asks, 'Shouldn't you be at work?'
'You know, I
'Got a lot on my mind. Johnnie just hit a nerve and I reacted poorly. End of story.'
'End of story.'
Gail is pacing back and forth in front of the couch. The hypnotic motion makes Frank sleepy, but Gail's precarious balance on the edge of fury keeps Frank wary.
The doc grits out, 'I'm trying to be sensitive here, Frank. I know you're under a lot of pressure. Granted, most of it is self-imposed, but I'm trying to overlook that. I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt, that you know the best way to work this out for yourself, but frankly, I'm losing patience. It's been almost four months, Frank. Four months in which you have done nothing but obsess about a six-year-old case and drink yourself comatose. I feel more inconsequential in your life than that sofa you're sitting on. Now you breeze in at eight in the morning and tell me you've been suspended for decking one of your own men, and I'm just supposed to take this in stride too?'
Frank doesn't need this. She feels stupid enough. Knowing Gail would find out sooner or later, Frank had decided she'd rather tell the doc herself. It was as dumb to stop by Gail's as it was to swing on Johnnie. Frank reckons she's on a dumb streak.
Pulling herself from the couch's warm embrace, she tells Gail, 'I don't care what you do with it.'
Gail half barks, half laughs, 'Oh, don't even think about leaving, Frank.
Frank turns, as cold as the backup piece she clips onto her belt. 'Why stay? I made a mistake coming here. Shouldn't compound it.'
Gail looks like she's been bitch-slapped but answers, 'Because good or bad, we're in this together, Frank, and that's how we'll work it out. Together. We can't do that if you keep running away.'
'There's nothing to work out, Gail. That's my whole point. And you keep insisting there is.'
'Is that really the way you feel?'
'It really is.'
Gail's fury is instantly quenched by tears. Guilt tries to pierce Frank's armor but fails. She pats her pockets, making sure she has her keys. It'd be embarrassing to slam out and have to come back for them.
'Frank?'
When Frank meets her eyes, Gail says, 'If you walk out that door, don't bother coming back.'
Frank pauses, squaring her shoulders. It's a big threat and she gauges Gail's sincerity. She looks serious enough, and probably has every right to an ultimatum, but Frank doesn't give a shit. That's really the bottom line. She just doesn't fucking care.
'Sorry,' she says, and slips out the door.
Chapter 24
The new sun is fresh and pretty. When Frank gets home she remains in her car, soaking in it. Her anger has cooled to remorse, and the morning's clarity emphasizes how brilliantly she's erred. She tells herself that yes, Johnnie was drunk, and yes, he would have been suspended anyway, but none of that negates the fact that she'd been drinking too. Despite his unjustifiable method of delivery, Johnnie's message was dead-bang true. Frank had swung because she didn't want to hear she was just like him.
Dropping head into hand, she massages her eyebrows while rats chew at her guts.
'Christ on a fucking pony.' She's acting as badly as Briggs, a man who needs professional help. A man who can't control his drinking.
This last is unacceptable. She
Frank is beyond exhaustion. She tips her head toward the headrest and is almost asleep before it gets there.
'Come on,' she rouses herself. 'Discipline. Word for the day.'
Despite how odd it feels to slide between sheets at nine in the morning, Frank is soon deeply under. She sleeps through to sunset. Her jaw still hurts when she wakes up but she likes the pain. It distracts her from anything deeper while reminding her what an asshole she was. She turns the volume on the phone back up and listens to six messages, hopeful that one is from Gail. Jill, the lab, Bobby, a clerk in admin, Darcy and Fubar. The captain tells her she's to report back to work on Monday. Frank won't admit relief over the last call, or disappointment that Gail's not on the machine.
She works up a hard sweat in the gym, then showers and returns phone calls. Jill backed her following the incident, stating that Johnnie was drunk and belligerent. When IA asked if Frank had been defending herself, Jill hadn't hesitated to say yes, despite every other witness stating that Frank had swung first. She calls Jill, admitting that she was wrong, that Johnnie got her goat and she lost it. Having worked with him, Jill can empathize. Having worked with Frank, Jill's grateful Johnnie's the one she finally chose to blow up on.
That evening, Frank drinks moderately, by her standards, refilling her tumbler only once. Saturday morning she is surprised that she went to bed early and slept through the night. She feels good outside, but dirty inside. At noon she calls Johnnie. He sounds awful.
'How you doin'?' she asks.
'All right, I guess.'
After a beat, she confides, 'Sorry about the other night.'
'Fuck, I don't even remember it.'
'Remember getting called out?'
'Sort of. I remember getting dressed and driving. That's kind of where I lose it.'
Frank is relieved. There's no need for her to come clean. Johnnie doesn't remember a thing. He has been suspended, pending further review after completion of a mandatory 30-day in-house treatment program. She listens to his ensuing alcoholic admissions like a priest. A dirty priest. When he is done, she apologizes for not helping him sooner. She's known he's had problems and she's hoped they'd go away.
'Me too.' He chokes out a laugh.
'It was hard for me to call you on your shit, 'cause it meant calling me on my own. You were right, you know. You accused me of drinking too much, and I have been. I gotta take care of that.'
'Yeah, before you get a thirty-day rehab. Man, I don't want to go, Frank. Can't you get me out of it?'
'No can do, buddy. You gotta take this bullet.'
'Fuck,' he moans and Frank's heart aches for him. Johnnie's a pain in the ass, but he's her pain in the ass. And like it or not, he's become her conscience.
'Your desk'll be waiting for you when you get back, big man. It's gonna be all right.'
'Yeah. Okay,' he agrees, sounding unconvinced.
Frank hangs up feeling worse for her self-serving noblesse oblige. Granted, she hadn't been as hammered as he was, but probably the only thing keeping her from a bunk next to Johnnie's was that her BAC had dissipated by the time the brass thought to collect her urine sample.
She goes cold turkey that afternoon and starts listening to the Pryce tapes. She's aware that she's waiting for the phone to ring. But Gail doesn't call. And she still hasn't called when Frank gets home from work on Monday night. Confident she can control her drinking because she was sober yesterday and only had two drinks on Saturday, she heads straight for the Scotch. She savors the liquor's torch as it lights up her belly.
Sipping slowly, making the glass last, she debates the lightless answering machine. It was Gail's ultimatum, she decides, so Gail will have to break it. If she doesn't, maybe that's just as well. Frank would be the first to admit that she's been awful company lately.
Sliding a frozen dinner into the oven, she decides the day went pretty well, considering. The first thing she did after clipping her Beretta and ID back on was to apologize to the rest of the crew. What she did was unprofessional and made the whole department look bad. Yeah, she's been stressed, but so has everyone so that's no excuse. The incident was being recommended to the Board of Review and Frank agreed to abide by whatever actions the BOR saw fit to impose.
The rest of the day was routine. Despite the disruption to her crime scene Jill had nailed the suspect in the
