by Paul Dini
“I had nothing to do with that,” Daddy said urgently. “I didn’t know the DEA was planning a raid—”
“You mean that was just a coinky-dink?” the first guy said. “Oh, well, that’s different.”
The second guy suddenly stepped forward and, before Harleen quite knew what was happening, he punched her daddy in the face, knocking him off-balance so he almost fell.
“Hey!” said the first guy. “Don’t do that!”
“Why not?” the other guy asked.
“I got first dibs.” Then he punched her daddy in the face, knocking him to the sidewalk.
Harleen screamed for them to stop. They ignored her as they hauled her daddy to his feet. The first guy held him with his arms behind his back so the second one could punch him again and again. She kept on screaming, but it was like they couldn’t hear her, like she wasn’t even there.
“I’m getting the cops!” she hollered at them and ran back toward the subway, where Mommy said you could find a cop if you needed help. But just as she got to the corner, she saw a patrol car and ran into the street, waving her arms and yelling.
Red and blue lights snapped on as it stopped. The cop who got out of the passenger side was a big guy, bigger than her daddy. Trying to pull him up the street was like trying to drag a tree out of the ground. The other one followed slowly in the car, the lights on the roof still flashing red and blue and red and blue.
The bad guys were gone by the time they got to her daddy; Harleen felt her heart break at the sight of him lying on the pavement like a heap of bloody rags. “Help him, help him,” she begged as the other cop stopped the car and ran over. He was shorter and a little younger but he seemed just as solid as his partner. Their expressions were all concerned and worried, the way her mommy’s was when Harleen skinned her knee or bumped her head. But when they saw her daddy’s face, they changed completely.
“Well, if it isn’t good old Slick Nick Quinzel,” said the taller cop as he and his partner lifted her daddy to his feet.
“Be careful, don’t hurt him!” Harleen shouted.
“Pipe down, kid, your old man’s okay,” the taller cop said. “Hey, Nick, you got any idea how many people are looking for you?” He pulled her daddy’s arms behind him.
Thinking the cop was going to hold Daddy so the other cop could punch him, Harleen leaped at him, flailing her fists wildly.
“Take it easy, kid,” the shorter cop said as he pulled her away. “We’re just cuffing him so we can take him in. Nobody’s gonna hurt him.”
“But he’s already hurt! You’re supposed to help people!” Harleen sobbed.
The cops looked at each other, then at her daddy. “Are you hurt, sir?” the taller cop asked in a stiff, formal tone. “Do you require medical attention?”
Daddy spat blood and said, “It’s just a scratch.”
“He says it’s just a scratch,” the taller cop told Harleen.
They put her daddy in the back seat of the squad car and let her sit with him. She held him all the way to the police station. But he couldn’t put his arms around her, and that was scary.
* * *
At the police station, the cops handed her and Daddy over to a couple of detectives. One was older, with dark brown skin and watery eyes large behind the lenses of his black-framed glasses. Here and there in his short, curly black hair were single white ones, like someone had sprinkled little white threads all over his head. He introduced himself as Detective Jack Thibodeau. His partner, Brian Li, was Chinese. He had longer hair tied back in a ponytail and, under other circumstances, Harleen would have had a crush on him. He was kind to her but his face was so serious, she couldn’t help being a little afraid of him.
Neither detective was dressed very well. Their clothes were so rumpled, Mommy would have said they must have slept in them. Maybe they didn’t know about how to dress for an important job, like Harleen’s teacher said you were supposed to, or maybe they just didn’t care. If so, none of the other detectives did, either.
Worse, though, they said her daddy was a bad guy, and that couldn’t possibly be true. A bad guy wouldn’t take her to Coney Island for the day and ride all the rides and play all the games with her. Millie at the diner said her daddy had a big heart—no one would say that about a bad guy. And a bad guy wouldn’t carry her all the way home. Bad guys never did that stuff; they were too busy doing bad things.
