Threshold

by G. M. Ford

  You fell in a manhole and broke both legs, that woman would find some reason why it was all for the best, or how it had been God’s will, or was something you’d been needing for ages anyway. Didn’t matter. If it happened, she had a homespun homily on hand.

  For Mickey, the question had always been whether or not she really meant it. Like . . . was it possible to actually have such a rosy outlook and not be an idiot, or did she just make up that shit as a means of getting through the night, so to speak. She’d been dead for a decade, and Mickey still hadn’t figured it out.

  Maybe getting suspended and, in all probability, fired would turn out to be a good thing. He had, after all, been locked in the throes of self-doubt lately. Since his split with Jen, he’d taken to wondering who he was, and how he’d gotten to this place in life, without consciously willing it so. How it had all just seemed preordained. Like he’d just been along for the ride, and wasn’t necessarily the manly self-willed guy he liked to think he was.

  On the way home, he’d stopped at the liquor store and picked up another bottle of whiskey. Thought he might need a spare. Good thing, too, because, for some reason, as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t seem to get hammered tonight. No matter how much whiskey he poured down his throat, seemed like nothing happened. He was still working at it when the doorbell rang.

  He craned his neck and squinted into the kitchen. The clock on the stove read ten after four. Last Mickey could recall, it had been a little after 9:00 p.m. Amazing how time passes when you’re having fun. He set his glass on the side table, grabbed the arm of the sofa, and attempted to push himself to his feet.

  Turned out to be harder than he’d imagined. Maybe he was having more luck with his getting-shitfaced project than he’d figured.

  Careful now, he pushed himself upright and tottered over to the front door, like a man walking on a tightrope. He twisted the deadbolt and eased it open. A woman. Vaguely familiar. He stuck his head outside and surveyed the surrounding area. Nobody else in sight. Just the woman.

  “I’m Joanna Bloom,” she said. “I think we need to talk.”

  Mickey kept one hand locked to the doorframe, maintaining his balance. She was older than she looked on TV. And shorter too. Both of which, for some reason, made Mickey happy.

  He leaned his back against the door. “Come in,” he said.

  She brushed past him and strode into the living room like she owned the joint. Mickey hustled over and pulled his laundry from the wing chair, dropping the disheveled pile onto the floor beside the chair. “Have a seat,” he said.

  She stepped over and perched herself on the edge of the chair.

  “Can I get you a drink?” Mickey inquired.

  “What have you got?” she asked.

  “Bushmills or Bushmills and water.”

  “I’ll take it neat,” she said.

  Mickey found a semi-clean glass and poured her more whiskey than he figured she could drink. He grabbed a couple of coasters off the kitchen counter and made his way back into the living room. She looked about as comfortable as . . . as . . . try as he might, he couldn’t come up with a decent metaphor . . . or was that a simile? So he put the drink on the table beside her and repaired to his spot on the couch.

  He raised his glass. She followed suit. “Salute,” he said.

  “Salute.”

  He watched as she took a serious pull and then set the glass back onto the coaster.

  “They’ve been arrested,” she said.

  “Who they?”

  “Jennifer, Teresa, the Royster family . . . all of them.”

  Took his numbed brain a few seconds to process the information.

  “How’d that happen?” he asked.

  She took another pull on the Bushmills. Shrugged. “I guess they figured it out,” she said. “The cabin appears on our income tax forms . . . probably on yours too, so I’m guessing it wasn’t rocket science.”

  “Shit,” Mickey said. “I figured the cabin was good for a couple of days.”

  “From what I’m told, the State Police had the Forest Service do a flyover on the homestead late yesterday. They saw smoke coming out of the chimney. Troopers took them into custody a little after midnight.”

  “Where are they now?”

  “State Police barracks in Garden County.”

  Mickey took a hit of his drink. “Charged with what?”

  “That’s where we got lucky,” she said. “Teresa’s an attorney for the Women’s Legal Coalition. She was smart enough to know that, other than Mrs. Royster, nobody was technically guilty of anything illegal, so whenever the first Garden County judge shows up in the morning, Jennifer and Teresa and your friend . . .”

  “Grace.”

  “They’ll be free to go.”

  “And the Roysters?”

  “Mrs. Royster is facing a number of serious charges. What they’re going to do with her I don’t know. The girls will end up with Family Protective Services until they get everything sorted out. As I understand it, once they get them transported back here, there’ll be a formal hearing in Family Court, after which the girls will be returned to their custodial parent.”

  “Who just happens to be a child-molesting son-of-a-bitch of the first order.”

  She finished her whiskey. “We’re doing everything possible,” she said.

  Mickey took another sip. “Cassie Royster’s not going to fare well in the county lockup. They need to get her out of there as quick as they can.”

  “Teresa’s not very hopeful about that,” she said. “Mrs. Royster has been held in contempt of court. From my experience, they can keep you inside for just about as long as they want on that particular charge.”

  Mickey nodded. Out in the street, somebody’s car alarm started going off. Things were like urban crickets these days. They could honk for a month and nobody would pay a damn bit of attention.

  “How you doing?” Joanna Bloom asked.

  “Relative to what?” Mickey said.

