Hawk rolled out of bed and made his way to the shower with his eyes closed. It was 4:00 a.m. Even if he opened his eyes it would still be dark.
On the long drive in to work he put the radio on low and thought about the day ahead. He and Nick were going to hit Teresa Mackey’s place early again in the hopes her son Chris was hiding out there. It was Hawk’s practice – and it usually proved successful – to start knocking on doors in the very early morning hours, when people were most likely still sleeping and off their guard, even though that meant he got only a few hours of sleep himself. Actually, Hawk couldn’t remember a night where he’d gotten enough sleep. Often it was only four or five hours; never more than six.
Even on his days off, Hawk couldn’t sleep longer. At times, he slept so little he wondered how he didn’t fall asleep on the hour-and-a-half long drive to and from work. Yet, for all that, he had never taken a sick day, he racked up five hundred hours of overtime each year without even trying and after every week-long vacation he was forced to take twice a year, he was chomping at the bit to get back to work.
The truth was, the job was his life, and despite the growing tension and discord at home, Hawk expressed no desire or intention to resist its all-consuming hold upon him. Naturally, there were aspects of it he didn’t like: the mindless bureaucracy, the arbitrary rules he broke without remorse, the tedium of filling out all the paperwork in triplicate, the frustration of constantly having to pick up the slack of lazy, incompetent colleagues. But the work itself was thrilling and more addictive than any drug his perps could smoke, inject, inhale or ingest. He loved investigating all kinds of cases: homicides, robberies, shootings, stabbings, rapes, home invasions, grand larcenies, kidnappings, missings, suicides. He got a huge adrenalin rush scouring crime scenes for clues, interviewing witnesses, discovering the “break”, tracking down and apprehending defendants, getting them to talk. The only cases he truly detested were domestic violence. Hawk had his own reasons, but really, everybody hated them. Playing mediator to a violent, co-dependent couple always turned out to be either a colossal waste of time because ninety-five percent of the victims of domestic abuse changed their minds about pressing charges, or exceedingly dangerous when either or both, or sometimes the whole household turned suddenly on the cops. It got so it became impossible to tell who was the aggressor, who the victim, and it was hard to dredge up compassion when they dragged everyone else into their cycle of violence, especially the kids. But other than that, the job was better than a seventh playoff game of NBA basketball.
Hawk didn’t even mind the part so many detectives hated and ardently resisted: going to court. He got along well with the assistant district attorneys and actually enjoyed hanging out in their offices waiting to testify in the Grand Jury or at trial. Most cops distrusted attorneys and it was commonplace to hear veterans warn rookies against mistaking the ADAs for friends or allies in law enforcement. But Hawk felt differently. He saw the district attorneys as part of his team, committed to building the case after his initial investigative work was done, making sure the perp he arrested and took off the street got convicted and stayed off the street. He knew they felt the same way about him, and he was rather proud of his popularity among the ADAs. Whenever he poked his head into their offices to say hello, they always invited him in, included him in their conversations. They talked shop in a cerebral, thought-provoking way that cops never did, perhaps couldn’t do. He loved it.
While in college, Hawk had briefly considered going to law school. His mother had encouraged the idea, but he hadn’t pursued it once he was accepted into the police academy. He had no regrets about that, but a certain intelligence factor was missing from his daily life and he sometimes felt as if he had become dull and stupid for the company he kept.
*****
By the time Patrick Callahan got to the precinct a little after 8:30 a.m., Hawk and Nick had already come and gone from Chris Mackey’s mother’s house with no success. Nick was still chuckling over how mad Teresa Mackey had been when she saw that it was Hawk again at the door. She had let loose such a foul stream of curses even Nick was astonished. She was sixty-five, after all. He expected an elderly woman to be more, well, decorous; certainly not as vulgar as the younger generations of harsh, irreverent gangsters and degenerates. However, Hawk was pleased, because during her sleep-deprived tirade, Teresa had given them an important clue to finding her son. Hawk immediately raced back to the station house and had been pecking earnestly at the computer ever since, waiting impatiently for Patrick to come in.
