Tick Tock (Michael Bennett 4)

My NYPD detective father, Tom Bennett, used to bring me here on Saturdays sometimes when my mom went to visit her sisters back in Brooklyn. He’d ply me with Cokes and quarters for the pinball machine as he drank with his fellow Irish cop cronies. They used to call my dad Tony Bennett sometimes for his occasional habit of breaking into song when he was three sheets to the wind.

My mom and dad died in a car accident on the way down to their Florida condo the week after I graduated from college. They were buried together out in Calvary Cemetery in Queens, but it was here that I came when I wanted to visit.

Something, maybe the dustup with the Flahertys, was reviving a lot of my melancholy Irish childhood. My current professional woes certainly weren’t cheering me up. I could handle having the press coming after me—that was their job. But getting the back of the commish’s hand was the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Or, hey, maybe I was having a midlife crisis. One night all alone in the big city, and I was sinking quickly into dad-olescence. I decided to roll with it. I continued to the bar and ordered us two shots of Jameson and two pints of Guinness.

“Let me guess. This is St. Patrick’s Day in July,” Emily said.

I winked at her and dropped the shot glass into the pint glass and tipped it back until the only thing left was the foam on my lips.

“Just trying to wake up,” I said, wiping the back of my hand over my thirsty mouth. “What are you waiting for?”

She rolled her eyes before she dropped her depth charge as well and sucked it back with impressive speed.

“Hey, you got a little something on your lip,” I said right before I kissed her.

I don’t know which of us was more shocked at my forwardness. To top things off, she started kissing me back, but I suddenly broke it off.

“Okay, then,” she said, looking at me funny. “You feeling all right, Mike?”

I shrugged. It was a good question. Unfortunately, I didn’t have a good answer. Like the rest of the city, I was having one weird summer.

“Maybe we should call it a day,” I said, dropping a couple of twenties on the bar and heading for the door.

Emily followed me back out, and we drove back to my building in silence. When I reached for the car door, it was Emily’s turn to lean in and kiss me. There was a pregnant, hot, wavering moment when I thought some clothing was going to get torn, and then she ripped her tongue out of my mouth and shoved me toward the door.

Wiping lipstick off my face, I looked over at my building, where Bert, the doorman, stood avidly watching the proceedings. Of course now the son of a bitch was at the door.

“Hot and cold, cold and hot,” she said. “I don’t know, but I guess this just doesn’t feel right for me right now, Mike. I don’t know what it is, but I feel like we’re not doing ourselves or each other justice. You should probably get out of here before I do something we’ll both regret,” she said.

I nodded. I knew what she meant. We were friends, not to mention intuitive work partners. If we went much further, we’d be putting that in jeopardy. Or something. Right?

I wasn’t sure how to reply, so I just said okay and opened the car door.

It was right then and there, standing in the street with Emily’s brake lights flashing off, that it occurred to me. Justice. Some synapse in my brain finally fired, and the connection we were looking for materialized in my mind like a constellation from a group of random stars.

“Emily, wait!” I yelled as she pulled away.

She didn’t stop. I actually had to run after her. If it hadn’t been for a red light, she would have gotten away.

“Are you crazy?” she said when I opened her door.

“Listen. I got it. You were right. It is the family dynamic,” I said as the light turned green.

“What?” she said as a cab honked behind us.

“What?” she said again after she’d pulled the FBI sedan to the curb.

“It’s the mothers,” I said, leaning across her and grabbing the interview sheets we’d been working on. I pulled out two of them, my finger racing down the rows.

“Look here. The mothers. Mrs. Morales and Angela Cavuto’s mother, Alicia, both went to the same school. They both went to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.”

“Holy shit,” Emily said. “Wait.”

She shuffled some more sheets.

“Here it is. Right here! Stephanie Brill, the girl who died in the bombing at the Grand Central newsstand went to John Jay as well. Her stepmother said she had taken classes there before dropping out. Is it a city school or something?”