  “My little courthouse birdie tells me you’ve been suspended.”

  “Yep.”

  “For refusing to tell them where to find the Royster family.”

  “Among other things.”

  “It was the right thing to do.”

  He met her eyes for the first time. She had eyes that looked like they’d had a lot of practice telling people things they didn’t want to hear.

  The car alarm stopped.

  “What with everybody being in custody,” Mickey said, “seems like maybe it wasn’t the best idea I ever came up with.”

  “The right thing’s the right thing,” she said. “No matter what happens.”

  “Seems a bit ironic, don’t you think?” Mickey said.

  “What?”

  “You and I sitting here in the middle of the night, drinking whiskey and bandying back and forth about doing the right thing.”

  “Strange bedfellows,” she said.

  Mickey smirked. “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

  “I didn’t mean it that way,” she said.

  Mickey took a pull of the Bushmills. He wanted to say something adult sounding and non-judgmental, but “I did” fell out of his mouth instead.

  She leaned forward in the chair, elbows on knees. “Does that bother you?”

  “Does what bother me?”

  “The thought of Jennifer and me in bed together.”

  Mickey shrugged. “Only when I think about it.”

  “Because I’m a woman?”

  “Because you’re not me.”

  She sat back in the chair for the first time, folded her arms across her chest.

  “Life’s complicated,” she said.

  “Feels like I lost,” Mickey drunkenly blurted.

  “Jennifer?”

  He shook his he
ad. “The game. Feels like I lost the game.”

  “Is that how you see it? As a game?”

  Mickey thought it over. “Not while it was going on,” he said. “But once it was over, I felt like that. Like . . .” He stopped himself. “Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “I wasn’t any happier than she was. The relationship wasn’t working worth a damn for either of us. But I kept hanging in there, trying to make it work, because I didn’t want to lose,” he said. “Didn’t want to feel like I’d failed at something.”

  “Some things just aren’t meant to be.”

  “You sound like my mother.”

  The car alarm recycled and began to bleat again.

  “Could I ask you something?” Mickey asked. “Something personal.”

  “Seems like we crossed into personal territory a while back.”

  “When did you know . . .” Mickey went searching for a phrase and couldn’t find it.

  Joanna took pity on him. “I was a lesbian?”

  “Yeah,” Mickey said.

  “I always knew,” she said. “Even before I knew what a lesbian was.”

  “How’d you know?”

  She shrugged. “Something just wasn’t right,” she said. “I never wanted what other girls my age wanted. I wanted to be up in the tree, not on the ground watching. I wanted what the boys had.” She leaned forward. “I remember when I was about ten, my mother bought me this set of mystery books. The same ones she’d read as a girl. Nancy Drew.” She smiled at the memory. “While I was reading them, I came across an ad in the back of the book for the Hardy Boys books. I think they had the same publishing company. They were sort of the boys’ equivalent of Nancy Drew, and I was completely captivated by them.” She spread her hands in an expansive gesture. “They had so much better toys than Nancy Drew did. Cars and boats and motorcycles. All Nancy had was her little roadster.”

  The car alarm stopped again. Silence filled the room.

  Joanna stood up. “I’ve got to be to work by ten,” she said. “Thanks for the drink.”

  Mickey tottered across the room and opened the door for her.

  “Thanks for sharing,” Mickey said.

  She stopped in the doorway and searched his eyes for sarcasm. Not finding any, she patted him on the arm. “Hang in there,” was the last thing she said.

  Mickey stood in the doorway and watched Joanna Bloom fade into the darkness, about three streetlights up. For reasons he couldn’t explain, he felt as if his pockets had suddenly been emptied. Like he’d been walking around with his pants full of nickels and had suddenly been relieved of the burden.

  The car alarm began to blare.

  Mickey closed the door.

  The official title was Civilian Review Panel, probably because Several Retired Cops and a Bunch of Guys Who Belonged to the Rotary Club was too long to fit on letterhead.

  Mickey’s two PBA-provided lawyers were hunkered down at the far end of the table shuffling papers and whispering to one another. Norman Beal was a local civil attorney who the union hired on a piecemeal basis. Budget-friendly, but competent. Fifty-something. One of those guys who lose all their hair except for a thick patch right up front where you don’t want it.

  Paul Dobbins was a full-time union lawyer. Spent most of his time doing routine administrative work for the PBA. Hadn’t been in a regular courtroom since the Eisenhower administration, but was known to be a feisty little union man where a member’s rights were concerned.

  They’d spent an unpleasant half an hour out in the hall before the proceedings began, going over who did what to whom and why. According to Beal and Dobbins, this morning’s proceedings were just a dog and pony show. They made no bones about it. Mickey was hosed. The best they could hope for was a general discharge from the department and a partial pension.

  Once the proceedings got underway, things went straight to hell in a hurry. First person they wanted to talk to was Chief of Detectives Marcus T. Nilsson, who was also wearing his dress blues, almost like he and Thomson wanted to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the idiot over there in the gray suit.

  They took Nilsson through all the name, rank, and serial number stuff and then got down to the nitty-gritty. “It is my understanding that Sergeant Dolan was assigned directly to you, Chief. Is that so?”

