Emily has a right to be happy, too, right? I thought. Sort-of-ish.
“Hey, that’s great, Emily,” I finally said. “Who is he? A cop or a real person?”
Emily laughed.
“He’s a real person, as a matter of fact. He’s a line cook at Montmartre in DC. He’s also a veteran of Afghanistan—a Special Forces medic. His name is Sean Buckhardt. He’s this tall, serious, tough, hardworking man, but underneath, he really cares, you know? About the world, about being alive. And he’s great with Olivia. He’s smart and sarcastic and funny, like you. I really think you’d like him.”
Wanna bet? I thought, glancing into her bright-blue eyes.
“A line cook? That’s a score. Tell me he cooks for you,” I said instead.
“All the time. Does it show?” she said, smiling. “It shows, right? All the butter sauce. I’ll come home from a case, and it’s Provence in my kitchen, with all the courses and the wine pairings. He makes this lemon-chicken thing. I swear it should be on the narcotics list. I must have put on ten pounds.”
That’s a lie, I thought as I watched her do some kind of reknotting thing with her shoulder-length hair. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched as she walked ahead of me a little. Whatever she was doing, it was working out. Quite well.
But I kept that to myself. Instead, I quickly took out my phone to see if there were any new messages from Mary Catherine.
Bad corner of my eye, I thought.
Chapter 36
The hotel dining room was all but empty as the last couple huddled together at the best table, right by the low turf fire in the massive river-rock fireplace. The candlelight was soft and low, as was the cozy romantic music playing.
“Ga! Will they never leave?” said Mary Catherine’s cousin Donnell as they hung back by the kitchen door, allowing the American couple celebrating their fiftieth anniversary to enjoy a moment.
“Have a heart. It’s romantic,” Mary Catherine said.
“They’ve enjoyed about a trillion and a half moments already, by my calculation,” complained Donnell. “The sun’ll be coming up soon.”
“Go in and help Pete, ya stone-hearted cynic,” Mary Catherine said. “I’ll get them for you and maybe even pass along the tip if you’re lucky.”
“Thank you so much,” the silver-haired American CEO type said after he finally handed over his Amex. He patted his ample midsection. “The lamb, the wine reduction sauce, all of it was—”
“Just perfect. Really,” insisted his pretty brunette wife. “Especially the dessert you sent over. Who would have thought? Real New York cheesecake in Ireland? Where do you get it?”
“I have my sources,” Mary Catherine said with a smile.
Donnell was nowhere to be found when she returned to the kitchen.
“Where is he?” she asked her other cousin Pete, the chef, who tossed a thumb toward the back door.
“Romance in front and now in the back of the house, too, I see,” Mary Catherine cried in mock shock as she busted Donnell canoodling his girlfriend against the side of her car. “Back to work. You can snog on your own time.”
“Are all you Yanks such slave drivers?” Donnell said as he walked past.
“No, you lazy Paddy. Just me,” Mary Catherine said, whipping him in the butt with a towel.
She grabbed a rack of hot glasses from the machine in the corner of the kitchen and brought them in through the swinging door into the hotel bar.
There were a lot of large and loud red-faced men at the bar and even more in the adjoining banquet space. A three-piece rock band was playing in the party room, and everyone was singing the old Squeeze hit “Tempted” at the top of their lungs and drinking Guinness and Harp Lager as fast as she and the bartender, Kevin, could change taps on the basement kegs.
An Australian-rules football club, mostly firemen and cops from Sydney, was in town to play the local Limerick club at various forms of football, and the place was packed. She smiled at the young and happy drunk men who’d been there for the last three days. She really liked the mostly good-natured Ozzies, but if she heard another one ask her what a nice girl like her was doing in a place like this, she was going to start screaming.
The best news of all was that the hotel’s potential buyer, Mr. Fuhrman, a tall, dour German, had come by in the midst of all the merriment about an hour before. He had suddenly seemed pretty merry himself when he saw the place packed to capacity and all the money flying into the till.
“I’m going to make a phone call to the broker on Monday,” Mr. Fuhrman had assured her before he left. “And I think you’re going to like what you hear.”
“Hey, Mary Catherine. Did you see this?” said Kevin, suddenly pointing up at the TV.
She looked up. The BBC was on. Behind a sleek glass anchor desk sat a sharp-faced blonde wearing a deadly serious expression.
Then Mary read the graphic on the screen beneath the anchorwoman, and the glasses in the racks rattled loudly as she set them down heavily on the bar.
NEW YORK ATTACKED! it said.
“Turn it up, Kevin,” she said as the image on the TV changed to a shot of the stranded Roosevelt Island tram.
“FBI sources have confirmed that this is yet another attack seemingly carried out by terrorists,” said the British anchor.
Another attack! What?
She flew behind the bar and grabbed her bag and dug out her cell phone. It almost slipped out of her hand, and she had to take a deep breath before she managed to focus enough to find the speed dial for the apartment. She bit her lower lip as she waited, listening to silence.
“C’mon,” she said, waiting on the connection. “Pick up, Michael. C’mon, pick up!”
