Muffin Top

The captain shrugged. “Get drunk. Get laid. Get a hobby. I don’t fucking care. Just get out of my office and don’t let me see that freckled mug of yours again for three weeks, Hartigan.”

For once in his life, Frankie had no words. His eyebrows met his hairline and stayed there as shock washed through his body. All he could picture was the absolute misery of the next three weeks he’d spend learning origami or underwater basket weaving or some other dumb shit just to keep himself from going nuts.

Yeah, that was not gonna happen.

Marino’s wasn’t a nasty dive bar or an outlaw biker bar or the kind of bar where, when Frankie walked in, all the seedy patrons stopped what they were doing and started picturing the best way to dispose of his body. Those places would have been more welcoming. Instead, it was a cop bar.

And why would a self-respecting firefighter go into such a place of ill repute? Because his poor, confused baby brother was one of Waterbury’s finest, complete with detective shield and annoying habit of always following the rules. Ford did, however, have the night off and a willingness to play wingman as Frankie checked through the captain’s proffered to-do list—with “get drunk” being at the top.

“Can you believe this crap?” he asked, taking a drink from his first draft beer. “Three weeks.”

Ford was watching the dartboard in the back, since he was up soon, but he glanced away long enough to roll his eyes at Frankie. “If you’d just taken your leave each year like you’re supposed to, you wouldn’t be in this spot.”

Frankie flipped him the bird. “Wait, not only do I have to drink away my sorrows in this place, but you’re going to tell me I told you so, too?”

“What else are younger brothers for?”

“I should have called Finn.” His fraternal twin, younger by six minutes and forty-two seconds, as their mom reminded them every birthday, would have commiserated properly with Frankie in a real bar.

“Finn is in Vegas because he”—Ford shot him a shit-eating grin that made it look like he was as much of a troublemaker as the rest of the Hartigans—“wait for it.” He paused, held up a finger, and took a drink of his beer, soaking the moment for all it was worth. “Took his leave like he was supposed to.”

“I swear you were switched at birth,” Frankie grumbled. “Somewhere out there is a changeling Hartigan who doesn’t get a hard-on for following procedure.”

“You already have one brother and four sisters who are like that already. I bring balance to the Force.”

It was probably true. There were seven Hartigan siblings—all ruled over by Frank Senior and Katie. Frankie and his twin Finn had followed in their dad’s footsteps and become part of Waterbury’s bravest. The triplets, Fiona, Ford, and Faith, had chosen different routes, with his sisters going into teaching and Ford crossing over onto the Dark Side by joining the Waterbury Police Department. How a nice girl like Gina could see past that awful fault to actually fall for the guy was beyond Frankie. Fallon came next in the Hartigan order, and she was a ball-busting nurse who put all of the patching up and shit-kicking skills she learned growing up in a rowdy working-class family to keep even the gangbangers in line when they came through her emergency room. Finally, there was the baby, Felicia, the pint-sized Hartigan—well, almost a Carlyle now—who lived across the river with her billionaire fiancé and studied ants. The family joke went that the Hartigans fell into all three categories of Irish: the red Irish, the black Irish, and the so-bull-headed-their-ancestors-got-kicked-off-the-island-for-rebel-activities Irish. And that joke was funny because it was true.

“How about instead of feeling sorry for yourself for having all this paid time off, you do something productive, like figure out what we’re going to do for mom and dad’s anniversary,” Ford said. “We all agreed to pitch in and do something big for them.”

The plan had been to send them to Paris for a week, until their dad came home and declared that if their mom forced him to go to one more frou-frou French restaurant to eat snails and force-fed duck livers, he was going to choose to starve to death instead. Yeah. The Hartigans were all known for being a little bit on the loudly dramatic side, with every hill being the hill they’d die on.

“I’d say, with three weeks off, you’re the perfect man for the case, Junior,” Ford said, using Frankie’s most hated of nicknames.

“Yo Hartigan, you’re up,” someone hollered from the area near the dartboard, saving Frankie from having to smack his brother upside the head on general principle for calling him Junior.