Part One. The Teacher
Chapter 1
It was coming on three A.M. when I finally managed to get myself smuggled out of Harlem by a uniform who owed me a favor.
As we negotiated the gridlock maze of news satellite vans, barricades, and mounted crowd-control cops, there still wasn’t the slightest hint about who had killed D-Ray.
Any standoff that led to a death would have been bad enough, but this bizarre shooting was the department’s worst nightmare come true. No matter how much evidence suggested that the NYPD wasn’t responsible, it looked like we were. The rabble-rousers, conspiracy theorists, and their many friends in the New York City media were going to have a field day.
And if that wasn’t enough to make me rip into a blister pack of Prilosec, there was the mountain of reports and other red tape I’d be facing come morning. I’d have gladly accepted another caning from D-Ray’s grandaunt instead.
When the cop dropped me off in front of my West End Avenue apartment building, I was so burnt out from fatigue, unresolved tension, and worry about what lay ahead that I almost stumbled to the door. I craved a few hours of peaceful sleep as a man who’d been crawling for days through the desert craves an oasis.
But the oasis turned out to be a mirage. Right off the bat, my crazy Dominican doorman, Ralph, seemed pissed off that I had to wake him up. I liked Ralph, but I was in no mood for petty surliness, and I gave him a look that told him so.
“Any time you want to trade jobs, Ralph, just let me know,” I said.
He lowered his eyes apologetically. “Rough night, Mr. Bennett?”
“You’ll read about it tomorrow in the Times.”
When I finally made it into my darkened apartment, the Crayola products and Polly Pocket debris that crunched underfoot were actually welcoming. I mustered up enough energy to lock up my service weapon and ammo in the pistol safe in my front hall closet. Then, totally wiped, I collapsed onto one of the high stools at the kitchen island.
If my wife, Maeve, were still here, she’d be standing at the stove right now, handing me an icy Bud while something wonderful fried – chicken wings or a cheeseburger, heavy on the bacon. With divinely sent, cop-wife wisdom, she knew that the only panaceas for the grim reality of the streets were grease, cold beer, a shower, and bed, with her warm beside me.
A strange moment of clarity pierced my weariness, and I realized that she hadn’t just been my love – she’d been my life support. On nights like this, the really bad ones, she’d listen for hours if I needed to talk, and understand completely when I couldn’t.
Right then, more than anything in the world, I longed to feel her fingers caress the back of my neck as she told me that I’d tried my best. That sometimes there’s nothing we can do. I would circle her waist with my hands, and her magic would make all my doubts and guilt and stress disappear.
Maeve had been dead for almost a year now, and in all that time, I hadn’t found any new ways to cope with it – only new ways to miss her.
I’d been at the funeral of a homicide victim one time and heard his mother quote a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay. It kept ringing in my ears lately, like a song you can’t get out of your head.
Gently they go, the beautiful, the tender the kind…
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.
I don’t know how much longer I can live without you, Maeve, I thought. My head sagged, and I leaned my forearms on the counter for support.
But I jerked back upright when I noticed that my left hand was resting in a pool of something sticky. I examined the stuff, sniffed it, then tasted it: grape jelly, Welch’s finest, covering not just my hand, but my whole suit jacket sleeve.
Living without you isn’t the only thing that’s impossible, I told Maeve while I stood up on tired legs to search for a paper towel.
How can I take care of all our kids the way only you could?
Chapter 2
I was hopeless on the domestic front, all right. I couldn’t even find a paper towel. I rinsed off the jelly with water as well as I could, and put the suit coat in a closet with some other clothes that were waiting to be dry-cleaned. My luck started looking better when I poked around inside the fridge. There was a Saran-wrapped plate of baked ziti on a shelf, and I dug up a can of Coors Light buried beneath half a case of Capri Suns in the drink drawer. I set the microwave humming, and I was just crunching open my Silver Bullet when a hair-raising sound emanated from the dark interior of my apartment – a sort of howling moan followed by a long, unholy splatter. Then it happened again, only in a different tone.
As I slowly lowered my untouched brew, I was visited by one of those blink moments I’d read about. Though my conscious mind wasn’t sure what was causing those noises, some deeper instinct warned me that it signaled a danger that any sane person would flee with all his might.
Against my better judgment, I staggered down the hall in that direction. Peering around a corner, I spotted a bar of light under the rear bathroom door. I tiptoed to it and slowly twisted the knob.
I stood rooted there, speechless with visceral horror. My instincts had been all too correct. I should have fled when I had the chance.
Not one, not two, but three of my children were projectile-vomiting into the tub. It was like looking at an outtake from The Exorcist while you were seeing triple. I reared back as Ricky, Bridget, and Chrissy hurled again, each one’s upchuck triggered by the previous one, like they were trying to puke a campfire round. Think Vesuvius, Krakatoa, and Mount Saint Helens all going off in musical succession.
Before I could catch myself, I made the mistake of breathing through my nose. My stomach lurched precariously. I blessed my stars that I hadn’t had a chance to eat during the Harlem siege, or to get started on the ziti. Otherwise, yours truly would have chimed in a fourth eruption of his own.
My Irish nanny, Mary Catherine, was right beside the kids, her golden ringlets bouncing out from beneath a red bandanna as she mopped furiously at the blowback they left. She had wisely put on elbow-length, industrial rubber gloves and covered her face with another bandanna, but I could see from her eyes – usually crisp blue, but now damp and faded – that she was as exhausted as I was.
She gave me a quick wave, then pulled off the bandanna and said, in her lilting brogue, “Mike, remember before you left for work, I told you Chrissy was looking a little green?”
I nodded mutely, still struggling to absorb the enormity of the situation.
“I think that flu that’s been going around school has arrived,” Mary Catherine said. “Repent, for the plague is upon us.”
I crossed myself solemnly, trying to pick up her joke to make us both feel a little better. But a nervous part of me wasn’t entirely kidding. The way things had been going, maybe this was the plague.
“I’ve got it from here, Mary,” I said, taking the mop from her. “You’re officially off duty.”
“That, I most certainly am not,” she said indignantly. “Now, the Tylenol is in the cabinet over the sink, but we’re running out of cough syrup, and? -”
“And enough,” I said, pointing toward the stairs to her upstairs apartment, formerly the maid’s quarters. “I don’t need any more patients to take care of.”
“Oh? What makes you think you won’t get sick?” She folded her arms in stubborn loyalty, which I’d come to know well. “Because you’re a big tough copper?”
I sighed. “-No – because I don’t have time to. Get some sleep and you can take over in the morning, okay? That’s what I’m going to need.”
She wavered, then gave me a weary but sweet smile.
“You’re not fooling anybody,” Mary Catherine said. “But okay.”