Callahan made his typical dramatic, excuse-filled entrance, but Hawk, hyped up and ready to go, refrained from voicing a well-deserved, sarcastic comment about Patrick being so old and slow he couldn’t be expected to show up to work on time. The minute Patrick signed in, Hawk called to him and Nick that it was time to move.
“Where’re we going?” Nick asked, grabbing the keys to one of the squad cars.
“Road trip,” Hawk grinned, raising his eyebrows meaningfully while giving an almost imperceptible jerk of his head in Patrick’s direction.
Nick understood well enough not to ask anything further until they were in the car. No one on the squad was lazier than Patrick – except maybe Laverne, and, well, Mike, if he could be considered “on” the squad. It was universally known that if Callahan could find a way to get out of going into the field, even just to pick up an apprehended perp, he would.
True to form, Patrick already had a pretext for begging off. “I hope it’s not far, boys. I gotta leave early today. The kid’s got a thing at school.”
That was the wrong thing to say. Hawk gritted his teeth in anger. Every cop on the force had had to miss countless milestones in his family’s lives: birthdays, little league, a school play. But it was an unwritten rule that you never used your kids as a reason for not responding to a job. If you absolutely needed the day for something like that, you switched your tour or took the day without pay and made it up to your partners another day.
Patrick’s hubris was just part of what Hawk found so insulting. He was also unabashedly selfish, inconsiderate, and his misplaced sense of entitlement and superiority violated the most basic rules of partnership. No one wanted to work with him, least of all his assigned partner, Gerard, and the detectives all privately counted the days until he retired. In the squad’s eyes, Patrick was dead, stinking weight.
Only when they were about thirty minutes out of the City and too far to turn back, did Hawk called the precinct to tell the sergeant they were on their way to Albany to pick up Chris Mackey. Patrick was furious. He thought about ordering Nick to pull over and drop him off, but he knew it would make him look like a pansy, and Patrick was an old, macho dog who had a lot to prove. Instead, he barked at Nick to go faster any time he dropped below ninety miles per hour, as he fumed in the back seat, despising these young, arrogant show-offs who refused to toe the line like they should or show their superiors proper respect.
He particularly disliked Hawk, whose ambition to make the next grade was so transparent, and whose workaholic habits made the rest of them look bad in the eyes of the captain and the chief. Patrick would have been doubly incensed if he could have seen Hawk’s satisfied smile as he looked out the window at the gray and green smear of the Empire State streaking past. He was in a good mood.
“What?” Nick asked, glancing over at his partner grinning like a jackal.
“That was funny, this morning.”
Nick laughed. He knew Patrick was mad but, with the typical middle child, peace-maker mentality, Nick tried to defuse the tension by including him in the conversation. Looking in the rear view mirror at Patrick, Nick said, “So, you know how we’ve been looking for Shaquana Howard for the past few months, right?”
Patrick didn’t answer, but Nick could tell he was listening because the muscle in his jaw pulsed. Clapping his hand on Hawk’s shoulder, Nick continued.
“So, this crazy sonofabitch goes into the Whitfield houses this morning with about a hundred ‘wanted’ posters to replace the ones he already put up everywhere that got torn down two minutes after he left ‘em. So, me and Bobby are, like, ‘What’s the goddamned point?’ Right? I mean, they’re tearing ‘em down faster than he can stick ‘em up. So, like usual, he says he’s got an idea. So, we go there, and next thing you know, he’s jumping up, like seven, eight feet, sticking those things practically on the ceiling, too high up for normal people to reach. But he’s not satisfied with that, so then we’re on the roof and he says, ‘Hold my feet,’ and next thing, he’s leaning over the edge of the roof, shimmying down the wall, plastering flyers like wallpaper on the side of the building while I’m holding his legs and laughing my ass off. And people are coming out to look at Evel Knievel over here, and I swear, I nearly dropped him over the side of that building.”
“Bet they’re still there, though,” Hawk said, grinning.
“Yeah, well maybe you’ll catch her trying to tear ‘em down.”
