Daughter of the Flames

“You’re all het up,” Pat went on, putting down his burger and wiping his hands on his napkin. He tented his fingers as he leaned toward her. “Something happened to you. Recently.”

“No.” Looking down at her bowl of soup, she shook her head, fully aware that she wasn’t convincing anybody, least of all a sophisticated cop who ferreted out lies for a living. She didn’t know him well enough to talk to him about it. She didn’t know anyone that well.

His face quirked; his dimples showed. “Well, it can’t be kissing me that did this to you.” He sounded so sure of himself that she had to smile back. “Forsooth, she maketh the candles to glow.”

“That’s nice. Shakespeare?”

“Kittrell,” he answered. He took her hand and wrapped his fist around her fingers, shaking them as if to loosen her up. “A guy who cares about you. Cares if there’s something eating at you. Can I help?”

“It’s nothing, really.”

He sighed. “Okay, I give. For now.” He checked his watch. “I have to go in. I’m putting you in a cab.”

“I’m fine on the subway,” she insisted.

“Maybe on some other guy’s watch.” He cocked his head and took a breath, as if he were about to ask her a question. Maybe if there was another guy. But he didn’t. He didn’t push, and she was grateful.

He paid the check—insisting that he had to or his mama would find out and hit him upside the head. Then they put on their coats and walked outside, while Pat flagged down a cab in record time for a nonnative.

As she climbed into the back, he leaned down and kissed her. “You get some rest, you hear?”

For an answer, she kissed him back. His lips were soft and he smelled so good, like soap and limes, and she lingered, her senses tantalized.

Beaming at her, Pat shut the door and Izzy waved a bit shyly at him through the frosty window.

She got home without incident, no strange men loitering in front of her house. As she let herself in, her father looked up from the TV in the front room. When he saw her in the foyer, he said, “Hey. How was it?”

“Nice.” She unwound the scarf from around her neck. “He’s nice.”

“He didn’t walk you in.” He peered around her, as if he expected Pat to appear.

“I took a cab. He had to go in to work.”

Big Vince drank his beer. “Big bust coming down. They briefed us on it. Sting operation. He tell you about it?”

“We don’t talk shop,” she said, yawning. “I’m going to bed.”

“Good.” He nodded thoughtfully. “You got to take care of yourself, Iz. You’re getting too thin.”

She sighed. Everyone was on her case tonight.

“Night,” she said.

She took the stairs, washed her face and brushed her teeth, changed into her white nightgown and crossed to her bed. For a moment she thought about pulling back the curtains. Then she ignored her impulse and pulled back the coverlet, and slid into fresh sheets and, hopefully, some rest.

Don’t look down, a voice said inside her head.

But she did. And there he was, silhouetted by flames.

The smiling man’s features were very sharp, and a large purple scar ran diagonally from the right side of his jaw to his left temple. His face was all angles; his almond-shaped eyes were dark and fierce beneath brows that slanted upward. He looked devilish.

She had a gun in her hand and she raised it slowly. Her hand began to shake as she pointed it at him. His eyes widened in fear, and then his gaze shifted to a point behind her. He bared his teeth like an animal.

Izzy turned.

They are looking for you. Both of them, a voice said.

Within the arched curves of a Medieval monastery, a figure scanned the horizon. It was another man, very tall, with a riot of hair that tumbled down his shoulders, like her own.

A blue-tinted fog boiled up and around the long-haired man in the monastery, sharply casting him in chiaroscuro. He was holding a glowing sphere. It illuminated his fingers; on his left ring finger, something heavy and gold glittered, more like a signet ring than a wedding ring.

Then a voice rumbled like thunder, shaking her spine with a low, masculine timbre.

“Isabelle? Je suis Jean-Marc de Devereaux des Ombres. Je vous cherche. Attendez-moi. Je vous cherche.”

This time Izzy woke slowly, clutching the sheets as she whispered to the darkness, “Oui. Je suis là.” “Yes, I am here,” in French.

Only, she didn’t speak French.

Haggard, feeling as if she’d been run over, Izzy went down into the bowels of the Two-Seven. Yolanda was taking a personal day, but the new-hire, Julius Esposito, was there. He had had his black hair processed and she thought it looked a little silly, like he was an extra in a movie about Harlem in the thirties or something. Or maybe she was just looking to find fault. She didn’t like him; there was something about the vibe he threw off that didn’t sit well with her. This was only his third day, and she hoped the situation improved. On the other hand, she could use it as further incentive to get herself out of Prop. “Good morning, Isabella,” he said rather formally as she entered the Property room.

