Iron Behind the Velvet ~ Chapter 67

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~ From the Storm, the Long Calm, the Darkness, the Swell ¹



From the smoke and blare, the sharp, concussive flash, the scene materialized in Catherine’s mind’s eye – Flynn defending, defenseless himself, himself the cross-hatched target of his partner’s weapon. The two children cloaked in his vest and huddled in the tub behind him were likely unseen had there been time and reason to note their presence. No, something – something else – intervened in that moment of decision, in that eternity fallen between two beats of two warrior hearts.

“Albie,” Eimear managed. “Is he all right?”

Neal’s response was delivered more thunderously than Catherine suspected he planned, his armored restraint, the necessary curb and bridle of emotion, finally given slack. “He doubled over, went to his knees. I thought he was having a heart attack, but when my ears started working again ... and my eyes, because I couldn’t believe what I was seeing ... I realized he was praying. Thanking God.”

“That he hadn’t,” Martin clarified, “mistaken for a weapon a flashlight that glinted like gun metal.”

Eimear flushed, Catherine presumed, with equal measures awe and anger and defense; she had, herself, embraced the same triad of passions. Palms and fingers flat together, Martin gestured for calm and thanksgiving. Still, Eimear’s voice kindled. “And that it wasn’t in the grip of a child. If he’d have shot Flynn, ‘twould have been Flynn’s fault, not Albie’s. And for Albie, a rending of the heart more survivable than the death of two innocents by his hand.”

“That’s pretty much what Flynn said, pretty much word for word.” Neal’s face was wine-red to Eimear’s carmine and his breath came just as fast, just as ragged. “But my thinking–” He slammed a fist to his chest. “My thinking is the difference wouldn’t matter. Either outcome, I’m finished.”

Eimear’s glare moved Neal back a step. “But there was a third outcome!”

“Yeah? Well, he was damn lucky. The risk he took, Eimear ...”

“Albie knows a deeper trust of himself now. You all do, because of that risk!” Eimear rounded her fierce scrutiny on the group. “Flynn’s confidence in you, in your reflexes and intuitions ... could he offer you anything more? Will you dismiss that gift? Will you ignore it?”

“He should have left it for us to handle! We have rules. We have training so we can function in a shi–  In a ... a situation. The last we heard from Flynn, he was on the roof. We sure as hell didn’t expect to find him on the scene. Maybe three, he told us. Three perps. We were primed. We ... expected! Maybe that’s what he wanted!”

“What do you mean?”

Never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer. A first lesson of law school.

Eimear knew. Not an hour earlier, over coffee at her kitchen table, she’d confessed her greatest fear. During other bleak and black times, Flynn had retreated, but never this far, never this desperately. She’d stammered and faltered, couching the feared finality in cushioned words. What if ... what if he decides to leave me? Leave her, this home, this life. Were his actions other than instinct to protect, to stand between two children and terror, between Albie and crushing guilt?

Martin started toward her. “A leanbh,” he murmured.² Seized then by a fit of coughing, he staggered back, braced one arm on the porch column. “A leanbh,” he ground out again from there. The unfamiliar words seemed an endearment underscored with caution.

Neal's spiraling frustration whipped back, disappearing as if hauled hand over hand, coiled into a box, its lid snapped shut, if fragilely secured. He pinched the bridge of his nose again, and Catherine noted his hand shook. Sean and David exchanged a leaden glance, one shoving his fists deep into his pockets; the other returning to a grave study of his shoes. Too respectful to offer platitudes to Flynn’s wife, too aware their words would be colored by exhaustion and spent adrenalin. So like Vincent. Mute if he could not offer truth.

“What ... do you ... mean?” Eimear repeated, regardless of Martin’s choked message and the thudding silence from Flynn’s crew.

Someone, another of you who loves him, tell her it’s not that bad, Catherine longed to beg. But for weeks, since the incident at the Yeshiva – possibly longer, possibly always – Flynn suffered. The press pressed, his supervisors, perplexed and beleaguered, pressed themselves, rattled after him. His crew-mates, men who must gear up, while Flynn must gear down,³ wary, perhaps warier, of him. The depths and reaches even she would never truly fathom, Eimear accepted with the reverence of faith. That Flynn was lost to himself was a fear Eimear must face, and what Dark Truth she could hear ... she would.

“Neal ...” Eimear spread her hands. “Please.”

