Vic looked at her in disbelief, “Excuse me? Are you suddenly my mother?”
“I just don’t want you drinking around my children. I don’t think it sets a good example.”
“A couple beers isn’t drinking,” Vic said.
“I said no alcohol. Period.”
“And I said who the fuck are you to tell me how to behave?”
“Curse at me again, and I’ll take them home with me right now.”
He looked at her evenly and said, “I doubt that. Whoever you’re dressed up for would be disappointed, I bet.”
“Kids, get your coats on. We’re going home!” Danni announced.
Both children protested as she swooped into the living room and started picking up their jackets. “Daddy doesn’t want you to stay here tonight.”
“That is bullshit!” Vic shouted. “Get your hands off of the kids and get out.”
“If you’d rather drink than watch them, I don’t want them around you,” she said.
“I never said that! I never said I didn’t want them and I never said I’d rather drink.” He pointed at the door and said, “Go. Leave. Now. Go do whatever you planned on doing tonight, and leave us alone. They will be fine. We’re going to rent a movie, eat some pizza and play a board game.” He looked at his daughter and said, “Does that sound fun?”
Penelope smiled and nodded. “I want to stay,” she said.
Danni spun on him and stuck a finger in his face, “Don’t curse around my children. I won’t have it.”
“Okay,” he said. “Now would you please just get out?”
“The only reason I’m not taking them is because I already have plans,” she said.
“Better hurry up then. Don’t want to keep the lucky guy waiting.”
Danni hugged the kids and kissed them while Vic stood by the open door, holding it for her, waiting for her to leave. After she walked out, he shut it quickly and locked it. Both kids were sitting on the couch looking up at him silently. Vic forced a smile and said, “Who wants pizza?”
8
The clerk looked up at the older man standing outside the small window and said, “Can I help you sir?”
He tapped the glass and said, “Is this bulletproof?” He frowned at the wall surrounding the window and said, “The wall around it isn’t. What good is that? Somebody could just start shooting you through the wall. Makes no goddamn sense.”
The clerk put her finger on the red emergency button and said, “What can I do for you, sir?”
“I’m here to see your new detective, Frank O’Ryan.”
“And your name is?”
He smiled at her. “Frank O’Ryan.”
“Look, let’s just humor him for a few minutes, then make like we got a radio call or something.”
“What are you talking about?” Vic said. He put the car in park and looked around the shopping center. “Where’s he at, inside?”
“I’m serious, Vic. It’s always one thing after another with him. I don’t have time for it anymore.”
“He’s your dad,” Vic said. “Show some respect, you ungrateful goddamn heathen. How many years did he have on the job?”
Frank shrugged, “Thirty something.”
Vic whistled and shut his door. “Back then it was for real. They didn’t take any shit off people. It was strictly hats and bats, you know what I mean?”
“No, not really,” Frank said. “Listen, my dad spent his whole career pushing a black and white around. He never made sergeant, never went anywhere. He worked every holiday, every family gathering, every graduation. It’s nothing to brag about.”
“He put food on the table for you though,” Vic said.
“It was more like beer in the fridge,” Frank said.
Vic stared at him as they crossed the parking lot. “Did you play lacrosse in school?”
“What the hell kind of question is that?”
“It’s an inquiry about your former recreational sports activities. So did you? I bet you did. Out there frolicking with all your preppy friends running around with your baskets, playing catch.”
“Lacrosse is an incredibly rough sport, Vic. It takes more strength than baseball and is more dangerous than football.”
Vic nodded and said, “That must be why they let chicks play it.”
Bells rang on the glass of the pizza shop door as they opened it. The old man was waiting at a table for them with three drinks on the table. Frank looked at the straws inside the cups and said, “Dad, I told you not to put the straws in the cups for people. It’s not sanitary.” He yanked the straws out and winged them into the trashcan. He grabbed two new ones and tossed one at Vic. “Some people like their straws to not taste like your grubby fingers before they drink out of them.”
Mr. O’Ryan looked down at his cup and Vic leaned forward, “Was he always this big of a pussy?”
Frank held up his hands and said, “Hey! Not cool, man. Not cool.”
The old man chuckled, “Nah, he was always a good kid. Popular with the ladies. Captain of his lacrosse team.”
Vic spun to look at Frank, their faces just an inch away. “I knew it.”
“Shut up. Listen, dad,” Frank said, “We can’t stay. We’ve got to run down to the city to meet up with the FBI about a drug case.”
“Oh,” Mr. O’Ryan said. “That’s too bad. I was looking to hear how you were making out as a dick.”
“Detective,” Frank said.
“Sorry. We called them dicks.” He looked at Vic and said, “And they lived up to the name, too, I’ll tell you.”
Vic said, “Screw the FBI. They can wait.”
“You know what FBI stands for?” Mr. O’Ryan said. “Famous But Ineffective.”
Vic smiled and nodded to Frank, “That’s what I’m talking about. Old School. I love this guy.” He held up his hand and called out to the man behind the counter to make them a large pie. “So tell me about what it was like when you first came on.”
“My very first week on the job, we get a body dumped in the crick down by the old Watson factory. There’s three feet of water and this girl is stuck in the reeds and wrapped up in a tarp. So’s I get there and see my Chief standing there with these two guys in real fancy suits. They had the hats, the trench coats, the whole nine. My Chief says to me, ‘Detective So-and-so needs to go take a look at the body. Carry him acrost.’”
“Wait? On your back?”
Mr. O’Ryan nodded, “That’s right. I bent down and carried the first detective over, then I took him back and had to carry the next one.”
“No way,” Vic said.
“Hand to God.”
“I’d have dumped their asses in the creek halfway across.”
Mr. O’Ryan shrugged and said, “That ain’t how it was back then. We didn’t have none of the union protection you guys get now or nothing like that. The Chief said to do it, and that was it.”
“Unbelievable,” Vic said.
“It wasn’t so bad. I liked it better than driving a milk truck, that’s for sure. I was just a city kid. Getting a cop job in the burbs was a good gig.”
“How come you didn’t work in the city?”
Mr. O’Ryan shrugged and said, “Wrong color. Back then the mayor was making a push to put all the darkies in uniform.”
“Dad!” Frank said, looking around.
“Sorry, sorry,” Mr. O’Ryan said. “I meant the, you know, blacks or colored people, or whatever they call themselves now.”
“I bet you saw some crazy stuff. Back then you guys didn’t have all these cellphone cameras and internet garbage to worry about. It was just good old fashioned police work.”
“Yeah, that’s how it was,” Mr. O’Ryan said. “I was always good at telling when someone was lying to me. Frankie can tell you, I was hard to beat when he was growing up.”