Callahan's Fate (14 page)

“
Naw
, I
ain’t
.”

“Good, don’t.
 
C’mon, let’s go.
 
I
ain’t
fucking
with her now.
 
I’ll wait till it’s the
right time, then I’ll do what I want.”

Heart pounding, stomach in knots,
Callahan did an about-face and marched in the opposite direction. He wouldn’t
want them to see him.
 
If they did, it
would increase the danger for
Raine
.
 
Acting on autopilot, he headed for the Forty-Eighth
Precinct in the Bronx.
 
When he walked
into the squad room, Joe glanced up from a stack of paperwork,
then
looked at his watch. “You’re late,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah, I know. I
gotta
get changed into uniform. Has the captain noticed yet
I’m late?”

His partner shrugged. “I don’t
know.
 
If he did, he didn’t say.”

“Good.”

Joe’s eyes narrowed. “What’s up with
you? You’re never late, and you look like holy hell.
 
You sick or something?”

He’d been straight with his partner from
day one, but Callahan hesitated.
 
Part of
him wanted to share his dilemma with Lowry, but if he did, it might lead to the
same bullshit he’d endured after Anthony died.
 
He would rather not face another internal investigation, be off duty,
and be railroaded into counseling. It hadn’t helped much anyway.
 
His gut
twinged
and
he made up his mind what to do. “Aw, I got a bellyache, that’s all,” he
said.
 
It wasn’t a lie—he did.

“
Whaddya
get a
bad hot dog or something?” Joe asked. “You’re never sick, kiddo.”

“Something
like
that, yeah.”
 
For emphasis, Callahan
rubbed his abdomen and winced.

His partner’s hard features softened.
“Jeez, Callahan, maybe you ought to take the day off or something. You got the
sick days, don’t you?”

“I still have a few, yeah.” He’d used up
several when he’d been shot.
 
Back when
Anthony died, he missed a lot of time, a little more when Aidan passed, but he
had built back up his leave.

“Get outta here, then. Go nurse your
gut.
 
Stop by a drugstore and get
something,” Joe told him. “You look worse than when you got shot for Christ’s
sake.
 
Sure it
ain’t
your appendix or something?”

Cal grinned. “Yeah, I’m sure. I had it
out a long time ago.”

“Good to know,” Joe said. “So, go
on.
 
I’ll make it right with the Captain,
all right?”

“Thanks, partner,” he said. “I’m going.”

“Take it easy and come back tomorrow,
healed
, you hear me?”

“Yeah, yeah, I do.”

Callahan escaped before any of his
co-workers or the precinct captain might question him.
 
Once on the street, though, he
hesitated.
 
He had no idea what to do
with the day.
 
If he knew
Raine’s
schedule, he would go find her, but since he
didn’t, hours stretched out until he would see her.
 
His sole consolation was that if he didn’t
know where she would be,
then
neither would the
Marshes.
 
He could text her but she was
working, and since he wasn’t, Callahan decided he wouldn’t.

Wild thoughts combined with powerful
emotions made him half crazy.
 
The love
shared with
Raine
meant everything, but the glorious
joy he’d known earlier had been tempered with worry.
 
He needed to clear his head, to get a grip so
he could deal with the situation, but with mind and stomach both in an uproar
he couldn’t.
 
Calm down.
 
You need to think it
through without bullshit, and pull your shit together before you meet her this
afternoon.
 
You promised her a ride on
the ferry, plus dinner.
 
You
gotta
come through for
Raine
.

****

First, he headed home to drop off his
uniform.
 
Callahan spent a few minutes
straightening up the place.
 
He folded up
the sofa bed and put the room to rights.
 
His nose filled with
Raine’s
fragrance, a
combination of her perfume, shampoo, and just a quintessential hint of
her.
 
He counted the hours until he’d see
her and imagined a ride on the Staten Island Ferry.

And just like that, he knew where he
could go to think and relax.
 
Callahan
headed for the subway, but
en
route, he bought a
bottle of what his grandmother always called “white soda” to help settle his
guts.
 
He ended up at the South Ferry Station
and climbed the stairs to enter the terminal.
 
On a weekday morning, the crowds were light, and it wasn’t long before
he joined those present in walking onto the deck.
 
After a few minutes at the rail, he headed to
the upper deck and moved forward until he was as close to alone as
possible.
 

The chill breeze blowing across the bay
swept away the cobwebs in his head, and he inhaled the cool air with a series
of deep breaths.
 
Little by little, he
calmed down, and when he did, his stomach eased, too.
 
Everyone he’d ever loved had ridden the ferry
with him at one time or another.
 
He let
the memories in and let them play across his mind.
 
The ocean soothed away some of his uneasiness,
and he decided he could handle the situation.
 
He could—and would—keep
Raine
safe, no matter
what it took.
 
And to do so, he’d have to
deal with Anthony’s death and tell
Raine
the story.
 
Once he did that, he thought he could deal
with the current scenario.

At Staten Island, Callahan spent a few
minutes perusing the shops.
 
He had
decided he wanted to give
Raine
a small gift but he
found nothing to suit his vague notions, so he rode the ferry back to
Manhattan, then took the subway to Brooklyn.
 
He headed for Green Wood Cemetery, the now-famous graveyard that drew
tourists to the borough as well as mourners.

To avoid the curious, he entered through
the gate at Fourth Avenue and Thirty-First Street and walked the rows to where
his family lay.
 
