After the Darkness

The closet door opened. A shaft of light appeared under the trapdoor to the crawl space. Mitch held his breath. There was a pause. Shirts being ruffled on hangers. Then the closet door closed.

Thank you, God. I swear I will never screw a woman in my father's bed ever again.

Pete Connors's footsteps receded. Then, suddenly, they stopped. Mitch's heart did the same. Hey, c'mon, God! We had a deal!

The closet door opened again. Then the door to the crawl space. As Pete Connors looked down at his naked son, an unmistakably fishy waft of sex hit him in the face.

"Hey, Dad. I don't suppose you know where I could find a towel?"

Two minutes later, Mitch was out on the street. He never saw his father alive again.

"I WANT TO GET MARRIED, MITCH."

Helen and Mitch had been living together for three years. Now almost twenty-one, Mitch was making good money tending bar. Helen had cut back on her charity work to do three days a week as a trainee librarian, but her heart wasn't in it. She was pushing thirty and she wanted to have a child.

"Why?"

"Why? Is that a serious question? Because we're living in mortal sin, that's why."

Mitch grinned. "I know. Hasn't it been fun so far?"

"Mitchell! I'm not kidding around. I want to have a baby. I want to make a commitment, to start a family, to do this right. Isn't that what you want, too?"

"Sure it is, baby."

But the truth was, Mitch didn't know what he wanted. Growing up watching his parents rip each other apart had put him off the idea of marriage for life. He loved Helen, that wasn't the problem. Or maybe it was the problem. Being with someone so good, so perfect, made him feel uneasy. He had too much of his father in him. A natural-born scammer, flirting was in Mitch's blood. Sooner or later I'll let her down. She'll learn to hate me, to despise me for my weakness. Helen was the mother ship, but Mitch needed lifeboats: other girls who he could keep as backup should Helen see the light and realize she could do a whole lot better than a barman from Pittsburgh.

"Next year," he told her. "Once Dad's come around to the idea." He said the same thing the following year, and the year after that. Then, in the space of a month, two seismic events took place that were to change Mitch's life forever.

First, Helen left him.

Then his father was murdered.

TWO WEEKS AFTER HELEN BRUNNER WALKED out on Mitch, Pete Connors was stabbed to death outside his apartment. He lost his life for a fake Rolex watch, a cheap, nine-karat gold wedding ring and twenty-three dollars in cash. Mitch's mom flew in for the funeral. Lucy Connors looked glamorous and suntanned and not remotely grief-stricken. Then again, why should she?

She hugged Mitch tightly. "You okay, sweetie? No offense, but you look like hell."

"I'm fine."

I'm not fine. I should have been there. I abandoned him, and now he's dead, and I never got to say I was sorry. I never told him how much I loved him.

"Try not to be too upset. I know it sounds harsh, but if this hadn't happened, the booze would have gotten him soon enough."

"It does sound harsh."

"I saw the autopsy report, Mitch. I know what I'm talking about. Your father's liver was like a pickled walnut."

"Jesus, Mom!"

"I'm sorry, honey, but it's the truth. Your father didn't want to live."

"Maybe not. But he sure as hell didn't want some deranged junkie to stick a steak knife in his heart. He didn't ask for that! He didn't deserve that." Mitch's mother raised an eyebrow as if to say, That's a moot point, but she let him finish. "And what about the police? What the hell have they been doing? They just let whoever killed Dad walk free. Like his life didn't mean anything at all."

"I'm sure they've done all they can, Mitch."

"Bullshit."

It was bullshit. The Pittsburgh police had done the bare minimum, grudgingly completing the paperwork on Pete Connors's murder without lifting a finger to attempt to track down his killer. Mitch made a bunch of complaints, all of them politely ignored. That's when it dawned on him.

People like my dad don't matter. In the end, he was no different from those poor housewives he used to scam with promises of a better life and white-collar jobs. There's no justice for people like that. The underclass. No one cares what happens to them.

Two weeks after his father's funeral, Mitch telephoned Helen.

"I've made some decisions."

"Uh-huh?" Her voice sounded weary.

"I'm going to become a cop. A detective."

It wasn't what she'd been expecting. "Oh."

"Not here, though. I need to get away from Pittsburgh. Start afresh. I thought maybe New York."

"That's great Mitch. Good luck." Helen hung up.

Ten seconds later, Mitch called her back.