The detectives kept calling her daddy a “con man.” Harleen had no idea what that was; she suspected it was something the cops had made up just to be mean. They claimed her daddy was behind a series of robberies and had planned one at a nightclub owned by a rich lady. But then he double-crossed the other bad guys and now everyone was looking for him, bad guys, good guys, any guys. All the guys.
Harleen tried to tell them her daddy couldn’t have done anything wrong because he’d been having fun all day with her at Coney Island. She started to tell them for what seemed like the thousandth time about everything they’d done together. Her daddy was sitting on a chair next to Detective Thibodeau’s desk and he suddenly pulled her onto his lap.
“Let me talk to her,” he said to the detectives and swiveled so they were facing away from them. Harleen wrapped her arms around his neck again, glad he wasn’t handcuffed anymore so he could hug her back. “Honey, these guys are just doing their job,” he said, speaking barely above a whisper. “But they can’t do anything if you keep interrupting.”
“But—” Harleen started.
“But nothing.” Daddy pressed his finger against her lips. “This is going to take a little while so you have to be my good girl and be patient, okay?”
“You want me to call your wife to come get her?” Detective Thibodeau asked.
Daddy turned back to him with Harleen still on his lap and shook his head. “No, Sharon needs her sleep. We’ve got three in diapers at home.” He looked around, then pointed at an empty bench along the nearest wall. “Harleen, how about you sit over there and wait for me?”
She heaved an enormous sigh. “Okay.”
“And maybe the detectives could find someone to sit with you?” Daddy added.
Detective Li took Harleen’s hand and walked her over to the bench. “I know you don’t understand what’s going on,” he said as he sat down next to her.
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “You’re being mean to my daddy.”
“That’s not—” The detective stopped, hesitated. “We don’t want to be mean to your daddy,” he said. “But your daddy has been mean to people. A lot of people.”
“My daddy’s never mean,” Harleen informed him, although she couldn’t help squirming a little because that wasn’t quite true. Sometimes he was mean to Mommy and Mommy was mean right back.
“Your daddy stole money that didn’t belong to him,” Detective Li told her. “He stole jewelry, too, and other very valuable things. Stealing is a very mean thing to do.”
Harleen’s urge to squirm vanished. The detective was trying to make her feel bad toward her daddy and that was wrong. He was her daddy. She looked up at him and she saw that he was waiting for her to agree with him that her daddy was mean. Well, he could wait forever; she’d never say that.
“It’s wrong to steal, isn’t it?” the detective prodded. “It’s wrong and it’s mean, isn’t it? Your daddy was mean to steal, wasn’t he?”
Harleen sat up a little straighter; something she’d overheard her mother say popped into her head. “They can spare it.”
Detective Li’s expression changed from serious to startled. He hadn’t seen that coming, Harleen thought. Without another word, he got up and went back to his partner and her daddy, and she knew he was telling them what she’d said, like it was some great big deal. Detective Thibodeau gave her a sidelong look; maybe he was thinking about handcuffing her, too.
But her daddy only shrugged. “She’s right—they can,” he said and winked at her, a secret wink that made her feel better, but only for a few seconds. The detectives just k
ept at him, asking him the same questions over and over. Harleen wanted to ask them a few questions—like, was this really their job? How did it make them good guys? Daddy still had blood all over his face and his clothes and it was getting later and later and she felt like her eyeballs were coated with sand. And now she had to go to the bathroom.
She probably had to get special permission for that. Maybe they’d want to handcuff her, even though the Ladies’ was really close—she could see it from where she was sitting.
Harleen tried to get someone’s attention but everyone was too busy. Even her daddy was facing away from her, talking to a third detective. Finally, she just couldn’t wait. It was probably a crime to pee your pants in a police station anyway. Nobody tried to stop her as she went into the bathroom, which smelled like it had just been hosed down with double-strength bleach.
Afterward, Harleen started to go back to the bench, then hesitated. No one seemed to have noticed she wasn’t there anymore; they were all too busy. Detectives were bringing in other people in handcuffs and sitting them down next to desks. Once she would have taken it for granted people in handcuffs were bad guys, but now she knew better. Cops made mistakes. But they never owned up to being wrong; they just kept saying they were right until they forced everyone else to say they were right, too.