Neal swallowed hard. “What stopped Albie–  What he said stopped him wasn’t that he recognized Flynn or a uniform or that the flashlight wasn’t a gun.” His voice splintered. “It was the look in Flynn’s eyes. A look of such ... welcome. Of peace. Not sadness. Not fear. A profound ... willingness. Just for an instant, Albie said, the room was so bright, he thought another flashbang had gone off. Then Albie yelled the code for no fire and went down; we crowded in behind him. Flynn should’a been knocked back, he shouldn’t have been standing, but there he was, between us and the tub, with his arms – well, one arm, the one that still worked right – held out, not up, but ... out.”

That terrible day, seven bodies on the ground, two further back in the tunnels she would later command he leave where they lay, leave to someone else’s duty, he stepped between her and a child holding her own gun in unsure hands.⁴ His driven rush subsided, Vincent made himself the target. It will be me, his bearing asserted. After all this ... it will be me.

You’re safe here, he told the boy. She’d sidled around, desperate to lunge, to dislodge the weapon waveringly pointed at Vincent. You’re safe here, he repeated to a boy who’d just seen otherwise. In the terse moment between his promise and the bullet, he held out his hand, forgiveness in it of what would be, understanding of its necessity. Forgiveness he could not himself accept, understanding he believed impossible. An arrest of fate. It’s all right, the flawless blue of his eyes affirmed. Whatever happens. The line he walked was too fine, the swirling abyss either side a constant, dreadful drag, a lifetime of it enervating. Whatever comes.

Flynn’s eyes were the same blue. What Albie had seen, she’d seen herself.


Neal shook his head, his gaze cast down. “I said things I wish I hadn’t. It didn’t help, but I kept saying them, and I kept on the whole time I was lifting those kids out of the tub alive. Then the supervisor took his turn. What the f– What the hell, O’Carroll, over and over. Flynn shut down, even before Internal Affairs showed up to do their thing. He needs help, Eimear.”

That strong. Something that has never been. A secret that gives us strength. With every atom of Vincent’s faith in it, Catherine willed the bond braiding between them woven stronger. Eimear’s glance flickered over ... lingered. Remember, Catherine telegraphed. Vincent’s promise to you – Braithre. I will be that brother, should I be needed. And me, Eimear. You have me. We’re alike, more than we’re able to know. Their aloneness, you said, and ours, but also our delight.⁵ I’m your friend through this. I know your pain.

Eimear’s focus drifted back to Neal who stood rigid and intent. Through the grime on his face, a clear track traced what Catherine saw now was a threadlike scar linking the corner of his eye to the corner of his mouth – a coursing bead of tensioned sweat, perhaps a tear, dried now. Eimear moved closer, put her hand on his arm. “Thank you for bringing him home, for caring so.” She didn’t smile, but offered Neal a look of such tenderness, he was compelled to lift his chin. “You’re a good friend. You all are,” she said, encompassing Sean and David in her heartfelt ray. After a moment, she went on. “You said ... you’d be doing without the both of them. Albie’s on leave, sure.”

“A week, probably.”

“Only a week?”

“We took fire through the door. Should be routine.”

A weapon was fired. There’d be an inquiry, more than one. A firearms discharge investigation. An inquest, an interview of all involved, the findings presented by the shooting team’s leader to the DA’s office for consideration of charges. The paperwork would never cross her desk, not this time. Conflict of interest. For Joe, too, though he’d not been present to hear these details,  the one ballgame with Sean and David, fellow-chaperones, his invitation to the ceilidh, his relationship with Rosie, as new as it was, all raised red flags.

Joe. I’d better call him back ... and soon.

Catherine rubbed her forehead, replayed his last words escalating with concern and demand. Cathy? Cathy! Ca–!!  Having in essence left the receiver dangling when she abandoned his phone call and followed Eimear out on to the porch, she’d not be surprised to see his car turn the corner and screech to a stop, the door open and Joe charge out, his face as flushed as Neal’s and Eimear’s had once been, as Martin’s was now.

“‘Tis not a reasonable ending,” Martin spluttered, “for a man to send a soldier in to do a job, and have that same man and a dozen more nitpick afterward the warrior’s every move. ‘Tis not dignified, what happens next.”

“Tactical review,” David said. “We know it’s coming before we start.”

“It’s how we learn,” Sean added.

Martin shook his head and huffed.”‘Tis not right,” he muttered, and Catherine could only ponder his roiled defense. “Not right.”

“They’re sequestered at the scene,” Eimear told her, a flashing pivot her way, then back. Her face clouded. “Separated from their mates, their lieutenant. First, of course, their guns are taken for inspection. They’re put in a car by a man in a suit, never left unattended ... unwatched. Escorted, they call it. At the station, their clothes are demanded, one piece at a time. Vest. Shirts. Boots. Pants. Removed in front of witnesses. All go into evidence bags. Evidence! And then the questioning begins. Isolated, they are, assumed guilty of something, if only it could be upturned.”