"I was hoping you'd consider coming with me. We'd get married first, obviously. I thought we could - "

"When? When would we get married?"

"As soon as you like. Tomorrow?"

Six weeks later they moved to New York as man and wife.

Seven weeks after that, Helen was pregnant.

THEY CALLED THEIR LITTLE GIRL CELESTE, because she was a gift from the heavens. Helen delighted in motherhood, wandering around their minuscule Queens apartment cuddling her daughter for hours on end. Mitch loved the baby, too, with her shock of black hair and inquisitive, intelligent gray eyes. But he was working long hours, first training, then out on the streets. Often, by the time he got home, Celeste was asleep in her crib and Helen was passed out on the couch, exhausted. Imperceptibly, as the months and years passed, Mitch found it harder and harder to pierce the cocoon of love enveloping his wife and daughter.

He got promoted and moved them to a bigger place, expecting that this would make Helen happy. It didn't.

"We never see you, Mitch."

"Sure you do. Come on, honey, don't exaggerate."

"I'm not exaggerating. The other day I heard Sally-Ann ask Celeste if she had a daddy."

Mitch said angrily, "That's ridiculous. Who's Sally-Ann anyway?"

Helen gave him a withering look. "She's your daughter's best friend. Sally-Ann Meyer? She and Celeste have been joined at the hip for the last two years, Mitch."

"Really?"

"Really."

Mitch felt bad. He wanted to spend more time at home. The problem, as he told Helen, was that the bad guys never took a vacation. Muggers, junkies, gang leaders, rapists, every day they walked the streets of the city, preying on the vulnerable, the helpless, the poor. Preying on people like my father. Being a detective was more than Mitch's job. It was his vocation, the same way that being a mother was Helen's. And he was great at it.

The divorce came like a bolt from the blue. Mitch got home one night expecting to find his supper on the table. Instead he found a sheaf of legal papers. Helen and Celeste were gone. In hindsight, he realized the writing had been on the wall for a long time. Ever since the economy imploded, crime in the city had been steadily rising. Then Quorum collapsed, unemployment in New York spiked and overnight a bad situation got twenty times worse. Mitch Connors was on the front line of a war. He couldn't just lay down his gun and be home in time for dinner.

Well, maybe he could. But he didn't. By the time he realized the toll his dedication had taken on his marriage, it was too late.

THE NYPD HAD BECOME MITCH CONNORS'S LIFE. But that didn't mean he loved it. Guys joined the force for different reasons, not all of them laudable. Some reveled in the authority that the badge and the gun gave them. Power trippers. They were the worst. Others were looking for a sense of camaraderie. To those guys, the NYPD was like a softball team or a fraternity. It filled a void in their life that marriage, family and civilian friendships couldn't fill. Mitch Connors understood those guys, but didn't count himself among their number. He hadn't become a cop to make friends, or to lord it over his fellow citizens. He'd joined up as a form of atonement for his father's death. And because he still believed he could make a difference.

Whoever killed Mitch's father had gotten away with it. That was wrong. Guilty people deserved to be punished. As for guilty rich people, educated people like Grace and Lenny Brookstein, they were the worst of all.

MITCH STOOD UP, KICKING HELEN'S TORTURE chair out of his way. There was a problem with him taking this case. A downside. Now, what the hell was it?

At last it came to him. Of course. The FBI would be involved...

It had been two years since the Brooksteins' audacious fraud first came to light, but as the whole of America knew, the stolen Quorum billions were still missing in action. Harry Bain, the FBI's debonair assistant director in New York, ran the task force set up to find the Quorum cash, and he'd come up with a big fat zero. Bain's agents had interviewed Grace Brookstein numerous times in prison, but she'd stuck like glue to her story. According to her, she knew nothing about the money and neither did her dear departed husband.

Like most NYPD men, Mitch deeply distrusted the FBI. With Grace Brookstein on the run, it was inevitable that Harry Bain would start poking his Harvard-educated nose into Mitch's case, asking questions, tampering with witnesses, pulling rank. As Mitch's boss would so eloquently put it, "Bain'll be all over your ass like a bad case of herpes. You better be prepared to fight him off."

Mitch was prepared.

The money is Harry Bain's problem. Grace Brookstein is mine.

Maybe, if he caught Grace and became a national hero, Helen would take him back. Was that what he really wanted? He didn't know anymore. Maybe he wasn't cut out for marriage.

It was time to get to work.