  If there was any good news, it was that, like most cops, Nilsson wasn’t fond of lawyers. While the cop end of the business was pretty much good versus evil, the lawyer end lived and died for the intermediate shades of gray. Drove cops nuts.

  “Yes,” was all Nilsson said.

  “Is that standard procedure?”

  “Is what standard procedure?” the Chief asked.

  “For you to take a direct hand in investigations.”

  “No. It’s not.”

  “Why so in this case?”

  “Sergeant Dolan was coming back from a personal leave of absence. He hadn’t been reassigned yet and I needed an experienced man to conduct an investigation.”

  “What investigation was that?”

  Nilsson recounted the story of Family Court and the missing Royster kids.

  “That’s a civil matter, is it not?” the guy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Does your department generally concern itself with civil matters?”

  “Not as a rule.”

  “Why so in this case?”

  Nilsson told him how, despite repeated efforts, when the normal investigatory channels had failed to turn up the Royster family, he had been asked to see what he could do. No names. All very passive voice and vague.

  “And that was Sergeant Dolan’s assignment. To locate the Royster family for the purpose of turning them over to the proper civil authorities?”

  Nilsson threw an angry glance in Mickey’s direction. “Yes.”

  “To your knowledge . . . did he find them?”

  “Yes.”

  The DA’s man approached the front of the room. “Mr. Chairman . . . at this time we’d like to screen a piece of closed-circuit video.”

  Dolan’s PBA attorneys objected most strenuously, citing the lack of authentication and such. The panel listened patiently to their legal lamentations and then told them to sit down.

  The room darkened, the camera blinked and there was Mickey Dolan, stuffing Grace and the Royster family into his unmarked cruiser and driving off into the sunset.

  “Did Sergeant Dolan subsequently turn them in to civil authorities?”

  “No. He did not.”

  “And why was that?”

  “You’d have to ask him,” Nilsson said.

  So they did. Nilsson was excused and suddenly it was Mickey Dolan’s turn in the barrel. “Was that you in the video we just watched, Sergeant Dolan?” the DA asked.

  “Yes,” Mickey said.

  “And that was the family you were assigned to locate and then deliver to Family Court authorities?”

  “Yes, it was.”

  “And did you do so?”

  “I found them.”

  “But you did not deliver them.”

  “No.”

  “And why was that?”

  “I didn’t think it was in the best interest of the children.”

  And that’s where Mr. Rock met Mr. Hard Place. Where Mickey was either going to heed the advice of his PBA attorneys and shut his trap, or where the Royster-as-child-molester discussion began, a move which, his lawyers assured him, would prove to be a personal and financial disaster of truly life-altering proportions.

  The DA must have been clued in too. He didn’t want any part of it either. Instead of asking the obvious question—you know, why Mickey didn’t think it was in the best interests of the children to do his sworn duty and turn them over to the proper authorities—the DA’s man started flipping through his notes, looking fo
r another line of inquiry. Something that led somewhere, anywhere else.

  Problem was, Mickey didn’t have the charade in him. Whatever it was going to take to sit there and listen to this guy serpentine his way to the obvious . . . Mickey just didn’t have it this morning.

  So he interrupted. “Stop,” he said. Looked over at the panel. They looked back. “The decision to stash the family was mine. I was fully aware that I was not in compliance with the orders given to me by my supervisor, or my legal responsibilities as an officer of the court. I willfully chose to disregard those responsibilities. At the time, I saw it as an act of conscience.”

  “And now?” the DA prodded.

  Mickey felt like laughing. Or maybe crying. He wasn’t sure which. “Now I see it as a futile act of conscience,” he said.

  Mercifully, it was all downhill from there. Several panel members rose from their seats and huddled around the chairman, forming a tight, muttering knot of furrowed brows and pointing fingers. After about five minutes of discussion, everybody returned to their seats. The Chairman announced that they’d reached a decision. Drum roll.

  Fixing Mickey Dolan with his most baleful stare, he announced that the panel had unanimously agreed that Sergeant Michael Dolan should be permanently removed from duty, and any and all appeals regarding the specifics of his dismissal would be heard next Thursday at 10:00 a.m. End o’ story.

  Took about two minutes of hushed voices and sliding shoes for the room to completely empty. Next thing Mickey knew, only he and a bailiff at the back of the room were still sharing the oxygen. Mickey took a couple of deep breaths, trying to calm himself.

  “Sergeant,” the guy said.

  Mickey looked his way. “Lots of reporters out there,” the bailiff said, nodding his head toward the big, oak double doors at the back of the room. He reached behind himself and opened a smaller painted door. “Probably best you go out this way,” he said. “Leads down to the parking lot.”

  Mickey nodded his thanks. The guy patted him on the shoulder on the way by.

  You can fool some of the people some of the time, but with Natalie Mendonhal, it was a bit harder. Mickey could make her out from fifty yards away. Only one smart enough to know he wasn’t going anywhere without his car. She’d parked her orange VW with the Secrets license plates directly behind Dolan’s ride, and was leaning against the driver’s door, waiting for Mickey to put in a guest appearance.