Harleen looked over at her father and the detectives. How many times would they ask him the same questions? Were they going for a world record?
This wasn’t how the best day ever was supposed to end. Her daddy was supposed to take her home and put her to bed. She’d be so knocked out she’d sleep through the argument he and Mommy would have about his keeping her out so late.
Instead, her daddy got punched out by some bad guys and when she’d brought the police, they’d treated him like he was the bad guy. None of them cared her daddy was hurt. No one had said, That was wrong. They shouldn’t have done that to you.
Everybody said cops were supposed to protect and help people. Harleen saw now that they only helped some people; whoever those people were, she and Daddy weren’t included.
The swinging double doors marked “exit” weren’t locked or even guarded. Cops and detectives were going in and out, sometimes with prisoners. Harleen remembered her daddy saying you could go anywhere you wanted as long as you looked like you knew what you were doing.
I’m supposed to do this, she said silently as she headed for the double doors. I’m right where I should be, I’m official, don’t worry. I’m not the droid you’re looking for.
No one gave her a second look as she went downstairs, out the front entrance, and onto the street. Harleen made herself walk at the same confident, unhurried pace until she was almost a block away from the station house. Then she broke into a run.
Years later, when Harley thought back to that night, she never wondered what had made her go back to Coney Island. She had found out the good guys weren’t really as good as everybody thought and she was still afraid the bad guys would come back, so she’d hidden from all of them in the one place where only good things happened. Surely she would be safe where she’d just had the best day ever. In a perfect world, she would have been.
* * *
Going back to Coney Island really wasn’t a bad idea. It would never have occurred to the cops that she’d go there, not at that hour. The thugs who had tuned up her father wouldn’t have thought to look for her there in a million years. Thinking was not their strong suit. But they were really good at following. They followed Harleen to Coney Island, one of them on the subway, the other in a car, because they were sure she would lead them to where Slick Nick had stashed the haul from the nightclub safe, the payoff they felt was rightfully theirs. It only made sense—now that Slick Nick was busted, he’d want to make sure the stash was safe. Naturally, he would send his daughter. His seven-year-old daughter. At three a.m.
Thinking really wasn’t their long suit. They clearly weren’t parents, either.
But even broken clocks are right twice a day, just as stupid adults have been making kids miserable since the dawn of mankind. Some things never change.
* * *
Harleen knew Coney Island wasn’t going to be all lit up and happy but she hadn’t realized it would be this spooky.
The rides were all shut down and the games were shuttered, except for some, where shutters were stuck halfway, including the one with the milk bottles. Harleen and her daddy hadn’t been able to win anything there.
She was thinking about crawling in and hiding there until morning (she could also check to see if all the bottles were glued to the shelves) when suddenly she heard a man laughing. She’d heard that laugh before. Automatically, she made a break for it, or tried to. Rough hands scooped her up under her armpits and held her off the ground.
“Well, whaddaya know—Slick Nick’s pretty little girl decided to come back to the park when it’s less crowded!” He turned her so she could see his face. “What a coinky-dink—so did we!” It was the shorter guy, the one who’d held her daddy so the tall one could punch him. The tall one was there, too, glowering at her.
“We never got properly introduced,” the guy went on. “I’m Tony, and—” He turned her to face the tall guy. “This is my colleague, who goes by the colorful and highly appropriate moniker, Spike.”
“She doesn’t know what ‘moniker’ means,” Spike growled.
“Do too!” Harleen said as Tony put her down. He kept hold of her shoulder. “Let go!” She put tears in her voice as she tried to twist away from him. “You’re hurting me!”
“No, he’s not,” Spike said, still glowering.
“No, I’m not,” Tony agreed. “See, Spike here is what you might call a pain expert. He’d know if I was hurting you, and if he says I’m not, I’m not. But if you keep trying to get away from me, I’ll have to. Like so.” He tightened his grip on her shoulder, digging his fingers in hard.