“Yeah, or maybe someone else will see the poster now, before she has a chance to tear ‘em all down. “
“Yeah, but it’ll have to be someone tall. Like maybe your C.I. from the Delarose case. Isn’t he, like, seven feet tall?”
“Yeah, but that guy moved to Georgia last year. He was a great informant though. Remember the time…”
The rest of the drive to Albany was a trip down memory lane as Hawk and Nick recalled the more comical arrests and mishaps they had had together on the job. Patrick alternately dozed and sulked in the back seat.
As they entered the city, Hawk called ahead to the local precinct, asking the officers to meet him at the address he’d found for Chris Mackey’s sister. Just before slamming the door in his face this morning, Teresa Mackey had unwittingly given him the precious nugget of information that led him here. Y’all done chased my whole family outa this city, my daughter, my granbaby, now my boy Chris. Denise, she a nurse in a big hospital, you know, doin’ good, helpin’ people, which is more ‘n I can say for you. Y’all done made it so I gotta travel up there, more ‘n two and a half hours on the Amtrak, jes’ to see my grandson. I know what y’all doin’, y’all tryin’ to chase me on up there, too, with all this comin’ ‘round y’all doin’, but no matter how y’alls keep harassin’ me, I ain’t goin’. You hear me Hawk, I ain’t leavin’.
It was a small matter after that, finding an address for Denise Mackey Woods, registered nurse, in downtown Albany.
They found the duplex and parked across the street just as the local police pulled up in their vehicle. As Hawk got out of the car, he was assailed by a shock of cold wind which had the effect of a surprise slap after the warmth of the car. Patrick woke up, cross of course, and got out of the car, stretching like a beat up old tomcat with a crick in its spine. Hawk noticed how tightly Patrick’s shirt pulled across his belly, which, after twenty-six years on the force, had become soft and fleshy. Nothing repulsed Hawk more than a slovenly police officer and he swore to himself, not for the first time, that he would never allow his body to look like that.
In fact, there was little chance of Hawk becoming flabby any time this decade. He was as slim as he had always been, including during his years playing hockey, lacrosse, and basketball. But secretly, Hawk was unhappy with his lack of definition. His chest and stomach used to be visibly muscled. He had even been asked to model back when he was playing ball in college. He’d cooperated as far as posing for photographs, some even bare-chested, but he felt embarrassed by all the attention and found the whole process boring and ridiculous.
In essence, with all things outside of police work, Hawk was shy. He could never get used to being looked at. His shield was literal; he felt naked without it. From a very young age Hawk knew he wanted to be a New York City cop, and that’s what he was. His mother had insisted upon his going to college, and he was glad now that he had, though he hadn’t fully realized its importance back then. He went because he’d always tried to accommodate his mother’s wishes as long as they didn’t infringe upon or directly contradict his own. His acute sensitivity and sense of responsibility toward her had undoubtedly arisen out of the death of his father, though he had been a good boy, if somewhat mischievous, before that. His mother, too, made efforts to be reasonable in her requests, careful not to impose too many constraints upon him. She was grateful to have such a good son and thanked God he’d turned into a good man who was very like his father: kind, not too selfish, protective of those he loved, deeply committed to justice. Those traits and values had existed in her boy always, before his father was killed. All she had to do was keep him warm and fed, secure in his home. That had been hard enough, but she had managed to keep him alive until he was mature enough to take responsibility for his own life.
Despite his mother’s aspirations for him, Hawk never seriously entertained law. The minute he finished undergrad, he signed up for the NYPD. It suited him then and it suited him still. When he had mentioned to one of the ADAs that he was due to retire in five or six years, she joked that that could never happen for it was completely evident he had no other interests. Hawk had smiled at that, but privately, he contemplated his options. If pressed for an answer, he thought he might like to teach. He’d taken a police- science course in high school and had enjoyed it. He thought he could do that.
But these and other thoughts of change made him anxious. There was enough to keep him occupied and interested in the present; he preferred not to think about the unknowable future.
