The Once and Future Father

“Want me to tell Lucy anything when she wakes up?” When he made no reply, she asked, “Will you be back to see her?”

Dylan thought it an odd question. For all she knew, he’d just been someone passing by at the right time, or the wrong time, depending on whose view you took. But, then, he amended, maybe Lucy had told her that they’d known each other once.

For the sake of brevity and to prevent any possibility of further discussion, he said, “Yeah, sure,” and quickly walked away.

Sheila spared herself a moment to watch him go, aware that she had just been brushed off. Instinct told her that there was a great deal more going on here than was evident at first.

Turning away, she smiled to herself. He’d be back. Whether he realized it or not, he’d be back. She was willing to lay odds on it.

Detective Dave Watley glanced up from the video camera he was adjusting. It was perched on a tripod, its powerful telephoto lens aimed at the entrance of the restaurant five stories below and across the street. “What the hell kept you?” he asked Dylan when his partner entered the apartment.

Pulling up a folding chair to the partially curtained window with one hand, Dylan placed the paper tray with its two cups of coffee on the unsteady card table. Besides a beaten-up sofa that had been abandoned by the last tenant who lived in the apartment, the card table and two chairs represented the only furniture in the studio apartment. Watley had brought the table. He needed someplace to put the puzzles he was so fond of working on.

“I was detained.” Dylan pried his own cup from the holder, leaving the one he’d picked up for Watley where it was.

Watley looked at him with good-natured disgust. “No kidding, Sherlock. I kind of figured that part out for myself. Detained how?”

As far as Watley knew, his rather closed-mouth partner had no personal life to speak of, no relatives he ever mentioned, and certainly no woman in his life. The man lived and breathed the job, which made him a good man to have watching your back, but not exactly the best to share a long stakeout with. And this one had all the signs of being a long one, even though it was just in its third day.

Because nothing else came to him and he knew that Watley wasn’t the kind to back off once he started asking, Dylan gave him an abbreviated version of what had happened. “A woman went into labor.”

Watley stopped fooling with the camera. “And you took her to the hospital?” he asked.

Dylan scanned the street below. Nothing out of the ordinary was happening at the Den of Thieves. This was the restaurant’s busiest hour, but there was no one entering or leaving who aroused his suspicions. So far, none of the usual players in what was reported to be a money-laundering scheme were evident.

“It was too late for that.” He took off the lid from his cup and dropped it on the table.

“So you did what?” Picking up the discarded lid, Watley dropped it into the empty box he’d converted into a wastebasket. “Helped her deliver?” he prompted.

“Yeah.”

With his wife a brief six weeks away from delivery, Watley was facing his first time up as a new father. Thoughts of the restaurant they were staking out were forgotten. “So, what did it feel like? Holding that newborn in your hands? You did hold it, right?”

“Yes, I held her.”

“Well, what was it like?”

“Messy.”

Usually a very easygoing man, Watley threw his hands up in exasperation. “Dammit, McMorrow, you’ve got a heart made out of stone, you know that? There you were, with the miracle of life happening right in front of you and you’re thinking of cleanup detail.”

“Somebody has to.” Dylan paused, taking a long sip of the coffee that was already getting cold. His thoughts kept returning to the event. He’d felt like a bystander and a participant all at the same time. “It was kind of strange,” he finally added.

Watley’s interest was instantly piqued. “Strange?”

“Like it wasn’t real.” Dylan looked at his partner. “Except that it was.”

“Right.” Watley slanted him a glance, then grinned. “That’s probably the most eloquent I remember ever hearing you get.”

Dylan didn’t feel like being eloquent. He didn’t feel like being anything but the cop he was being paid to be. It was too complicated any other way. Dylan nodded toward the building across the street. “Anything going on in there?”

Clearly bored, Watley shook his head. He took the lid off the puzzle he’d brought with relish. “Nothing more than usual. I’m beginning to think this is just a wild-goose chase. Haven’t seen any of the big boys go in or out yet. Maybe the tip was bogus. God only knows where that accountant disappeared to.” The operation had begun in earnest on the word of one Owen Michelson, the restaurant’s accountant. But neither he nor the information he’d promised had turned up at a rendezvous he’d arranged last week.

“Chambers said he thought he saw someone he recalled seeing on a poster going in this morning, but he’s not sure,” Watley remarked. Dumping out the puzzle’s pieces on the table, Watley smiled to himself. “I think it’s just wishful thinking on his part, but we sent a copy of the photo he took to the feds for positive ID.”

“And?”

Watley shook his head. “Nothing yet.”

Dylan blew out a breath. “And the wheels of justice turn slowly.” He took another swig from his coffee before setting the cup down in disgust. It hardly met his criteria for coffee beyond being liquid. Restless, he ran his hand along the back of his neck and told himself to calm down. “Doesn’t matter, we’re not going anywhere.” Watley groaned his agreement.

Dylan wished he had a cigarette.

Dylan pulled up the hand brake on his beat-up sports car. He’d bought it with the first money he’d earned the day before he left home. It still ran well. A single turn of his key cut off the engine and the low murmur of music that had been playing on the radio.

He sat in the stilled vehicle, looking at the back entrance to Harris Memorial and wondering if he’d lost his mind.

Getting off work half an hour ago, he’d had every intention of picking up some takeout at the new Thai restaurant near the stakeout and heading straight back to the place where he slept and ate when he wasn’t on the job. It wasn’t really home, but it served in lieu of one. Dylan hadn’t thought of a place as being home since his mother had died.

But instead of doing that, somehow, he’d ended up here instead, with no takeout sitting on the seat beside him and no claim to sanity even remotely in the vicinity. The smart thing, he knew, was to send either Alexander or Hathaway here. They were the ones handling the case, not him.

He frowned, absently watching a couple rush through the electronic doors.

Lucy didn’t need to see him again, it’d only upset her. And he sure as hell didn’t need to see her again.

Dylan began to turn the key in the ignition, then stopped, silently cursing himself. He couldn’t do it. There was a sense of right and wrong instilled in him, the one thing his mother managed to accomplish with her rebellious son.

He dragged his hand through his hair. It was his mother’s fault that he was here.

And his father’s fault that he shouldn’t be.

C’mon, fish or cut bait, McMorrow.

Biting off another curse, Dylan got out of his car and slammed the door shut behind him. Might as well get this over with, he thought.

As he strode almost militantly toward the bank of elevators located in the rear of the building, the hospital’s small gift shop still managed to catch his eye. The little teddy bear with a jaunty pink bow over one ear in the center of the window display all but popped out at him. Stopping in midstride, he went in before he changed his mind.

The shop, with its cheerful clutter, was empty except for one other customer who was browsing on the opposite side.

“How much for the bear in the window?” Dylan asked.

His question, snapped out the way it was, startled the mature-looking, pink-smocked woman behind the counter. As she looked up, her features softened into a grandmotherly smile. “Twelve ninety-five.”

Dylan dug into his front pocket. The wad of bills that comprised change from the twenty he’d given the cashier at the coffee shop earlier tumbled out onto the counter. He isolated the proper amount.

“I’ll take it.”

“And anything for the mother?”