“Oh, everyone calls me Izzy,” she told him. There was an evidence bag beside the terminal tagged with Cratty’s signature turquoise tape. She gestured to it with her head. “What did he bring in?”

“Crack,” he told her.

“He’s been busy lately,” she said, crossing to the terminal to log herself in. Her elbow brushed the bag.

It’s light. The words came to her as clearly as if someone had spoken them to her. She looked at the monitor. In the column for the weight, Julius had typed in 98 gm. It was almost a hundred ten when he confiscated it. Cratty took some before he sealed the bag

And there is no way for me to know that. None.

Freaked, she moved away from the terminal as casually as she could, while Julius finished his intake procedures, put the bag in one of his lockers and slammed it shut. Then he returned to the cage window and started fiddling with the radio. “Do you like smooth jazz?” he asked without looking at her.

“Sure,” she said, although she hated it. Right now music was the furthest thing from her mind. A wave of vertigo made her wobbly. She felt as if she were standing under water and the air in her lungs was all the air she was going to get—so she’d better hang on to it.

Eye-level on the shelf to her left, she saw one of Yolanda’s lockers. The three-by-five card in the pocket showed a strip of turquoise tape—Cratty’s. She walked over to it. Touched it.

She heard his voice inside her head.

“Beating him down in the subway tunnel. Filthy skel, lowlife piece of crap, hold out on me? Me?”

Izzy jerked her hand away. She glanced at Julius, who took no notice. I am hearing things. I’m crazy.

She spotted another of Yolanda’s locker cards marked with Cratty’s turquoise tape, on the same wall but two-thirds of the way down. She stared at it for a long, hard minute.

Then she walked over and touched it.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

She touched the eye-level container for the second time.

Nothing there, either.

Hallucinations, she thought. Her heart thudded; she could feel the vein in her neck pulsing hard. I need some sleep and maybe I need to see a shrink again. I’m in trouble.

At a late lunch the next day, in a joint around the corner from work, Yolanda pushed a business card across the expanse of red-and-white-checked plastic tablecloth and said, “Just go see her. There is something terribly wrong with you. You look like you’re dying.” She grimaced. “Sorry if that’s a sore subject.”

“It’s okay, Yolanda.” Izzy reluctantly read the card. It was for Dr. Mingmei Wei, Yolanda’s Oriental medicine doctor. Yolanda swore by her. She also paid her out of pocket, because their Department health insurance wouldn’t cover her services.

“It’s your chi, ” Yolanda opined. “It’s out of whack. What she does is like feng shui, only for people. Psychic chiropractic. You need to get readjusted.”

“Does your priest know about this?” Izzy gibed.

“This is not funny. You are psychically ill.”

She indicated Izzy’s untouched barbecue-beef sandwich. “When’s the last time you ate a decent meal?” She gazed hard at Izzy. “Are you pregnant?”

Izzy burst out laughing. “Please. There’s only been one Immaculate Conception.”

“I didn’t think you were.” Yolanda stabbed her finger at the card. “But—”

Flames. Heat, smoke. Lungs…searing…

The image of her father’s red, sweaty face filled her mind.

She heard him gasping, coughing. “Izzy…Gino…”

“Oh, my God!” Izzy cried. She jumped to her feet. Her chair clattered to the tile floor. “My father’s in danger!”

“What?” Yolanda said, reaching out to her as she rose from her chair. “Izzy, wait!”

Izzy bolted and ran outside. A black cloud of thick, oily smoke billowed on the horizon. In her mind she saw her father, saw a hallway, saw rats and shapes moving in the flames.

I’m not asleep, she thought as she ran. I’m awake, and Big Vince is in that.

She flew toward the smoke, picking up speed until her feet were barely touching the ground. Her lungs burned but she kept going, weaving around pedestrians who yelled and jumped out of her way like missed targets in a shooting simulation. It was as if someone else was operating her body and she herself had no choice but to propel herself forward.

Images roared into her mind.

Flames…rats screeching down the halls. Shapes moving in the smoke. Officer Vincenzo DeMarco. Detective John Cratty.

And a semiauto pistol—a .9 mm Glock—in a closeup that filled her field of vision.

