was that they needed a key until the cops lined up at the back door. Well, they could just as easily get in the front, but if they wanted to go in the clean way then she wasn't going to stop them.
The key was tight with the lock. It always had been, and it was almost unpleasant to actually use, but then again it wasn't her key. She'd never really gotten used to going in the back way, to unlocking the place, because she'd only done it a handful of times herself.
"What happened here?"
The cop who had done all the talking up to that point continued his streak. "That's what we're here to find out," he said. His voice was low and concerned, though Caroline couldn't have said whether he was more concerned about her question or about the damage of the store.
It didn't look like someone had come in to rob the place. If they had then they would have actually taken something, but as far as Caroline could tell, they hadn't. Instead, everything was on the floor, Dad's tools either smashed or, when they couldn't be smashed, embedded into the drywall.
Caroline's face dropped. Whatever had happened here, it was bad news. Very bad news. She wasn't sure that she was prepared to deal with this kind of damage, no matter what happened. She wasn't sure that anyone was. But she would have to, because when Dad finally got out, he was going to want these tools back. He'd never once taken a day off until he got into the hospital, and she suspected that he would want to pick that trend back up once he got out of the hospital.
She frowned and looked around. The damage was so complete and so startling, she thought. So much of it.
The cops waded through the stuff, layered thick on the floor almost ankle-deep. "Do you know who could have done this?"
The one in charge looked back at her with a flat expression, as the other guy started to snap photos of the scene. "There are several suspects at this point, but it's too early to say for sure, ma'am."
"I just, I don't even get it. Who would even do such a thing? What would they get out of it?"
He let out a long breath. "Sometimes it's just for fun, I guess. Teenagers, you know. They see an abandoned-looking building, they think they can get in and out before we show up to roust them, and they cause trouble as long as they can."
"You don't think that's the case this time, though?"
Something in his manner shifted a little bit at the question, like he didn't want to think too hard about it. "I can't say, ma'am."
"Can't say what?"
"It's still early," he repeated, as if it could undo the tone in his voice that had left little room for doubt over whether or not this was all the work of some teenagers. "Can't really say."
"You seemed awfully sure that it wasn't just some local neighborhood teens, though."
"I didn't say that."
"No, but it was clear from the sound of your voice."
The older cop let out a long breath, and the younger one turned. "It could have been a message," he said, filling in the blank space that was left by his partner's silence.
"A message from who?"
The older cop reacted to the question like it was a slap, and he reacted first and foremost by looking at his younger partner with an accusatory look.
"Like I said, it's early days, yet. We can't know anything for sure, so it's useless to speculate."
"But if you had to guess, then..."
The younger cop spoke up this time, again. She was starting to like him; at least he answered questions. "Coogan and his gang," he said. The look that the older cop gave him was enough to shut him up, but the answer was already out.
'Coogan' wasn't a name that she'd heard before, which meant that Caroline was going to have to play catch up.
10
Caroline sat at the table and tried to pretend against all hope that she wasn't distracted. Shannen eyed her like he usually did, and she knew that there wasn't going to be any way she could lie to him, not with the way that his eyes seemed to be able to see right through her. The way that he seemed to be able to constantly know when she was lying or hiding something.
The whole thing was strange to her. 'Gang,' they'd said. What did Dad have anything to do with a gang?
"Are you apologizing for ignoring me, or taunting me that you can keep it up as long as possible?" Shannen's words sounded offended; his voice didn't.
She looked up, surprised that he'd spoken. "I'm not ignoring you," she lied.
"Is this about that visit from the cops? What'd you do, fail to file your official papers when you donated to the poor?"
"Someone broke into my Dad's shop."
"Oh yeah? What's the old man do?"
"Right now he's in the hospital. The shop is closed."
"So he didn't get hurt, at least. That's good, right?"
"It would be better if I knew what the heck they had even done it for. I can't understand for the life of me why anyone would break into a shoe repair place."
Shannen shrugged. "All kinds of reasons, I guess. Maybe there was some spy shit in one of the shoes."
"He'd already sent out all the orders that had come in before he got sick. He did it like it was some kind of rite of passing, like he knew he was going to be in the hospital a while."
Shannen's expression was pained. "The cops say they knew anything?"
"One of them said it might be a gang," she offered. "Coogan-something?"
Shannen looked at her as if she'd just spoken complete gibberish, but he didn't refuse to believe her, which was at least better than the alternative. "I'm sure they're just guessing, though."
"You tried talking to the old man about it?"
"No, I didn't really have the heart to tell him," she answered. It was the truth, and if she was going to be so distracted she might as well not lie about it, she figured. That was the best way to handle the situation. At least, she hoped it was.