Chapter 37
That night at a quarter after seven, cranky, definitely drained, and yet at the same time extremely grateful just to be here, I stepped off my elevator and finally made glorious contact with the loose brass knob of my apartment’s front door.
Sometimes bad days at work depressed me and stayed with me, but this was one of the days that made me happy just for the fact that it was over and I’d gotten through it in one piece.
I was locking the apartment door behind me when a horrendous crunching sound ripped out from the vicinity of the kitchen.
I peeked inside and saw Martin, with his back to me, throwing a bunch of carrots into a blender. He seems to be in one piece, I thought. The same busy, assured, positive, energetic person who’d come to work this morning. First days were tough. Especially ones that involved taking care of double-digit kids. But it was looking like it had gone well enough. Excellent, I thought. So far, so good.
Instead of interrupting him, I peeked into the living room.
Uh-oh. Maybe not so good, I thought when I saw the kids.
All the boys were there except Brian. They were lying all over the place. Eddie was passed out on the ottoman. Ricky was on the carpet, red-faced and staring, dazed, up at the ceiling. Trent, huffing and puffing, was sprawled facedown on the couch.
Seamus, who was on the end of the couch, thumbing through the Irish Voice newspaper, rolled his eyes at me.
“What’s wrong with them, Father?” I said.
“I don’t know. I just got in myself, and they won’t say,” said Seamus. “They keep sighing and moaning, though. I believe they’ve come down with some sickness perhaps mental in nature.”
“Help, Dad. Just help,” said Eddie as he looked up weakly from the ottoman.
“He makes us run, Dad,” said Trent, pointing toward the crunching sound in the kitchen. “We were doing drills. Soccer drills.”
“You made Mary Catherine disappear and replaced her with a drill sergeant,” Ricky said. “We’re not that bad, are we? Well, I mean, we’re sort of bad, but this bad? Honestly, what did we do?”
The blender stopped, then whirred again.
“And he says he’s making us smoothies,” said Eddie. “But I saw vegetables, Dad. He bought vegetables from the corner market! I def
initely saw carrots and even some green stuff. That’s not a smoothie, Dad. That’s V8 juice!”
“Give it up, fellas,” I said with a smile. “You couch-potato Nintendo athletes could use some running around. Not to mention some vegetables. Mary Catherine would be pleased.”
Chapter 38
I was turning into the hallway near the back bedrooms when I ran into the female Bennett contingent near the rumbling washer and dryer. They glared at me in unison. Another group of unhappy campers, apparently.
“First the boys, now you,” I said. “What’s wrong? What are you guys up to?”
“Doing our laundry, thank you very much, Father,” said Juliana.
“But Martin can handle that,” I said.
Six sets of female eyes glared back at me in unholy unison.
“Are you nuts, Dad?” said Jane. “Do you know how embarrassing that would be? Martin is not—and I mean never—doing my laundry. Or I’ll…run away!”
“We all will if that man in there even glances at the laundry of any female member of this family,” chimed in Fiona.
“Forever!” said Chrissy.
“Forever? Wow, okay, ladies. I’ll work on it. Sheesh,” I said, slowly backing away.
“Hey there, Martin. How’d the first day go?” I said back in the kitchen.
“Ah, they’re great, so they are,” said Martin. “They complained a bit about the running around, what with the rain and all, but that’s natural. Listen, I think that little one there—Trent, is it?—has some real potential as a footballer, especially for a three-footed Yank, but what are we talkin’ about my day at work for? I heard it on the radio. They hit us again, have they?”
I nodded.
“Is it bad?”
“It’s pretty bad, Martin,” I said.
“And I thought the troubles in Northern Ireland were bad. Who’s doing it? Is it those al Qaeda nut jobs again, do ya think?”
I shrugged.
“We don’t know yet.”
“Well, I thought it best to keep the TV off on account of the youngest ones,” Martin said. “I thought you’d handle the situation best.”
“Good call, Martin,” I said.
And now for another, I thought, taking out my phone and hitting a speed-dial number.
“Hey, Tony,” I said. “I’d like to get four large pies, one plain, two sausage, and one with pepperoni.”
“Mike, whatcha doin’? Don’t bother with that. I got dinner covered. I’m making them some smoothies with Caesar salad.”
“Hey, that’s perfect, Martin,” I said. “We’ll have everything with the pizza.”
Chapter 39
“Mmm, this pizza sure is good,” I said in the dead silence to break the ice.
It certainly needed some breaking. I looked around the table at the kids with their faces downturned at their food. It was suddenly Buckingham Palace formal and pin-drop silent with Martin having joined us for dinner.
“Fine. I’ll say it if no one else will, Dad. Are we all going to die or what?” said Brian around a mouthful of pepperoni.
“What?” I said, glaring at him.
“What’s wrong?” asked Bridget.
“Oh, it’s nothing really, little sis. We’re just under attack by a bunch of insane terrorists again,” Brian said, staring at me like it was my fault. “Not for nothing, Dad, but if we have to move again somewhere, you can count me out. I’m going to lie about my age and join the marines or something.”
“Relax,” I said, looking around the table. “There was a blackout on the East Side. They think somebody did it deliberately. That’s all. We don’t know who’s doing it, okay? It’s a mess, and we need to pray for a lot of poor people who are affected, but it’s okay. Honestly.”
