Reed Coleman - Empty ever after

My phone buzzed, then stopped. That was Carmella’s signal that people were spilling into the baggage claim area. Sarah appeared. I couldn’t help hoping that I was being foolish and over protective, that Carmella was right. She wasn’t. Everything seemed to happen at once. Even before I was fully conscious of Sarah’s presence, the pocket of space closed around her. Carmella came out of nowhere and tackled someone, Sarah screamed, a crowd surged in their directions. I put my head down and charged through the sea of bodies.

“Get the fuck off me, bitch! You breakin’ my finger.”

A chubby black kid of maybe seventeen was face down on the floor, Carmella twisting his thumb and wrist behind his back. Sarah’s expression was more surprised than anything else. Then I noticed a brown shipping envelope in her hands that I hadn’t seen her holding when she first came into view.

“Give that to me, kiddo.” I held my hand out to Sarah and she placed the envelope in my palm. “Let him up, Carm, so we can talk privately.”

Carmella pulled the kid to his feet as I assured everyone that it was all right.

“Just a misunderstanding,” I lied, sounding authoritative as hell. I didn’t flash my badge. When the cops showed up-which they would-I didn’t need to try and explain away a potential felony charge. “Show’s over, folks. Go get your bags and have a safe trip back home.”

By nature, New Yorkers are disobedient bastards. On the other hand they take an inordinate amount of pride in their unshockability. This time unshockability won out and they went back to reclaiming their luggage while we hustled the kid into a corner. As we walked, I tore open the envelope. It was another wilted rose and a “self-portrait” of Patrick done on an eight by eleven piece of Masonite. The familiar initials PMM were in the lower right hand corner. This wasn’t funny anymore.

“Okay, asshole, what’s this about?” I said, pressing my face into the kid’s. His wide, frightened eyes told me he knew I wasn’t fucking around.

“Guy gimme a twenty ta give dat package to da red-headed girl come out dat door.”

“What guy?” I asked, pressing my face even closer to his.

“Dat one,” he said, pointing.

“Which one?” I stepped back to see where he was pointing.

“Him.”

He was pointing at the portrait.

“Bullshit!” Carmella hissed in the kid’s ear, tightening the thumb lock.

He winced. “I ain’t fuckin wich y’all.”

Carmella yanked and twisted. The breath went out of the kid and I thought he might pass out from the pain.

“Carmella, stop it!” Sarah said. “Dad, tell her to stop it.”

“Look! Der he at.” The kid’s voice was barely a whisper, but he pointed toward the exit doors with his free hand.

I turned and my heart jumped into my throat. There he was, tattoo and all. The world around me crawled. There was a muted roar in my ears. I could hear individual noises-the squeaky wheel of a baggage cart, the smack of a suitcase as it hit the metal railing, a limo driver screaming “Mr. Child. Mr. Child. Mr. Child,” the whoosh of the doors-but none of it made any sense. I told my legs to run, but they wouldn’t move. I tried to shout, but I could form no words. Something was tugging my arm.

“Dad! Dad!” Sarah was shouting, pulling my sleeve.

“Moe, what’s up?” It was Carmella.

“Let the kid go,” I heard myself say. “Let him go.”

“What?”

“Let him go.”

My legs finally started moving, but not fast enough. Strong arms grabbed me.

“Where the fuck you think you’re going, buddy?”

“Huh?”

“C’mon, pal,” the Port Authority cop said. “And the three of youse too, let’s go. Now!”

I didn’t argue, but kept watching the door as I moved.

I didn’t know ghosts used doors.

It didn’t take long to straighten things out with the Port Authority cops, especially once we showed them our old badges and shields. You should never underestimate the power of the us against them mentality. Once cops, always cops. Raheem-that was the kid’s name-was no fool either. He understood that he wasn’t going to get a whole lot of sympathy once the policemen’s love fest began. So for a hundred bucks and a sincere apology, he was willing to forget all about Carmella’s tackle and death grip. For an extra fifty, he agreed to have coffee with Carmella so she could debrief him about how he’d been approached to deliver the package to Sarah.

I had to get Sarah back to my condo so we could talk about the full extent of what was going on with Katy and so she could decide if she wanted to stay with me or her mom. Having Sarah in the car to talk to was helping me not to obsess over who I thought I saw at the airport. The distraction of driving had also let me regain some measure of equilibrium. It wasn’t Patrick-that’s what I kept telling myself-but I was meant to think so. My new mantra was, “Don’t fall for it. Don’t fall for it. Don’t fall…” But Christ, that guy in the airport terminal looked an awful lot like him.

“So talk to me, kiddo.” I wasn’t quite pleading.

“I didn’t like that back there.”

I didn’t like it either, at least not the part where I saw a ghost. I didn’t think Sarah had seen him, so I played dumb. “You wanna give me a hint here?”

“How you guys treated Raheem.”

“We were only being cautious. Don’t hold it against Carmella. She was trying to protect you. Blame me. More has been going on at home than I’ve let on.”

“Not that part,” she said, staring out the window as we passed Shea and smiling wistfully.

“Then I’m a little confused.”

“How the cops blew him off because he was a black kid and you guys were cops. If the roles were reversed and he had tackled you or Carmella, the cops would have beat the shit out of him. They wouldn’t have been slapping him on the back and inviting him out for drinks like they did with you and Carmella.”

“You’re right. I’d like to tell you it’s not true, but it is. That’s a cop’s world sometimes.”

“Well, it sucks.”

“There’s a lot of injustice in the world, Sarah. Some of it’s big. Some of it’s small. In the scheme of things, today’s events were a small injustice.”

“You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a little kid, Dad. Besides, there’s no such thing as a small injustice.”

“I didn’t say it was right. I just said it’s the way it is.”

“Is that how you rationalized yourself to sleep when you were a cop?”

“When I was a cop, I slept like a baby. Being a cop isn’t about the big questions. It’s about doing the job.”

“Did doing the job include mistreating innocent people?”

“Sometimes, yeah, I guess it did.”

“Then that sucks too.”

“I’m glad I’m sending you to the University of Michigan so you can learn to use the word ‘sucks’ in every other sentence. You gonna try for the debate team next term?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

“Okay. Look, Carmella and me, we were just looking out for you. Raheem got the shit end of the stick today, but he also got a hundred and fifty bucks for getting his thumb twisted a little bit. You seem a lot more worried about his dignity than he did.”

“That’s not the point.”

“Then I’m lost,” I said.

“It wasn’t necessarily what happened back there, but what it represented that bothers me. You guys got a free pass because you were once cops, not because of what you did or didn’t do.”

“Oh, kinda like how you got out of those speeding tickets last year because you were a cop’s kid and had the PBA and Detectives Endowment Association cards in your bag that Carmella and I gave you.”