"You should call him."
"Why? There's nothing that he can do except get hurt by the news. I don't want to upset him."
"If someone fucked up my gym, fucked up my trainer, fucked up everything I held dear, I think I'd want to know."
She definitely understood that. Indeed, Dad would probably want to know, and he'd want to know because he would want to do something about it. She wasn't about to have him going off putting himself at risk all over his shop, especially not when he was supposed to be in the hospital getting better.
"I don't know," she said. Her voice was low and frustrated. Someone in the corner watched them. He was creepy and she didn't like it, but then again when someone else came through he fixed his beady stare on them for a moment. Then his neck straightened and that same stare came back down on her.
"I'm serious. You really should call him."
She took a breath.
"Okay, fine, I'll call him."
"Call him now," Shannen said. "It's important."
"Okay, fine," she agreed, with a roll of her eyes and a sigh. Men could be so damned insistent on the silliest things. The phone rang three times before he picked up, but Dad did pick up. He sounded better than he had, at least. He'd been looking better, too. He must have just woken up a few minutes ago, though, because he sounded particularly awake, especially for seven at night.
"Sweetheart? Something wrong? You don't usually call this late."
"I've got some bad news, Dad."
"Is everything okay? You're not hurt, are you?"
"It's not about me," she said. It was hard to say any of it to him, knowing that it would just hurt him in the end, but Shannen was right. He'd want to know and he'd want her to tell him. As soon as possible.
"Okay? What is it?"
"It's about the shop. Someone broke in, and..."
"Oh, sweetheart," he said. His voice sounded like he was trying to reassure her, which was strange. She didn't want to think too hard about what the reasons for it were because if she did then she was going to have to think about what the reasons for the destruction of the shop were. "You don't have to be so upset about it."
"But Dad," she protested weakly. The trouble was that she didn't know what 'but dad' was supposed to lead to. 'But Dad,' was as far as it went. The rest of it pulled her in a thousand different direction. Bud Dad, you loved that place. But Dad, it's not fair that it's destroyed. But Dad, you should have seen it. It was so awful.
"Don't 'but Dad' me, Caroline. It's just a building. When I'm out of here I'll put it back together again, don't worry about it. If I weren't in this damn bed..."
"You need to stay in bed, Dad. Don't go off doing something stupid."
"No, you're right. I'm a little tired, even now. This stupid place sucks the life out of you, you know?"
She did know. She'd seen it in him; she'd seen it in so many of her patients. The hospital was a place where you were supposed to go to get better, but so many people who stayed there only got worse as a result of the stay.
"I love you, Dad. I'm about to eat. The food's here."
He said his goodbyes, and as she set the phone into her pocket, true to her word, the waitress set their food down in front of them. It wasn't exactly a fine bistro, but it was at least something. Shannen smiled at the waitress, and the waitress smiled back at him, a little more interested in him than he was in her. Caroline didn't think about what they would have gotten up to if she wasn't there to dampen Shannen's libido.
"What did he say?"
"He didn't say anything," Caroline answered, halfway true. Something about it set her on edge. Something was strange.
"He didn't know anything?"
The thing that had been making her feel strange suddenly hit her like a ton of bricks. Like the nurse's clipboard on the bedside table.
"He wasn't surprised," she said. "Like he expected it. 'If only I weren't in this damn bed,' he said. Like it could've been avoided."
"That sounds a lot like gangs to me," Shannen offered. She didn't want to think too hard about how he would know anything about gangs, because the minute that she did think about it she was going to have to ask herself once again how she was supposed to feel about his career, and she knew what she was going to decide.
She knew what she was going to feel about it the whole time, and the more that she tried not to think about it, tried to remind herself that she needed the money, the more it chafed not to think about it.
"You know anything about the name 'Coogan?'"
Something glinted in his eyes, but it was gone in an instant. A moment later he patted his lips with a napkin and he shrugged. "No, I don't."
"Shannen, don't."
"Don't what?"
"I said, don't."
"I'm not going to do anything," he said. He finished his food quietly. Whatever thoughts were running through his head, he didn't share them with her. She went to sleep that night, and by the morning she'd forgotten the conversation entirely, except for the vague sense that she wasn't fighting with Shannen any longer.
It wasn't until she woke up, the coupe barely driving up when it should have been leaving for the morning as she started the coffee before her shower, that she remembered it. He came inside, a new lump raised on his cheek and his eye drooping a little shut, but he wore a smile in spite of all that.
"What happened to you?" She almost forgot, looking at his ground-beef textured face, that she wasn't wearing much other than a long tee shirt. When she did remember, she did her best to pretend that she hadn't noticed it at all.