Although he paused at
his mother’s resting place, offered a brief prayer at his grandmother’s,
Callahan knelt down in front of Anthony’s headstone.
 
He touched the granite with reverence and something
close to affection.
 
Beneath his
fingertips, the sun-warmed stone almost seemed alive.

“Hey, bro,” he said. “I should’ve come
here a long time ago but I haven’t, not since Aidan was buried beside you.
 
And I need to say that I’m sorry.
 
I’m still trying to wrap my head around the
fact it wasn’t my fault and make myself believe it. Kind of hard, when I still
think it was.”

A breath of wind puffed against his face,
and Callahan almost swore he heard whispered words,
“It wasn’t.”

“Yeah?
I hope not, but
I’ve carried the guilt long enough.
 
I
got a girl now, Anthony, and she’s in trouble because of me.
 
I
gotta
keep her
safe, no matter what, so I
gotta
stay focused. I came
out here today to let go of the guilt-trip.”

A single crimson leaf fluttered to the
ground from the tree nearby, enough to remind Callahan it would be Halloween in
a few days.
 
On the heels of trick-or-treat
came All Saints Day, a day to remember the dead in his Catholic faith, so the
season seemed perfect for his pilgrimage to the cemetery.
 
It was a time for remembrance and
reflection.
 
He shut his eyes and
recalled that fatal day.

It’d been
spring, not fall, a hot May afternoon when he surprised Anthony with a pair of
tickets to the Yankees game.
 
His brother
had planned to take his wife and kids on a picnic somewhere, but Callahan
persuaded him to change his plans.
 
They
headed to the stadium, both in high spirits, and their team won.
 
Maybe they’d drank a little too much beer, but
damn it to hell, they had a blast.
 

If they had gone
home after the game or went their separate ways, things might have been
different.
 
But he suggested they run by
his place, not where he lived now in Midtown, but a crappier apartment on the
Lower East Side.
 
He wanted to grab some
money so they could go out for burgers or steaks or something.
 
Callahan hadn’t wanted the time together to
end so soon, so he’d been a selfish bastard.
 

They ate steaks,
drank another beer or two, listened to some killer music.
 
Anthony enjoyed it, but around eleven o’clock,
he got antsy.
 
He drummed his fingers on
the table and made noise about needing to go home.
 
Callahan agreed and they left.
 
At the Grand Street Station, blocks from
Cal’s dinky apartment, they started down the stairs to the platform when a guy
jumped them.
 
He acted crazy, hopped up
on drugs with wild eyes and shaky hands.
 
The .357 magnum pistol in his hands wobbled as he demanded money in a
high-pitched voice.
 
Sores around the
perpetrator’s mouth indicated his heavy habit, probably on meth.
 

Anthony reached
for his wallet, but Callahan put out his hand. “Don’t give this piece of trash
any money,” he’d said.
 
He had to be the
big law enforcement officer, had to show off to impress his big brother one
more time.
 
Off-duty, he hadn’t had a
weapon, but he had his badge and he pulled it.

“Police,” he
shouted. “Put down the gun, and get your hands above your head.”

He had thought
he would be the hero and had wanted to see admiration in his brother’s
eyes.
 
But everything went wrong with
such speed it became a blur.
 
The gunman
didn’t put down the pistol. Instead, he pointed it at Anthony’s head.
 
Then he plucked the wallet from Anthony’s
hand and pulled out the wad of cash.
 

Callahan made
his big mistake then.
 
He went for the
gun, thinking he could snatch it while the robber was distracted.
 
An accomplice stepped from the shadows and
whacked him over the head.
 
It wasn’t
hard enough to knock him out, but the blow took him down.
 
As he scrambled to his feet, he heard Anthony
yell, then the blast from the .357 roared in his ears.

Although he’d
leapt to his feet in seconds, there wasn’t anything he could have done.
 
Anthony tottered, rocking on his feet with a
huge hole in his belly.
 
Blood poured
from it, and Callahan watched with horror as his brother toppled like a felled
tree.
 
He knelt down beside Anthony,
tried to staunch the bleeding, but he couldn’t and his brother knew it.
 
Cal read the terrible realization in
Anthony’s eyes and clutched his brother’s hand for the last seconds of his
life.
 
Anthony whispered something, words
he couldn’t quite catch, then went still and died.

Grief caught him
hard, but he had also been enraged.
 
Callahan had jumped up, grabbed the gun, and dispatched the man who had
shot his brother with a single shot to the head.
 
He whirled around to nail the other
perp
if he could, but he hesitated.
 
Shit, the other one was a kid, probably still
in high school.
 
He lifted his arms in
slow motion and said, “Don’t shoot me like you did Dante, man, please.”

He hadn’t.
 
By then, officers from the closest precinct
had arrived and took control.
 
Callahan
sat with his brother’s body, weeping silent tears, already eaten up with
remorse, regret, and guilt for what happened.
 
If he hadn’t had the tickets or invited his brother, Anthony would be
alive.

But now, he
remembered those few whispered words and made sense of them.
 

“Don’t blame
yourself, kid,” he had told him.
“
Ain’t
your fault.
Shit happens.”

Callahan came back to the present with a
jerk.
 
His cheeks were wet with tears he
hadn’t realized he’d shed.
  
The terrible
pain of his loss smote him hard.
 
He
would never get over Anthony’s death or Aidan’s that had followed, but he let
go of the guilt.
 
Anthony had absolved
him with more power than any priest at confession.
 
He sucked in a deep breath and let it out
slow.