Chapter 11

11

"Hey, how's your dad? Still living in the old neighborhood?" I said as I came back out with her Venti Americano.

"Of course," she said. "I begged him to head for Florida, but he has this old lady, Mrs. Paulmann, for a tenant upstairs who he shovels the snow for, so he's not leaving. He liked you a lot, Mike. He never could understand why you joined the navy SEALs when he offered to get you into the steelworkers union."

"Go up on the high steel with your crazy old man?" I said as I sat. "I chose the SEALs because it was safer!"

I watched her laugh. It was something to watch.

What a day to be alive , I thought again.

"So, what brings you all the way up here from the Boogie Down Bronx, Colleen?" I said. "Let me guess. You ran out of Pepperidge Farm cookies?"

"Bite your tongue," Colleen said with a laugh. "I'm an Irish Catholic West Bronx girl to the bone, Mike. You actually think I'd ever step out on Stella d'Oro?"

I laughed myself at that. The Stella d'Oro Italian cookie factory was located next to the Major Deegan Expressway, a stone's throw from our Bronx block. Playing outside, you could always smell when the cookie ovens were firing. Even all these years later, the scent of Swiss fudge and anisette gave me Gen X childhood flashbacks.

"I'm up here in Connecticut for work actually," Colleen said, blowing on her coffee. "I'm an investigator now."

"No! You're a cop?" I said. "I thought you were a nurse and your husband—what was his name? Bill? I thought he was the cop, a transit cop, wasn't it?"

"My ex -husband's name is Ryan," Colleen said, laughing again, "and yes, he was a transit cop and maybe still is. I wouldn't know because I don't talk to him anymore. After the divorce, I got sick of being a nurse and so I went back to school and now I work as an investigator for a law firm in Manhattan. It's been seven years now."

"Is that right?" I said. "A law firm investigator. But if it's a law firm in Manhattan, what are you working on way up here?"

"Wait, you're not still a cop, are you, Mike?" she said, sipping her coffee.

"Nope. Happily retired, thank goodness," I lied.

I was retired. But happily? Not even a little. That was another story. One that Colleen, or anyone really, didn't need to know about.

"I heard you left the city," she said. "Florida, was it?"

"Yep, first Florida then the Bahamas," I said. "I lived down there for a bit but I, um... I live out West now. I'm actually back East here for a New England fishing vacation my son set up for me. The Farmington River behind the coffee shop here is actually world-famous. See, it's got this special water that comes out of these aquifers up in the Berkshires that give it this not too hot, not too cold temperature that's perfect all year round for the fish. And what fish! You have to see these trout."

"You still with the fishing," Colleen said, smiling as she shook her head. "Some things never change. I remember you with your dad out along the train tracks at the lake in Van Cortlandt Park. You had to be five years old. You were the cutest thing, you and Connor, in your red plaid ties and freckles."

"I think we both know, out of the two of us, who the cutest thing in the neighborhood was," I said.

"Mike Gannon," she said, shaking her head as she looked at me with those pale angel eyes.

"So, what are you working on up here?" I said.

Colleen gestured across the street with her coffee.

"The death of a student at Beckford College. A girl from the city, Olivia Ramos. She was a scholarship kid. She died from a drug overdose last year. Twenty years old and an only child. I'm here to look into it."

"No! Those damn opioids," I said.

"You said it," Colleen said. "Every year they kill more young people than Vietnam ever did. Makes you sick more isn't being done."

"Sure does," I said, sipping my own coffee. "So, you're here on an insurance thing? The parents are suing the school?"

"Kind of," Colleen said, looking across the road again. "Or who knows. Maybe. We're not there yet. Beckford College is small, but it's a minor Ivy with a giant Final Four basketball program and has deep pockets. They have an endowment of thirty-four billion dollars so they actually settled really quickly for a million-plus to keep it out of the news."

"So, where do you fit in?"

Colleen sat up and placed her coffee cup down onto the garden table.

"The girl's parents were divorced and the father was in prison when the mother signed off on it. The dad was released last year and wants us to look into it for him to see what it was all about."

"He win the lottery or something?" I said. "That sounds like it would cost plenty."

"No, not at all," Colleen said. "The opposite. It's a pro bono thing. The father was actually wrongfully convicted for a robbery in Times Square and one of the firm's senior partners was his lawyer at the time. He blew it, so he's trying to make amends. You have to see this poor guy. He doesn't even seem to care that he's been exonerated. He just wants me to see what happened to his daughter."

"Wow. You get thrown in prison for something you didn't do, then your twenty-year-old kid ODs while you're inside. That's about as rough as it gets," I said.

Colleen nodded, looking down at the table.

She suddenly raised her coffee cup.

"To Irish reunions," she said with a sigh.