Derailed (9 page)

Yeah
, I thought,
Estelle feels creepy when people peek out at us, but I feel queasy over whether we can afford this place
.

Had God really given us this house? If so, why were we suddenly in over our heads?

I had almost drifted off to sleep, having little
half dreams about how to mount that basketball hoop on the back of our garage. But it just wasn't fitting together the way I wanted it to.

“Harry? Harry!”

I opened my eyes. “Huh?” Everything was turned around. The window should be at the foot of our bed, but the dim glow of a streetlight came through Venetian blinds at my side.

“Harry, you awake?”

“What . . . ?” I raised myself up on my elbows and remembered we were in our new bedroom. I turned toward my wife's familiar shape, smelling faintly of soap and powder. “What's the matter?”

“Nothing's the matter, honey, but I was just thinking . . . several weeks ago, at the Manna House Valentine's party, didn't you say someone from Amtrak Police called and wanted you to come work for them?”

I sat all the way up. “Amtrak? Oh, yeah, Gilson called me, but—” I choked off my words and blew out a long breath. “It's the middle of the night, Estelle. What's the clock say?”

“Um . . . eleven thirty, but I couldn't sleep, 'cause I been thinkin', if it would make a difference for us to have the money to cover the whole mortgage ourselves, maybe you should take that job. Better than bein' a doorman. You don't much like being retired, anyway. And then we wouldn't be caught between Rodney's behavior and the bank.”

I flopped back onto the bed and yawned loudly. “Not so sure it'd be better than that doorman job. At least no one woke me up in the middle of the night. Now go to sleep, Estelle. We can talk about it tomorrow.”

“Okay, okay. Just think about it.” She turned over, and within minutes I heard her breathing transform into the steady slowness of a peaceful sleep.

But no such luck for me. My mind started skittering like static electricity . . .

Okay. The reason we needed someone to rent our downstairs apartment was because Mom couldn't move in. The image of her lying up there in the hospital giving me her crooked smile floated through my mind. Was she feeling lonely? I should visit her more. But how could I? We'd just bought a house that needed a lot of work, and I'd have even less time if I got a job.

Of course, she'd been living alone for years and never complained of being lonely. At least now she had a roommate and nurses on duty to help her. Had to admit, though, at almost ninety, she had to be approaching the end of her life. Her best friend, Ethel, had died right after Thanksgiving. I really needed to prepare myself for that. A physical ache pulled at my heart, thinking of her passing. Sure hoped some of us would be there to hold her hand and pray with her when she went home. It'd be terrible to be completely alone.

How stupid we'd been to base our whole plan for this building on her moving in! Which was why I didn't want to base our future on Rodney's performance either. Not good!

I flopped over on my other side. I needed to get some sleep.

What got me goin' here? Oh, yeah, Estelle asking about that call from Gilson. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to work for Amtrak. We could sure use the money. And she was right; with more financial stability we could give Rodney a genuine second chance. Maybe this was the time. I wasn't really worried about him holding down a job as long as drugs were out of the picture. He'd been a good worker ever since I got him his first job at age twelve helping our building manager for thirty minutes a day, picking up trash, sweeping the back stairs, or washing the door windows.

It was the drugs that did him in, and I didn't want them under our roof. We had to think of DaShawn. He was getting to the age where it'd be a big enough temptation to him too.

I rolled the covers off me and went to the bathroom, got a drink of water, and shuffled back to the bedroom. Careful not to disturb Estelle, I crawled back into bed. She was turned away from me, so I spooned up behind her, resting my hand on the curve of her hip. I lightly kissed the back of her neck. Maybe a little lovin' would get my mind on something different . . . if not calmer. She moaned contentedly and wiggled a little, then sank back into the steady breathing of a sound sleep.

Hmm
, maybe another time. But I was realizing it might not be as easy with a guest in the house.

Rodney . . . yeah, the drugs did it. That's when I knew I was losing Rodney. I had just transferred from the CPD's K-9 unit—where, of course, I did some drug interdiction with my dog—to the Special Ops Section. The elite SOS unit supposedly targeted drugs, the lifeblood of the gangs. I wanted to get the scumbags who'd stolen my son.

I'd given the SOS a hundred percent, and we were making a real difference too—a difference, that is, until my boss, Matty Fagan, got greedy. My thoughts drifted back to the mess he'd created and the day I'd finally decided to blow the whistle. It's not easy to cross that thin blue line, and, as with most officers who decide they must do it, it was a career ender for me. You don't go against your own—not even for a righteous cause—without paying a price. The first installment for me was being asked to take early retirement so I could be “put on ice” while Internal Affairs prepared the case against Fagan. But even when the court case was over and Fagan had been sentenced, I knew better than reapply to the CPD.

Now Gilson had reached out to me, inviting me to join him at Amtrak.

Ahh
! . . . this wasn't working. I was right back into the same loop. I'd never get to sleep at this rate.

I started to ponder those harebrained ideas Captain Gilson had spun to interest me. They might be a figment of his creative imagination, as he'd called it—but what if some kind of detective role were possible? Perhaps my career in law enforcement wasn't over,
after all. If I
could
become a K-9 detective with a drug-interdiction dog that I brought home at the end of the day . . . oh man! I'd have our place covered. Neither Rodney nor DaShawn could get involved with drugs without me being immediately alerted.

Of course, the dogs weren't for personal crusades. In fact, there was probably some regulation against doing what I envisioned. But hey, if that dog just happened to draw down on a stash or even some weed in someone's pocket, well . . . And if that didn't happen—I surely prayed it wouldn't—at least I could sleep without worrying that something bad might be goin' down under my roof.