"Nothing," he told her. "I just need a nap before I head to the gym this morning."
"You look like hell," she told him. He shrugged, touched the swollen cheek and grimaced.
"You won't be having any more trouble with Mr. Coogan's boys."
"You didn't," she said, her eyes wide. "Tell me right now, you didn't."
"I didn't do anything," he said, shrugging. "I just asked around, got in touch with him, and had a talk."
She looked at his face again.
"Then what happened to your face?"
"He had a fighter in town. We went a couple rounds. He's a little outside my weight class, but it's good to fight up sometimes. Particularly when you're the underdog," he said. He smiled wider, showing her his teeth.
"I'm going to hop in the shower," she said. "So if you have to go, then go."
He shook his head. "Go on, you've got work."
And then he walked away, and Caroline did her absolute best to imagine that he was telling her the truth. It didn't help.
11
Caroline's day was long. As long as any of them, and she spent the vast majority of it, for better or worse, worrying. She hated that she was always worrying. Hated that she was a worry-wart. She knew better than most that she could have gotten more done without all the worrying to do, but somehow it didn't make her feel much better.
The worrying did one thing for her, though. It made the rest of her day go by a little faster. No matter what she did, it wasn't quite as stressful as the idea that someone she knew, someone in her house, had gone around beating the tar out of mobsters. Like it was some kind of game to him.
Well, he would learn how much of a game it wasn't, she thought sourly. There were things that people simply didn't do, and it was generally for a good reason. For example, one didn't go around spitting on cops, because they knew the law better than you, and because they carried tasers. Or guns, for that matter. No matter how much you got mad, no matter how unfair it all seemed, the smart move was to wait until they were out of earshot before you started complaining about it.
Going after mobsters, getting involved with them at all, as one of those things that people weren't supposed to do, and the reasons were just as good. There was a great deal of danger in doing that sort of stuff. Mobsters were good at punching back. It was what made them mobsters.
Shannen seemed to think that he was invincible. Seemed to think that he could take on anything and come out of it untouched, but Caroline didn't have those illusions. She didn't have the luxury of thinking that no matter what happened she could just walk away from it unscathed like he apparently thought that he could.
But if the mob wanted him dead, then how could he have gotten away without getting himself killed? No matter how good he was with his fists, unless he'd just murdered a dozen men or more, there was no way that he got away clean. She frowned. If there were people hurt that bad, then they would have been in the hospital. If there was a big gangland killing, then that would have made the news. Neither seemed to be the case.
It wasn't something that Shannen would ever admit, she knew, but what if he weren't the winner of this one? What if he were the one who got the tar kicked out of him? What if he wasn't lying to her and he really had just gone in to talk to them?
What did that mean for her? What did that mean for Dad?
She cl
osed her eyes and tried to calm down. There was no reason to freak out, and it wasn't going to help her even if she did. So she needed to think. And by the time that she managed to get any of that thinking done, work had run by so fast that she hadn't even realized that it was passing her by until Sarah was waving her away and telling her that she was free for the night.
Caroline called the number in her phone, and two rings later Shannen picked up. "You need a ride?"
She told him that she did, and he said that he'd be there in ten minutes. That was just about the right amount of time, she thought, because it would take ten minutes to get herself checked out, use the bathroom for the first time in two hours, and get herself downstairs.
He was waiting for her when she finally came out the door. Caroline wondered again, for the thousandth time, whether or not it was normal for a tenant to come and pick up his landlord from work every day, and as she did every time she knew that it wasn't.
But she wasn't going to complain. The Toyota only had so many miles left in her, no matter how much Caroline tried to baby her, and the little coupe was newer, nicer, ran quieter and smoother and faster. Never mind that the seats were more comfortable, so she certainly wasn't going to complain if he wanted to give her rides. She certainly wasn't going to complain if he wanted to do other things, too. She pushed that thought out of her head and pretended she hadn't thought it at all.
If Shannen noticed the way that her face suddenly turned bright red as she slid into the luxuriously soft leather seats, then he didn't make any sign of it.
"Work okay?"
"You're looking a little better," she said. It was a lie, but she wasn't going to tell him the truth. It would have been downright rude to say that he looked worse, that the bruise on his face had turned an ugly purple color that she would have been worried about if she weren't used to bruises happening from any old thing. His lip had swollen, too, she saw now, and it stood out on one side a little bit where it was swollen up to almost twice its size.
But he seemed less tired, at least. His eyes were both mostly open, one admittedly more than the other, but if it hurt then he didn't show it. Then again, she thought sourly, he never did, which was eventually going to bite him in the ass. She hoped it would anyways, because if it didn't then he'd never learn to cut the macho crap.