“We don’t look at it that way,” Sean said, though his jaw ticked. He put his arms behind his back, shifted his feet wider apart. Catherine wondered if Vincent ... afterward ... must stand for this, if, beyond his own cross-questioning, he felt this ... examined.

“So I will, for you, then.” The music of Eimear’s voice dulled to one grim note, sustained long after she fell silent and, glowering, panned the group. Only when her squared shoulders relaxed did the men’s braced attentions ease. Everyone took a breath. A spiraled strand of hair adhered to her cheek, and she raked it free. “It comes at a good time for Albie and Maricel and the baby,” she murmured. “With pay, yes?”

“Yeah. Silver lining.”

“But Flynn ...”

“Suspended. Captain said psych. Flynn told him to go ... well, you can fill in the blank.”

Eimear eyed the brass latch, the thumb-shined lever. Soon she’d mount the stairs ... confront the closed bedroom door, the stone wall Flynn laid up. Flynn with no river of retreat running through the darkness, yet as distant, the geography between them vast and obstacled. She sighed and turned back to the men. “The babies in the tub ... were they hurt?”

Martin followed quickly with a query of his own. “Did no one – a neighbor, the sister of the hostage –  even mention the possibility of children in the home?” Had they known, then surely – a different strategy, a different outcome.

But a better one? Vincent whispered, close to her ear. Catherine touched the warmed place on her neck brushed with his imagined breath.

“Not babies,” Neal said. “Not really. A boy eight years old, his sister nearly six. Scared but okay. When the perps muscled in and the yelling started in the living room, they hunkered down in the bathroom closet. I don’t think it’s the first time they’ve had to hide like that.” Neal looked away, a wince narrowing his eyes. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Catherine couldn’t name the single emotion graying his voice and his face – an amalgam of frustration, resignation, something tender and unhardened, something steeped in tears. “Turns out,” he went on, “they’re the boyfriend’s, and the boyfriend’s had his rights revoked; they weren’t supposed to be there. When they didn’t run out to see what was going on, the woman – the hostage – figured not to mention ‘em and hope for the best. Figured right, it turned out. And no,” Neal went on, anticipating at least Catherine’s next question, “they hadn’t been reported missing. Children’s Services took ‘em in until they can locate their mom.”

Martin’s face wrinkled up. “Fearfully, 'tis if she can be found.”

“Copy that,” David put in. “We left with a bad feeling.”

As Eimear must, her work a daily reminder of the toll of travesty and tragedy, Catherine understood bad feelings. Too many children neglected and worse, the cracks in the system jagged and wide. If only they could fall straight through to the tunnels.

“I have friends at ACS. I’ll find out what happens to them, to the boy and his sister,” Catherine said.

“Could you? Great. His name's Reggie. We never hear ...” David’s voice trailed off, but her offer elicited haggard, dry smiles from the gathering on the porch.

Eimear circled the bracelet watch she wore, bringing the round face into view at the bend of her wrist. Without checking her own, Catherine felt her pulse beat against the cool metal, the echoing tick, tick. Eimear met her gaze. Children’s court well in session, by now Wren’s case – Edward’s – could be decided. She nodded. I’ll find that out, too.

David and Sean reset their caps and checked the position of their cruiser, monitoring a mirror-polished, decades-old Cadillac as it crawled by, the leafy street so narrow, the side mirrors barely spared. One man’s stomach rumbled.

“Let me make you boys some breakfast,” Eimear appealed. “Coffee, at least,” she amended, when each declined.

David squinted at the sun. “Thanks, but I’d better get home, hit the sack.”

“Bravo Team’s taking our four by twelve today,” Sean explained, “but we’re on again at midnight.”

Tomorrow, and tomorrow and tomorrow ... ⁶ After a few hours of sleep, hopefully a decent meal caringly prepared and company for it, after too short a time at liberty to attend their own lives, their own loves, not nearly enough time to accept and assimilate one shift’s crises before facing another’s, these men would report again to their station house – to the shop, they called it, a sedate name for a destination anything but – ready and willing to bear on and bear up, regardless. Regardless.

How, she wondered. Why, she knew.

David shook Catherine’s hand, and Martin’s, then Sean followed suit. Eimear walked the two men down the steps to their car and kissed their cheeks and whispered something in their ears. She waited and watched, waved as they pulled away, and from the sidewalk stared up at the second story landing’s window. Always, until now, Eimear had believed the shadowing would pass. But this time, she’d whispered, this time something is very different. And that’s before I tell him about the calls and the drive-bys.⁷ And before ... this, as well – whatever happened overnight that returned him home bruised and battered, more than silent.

