Free Empty Ever After by Reed Farrel Coleman Page B

it hit the metal railing, a limo driver screaming “Mr. Child. Mr. Child. Mr. Child,” the whoosh of the doors—but none of it made any sense. I told my legs to run, but they wouldn’t move. I tried to shout, but I could form no words. Something was tugging my arm.
    “Dad! Dad!” Sarah was shouting, pulling my sleeve.
    “Moe, what’s up?” It was Carmella.
    “Let the kid go,” I heard myself say. “Let him go.”
    “What?”
    “Let him go.”
    My legs finally started moving, but not fast enough. Strong arms grabbed me.
    “Where the fuck you think you’re going, buddy?”
    “Huh?”
    “C’mon, pal,” the Port Authority cop said. “And the three of youse too, let’s go. Now!”

    I didn’t argue, but kept watching the door as I moved.
    I didn’t know ghosts used doors.
     
    IT DIDN’T TAKE long to straighten things out with the Port Authority cops, especially once we showed them our old badges and shields. You should never underestimate the power of the us against them mentality. Once cops, always cops. Raheem—that was the kid’s name—was no fool either. He understood that he wasn’t going to get a whole lot of sympathy once the policemen’s love fest began. So for a hundred bucks and a sincere apology, he was willing to forget all about Carmella’s tackle and death grip. For an extra fifty, he agreed to have coffee with Carmella so she could debrief him about how he’d been approached to deliver the package to Sarah.
    I had to get Sarah back to my condo so we could talk about the full extent of what was going on with Katy and so she could decide if she wanted to stay with me or her mom. Having Sarah in the car to talk to was helping me not to obsess over who I thought I saw at the airport. The distraction of driving had also let me regain some measure of equilibrium. It wasn’t Patrick—that’s what I kept telling myself—but I was meant to think so. My new mantra was, “Don’t fall for it. Don’t fall for it. Don’t fall …” But Christ, that guy in the airport terminal looked an awful lot like him.
    “So talk to me, kiddo.” I wasn’t quite pleading.
    “I didn’t like that back there.”
    I didn’t like it either, at least not the part where I saw a ghost. I didn’t think Sarah had seen him, so I played dumb. “You wanna give me a hint here?”
    “How you guys treated Raheem.”
    “We were only being cautious. Don’t hold it against Carmella. She was trying to protect you. Blame me. More has been going on at home than I’ve let on.”
    “Not that part,” she said, staring out the window as we passed Shea and smiling wistfully.
    “Then I’m a little confused.”
    “How the cops blew him off because he was a black kid and you guys were cops. If the roles were reversed and he had tackled you or Carmella, the cops would have beat the shit out of him. They wouldn’t have been slapping him on the back and inviting him out for drinks like they did with you and Carmella.”
    “You’re right. I’d like to tell you it’s not true, but it is. That’s a cop’s world sometimes.”

    “Well, it sucks.”
    “There’s a lot of injustice in the world, Sarah. Some of it’s big. Some of it’s small. In the scheme of things, today’s events were a small injustice.”
    “You don’t have to talk to me like I’m a little kid, Dad. Besides, there’s no such thing as a small injustice.”
    “I didn’t say it was right. I just said it’s the way it is.”
    “Is that how you rationalized yourself to sleep when you were a cop?”
    “When I was a cop, I slept like a baby. Being a cop isn’t about the big questions. It’s about doing the job.”
    “Did doing the job include mistreating innocent people?”
    “Sometimes, yeah, I guess it did.”
    “Then that sucks too.”
    “I’m glad I’m sending you to the University of Michigan so you can learn to use the word ‘sucks’ in every other sentence. You gonna try for the debate team next term?”
    “Don’t change