Pointed straight at her father’s head.

A voice. “Filthy cop, you’re gonna die; no one shakes me down.”

“Hit the floor!” she screamed out loud.

Then abruptly and without warning, her astonishing burst of energy left her. She staggered forward, swaying wildly left, then right; she smacked against the side of a brick-faced building and slid down it, pitching painfully onto her side.

She was dimly aware of people crowding around her, asking her if she was all right. Should they call an ambulance?

“Hey!” Yolanda caught up with her. She was carrying Izzy’s coat and purse. “Hijo de puta, did someone mug you?”

“I’m okay.” Izzy ground the words out. Yolanda put her arm around her waist, helping her to her feet.

“Are you loca? ” Yolanda said. She whistled and waved as a cab approached. The cab swerved to the curb.

“Come on, Iz,” Yolanda said, helping her to the cab.

The cabbie peered at them and frowned as his window rolled down.

“Go toward 108th,” Izzy told him as they got in. To Yolanda, she ordered, “Get my cell phone, and call my father. Number one on my speed dial.”

The cabbie shook his head. “No way. See that smoke? The cops have got it blocked off.”

“You have to go there!” Izzy yelled.

Yolanda squeezed Izzy’s hand as she opened up Izzy’s hobo bag with her other hand and dug around. “Easy, mi amor. We don’t know your father is in that building.”

“You need a cab or not?” the driver snapped.

Ignoring him, Yolanda found Izzy’s cell phone and pressed a couple of buttons. She put the phone to Izzy’s ear.

“Cratty, ten,” came a raspy, hoarse voice. “Ten” was the same as saying “over” on a police radio phone.

“This is Izzy,” Izzy announced, confused.

“It’s John, Izzy. We’re in an ambulance. Smoke inhalation. They’ve got him sucking some oxygen but it’s just a precaution. We’re going to the Metropolitan.”

“He wasn’t shot?” she asked, her voice shrill. “Tell me if he was shot!”

“No, Iz. No. Just smoke.” He sounded a little off. “Meet us at the Met.”

Located on First, it was the nearest hospital. It was where Pat had taken his Aided last night.

And her father was with the guy she had seen in visions, beating people and skimming drugs. Why was he with him? Had he tried to shoot him?

Izzy said neutrally, “Thanks. Tell him we’ll be there.”

Disconnecting, she said to the cabbie, “Take us to the Metropolitan.”

“You got it.” He screeched into the traffic.

She said to Yolanda. “Call in and explain. You’re taking me in because I’m injured.”

“Works for me, mi’jita, ” Yolanda said, biting her lower lip as she smoothed Izzy’s hair away from her wound. “Especially because it’s true.”

Izzy and Yolanda both knew the way to the ER entrance of the Metropolitan Medical Center. Anyone who worked for the NYPD in this part of town eventually found him or herself here, if not for a perp or a personal injury, then for someone close to them.

She half crawled out of the cab while Yolanda paid the driver. An ambulance sat in the dock as two men in scrubs burst out from the ER double doors, a gurney rattling between them.

John Cratty got out of the ambulance, appearing from behind the open back door of the rig. He was wearing kicker boots, jeans, a T-shirt, and a heavy dark brown leather jacket. His face was covered with soot, but he was walking under his own steam. He motioned to the two men, pointing back into the ambulance.

Within seconds, Izzy’s father was loaded onto the gurney.

“Big Vince!” Izzy cried, hurrying toward them while Yolanda worked to stay up with her.

Izzy saw the portable O2 bottle propped against his shoulder, the mask over his face. There were saline bags and a defib machine on the gurney with him—oh, God, had he had a heart attack?

As Izzy approached, Cratty put his arms around her, giving her a tight hug. She stiffened, but he didn’t notice.

He said, “Your father’s in good shape.”

“The defib—”

“Wasn’t used. But what the hell happened to you? ”

“Just a fall,” she said as she pushed past him and ran up to her father’s gurney.

His eyes were closed.

“Daddy!” she cried. “Daddy!”

The orderlies pushed the gurney through the double doors, Izzy holding Big Vince’s limp fingers. Yolanda and Cratty brought up the rear.

Inside the building, a short man in dark blue scrubs barked orders at the two men, then said to Izzy, “We’re taking him in.” He held up a restraining hand. “You can’t go with him. Let us do our job. Besides, you look like you need help.”

