The Ghost of Christmas Present (13 page)

“Knock it off, every one of you lowlifes! Who started this ruckus?”

The bikers pointed to Patrick. “He did!”

“All right, Jolly Green, let's go!” the driver cop shouted as he opened Patrick's cell and pulled him out.

“Am I getting out of here?” Patrick asked.

“You sure are,” the shotgun cop answered. “You're headed to thirty-day lockup.”

“What?”

“You've got no name.”

“No address.”

“No social.”

“No one to post bail.”

The two cops took turns reciting before they grabbed him by the arms. “You're headed to Riker's for a month-long wait to see the judge.”

The policemen began to drag Patrick down the row of cells toward the open door leading into the main precinct.

And that's when it happened.

That's when Patrick Guthrie, drama teacher at Independence High School, father to Braden, widower of Linda, model citizen for almost all of his life . . . that's when he panicked.

The open door to the precinct was waiting.

Patrick threw off the two cops and bolted down the row of cells as the prisoners went wild with joy at the sight of the passing jailbird.

“Go, Freaky! Go!” Breeze cried.

“Run, Freaky! Run!” High Ride screamed.

And run Patrick did, through the door, down the outer hallway lined with mug-shot wanted posters, his green velvet robe flying out behind him.

“Prisoner in flight!” one of the cops yelled.

Police clerks and handcuffed perps alike were tossed out of Patrick's way as he made a mad dash through the detectives' room, past desks, around partitions, and finally nearing a door marked
EXIT
.

Patrick was almost to the door.
Almost free!
he shouted to himself in the midst of this unthinkable mania of escape. If he could just get through the door, he'd be fine. He would be by his son's hospital bedside before he knew it, like stepping through a mirror or falling down a rabbit hole. Once through the door he'd be home free.

Home.

Free.

He took the handle of the door and twisted it to suddenly find himself . . . locked in.

“We've got lockdown!” boomed a voice from behind him. “He's got nowhere to go, people!”

Patrick whirled around and spotted a stairwell. There was always somewhere to go.

Up the stairs he ran, taking the steps by two- and three-step bounds. Chasing footsteps echoed behind him like a thundering herd, but Patrick's raging panic forced him on, to what hope of escape he had no idea. But still he ran.

He'd seen the fruitless escapes on TV of jokers who'd got caught jacking some car and then led the police on an insane chase that only lengthened their jail time with each fugitive mile. And now here he was, leading the police on the same insane chase up the stairs and finally to a closed steel door at their top.

You're gonna get your keister kicked out there on the mean streets.
Braden's voice echoed through his mind as he grabbed the steel door's handle, and it turned. Patrick was out in the night in a second. If only he could get to his son and spend a minute with him before he had to leave for prison, before Braden had to leave his world. He had to get off the roof.

But there was nowhere to go.

On all four sides of the roof, there was nothing but air. The city lights surrounded him in a swirl of multicolored stars, like a mock heaven that was beckoning him onward. Patrick looked back to see more than a dozen policemen pour out of the roof's door, guns drawn, and slowly come toward him.

“Get on the ground, hands folded behind your head, now!”

Patrick looked ahead of him. Nowhere to go but into the heaven of the colored lights and the air below that offered something that might just end up feeling like peace.

“Down on the ground! Don't make me say it again!”

Patrick walked ahead toward the far ledge and stood on the precipice and the promise of black oblivion far below. Could he do it? Why shouldn't he do it? He'd come to the end of all he could do for his son. Braden would be better off without him. He'd be better off with the man who hated Patrick and all he had done to take Linda away. Had he somehow helped to cause Linda's death? Had he somehow brought Braden to a place where his boy waited for an operation that might just cost him his life, and if it didn't, what kind of home did Patrick truly have to offer him?

Braden would be better off with another man as his father, a better man than he.

Patrick stood on the precipice, teetering on its edge, his green velvet robe flapping in the December night wind.

“Whatever you're thinking about doing, don't.”

What
was
Patrick thinking about doing?

Leaving Braden behind to remember him as the man who left his son behind.

And that he would not do. There was a French vanilla dessert cup on a hospital tray waiting for him. There were two spoons to clink. And whatever way it was now bound to happen, there was a little boy who was going to have his heart cut open and would have to heal, and Patrick would never let him go through that without his father.

Patrick turned back toward the approaching line of policemen.

“Don't reach for anything! Hands behind the head! It's over!”

Patrick dropped to his knees and put his hands behind his head. “My name is Patrick Guthrie.”

Yes. It was over.

Chapter 18

THE MAN WITH THE PLAN

D
etective Mike Kovach entered the interrogation room wearing a flannel sport coat that had seen better days and a wan face that had seen it all. He sat down at the plain wood table, ran his hand over the back of his neck, and looked to where Patrick sat behind the now peeled-off beard and wig. Patrick answered the detective's question before he had a chance to ask it.