Hawk strolled down the block perusing the buildings and their scrawny, frozen, fenced-in side yards, ignoring Nick and Patrick who stood conspicuously on the sidewalk in front of the house, talking to the local police. When he’d seen enough, Hawk caught Nick’s eye and rolled his own toward the house.
“The back?”
“Nowhere to go from there. But maybe that door,” Hawk answered, pointing to the left side of the house, to a door that led to the basement.
“Okay. Got it,” Nick replied as he moved, casually, closer to the house.
Hawk climbed the steps to the front door, watching the shaded front windows as he ascended. He knocked. He saw a slight movement from behind the curtain at the window and called out, “Police! Open up.” Naturally, no one answered. Hawk tried the knob. It was locked.
Patrick called out, “Not without a warrant, you don’t!”
Hawk turned toward the local cops. “You saying I need a warrant?” As they hesitated, Hawk added, “because I think there may be a hostage situation in there.”
“Get a warrant,” ordered Patrick. Hawk looked at him coldly for a long moment. He glanced at Nick’s worried face – Nick tended to defer to Patrick’s experience, though Hawk felt such deference was utterly undeserved – and shifted his gaze to the two local cops.
“There’s someone in there. Could be a fugitive. I’m opening the door.”
The two police officers came immediately up the stairs. Hawk turned to the door, calling out, “Police, open up. If you don’t, we’re going to break down the door.”
The door opened instantly. Hawk saw a tall, skinny boy, approximately 15-years old, standing barefoot in jeans and a sleeveless undershirt.
“You alright?” Hawk asked him.
“Yeah.”
“Who’s here with you?”
“Huh?” The boy looked nervous.
“Who else is in the house?”
“No one.”
“No one?”
“Nuh uh.”
“So who was that who just looked out from behind the curtain?”
“Oh, that was me.”
“Oh yeah? You changed your shirt that fast, huh?” It was more a guess than a certainty. Hawk hadn’t really seen the color of the shirt of the person behind the curtain, but he didn’t think it was white.
“Oh, yeah, I, uh, took off my sweatshirt when I came to answer the door.”
“You took off your sweatshirt to open the door?”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah, okay. Where’s Chris?”
“Who?”
“You know who I’m talking about. What, is he your brother?”
“No, he’s not my brother.”
Score. From the cop’s expression, the boy realized he’d given something away. He didn’t want to get caught lying, so he added cautiously, “He’s my uncle.”
Suddenly, Hawk felt sorry for this kid. His depraved, fugitive uncle was hiding out somewhere in the apartment and that bastard had no compunction about sending his young nephew out to get rid of the police. There were all kinds of hostages, he thought.
“Where’s your mother?”
“At work.”
“We want to talk to her. Can we come in?”
“Well, she’s not home.”
“Maybe you can call her. How come you’re not in school today?”
“Uh, I’m sick.”
“Okay. Well, call your mother. We can check up on that with her.” Another guess.
“Um, she doesn’t like me to call her at work unless it’s an emergency.”
“Kid, you got five cops standing here outside your door. I’d say that’s an emergency.” He hated to do it. He hated the scared, powerless look that crossed the kid’s face.
“Um, okay. You can come in.”
“Thanks,” said Hawk as he gently, but firmly, pushed his way past the door before the kid changed his mind. The local officers followed him in and started searching the apartment. Patrick and Nick remained outside. Nick drew his gun and guarded the possible escape route.
Hawk casually glanced around the living room. The kid stood there, looking nervous and frightened, his hands shoved into his pants pockets.
“What’ve you got?” Hawk attempted to ease the boy’s anxiety.
“Huh?”
“What’s the matter with you? What are you sick from?”
“Oh. A stomach ache.”
“Sit down if you want.” The boy sat. “Who do you live with?”
“My mom.”
“What grade are you in?”
“Ninth.”
“How’re you doing in school?”
“Okay.”
“Play basketball?”
“Yeah.”
“Position?”
“Guard.”
“I played shooting guard in college.”
The boy glanced up. Hawk saw that he was a bit calmer now. He seemed like a nice enough kid.