“No,” she protested, but Cratty took her arm.

“You know the routine,” he reminded her. “They need their space.”

The gurney zoomed on past her as the trio hung a left and disappeared down a corridor.

“You two were in a building?” Yolanda asked him as she led Izzy to the left, through a door marked Emergency Waiting Room. “The one on fire?”

“We got the hell out of there as soon as the real firemen showed up,” he concurred, puffing air out of his cheeks. “Had a couple of rough moments.”

“What were you doing in there?” Izzy asked sharply. All her alarm bells were going off at once, and at full volume.

“We were on a detail,” he said, locking gazes with her. “Confidential.”

She didn’t know what to say. They kept walking, past people sprawled in rows and rows of orange-plastic chairs, looking pale and sick and tired of waiting.

Cratty flashed his badge and the three passed through to a second security door to the curtained sections filled with ER cases. Her father was lying on his gurney with a sooty face and bloodshot eyes barely visible above an oxygen mask covering his nose and mouth. When he saw Izzy, his eyebrows met over his nose and he tried to take off the mask.

She knew he was staring at her injury. “It’s nothing, Big Vince,” she insisted, touching her cut.

The dark-haired nurse who had just wheeled a blood pressure monitor to the side of the gurney said, “We’ll look at that.”

“It’s fine,” Izzy repeated. But the truth was, her vision was blurring and she was dizzy. “Maybe I’ll just sit down.”

And then she fainted.

Chapter 5

I t’s the gun. They will shoot him with the gun. It will stop his heart.

Izzy woke up in a softly lit room.

Pat was bending over her, the tan lines across his forehead and at the corners of his eyes softened by the dim illumination. But the worry on his face was evident, and she was touched.

“You passed out,” he said by way of greeting. He had on a sweatshirt that read Dallas Cowboys and a pair of jeans. Off-duty attire, since he wasn’t undercover. He looked sexy…and worried. “They’re keeping you under observation.”

“My father…”

Pat chuckled softly. “He’s awake, alert, and ready to leave. They want to keep him overnight, but frankly, I fear for their lives.”

She smiled at that. “Where’s Cratty? And Yolanda?”

“Back in the world. Yolanda’s very worried about you.”

“That’s so sweet,” she said.

An IV had been inserted into the back of her hand. Her gaze trailed up the clear plastic tubing to the bag hanging from a metal carrousel.

“Your electrolytes were out of whack.” He smoothed her hair away from her forehead. His fingers were calloused, but his touch was gentle. “They’re running some tests. Just as a precaution.”

His voice was low and steady. She felt calmed by his air of quiet authority.

“What happened, Izzy?” he asked her, stroking her cheek with his thumb. “Yolanda said you freaked out in the restaurant.”

“I…” She didn’t want to try to explain it to him. It was all beginning to fade. She had seen her father, hadn’t she? “I had a funny feeling…” She trailed off.

He urged a cup with a straw to her lips again. “It’s okay, darlin’. You don’t have to talk if you’re too tired.”

They sat in stillness for a moment—or what passed for stillness in a busy hospital. Doors opened, shut. The PA system paged a doctor. Machines beeped.

After a few moments Pat said, “I had a funny feeling like that, once.”

She looked up at him. He nodded calmly, but she could see the sorrow etched in his face. She assumed he was talking about his wife. She waited for him to go on, but he didn’t.

“Do you need anything?” he asked.

She said, “Is my father very upset? About me? He knows I’ve been admitted, right?”

He nodded. “Yes, he knows. And he’s upset. Bombastic is more appropriate, I’d say. But that’s because he loves you.”

She sighed heavily. “If he’s upset now, it’ll be nothing compared to telling him I want to go the Academy.” She considered. “If I can still get in. Maybe there’s something wrong with me. Neurologically,” she elaborated.

“Don’t go looking for trouble,” he chided her gently.

“Why was John Cratty partnering with him?” she asked him. She debated about telling him about all the weirdness in the Prop room. But if she was wrong, she could bring a man down for nothing.

“Can’t rightly say.” Pat’s face was blank. She got it: private Department business, some kind of organized raid, something he wasn’t at liberty to discuss.

Maybe she wasn’t the only one who had felt a twinge of wrong around Cratty lately. That decided her.

“About Cratty,” she said.

He gave her a little nod. “Yes?”

