'That jerk called Trent something bad, Dad.'
'What?'
'An Irish jig.'
I turned and glared at the big kid with the even bigger mouth. Trent was even younger than Eddie, an innocent seven-year-old kid who happened to be black. I really felt like knocking the fat kid's hat back straight with a slap. Instead, I quickly thought of another idea.
'In that case,' I said, staring at the delinquent, 'kick his ass.'
'My pleasure,' Eddie said, trying to lunge from my grip.
'No, not you, Eddie. Brian's not doing anything.'
Brian, six foot one and on the Fordham Prep JV football team, smiled as he stepped forward.
At the very last second, I placed a palm on his chest. Violence never solved anything. At least when there were witnesses around. Twenty or thirty loyal St. Edmund's parishioners had stopped to watch the proceedings.
'What's your name?' I said as I walked over and personally got in the kid's face.
'Flaherty,' the kid said with a stupid little smile.
'That's Gaelic for dumb-ass,' Juliana said by my shoulder.
'What's your problem, Flaherty?' I said.
'Who has a problem?' Flaherty said. 'Maybe it's you guys. Maybe the Point isn't your cup of tea. Maybe you should bring your rainbow-coalition family out to the Hamptons. You know, Puff Daddy? That crowd?'
I took a deep breath and released it even more slowly. This kid was getting on my nerves. Even though he was just a teen, my somewhat cleansed soul was wrestling valiantly not to commit the sin of wrath.
'I'm going to tell you this one time, Flaherty. Stay away from my kids or I'm going to give you a free ride in my police car.'
'Wow, you're a cop. I'm scared,' Flaherty said. 'This is the Point. I know more cops than you do, old man.'
I stepped in closer to him, close enough to head butt, anyway.
'Do any of them work at Spofford?' I said in his ear.
Spofford was New York's infamous juvy hall. By his swallow, I thought I'd finally gotten through.
'Whatever,' Flaherty said, walking away.
Why me? I thought, turning away from the stunned crowd of churchgoers. You never saw this kind of crap on TLC. And what the hell did he mean by old man?
'Eddie?' I said as I started leading my gang back along the hot, sandy road toward the promised land of our saltbox.
'Yes, Dad?'
'Stay away from that kid.'
'Brian?' I said a few seconds later.
'Yeah, Pop?'
'Keep an eye on that kid.'
Chapter 3
An hour later, I was out on the back deck of my ancestral home, working the ancestral grill full-tilt boogie. Dogs on the warming rack. Cheese slices waiting to be applied to the rows of sizzling, freshly ground burgers. Blue smoke in my face, ice-cold bottle of Spaten lager in my hand. We were so close to the water, I could actually hear the rhythmic roll-and-crash of saltwater dropping onto hard-packed sand.
If I leaned back on the creaky rail of the deck and turned to my left, I was actually able to see the Atlantic two blocks to the east. If I turned to the right, to the other side of Jamaica Bay, I could see the sun starting its long descent toward the skyline of Manhattan, where I worked. I hadn't had to look in that direction for over a week now and was praying that it stayed that way until the first of August.
No doubt about it. My world was a fine place and worth fighting for. Maybe not in church parking lots, but still.
I heard something on XM Radio behind me. It was the eighties song 'Everybody Wants to Rule the World' by Tears for Fears. I laughed as I remembered dancing to it with Maeve at our wedding. I cranked it. You better believe I was preoccupied with 1985. No Internet. Spiky, gelled hair. Weird Al Yankovic. John Hughes movies. If they build a real hot-tub time machine, I'm going back.
'Bet's to you, Padre,' I heard Trent say behind me.
Inside at the kitchen table, a tense game of Irish Riviera Hold 'em was under way. A lot of candy had been trading hands all evening.
'All right, hit me,' Seamus said.
'Grandpa, this isn't blackjack,' Fiona complained with a giggle.
'Go fish?' Seamus tried.
I thought about what my new young friend Flaherty had said about my multicultural family. It was funny how wrong people got it. My family wasn't a Hollywood social experiment. Our gang had come from my cop cases and from my departed wife Maeve's work as a trauma nurse at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx. Our children were the survivors of the most horrible circumstances New York City had to offer. Drug addiction, poverty, suicide. Maeve and I were both from big families, but we weren't able to have kids. So we took them in one by one by one. It was as simple and crazy as that.
I turned as Trent opened the sliders to the deck.
I was prepping my father-son sit-down about racist dumb-asses when I saw that he was holding something. It was my work cell, and it was vibrating. I threw a panicked glance back toward the Manhattan skyline. I knew it. Things had been too good for too long, not to mention way too quiet.
'Answer it,' I finally said to him, pissed.
'Bennett,' Trent said in a deep voice. 'Gimme a crime scene.'
'Wise guy,' I said, snatching the phone out of his hand.
'That wasn't me,' I said, turning down the radio. 'And you can keep the crime scene.'
'Wish I could,' my new boss, Inspector Miriam Schwartz, said.
I closed my eyes. Idiot! I knew we should have gone to the Grand Canyon.
'I'm on vacation,' I protested.
'We both are, but this is big, Mike. Homeland Security big. Just got off the phone with Manhattan Borough Command. Someone left one hell of a bomb at the main branch of the New York Public Library.'
I almost dropped the phone as a pulse of cold crackled down my spine and the backs of my legs. My stomach churned as memories of working down at the World Trade Center pit after 9/11 began to flash before my eyes. Fear, sorrow, useless anger, the end-of-the-world stench of scorched metal in my clothes, in the palms of my hands. Screw that, I thought. Not again. Please.
'A bomb?' I said slowly. 'Is it armed?'
'No, thank God. It's disarmed. But it's 'sophisticated as shit,' to quote Paul Cell from Bomb Squad. There was a note with it.'
'I hate fucking notes. Was it a sorry one?' I said.
'No such luck, Mike,' Miriam said. 'It said, 'This wasn't supposed to go boom, but the next one will.' Something like that. The commissioner wants Major Case on this. I need my major player. That's you, Mickey.'
'Mickey just left,' I groaned. 'This is Donald. Can I take a message?'
'They're waiting on you, Mike,' my boss urged.
'Yeah, who isn't?' I said, dropping the spatula as my burgers burned.
