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‘Life is dangerous, and in a lot of different ways, honey. I could get killed crossing the street, taking a plane trip, driving a car. I could choke on my food, get a fatal disease, or drop dead from a heart attack…’ He left his sentence unfinished, gave her a long hard stare, and then shrugged his broad shoulders almost nonchalantly. ‘People other than undercover cops die every day, Rosie. Especially these days, what with kids toting guns and stray bullets flying around everywhere. I know you love this city, and so do I in my own way, but it’s gone to hell on crack and smack and random violence, to name only a few of its ills. But that’s another story, I guess.’
‘I don’t want you to get killed the way Dad did,’ she persisted.
‘I know…Funny about Dad, when you think about it. He was just a plain old garden variety detective, doing a standard job at the Seventeenth, minding his own business so to speak, and he went and got himself killed, and at that by accident –’
‘By the Mafia you mean,’ she cut in.
‘Ssssh, keep your voice down,’ Kevin said swiftly, warily glancing around, while knowing full well there was no real reason to do so. After all, this was a well-known and respectable mid-town establishment on the East Side, just off First Avenue and a stone’s throw away from posh Sutton Place. Still, he couldn’t help himself. Being cautious was a habit he had honed to astonishing perfection over the thirteen years he had been with the police; that was the reason he only ever sat with his back to the wall, facing the door, when he was in a public place. He could not afford to be taken by surprise from behind, not ever, not in his job.
Leaning forward, bending over the candle in its red glass container, bringing his head closer to hers, Kevin went on, ‘Supposedly Dad was taken out by the Mafia, but there’s never been any real proof, and I’ve never been absolutely sure of that myself. Nobody has, not even Jerry Shaw, his partner. And let’s face it, the Mafiosi don’t make a habit of shooting cops, for Christ’s sake; it’s kinda bad for their business, if you get my drift. Look, they much prefer to neutralize cops, you know, get them on the pad – on the take. Wiseguys feel easier dispensing cash not coffins.’
‘I suppose you’re right,’ she agreed reluctantly. ‘A dishonest detective is more valuable to them than a dead one…that spells trouble.’
‘You betcha it does.’
‘Even so, Kevin, I do wish you’d come in from the outside. Couldn’t you get yourself a desk job?’
Her brother threw back his head and roared, obviously highly amused by the sheer absurdity of her suggestion.
‘Oh Rosie, Rosie,’ he gasped at last in a strangled voice, as the laughter began to subside, ‘I could, but I won’t. You see, I don’t want to, honest I don’t. What I actually do for a living is the centre of my life. Jesus, Rosie, it is my life.’
‘You take your life in your hands every day of the week, Kev, hunting down murderers, crooks, criminals, and drug-dealers, who are the worst, to my way of thinking. They’re certainly the most dangerous – violent, brutal.’
Kevin was silent.
She pressed, ‘Well, they are, aren’t they?’
‘Damned right they are, and you know how I feel about those fucking bastards!’ he exclaimed harshly, although he kept his voice contained, trying to be circumspect, having no wish to draw attention to himself.
After a moment’s pause, he said, ‘Listen to me, Rosie, almost all crime centres around narcotics these days. And I loathe and detest drug-dealers – all cops do. They’re the scum of the earth, dealing death around the clock. They’re even killing little kids now for profit, selling crack and coke at the school gates, getting seven-year-olds hooked on dope. Seven-year-olds, Rosie, and to me that’s unconscionable! It’s my job to destroy these foul specimens, these…these…animals. My mission is to nail the sons of bitches to the cross, bring them to justice, get them behind bars, hopefully on a federal rap. That way, they’re in for five years minimum, usually much, much longer, depending on their crimes. And don’t forget, there’s no parole in the federal system, thank God. Personally, I wish we could lock ‘em up and throw the keys away. For ever.’
His mouth compressed into a grim line, and a hardness settled on his face, making him suddenly look much older than his thirty-four years. ‘Doing what I do is very important to me, Rosie. I think, I hope, I make a difference in this world, fighting crime the way I do. In any case, it’s the only way I know how to keep my sanity,’ he finished, reaching out, squeezing her long, slender hand resting on the red tablecloth.
Rosie inclined her head, knowing exactly what he meant. It had been silly of her to think he would ever change his job. He was just like their father. The New York Police Department was the centre of his existence. In any case, Kevin had been on something of a crusade for the past six years – because of Sunny.
Their beautiful Golden Girl was a victim. Bad drugs had scrambled her brains. That’s why she lay in a hospital bed in a mental home, catatonic, a lost soul. Lost to herself. Lost to them. Lost to Kevin, who had loved her so.
Sunny would never recover, never be herself again, forever a vegetable, rotting in that place in New Haven, where her two sisters and her brother had been forced to put her out of their own desperation. It was costing them a fortune to keep her in the private home, but they had told Rosie they could not stand the thought of her being locked away in a state mental institution, and neither could she.
She had always believed that Kevin and Sunny would marry, and they would have, if it hadn’t been for the drugs that had turned Sunny into a zombie. None of them knew how she got hooked on drugs in the first place, how she slid into such fateful abuse of them, or who had kept on supplying her. Somehow it had just happened. But the seventies and the eighties had been the drug decades, hadn’t they? Pot and hash, pills and poppers, uppers and downers, coke and skag, or smack, as Kevin called heroin. Some addicts were stupid enough to compound their habit by mixing drugs with booze, and inevitably that spelled death at some point in their already ruined lives.
Perhaps Sunny Polanski would be better off dead than living the way she is today, Rosie thought, and felt a shiver trickle through her.
Rosie had never been interested in drugs, had only ever once taken a few puffs on a joint years before, had instantly felt sick to her stomach, had wanted to throw up. Gavin had been furious with her for accepting the joint at the party they were attending together, and he had lectured her relentlessly about the danger of drugs for days afterwards. She had not needed to hear his dire warnings; she knew how dangerous drugs were. Poor Sunny hadn’t known and that was the tragedy.
‘You’re thinking about Sunny,’ Kevin said softly, breaking the silence, zeroing in on her thoughts as if he could read her mind.
‘Yes, I am,’ Rosie admitted, hesitated briefly, then asked, ‘Have you been to see her recently, Kev?’
‘Three months ago.’
‘How was she?’
‘Just the same. Nothing’s changed.’
‘I thought I might go to New Haven before I go back to Europe to –’
‘Don’t!’ he exclaimed sharply, and then shook his head, looking chagrined. ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to be snappish, but you mustn’t go see Sunny. She won’t even know you’re there, Rosie, and you’ll only upset yourself. It’s just not worth it.’
Merely nodding, making no response, knowing it was better not to argue with him, Rosie decided that perhaps he was right. Maybe it would be better not to visit Sunny as she had planned. What would it mean to her, poor thing? Sunny wouldn’t even know she was in the same room, and anyway, there was nothing to be gained, nothing she could actually do for her old friend to make her existence better. In all truth, she would only create yet another worry for herself, if she saw Sunny in the pitiful state she