“Nothing firm, nothing provable.”

“Same here,” he said.

“Whoa.” She nodded back. Their gazes locked. “I feel better.”

“Me, too, Iz.” He took her hand.

She took a deep breath, then said something that would humiliate Big Vince if he heard her say it. “My dad is…over fifty, Pat. He’s gone through a lot. Please remind whoever’s in charge of this Cratty thing. If it’s dangerous…”

“Understood.”

She was grateful to her core that he did understand. Suddenly it was the best thing in the world that the man she was attracted to was a cop. She was a cop’s daughter, and she wanted to be a cop. It was the only world she knew—no matter how dangerous or strange.

Pat had had to go back to the station. The physician on duty refused to release Izzy until she could prove that someone was going to stay with her for the next twenty-four hours.

She thought about staying with Aunt Clara, but their place in Queens was always pure bedlam. There would be endless calls between Clara and Big Vince, and a lot of yelling. Yes, she did love her big, noisy Italian family, but she needed some quiet tonight.

When she called Aunt Clara and the phone was busy, she took that as a sign not to pursue it. Then Yolanda arrived, telling her that her shift was over and she could take her home with her. “That okay?” Yolanda asked her excitedly. “I’d come to your house but Tria is working tonight so I need to watch Chango.”

Izzy raised a brow. She was fairly certain that chango meant “monkey” in Spanish. She rethought her decision. Except that Clara had five children, two dogs and several very noisy finches.

One night won’t kill me, she thought, making her decision.

“Okay. Thanks so much,” Izzy said.

“Bueno,” Yolanda said, clapping her hands. “Now, let’s go see your father before we go.”

Finally. Izzy had been begging them for hours to take her to him.

The doctor agreed to prepare Izzy’s discharge papers on condition that she sit in a wheelchair while Yolanda did the steering. Bouncing along, radiant in her helpfulness, Yolanda wheeled Izzy to an elevator.

They went up to another floor and Yolanda breezed her straight down a corridor, hung a left and paused on the threshold of a dimly lit room.

“Officer DeMarco? It’s us!” Yolanda sang out.

“Izzy?” her father croaked from the nearest bed.

“Yes.” Izzy began to rise from the chair. Yolanda clamped a hand on her shoulder and forced her to stay seated. She wheeled her into the room and around the side of the bed. “How are you, Daddy?” she asked softly.

“Everyone keeps asking me that. I’m fine.” Big Vince sounded exasperated and hoarse.

“It’s because they don’t want you to sue them,” Yolanda informed him. “If they let you out but you were still messed up, you’d have a case.”

“That so,” he said politely. He turned to Izzy. “How you doing, princess?”

Big Vince had not called Izzy “princess” in years. And she had not called him “Daddy” in years. It was as if those two softer people had been buried with her mother.

She said, “I’m okay.”

Yolanda cleared her throat. “I need a Diet Dr Pepper. I’ll check on you later, Izzy.”

She smiled gratefully. “Thanks.”

Yolanda left. Without taking his gaze from her face, Big Vince grunted. “This from falling?” he asked her, hand hovering above her temple.

Before she could answer he said in a rush, “Izzy, I have to tell you something.” His eyes got watery; his mouth pulled up in a smile. “Your mother saved my life.”

Izzy blinked. “What?”

He nodded eagerly, sitting up and grabbing her hands. “She looked down from heaven and warned me to hit the ground. The shooter was aiming right at us. I heard her voice in my head. If she hadn’t warned me, I would be dead.”

Izzy was stunned. She said slowly, “Did you really hear her voice? It was Ma?”

“Yes,” he said, seizing a couple of sheets of tissue from the box on the end table. He wiped his three-cornered Italian eyes. “I heard her loud and clear.”

His face was literally glowing.

“Your mother is still with us, baby. She hasn’t left us. And she saved my life today.” The tough Big Vince exterior cracked a little more. “My Anna Maria is back. ”

Izzy stared at him. “It’s a miracle,” he whispered.

She reeled. The nightmare…all this time, had it been in preparation for this day, this danger? Was her mother really with them? She looked up, around, joyful and a little anxious, half expecting to see her mother’s ghostly apparition floating in the room.

“Did you tell Gino about all this yet?” she asked, not sure what else to say.

“His phone was turned off. Maybe he’s at Mass. I left a message for him to call me back.”

He held her hands and began to weep.