“You any good?” he asked.
“Good enough.” A tiny note of pride crept into the boy’s voice.
“Good enough for what? You planning on going to college?”
“Could do.”
“Well, you better not go down your uncle Chris’ road, then.”
Very quietly, the boy asked, “What’d he do?”
“Stabbed somebody.” Hawk didn’t elaborate. What purpose would it serve to tell this kid that his uncle Chris had stabbed a fifty-three year old store owner twelve times in the torso with a screwdriver for refusing to let him pay for a soda with a stolen credit card?
“Oh.” It was so soft, it was nearly a whisper.
The cops came into the living room after searching the bedrooms, shaking their heads. “He’s not here.”
The boy looked up, directly at Hawk. There was an unmistakable, conflicted look in his eyes that Hawk had seen before. The boy wanted to tell him something, but was bound to keep his secret. They were not three feet apart from each other, yet it was as if they stood on opposite sides of a vast, unbridgeable chasm.
After their pronouncement that the place was clean, the cops headed toward the entrance. Hawk called out for them to wait a minute. He moved quickly down the hallway, glancing into the open bedrooms the officers had just searched. To his right was the kitchen. Hawk turned on the light and went in. He stood still for a moment. The only sound was a wall clock ticking over a small round breakfast table. Something was wrong. It took no longer than a second for him to notice that the refrigerator was not flush against the wall, but protruded too far into the room. Hawk walked over to the fridge and leaned against it hard, pushing it back toward the wall.
“Ow.”
Instantly, Hawk was pulling the refrigerator away from the wall with both hands, turning it sideways so he could look behind. Chris Mackey peered up from where he’d been crouching. He was covered in gray dust.
“Hawk?”
Hawk grinned with satisfaction as he moved aside so Chris could stand up and step out from behind the fridge.
“You came all this way for me?” Chris looked over his shoulder as he turned his back and put his wrists together behind him so Hawk could cuff him. “You sure take your job serious.” He seemed proud to have earned such attention from the NYPD.
Hawk shrugged. “What’re you gonna do?”
Chris walked ahead of him to the front door. The boy stood in the living room, silently watching them go. Hawk said nothing, but he shook his head slightly behind Chris, as if to assure the boy that he would not implicate him in any of this. An intense flash of emotion – rage? shame? hatred? – shone in the kid’s black eyes and then was gone. Hawk closed the door behind him.
On the way back from Albany, Hawk sat in the back with Mackey while Nick drove and Patrick brooded, staring unseeingly out of the front passenger window, now and then urging Nick to drive faster. Nick was happy to comply, merrily speeding on the highway, singing along with the radio. His euphoric mood was partly relief: being partnered with a guy like Hawk was like living on the edge, of Niagara fucking Falls. He played by his own rules, taking risks that worried Nick although he’d never admit it. Nick was careful not to show his doubt or do anything to undermine their relationship, which was so much more than a friendship, or a professional partnership. However, Hawk’s methods sometimes left him anxious and shaken. In the past ten years, Nick had been called up twice for possible misconduct, and though he’d been exonerated both times, he knew he had to be careful. He couldn’t tell his wife about it, even a whitewashed version, because she would be frightened he would lose his job. Besides, she loved Hawk. Sometimes he thought she showed it a bit too much, but women always acted weird around Hawk. Nick knew nothing would ever happen between them – Hawk was his partner, his best friend, his brother in arms. Their lives depended on their absolute, mutual trust.
Patrick was preoccupied, as always, with his immediate wants and needs. He was unimpressed by yet another example of Hawk’s unorthodox methods and waste of resources in apprehending a suspect who would eventually have returned to the City on his own. As far as he was concerned, this new generation of detectives had no respect for the position or power he had attained, and frankly, he intended to continue to avoid working with them whenever possible. He wouldn’t reject an opportunity to bring this boy down a notch or two if one arose, but for now, he just wanted to get back and clock out.
Hawk was remembering his own experience of ninth grade. He thought about the boy and wondered what his future would be. He could imagine nothing.