“I did it to make enough money to pass a parental competency hearing. I did it so I wouldn't lose my son, for even a day. So you can drop me in a cellar and turn the lights out when you leave. I don't care.”

Kovach nodded as opened a file and looked it over. “They tell me he's in St. Genevieve's.”

“Until he has his heart procedure just before the holiday.”

“That's what they also tell me,” Kovach said as he leaned back in his chair. “Which is why I'm not going to slam you with resisting two law officers, attempted flight, disturbing the peace, and just plain stupidity above and beyond the highest heights.”

Surprised, Patrick waited.

“I've got three daughters at home, and there's nothing I wouldn't do to see them every morn, noon, and night,” he said as he closed the file. “I'm also glad you didn't take a header off my roof. That kind of
New York Post
front-page headline I don't need.”

“So you're going to let me go?”

“I've got my informants, and with what they tell me I can put together a pretty good picture of what happened. You crossed some Christmas creeps and got good and framed.”

“Is this going to go on my record?”

“You mean, will Family Court find out about this? No. You didn't hurt anybody and from what I understand from my boys in blue, you put on a pretty good show.”

Patrick sat feeling relieved.

“But I'd stay off the street from now on. Next time something like this happens I'll be bound to make an official note of it, and I don't know a Family Court judge in the state who takes a shine to fathers who panhandle.”

“What do I do now?” Patrick asked.

“What does your lawyer say?”

“I can't afford a lawyer.”

“If you're fighting for custody of your kid, you're entitled to a free one from the state.”

Patrick's face rose with hope.

P
atrick stepped out of the 7th Precinct into the bitter December wind and wrapped the green velvet robe close around him as he headed down the sidewalk in search of a subway.

He would most likely lose his son, according to what the public defender had told him only a half-hour earlier. Maybe it would be for only a month or so until Patrick could get established in his new job, if that even came through in the New Year. But considering his circumstances and Ted's influence and wealth, any Family Court in the city would almost certainly rule that a child recovering from a heart operation would be better placed with the boy's grandfather.

And Patrick knew in his heart that it would be better for Braden, better for his healing body. But what would it do to the little boy's heart? Not the physical heart, which would certainly benefit from all that Ted could give him, but the emotional heart?

Ted hated Patrick. As he walked, he replayed the last memory he'd had of the old man throwing himself and Linda out into the cold that Christmas Eve two years before Braden was born. Patrick had agreed to go along with Linda and visit her father to explain in person that she was going to pursue a life in the theater. It was the hardest thing she'd ever had to do, but she did it, hoping with every fiber of her heart that her father would understand, might even wish her well.

But the old man had told them to leave. No matter that Patrick had a broken ankle, and there were no cabs to be had, and they had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge at night just to get back to Manhattan. No matter that Linda was his only child.

It mattered like the devil to Linda, who saw all her overtures to her father ignored. And now it mattered like the devil to Patrick, who knew all Ted needed was a month with Braden to fill his mind with the idea that perhaps, just perhaps, his mother might not have died if she had had the regular physical checkups that an actor without health insurance could not afford.

It was this thought that Patrick could not brook. Once Ted was able to infiltrate the boy's mind with that idea, there might be no recovery.

Patrick turned the corner of Pitt Street and headed up Ninth Avenue. At this hour it was dark and empty. The city that never sleeps was out cold.

And then there they were.

There were six of them, shadows at first that emerged from below-street building stairwells. They approached Patrick in a slow wave, coming from both sides of the street across the pavement in an uneven parade. “And where do you think you're going?” one figure from the encroaching group asked.

Patrick said nothing.

“I'll tell you where you're going. The city morgue, that's where you're going,” a second figure called out as he stepped into the glow of the streetlight. “You're gonna get yourself good and dead walking these bricks past beddie-bye.”

It was Red-Beard and the back-alley boys. Patrick exhaled a relieved breath. “You guys? What are you doing here?”

“Checking up on you, making sure the cops know the score.”

“You're the informants?”

“Undercover operatives,” said Red-Beard. “Please. We do have our dignity.”

“Of course. Well, in any case, thank you. You saved me.”

“Not quite. You've still got a heck of a problem on your hands. No dad should lose his kid because of money, and not just before Christmas.”

“Is there anything you don't know?”

“We know this,” Red-Beard said as he held up a small white business card. “You should go pay a visit to a friend of ours.”

Patrick stepped back. “I don't know.”

“Go see him.”

Red-Beard put the card into Patrick's hand and closed his fingers over the paper. “He's the man with the plan.”

Chapter 19