I felt small. The trees were taller than me and the church was taller and the buildings around it were taller still and above us all was the sky. I felt like I was such an infinitesimal part of things, but that somehow all the infinitesimal parts— including me— came together to make the whole picture. I felt like a dot in a Seurat painting. A pixel. Barely a speck on its own but together they make a picture. It just felt like at that instant in time everything was as it should be. A baby being born across town, and an old man dying in the apartment across the street. Someone getting married while someone else was getting knifed in an alley. Someone shooting junk while someone else is out on their first date. I don't know. It just all seemed to fit. Life going around and around, doing its thing.
I told Mary about it. How I just got filled up with the majesty of it and she laughed. Said that was gratitude and that when I was drinking I was too busy getting loaded or figuring out how to get loaded to feel it. Definitely a nice result of sobriety. Told her what a roller coaster day it had been. All the mixed feelings—surprise, anger, joy at being with Gail. Sadness. Seems everywhere I turn there's a memory, not always a good one.
Nice people at the AA meeting. Amazing how you can just walk into a room full of complete strangers and have this instant rapport with them. Mary said that's because we all have one thing in common that bonds us instantly, and that's the fact that alcohol's almost killed us and will likely kill us if we pick it up again. So right away you got a bond with everybody in an AA room. We've all come through the fire together. Lets you strip away the bullshit and cut to the chase.
Wish I had answers. Wish I had a match on the prints. Hate waiting. Hate the uncertainty. Gail asked how it felt to have this door open again after all this time and I got to admit it's damned uncomfortable. I gave up on ever having an answer and now the question's shoved back into my face. Who is the motherfucker? Where is he? Who's leaving this shit on my father's grave? Spent all this time trying to forget and now it's all pouring back in. Not liking this. But I gotta see it through. Woman at a meeting said when God wants something for you he rolls the red carpet out. I feel like this is my chance, that the carpet's rolling out and no matter how uncomfortable it is I have to walk it to the end.
One day at a time, right? Mary says this is all unfolding according to God's schedule, not mine. That my job isn't to force the unfolding but to follow along in the direction of the movement. She told me not to push it. Damn—been getting a lot of that lately. Said drunks are like five-year-olds. We don't have a lot of discipline. Want what we want and want it now. And the bottom line is, sometimes you just can't have it. Like Gail. At least not now. So you move on and take what you can have. Which in the World According to Mary is a good night's sleep, a decent meal and faith that tomorrow will bring what I need. Maybe not what I want, but what I need.
It's ironic. At work I know exactly when to force things and exactly when to sit back and let them develop. I can wait weeks on a stakeout or take a perp down in an instant. Flexibility makes me a good cop, so you'd think I could apply that logic to my personal life.
Whatever. Progress not perfection. And Tm Audi. My extra ten minutes is up. And you know what? Right this second, it's all good. New York is shining outside my window, Tm warm, Tm healthy, I don't have a hangover or the shakes, and I have a soft bed to sleep in. There's a hell of a lot of people out there who can't say that. So this drunk's going to turn the lights out and admire the view. Tm paying enough for it.
CHAPTER 13
By quarter to seven Annie Silvester was already in the squad room, chatting with a man shaped like a fireplug. She raised an eyebrow in Frank's direction, her glance taking in the bag Frank held out. Reaching for it, Annie plunked the bag next to a fresh pot of coffee and introduced her to a detective from the Fourth Precinct. Extracting a bialy, she told the cop, "Detective Franco here's from Los Angeles. She visits her father's grave to pay her respects and finds something that may or may not be of interest to us. An old case of ours, thirty-six years old, to be exact. Her pops was shot by a junkie on East Ninth and Second. The lieutenant here was the only witness. She and her pops were walking home from the deli. Junkie popped out from a doorway. Shook her pops down. Pops resisted, junkie capped him. Pops was dead before he got off the sidewalk. Not even a hint of a suspect." Biting into her bialy Annie asked Frank out of the side of her mouth, "How'm I doin'?"
Frank was impressed by her blunt grasp of the details. "Light bedtime reading?"
"Naw." Annie winked at her. "First thing this morning. Much better than the Post." Annie turned back to the squat detective. "Billy found the little girl's backpack last night, ripped open and dumped into a trash can three blocks south. I was gonna run it over to the lab with the lieutenant's things while he and Vince track down our mopes. There's a couple places we want to check today. While I do that"—she turned to Frank again—"the file's over on my desk if you want to look through it. Maybe something fresh'll come to you, huh?"
Frank doubted she'd have a sudden brainstorm after thirty-six years but answered, "Sure. Thanks."
As the rest of the detectives sauntered in they fell on the bialys like crackheads on a loose rock. One of the detectives, who turned out to be Vince, came up to her and said around a mouthful, "I got a sister in LA. She works for Fox Studios. Says you couldn't pay her enough to come back to New York. When she visits—you know, Thanksgiving, Christmas—all she says is LA this and LA that. Me? You couldn't pay me to leave the city. Best place on earth. You can't get a bialy like this in LA."
"You can't," Frank agreed. "Or the right hard rolls or bagels either. Must be something to do with the weather because San Francisco's got sourdough bread that doesn't taste right anywhere else. Everyplace has got something, I guess."
"Yeah. LA's got earthquakes, floods and fires."
"Don't forget the mudslides," a Hispanic detective chimed.
Vince waved him down. "That goes with floods."
"They're totally different," the other detective argued.
Leaving them to it, Frank wandered over to Annie's desk. She saw the file marked "Franco," the case number. She returned to the coffeepot and poured a cup. After making such a big deal about getting the file, she was suddenly reluctant to touch it. She sipped her coffee and listened in on the squad room chatter.
Annie was conferring with Meyers, her partner. One of the detectives was reading aloud from a newspaper to a cop ignoring him, while Vince and the Hispanic swapped natural disaster lore. Maybe if she was alone, or if it was quiet, she could have picked up the folder, but the room was too noisy and distracting.
It was a good story, Frank decided, but she felt that even if the room were empty she'd still hesitate to open the folder. She groped for the bottom line and the bottom line was dread. It was one thing to describe that night to another cop, but something else entirely to relive the details.
She debated the wisdom of picking at the scab of her father's death. After all, it was her mother she'd come to make peace with, not her father. The man had been dead nearly four decades with no resolution in all that time. Was the sudden urge to find one now just because she was a cop? And where would these leads go anyway, besides straight into the circular file like most leads? Why was she wasting Silvester's time on some wild-ass goose chase?