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.”
Sarah had no snappy reply for that one, but sank into her seat and sulked for a few minutes.
“So what is it with you and Carmella anyway?” she said as we got off the Van Wyck and onto the Belt Parkway.
“We’re partners.”
“That all? Just business partners like you and Uncle Aaron?”
“Not exactly. I get along better with Carmella. I’m not a disappointment to her like I am to your uncle.”
“Come on, Dad, Carmella is beautiful and you have that cop thing between you and-”
“Look, kiddo, if this is about me and your mother, forget it. What went wrong with us has nothing to do with Carmella.”
“Not even a little bit, not even about you and Mom not getting back together?”
“I love your mom, but it just doesn’t work between us anymore.”
“But-”
“No buts. I hurt your mom and she can’t get past it. Until this stuff with Patrick, we were both okay with that.”
Patrick. Shit! I got a little queasy just saying his name. What had happened at the air terminal came rushing back to me. I worried Sarah might notice. Then, of all people, I thought of Francis Maloney and smiled. A reaction I had never before had nor was ever likely to have again. The strange thing about my late father-in-law and me was that in spite of our mutual loathing, we never fought, not really. We were engaged in a long cold war. And just like in the real Cold War, both of us kept a finger close to the button that would bring our worlds crashing down around our heads.
We barely spoke, but there was one question Francis Maloney Sr. never missed the opportunity to ask me, “Do you believe in ghosts?” He never explained the question, never once discussed it. He didn’t want or expect an answer. After a few years, he didn’t even have to say the words. The question would come in the guise of a sideways glance or a churlish smile. His favorite form of silent sparring was to raise his glass of Irish to me, a toast to his sworn enemy.
Only in death did he explain. The mechanics of his revenge from the grave were particularly cruel. Included in Katy’s inheritance was a cold storage receipt. She thought it might be for her mom’s wedding dress. When we retrieved the item from cold storage, it wasn’t a wedding dress at all, but a man’s blue winter parka, the blue parka her brother Patrick had been wearing the night he disappeared. Katy recognized it immediately. So did I. In the pocket of the coat was a twenty-year-old handwritten note from Francis:
“Your boyfriend gave this to me on February 17, 1978. Ask him where he got it and why he swore me to secrecy. Did he never tell you he found Patrick?”
And so I came to understand the question he had asked me hundreds of times in a hundred different ways over the years. The coat proved I had found Patrick, that I had let him go, and that I had conspired to keep the secret from Katy forever. Patrick’s ghost had essentially ended our marriage. Francis, thinking that his death would protect him from the fallout, had miscalculated. For as angry as Katy was with me, the extent of it was nothing compared to the animus with which she regarded her late father. Katy and I might never reconcile and she would likely not forgive me, but we would always share Sarah. Sarah was the best of both of us. On the other hand, Katy would hate her father for eternity.