“Okay?” said Juliana. “First they blow up a train tunnel, then they kill the mayor, and now—”
“You’re going to pass the garlic salt, young lady, and we’re all going to have some nice dinner-table conversation,” I insisted loudly.
I guess I was a little louder than I intended to be, because everyone stared at me like I was nuts. Except for Martin, who, I could see, was trying hard not to laugh at me and the rest of us Bennett lunatics from behind his napkin.
In the awkward silence, I suddenly tossed out an even more awkward conversation starter.
“Hey, how about those Yanks, Eddie, huh? Pettitte’s looking sharp, isn’t he?”
Eddie stared at me quizzically, as though I had just grown another head.
“Well?” I said again, louder.
Eddie put his slice down on his paper plate carefully.
“I don’t know, Dad,” he said slowly. “He’s retired.”
That’s when Martin couldn’t hold it in anymore and burst out laughing. Seamus joined him. Then everybody else.
“Go ahead. Yuck it up, everybody. See this, Martin? It’s laugh-at-Daddy time here at the Bennett abode. It’s a common dinnertime stress reliever,” I said, sticking out my tongue at them before I started laughing at myself. “Works every time.”
I leaped up immediately three minutes later when the phone rang. It was Mary Catherine, I saw on the caller ID in the living room. Finally! I was so eager to talk to her that I managed to hang up instead of pick up, and I was placing the handset back down when she called back.
“Finally, Mike! Oh, you had me so worried!” Mary Catherine said. “I had the damnedest time getting through. I just saw the news. What’s going on? Tell me everybody is okay.”
“We’re all fine, Mary Catherine. Everybody is as healthy and sarcastic as ever,” I said.
“But what is this EMP bomb? What about the nuclear stuff they were saying on the news?”
Even after I explained it to her as best I could, she—like everyone else—didn’t seem very reassured.
“How’s things on your end?” I said, changing the subject.
“The new buyer is looking very serious. I’ll know on Monday,” she said.
I could hear the smile in her voice.
“I’ll keep my fingers crossed,” I said, hearing music in the background. “Are you celebrating already?”
“Oh, no. That’s just some Australians reliving the eighties.”
“Any room for an American?” I said. “I could be there in six hours. I do a killer Depeche Mode.”
Mary Catherine laughed.
“Wow, how I wish I were there with you, Michael. I can’t tell you how much I miss those kids, too. All of them.”
“All of them?”
“Oh, Michael, you’ll never know. Every little stinker in the bunch. It’s killing me not being there. What did that oil-spill CEO guy say? ‘I want my life back.’”
“I want our life back,” I said.
There was a pause.
“I have to go,” said Mary Catherine.
“So do I,” I said.
There was a pause.
“Why haven’t you hung up yet?” I said.
“I was just about to ask you the same thing.”
We laughed. There was another pause.
Then it happened.
“I love you,” I said.
I heard a gasp and then a loud earful of dial tone a second later.
What the hell are you doing? I thought, smiling at my reflection in the TV screen.
I’m reliving the eighties, all right, I thought as I realized that I had butterflies in my stomach. I felt like I was about sixteen. I liked it.
“Detective Bennett, what have you finally gone and done?” I mumbled as I stood.
Chapter 40
My cell phone rang a little after three o’clock that morning. Like most calls that come at ungodly hours, it was not good. It was from Neil Fabretti, the chief of detectives himself.
“Mike, sorry to bother you. I just got off the phone with the new mayor’s people. The gist of it is they’re beyond pissed at the pace of the investigation and want whoever’s on it off it and someone new put on pronto.”
Tho
ugh I was a little stunned to actually hear it, part of me had been waiting for this call. I’d been on high-profile cases before, and I knew that now with several people dead, including the mayor, tens of thousands of people displaced, and millions more on edge, the pressure to do something, even unfairly sacrificing a convenient scapegoat like me, was immense.
Good investigations were about being patient and meticulous, but that wasn’t exactly a popular sentiment, I knew from reading yesterday’s New York Post headline, WHAT THE #$%@ IS BEING DONE?
When you lost the usually NYPD-friendly Post, you knew you were in deep trouble.
“Is that right?” I finally said.
“Yeah, well, I told them to pound sand,” Fabretti continued, surprising me. “I said that we couldn’t just go shuffling investigators around because of the pressure of the twenty-four/seven news cycle. I told them you were the best we had and that I was behind you one hundred percent, yada, yada, yada.
“But there’s a big meeting scheduled for one o’clock this afternoon at the commissioner’s office, and you need to be there for the investigation’s update with bells on, if you know what I’m saying. Nothing personal, but the reality is, if you want to keep being the lead on this, Mike, you got about ten hours to make something drop.”
“I’ll be there. Thanks for the ‘look out’ and the heads-up, Chief,” I said before I hung up.
Wide awake now, I knew it was time to make my own 3:00 a.m. calls to see if there had been any developments. Doyle and Arturo didn’t pick up, but I caught Brooklyn Kale burning the midnight oil at the NYPD intelligence desk we’d been assigned.
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