And she wouldn’t. She’d not tell Flynn, or Martin, or Rosie; she’d not file a report at her local precinct. Now now. Catherine met Eimear’s lowered gaze with a quick nod of empathy. I understand. I wouldn’t, either.

Neal dragged his cap from his back pocket, drawing Catherine’s attention. One side of his mouth lifted in a subdued, quarter-smile. “Thanks for checking up on those kids,” he said. “If it’s possible ... I’d like to send Reggie a new flashlight. Flynn had to give it up to the detective ... evidence. Poor kid flipped out when he couldn’t have it back, started screaming at Flynn, you promised, you promised, you promi–” At Eimear’s returning tread, he broke off, and Catherine had no time to question Martin’s reflex of surprise, or his sad Ahhh, nooooo, hardly masked behind a balled fist and a practiced cough.

Eimear slipped her arm around Neal’s waist. “He’s not in the hospital.” She sighed and leaned against his arm. “Should he be?”

“He bashed up his left side when he hit or landed or whatever, but nothing’s broken. Well ... a few ribs. Two fingers on one hand. A subluxation of the shoulder he popped back in joint himself. The mini-bang scorched his face. I’ve gotta guess he’s got it all going on in there – flash blindness, headache, tinnitus.”

“Did they rule out concussion?”

Neal situated his cap, tugged it lower. “They? Who’s they?”

“Was he released from the emergency room, or did he just walk out?”

“He refused to go, period. EMTs taped him up on the scene. He says he’s fine, and that’s all he’ll say.” Neal’s tone threatened to ratchet up, and he started for the steps. Two treads down, he turned back, gentled again. “He never lost consciousness, Eimear. He doesn’t seem disoriented, no nausea. I don’t think there’s any traumatic amnesia. He’s just not talking. He just seems ... done.”

“If only,” Martin whispered, having eased to Catherine’s side. Concern pleated his face that Eimear, bidding Neal goodbye, didn’t see. “But ‘tisn’t over. ‘Tisn’t over at all. Not for him.”

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Water surged along the cobbled passage upstream, the surprising swells undulating as if with the motion of some undersea creature. Restricted for a moment by the narrowed circumference of the culvert’s mouth, the force through the aged facing blew fragments of masonry and mortar into the air. The water pocked, and on the other shore, his friends took cover. Midway in his crossing of the already rushing stream, Mouse ducked the flying debris, doubling over in defense. There was no time, no time to shout instruction; he could only will that Mouse hold fast to the rope. The pressured tide struck and struck hard, took Mouse under and away ... and then it came for him.

Panicked instinct, both brutal and blessed, siren and silence, a desperate push-pull. Everything that was yet to be. Yet ... all that was his. His. Between heartbeats, Dr. Wong had once told him, lay an eternity, the little death, a fathomless void outside of time, a nothingness of peace, and in that utterly brief, exquisitely still moment ... he rested ... and in next, the valves of his heart insisting, confronted terrible, unacceptable loss.

Tumbling and knifing, he could only ride the current, one arm wrapped with slack rope, the other flailing, trailing, searching. He bashed into a solid wall, was snatched back and pitched again, and again, and again, until he struck a crosshatch of iron. A grate! A rusted filter blessedly fine, the suction to it, through it, like gravity – inevitable, a universal truth. As he was drawn to it, Mouse would be, too. He was here. Here! He had to be. His heart was too big in his chest; his lungs screamed with demand. The last breath he’d snared was nearly meted out.

Determined hands under his armpits dragged him out, around his midsection lifted him free of the mud. The muscles of his belly grabbed and scooped, grabbed and scooped for air. His breath returned in rough shudders, the sound, to his own ears, unearthly, at once guttural and shrieking. He scraped away the soppy strands of hair caught in his mouth, the sodden mat that screened his vision. Beside him, where he’d dropped him in the brown ballast sand, Mouse lay too still, his skin the same under-worldly shade as the gray blanket Stuart snapped from its tight roll. Vincent scrabbled over. The rubbled ground of brick-shard and gravel abraded the skin of his palms, gouged his knees, but it was breath; it was feeling. Pain meant life. Pain meant hope.

Click HERE for Chapter 68

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1. Walt Whitman. As I Ebb'd with the Ocean of Life.
2. A leanbh. Gaelic: My child.
3. from Chapter 51: I Know of Nothing Else But Miracles
4. The Outsiders. Season 2.
5. From Chapter 51 again.
6. William Shakespeare. Macbeth. Act V, Scene v.
7. Chapter 62: Over the Wide Curve of a Trembling World.