Sometimes it really seemed as if life was taken for granted more often than it should have been. I found myself walking on the streets of Staten Island for what I knew was not the first time, and what I knew would not be the last, and where I'd never really thought about what I was doing before, now I was, and I found it surprising that it didn't bother me. Maybe it was because I'd already been out on the island for too long, maybe it was something else. I didn't know. But what I did know was that I didn't have anything better to do other than walk around, so that was what I was going to do.
I thought of the two-seven. Of my former partner, and how ironic it was that I was stuck with someone just as smart-mouthed as he'd ever been, and how weird it was that I was back in Homicide again, even though I wasn't in Manhattan. I had, I mused, my footsteps echoing slightly against the sidewalks, not yet paid my time for what I had done in punching that idiot councilman, and probably would not be considered to have paid it until I left the department. But I had no intention of doing so, until it was pretty much mandatory for me to retire.
I thought of my intentions in pursuing this case the way I had, in making it seem like the body had been the island's problem in the first place, when I knew that technically, the case should've been bumped to Manhattan. Suddenly I felt selfish. I knew exactly why I'd pursued it. I'd wanted to go…well, home, so to speak, and I knew now that it had been useless. I had closed a case, yes, but at the same time, I had torn the two-seven apart to do so; the clues had pointed in a direction that no one had wanted them to go. But not even the thin blue lines that supposedly protected us all could have prevented this from happening.
I thought of Profaci, and thought I knew the sort of desperation that he'd been feeling. I had known, even before I'd left, that he and his wife had been struggling to start a family. But I, like the rest of our precinct, had never thought that he'd go the way he had gone. He had been the last one that I'd have expected to turn to the dark side of the city for help, yet he had, and now he would pay the consequences for it. I felt guilty, if only because he had been a friend of mine, once upon a time, and yet I had been one of those to bring him down.
The department, I thought bitterly, could be an awful hypocrite sometimes. They told us that our squads were supposed to be like families. We worked together, ate together, sometimes crashed together. Talked about our personal lives, our families, our relationships, our triumphs, and our downfalls. Exchanged banter every now and then, and got into fights when we were pushed to our limits. Lost our tempers with suspects, walked into dangerous situations, all the while knowing that we would always have someone there to back us up, to make sure that we would come out all right.
And yet, there were secrets. There was corruption. We all hated the Internal Affairs Division, at least, those of us that were not part of said division. We were reluctant to tell any one of them anything, afraid of turning 'traitor', afraid of being a snitch. We didn't want to be ostracized by those we knew and cared about, and yet we were bound by a code of ethics that made it almost impossible for us to keep our mouths shut. We were honorable, and the city commended us for it; loyal to each other, because that was the way it worked. And yet the department at times required of us what we were unwilling to give…what we had given this time around, if only to close a case.
But, like I had thought earlier, life as everyone knew it was taken for granted more often than it should have been, and this thought, where it had not bothered me before, bothered me now. I stopped, suddenly, in the middle of the sidewalk, and stared up at the sky. It seemed endless in its reaches, as if it went on forever, and I knew that it did, knew that no matter how hard any of us tried, we would never be able to reach it, the way some of us so desperately wanted to. Our lives here in the city seemed so mundane at times, so hard to work with, to survive in. The city that never slept was a cruel place, as had only just been proven to us. I wanted nothing more than to forget that this had ever happened, but knew that I would be unable to.
So I continued to walk, until I reached the docks, and the ferry that would take me back and forth from the island to Manhattan until I decided to get off for good, to go home, and try to sleep, despite all that had happened. I stepped onboard, and listened to the water, gently lapping against the sides of this boat I was on, until we started moving, and the only thing that could be heard was the engines.
I closed my eyes for a moment, and listened, content to do just that, but after a few minutes, my eyes opened again, and I stared back up at the sky, at its endless reaches, ignoring the lights, and the noise, and everything around me, because I knew that it meant nothing at that moment, that it would later on, but didn't now.
Life, I thought for the third time that night, was something too often taken for granted. I leaned against the rail, still staring up at the sky, and for the first time in a long while, took the time to try and count the stars.