“Ow!” This time, the tears in Harleen’s voice weren’t fake.
“Now I know Spike would say that hurts.” Tony loosened his grip very slightly so it was uncomfortable rather than painful. “You see the diff, doncha? Thought so. You seem like a pretty bright little kid.” He laughed a little. “Hey, it’s too bad we don’t have one of those kiddie-leashes, so we could hook you up like a dog. Any time you tried to get away, I could reel you in. But we don’t, so you’re gonna haveta hold still while we wait for the boss.”
Spike let out a long, exasperated breath.
“What?” Tony said, sounding a little defensive.
“You never shut up, do you,” Spike said.
“Aw, don’t be like that,” Tony said soothingly. “You’ll scare little what’s-her-name. Say, what is your name?” he added to Harleen.
“Why do you care?” Spike said, even more exasperated.
“It’s good manners,” Tony said reasonably. “And I go for the personal touch.”
“Oh, yeah, me too,” Harleen piped up suddenly, imitating Millie’s sassy Brooklyn accent. “The poisonal touch is so impawtant.”
Both men stared at her in surprise. “Whadja say?” Tony asked her. His grip on her shoulder loosened a bit but Harleen didn’t try to get away—yet.
“Yeah, ever since I started workin’ my new job down on Toidy-Toid an’ Toid, I been goin’ for the poisonal touch,” Harleen went on, pretending to chew gum. “People really appreciate that, ya know? Sure ya do!” She gave Tony an affectionate sock on his belly. “You got class, I knew the minute I saw ya. I says to my friend, Mabel, I says, ‘Mabel, I’m just lookin’ for a guy with class. He don’t haveta be rich or handsome, he’s just gotta be classy!’”
Tony laughed heartily and slapped his thigh with his free hand. His grip on her shoulder loosened a little more, just as Harleen hoped. Spike was a big sourpuss but he wasn’t the one holding onto her. She had to get Tony laughing hard enough to put him off-guard.
“So you think I got class?” Tony said a bit breathlessly. “The feelin’ is mutual. You’re a
classy kid.”
“I’m glad it shows. I went to chahm school you know,” Harleen went on, remembering a routine from TV. “They removed all my ahs. You know—Q, Ah, S, T? Now I drive a cah. It’s just like a car except it costs more to fix. But I’m woith it!”
Tony was laughing even harder, and he was leaning on Harleen’s shoulder more than actually holding it now. Spike looked like he wanted to slap her. If she could shift around so that when she pulled away from Tony he would lose his balance and fall into Spike—
“Thank God,” Spike said suddenly, looking past her and Tony.
Harleen followed his gaze. At first, she could only make out a bulky shadow coming toward them. Then the shadow became a broad-shouldered man with thick arms and legs. Even his fingers were thick; Harleen caught a gold glint from a pinky ring. He walked with his head up and his chest out—like a man who expected trouble and didn’t like to be kept waiting, her mother would have said.
She knew who he was; she had seen Bruno Delvecchio on the news and in the papers. Daddy said he was the boss of bad guys and everyone was so afraid of him, they did whatever he told them to.
Tony’s grip on her shoulder tightened again as he straightened up. He stopped laughing and wiped his eyes with the back of his free hand. “Oh, hi, boss. How ya doin’?”
“What’s so funny?” Delvecchio snapped. When a teacher asked this question at school, there was no good answer. Harleen knew this was the same thing.
“It’s the kid here,” Tony said cheerfully. “You shoulda heard her just now—”
“I don’t want to hear her,” the boss replied with even more of a bite. “I want to hear you’re taking care of business.”
Delvecchio was taller than either Tony or Spike, and Harleen could tell he didn’t just look down at someone, he looked down on them. His suit was like the ones she’d seen in the window of the tailor shop she passed on her way to and from school—handmade and very expensive. Daddy had told her the only people who could afford suits like that were connected. He would have looked classy, except his tacky pinky ring ruined the effect.