Yeah, I could sleep without worrying . . .

Estelle's steady breathing calmed me like small waves on a beach. It was all I could hear in this quiet neighborhood, so different from the noisy blocks around our old apartment. I was close to drifting off . . . but a cloud still hovered at the fringe of my consciousness. Even if Rodney and DaShawn were straight, even if the finances on the house got covered, something still felt wrong with my world, something that cast a shadow over every joy. What was it?

My mother. She was near the end. I didn't want her to go, but there wasn't anything I could do about it.

Monday morning, I walked DaShawn to the corner a couple blocks south to catch the city bus. He didn't want to be seen with me, but this was the first day going to school from our new address, and I wanted to make sure he caught the right bus. As the bus pulled away from the curb, I was startled to notice that The Office, a friendly neighborhood bar, was just three doors west of the bus stop. I'd gotten myself in trouble there more times than I could count. So why had its proximity completely slipped my mind when we were deciding to purchase a house not more than a five-minute walk away? Was my subconscious setting me up with temptation? I would not yield. I would tell my Yada Yada brothers and Estelle about it to get it out into the light so God could help me.

But when I got back to the house, I lost myself in the day's events. Rodney had gone out to find a phone store that could reactivate his phone. “Got to get a newspaper too, snag me a job,” he'd told Estelle.

Sounded good, but I knew how hard it could be for anyone who'd been “inside” to get a job. He was going to have to find someone who had a connection and would take a chance on him. Maybe Peter Douglass needed help at Software Symphony. I'd check.

“Estelle, let me do those dishes. You're still trying to set up the kitchen.”

Her eyes went wide. “And . . . ?” We shared a lot of household chores, even in the kitchen, but it wasn't very often I volunteered out of the blue to do the dishes.

“And nothin'. Just thought we might talk about what you said last night.”

“Uh . . . and what was that?”

I dumped the coffee grounds in the trash. “You know, the Amtrak idea.”

“Oh! I was so sleepy, I nearly forgot.”

Then why didn't you save it till this morning and let me sleep?
But I didn't say so.

I scraped the last of the bowls and put them into the dishwasher. “Well, being a cop isn't an easy job. In fact, maybe the only thing harder than being a cop is being the wife of a cop.”

“Not a husband of one?”

I tossed her a grin. “That too, I guess.” My old partner, Cindy Kaplan, had never married. Maybe she was smart. “Anyway, the Amtrak scene might be a little different, but . . . police work is police work. And”—Did I really want to say this?—“I basically lost my first marriage over it.”

Estelle gave me the eye. “I thought it was because of your drinkin'.”

“That too.” I raised my hands. “I'm not blamin' my drinkin' on my job, but the stress of the job was certainly part of my home problems. I let the job come first. Wasn't there for Willa Mae, wasn't there for Rodney when they needed me most. Brought home all the tension—if I hadn't drowned it before I got there.”

“Well, I don't want any of them apples, Harry Bentley. If that's how you'd end up at Amtrak, go back to the doorman job.”

I finished loading the dishwasher, then poured myself the last of the coffee. “If those were my only choices, yeah. But maybe I ought to check out what Gilson has in mind. I've had enough experience, I think I can tell pretty quickly whether it'd be like workin' for the CPD. If so, you're right, I should give it a pass. But even in the CPD, not every assignment was the same. I mean, working the K-9 unit was a whole lot different than working Special Ops.”

Estelle climbed down off the step stool she was using to reach the upper shelves of a cabinet. “K-9, that's with dogs, right? I like dogs—well, most dogs.”

“Yeah, me too. And you can't push dogs around the way you do people. If you do, you mess 'em up, and then they're no good for anything.”

Estelle looked at me curiously. “So what're you sayin', Harry?”

“Well, when Gilson talked to me, he mentioned the possibility of workin' K-9 again. Now, I don't know if he was just shinin' me on or what. But—”

“But you're thinkin' about it, right?” She shook her head. “I don't know, Harry. I know I was the one who brought up that Amtrak thing. Sounded good in the middle of the night. But if police work's like you say . . . well, we got a good thing goin' here. I don't want to push you into doing somethin' that'd put you or us at risk—”

“And I don't want that either. But other things are different now too. C'mere, sit down a minute.” I took her hand and pulled her over to the little kitchen table. “First of all, babe, I'm in a much different place with God, and that means a whole lot.” In the back of my mind, I had to check myself on that statement. But I really did have a different relationship with him now, even if we still had a few details that needed working out. “And there's you too, babe. That's a big—”

“Wait a minute. You tellin' me I can somehow do for you what Willa Mae couldn't?”

I grinned at her. “Yeah, and you just demonstrated it. You don't let me get by with nothin'. She just boiled inside until she exploded, and I never knew why until we were in the middle of Armageddon.”

“
Hmm
.”

“But it's more than that, Estelle. You believe in me. You make me feel like I can become the man God created me to be. I know I got a long way to go, but now I've got a group of Christian brothers too, and AA.”

“You don't go to AA meetings anymore, Harry.”

“No, but they're there. My prayer group brothers keep me on the straight and narrow now, but if I needed AA, I wouldn't hesitate. What I'm tryin' to say is, some major things in my life are different. I think I've got the support and the experience to make it work if the Amtrak job is worth pursuin'.”
Whew
, I surprised myself with my little speech, even before I knew whether I wanted that Amtrak job. But somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I had left out a piece. I had forgotten to tell Estelle or my brothers that The Office was just a five-minute walk away. But why bring that up? I hadn't felt any desire to drop into that little bar, didn't even spend time thinking about it being so close.