“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.”
Though 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.