Title: Speeding on Staten Island

Author: Kathleen Purvis

Summary: Frankie Silvera on her not-so-new partner.

Author's Note: This takes place about two years after the events of Exiled. I'm going with the assumption that Mike and Frankie are still partners. I named Frankie's son Leo.

He still gets lost on Staten Island. I didn't think he'd be able to manage it the first time and I told him to watch the street signs, but he's a guy and ergo, he blows through everything. Looking for a short cut, I guess. Back to Manhattan, maybe? I don't know. He doesn't talk about going back as much as he used to.

Having grown up in Staten Island, I think I understand him a little more than he gives me credit for. I know the feeling of being trapped. I know what it is to be left behind, watching lives that you used to be a part of go on without you. I know how much it hurts. Maybe I don't understand him, but I can hazard a guess as to how he feels. Being raised in foster care can do a number on a girl. No matter how much I try to deny it, I think it shows in everything I do. The accent I've given up trying to expunge from my speech, the hard edge that I know everyone else talks about when they think I'm not around.

They think I don't hear it. I'm not a good cop because I'm a good mother. I can't possibly give one hundred percent just because I want to be home by six to see my kid. I should've stayed married to that lying, cheating jerkoff because I'd have more time to spare to be a detective. I know Mike didn't get it for the longest time. Most of the guys he knows are always looking to the next promotion, looking to climb up our version of the corporate ladder. I don't need that. I'm happy being a detective. The pay is more than enough to make the mortgage on the house, and I get child support from Dan. I don't need a promotion to be a good cop. And maybe that's what they don't understand.

I'm happy where I am in large part because of my childhood. Don't get me wrong, there was no great tragedy in it. I was a hell of a lot more lucky than some kids who grow up with a mom, a dad, and a few brothers and sisters and wind up screwed anyway. I guess I just had the unhappiness of a childhood that didn't have anyone who cared enough to look after it. Some of the homes were better than others and none of them were too bad. I did get lucky in a few ways. But I used to watch a lot of old movies in the offices while the Man made phone calls trying to place me. John Wayne, Katharine Hepburn, Humphrey Bogart, I know most of them well. But I'm very partial to Bing and Henry. Anyone who's seen the Fonda movie "Yours, Mine, and Ours," or is familiar with Bing's Father O'Malley from "Going My Way" and "Bells of St. Mary's" probably knows what I'm talking about. It's sort of like faith, I've been told. You either have it or you don't. If you have it, it doesn't have to be explained to you. And if you don't, no one could explain it if they spent a lifetime trying.

I used to think Mike didn't have any faith, but I discovered I was wrong. Mike does have faith, faith that has been shaken and wrinkled and shattered and glued back together again. I've spent enough time pasting things back together with Leo to know that sometimes things broken can't ever be the same and I have a feeling the last time Mike was broken, that was the case. I'd heard what he'd done to get shipped over here, but I never really paid much attention. I knew of Mike Logan before he even arrived, but I didn't meet him until about a year ago. Part of the reason I was so snotty to him at first was because I spent my childhood being no one's top priority and getting ignored and all that. Or maybe I was just being bitchy because my former partner had been reassigned without notice and I was being thrown into a murder investigation that by all rights belonged across the water. Besides which, I was going through a divorce at the time, so I didn't have much time for a bitter, cocky, self-obsessed son of a bitch who wasn't going to be watching my back.

I couldn't have been more wrong about him. The first time I realized that, he didn't give me a hard time about knocking off early. I had to get across the river and back home in time to feed Leo and go over his homework with him. He graced me with a raised eyebrow, but didn't give me any trouble about it. Of course, he did know I was separated.

I wonder if he would have gone ahead and snatched the body up if he realized what was going to happen later on. I would go with no, but I wonder if he realized that he saved Tony Profaci's life. True, the guy's doing two to five right now with a wife and year-old at home. But Shirley and Anthony are waiting for him. I grew up around Gianni Uzielli. I know what he's capable of and the world's something akin to a paradise now that he's behind bars. He would have killed that Profaci guy eventually. But not all at once. He would have sucked the life and soul out of the guy first. Profaci would have ended up dead inside and then dead all around if Mike hadn't blown the whistle on him.

Mike goes to see Shirley a lot. The first few times, she damn near killed him for what he did. And I get where she was coming from. But something in Mike just made me want to make it better, for both him and for her. And for Profaci, who's gonna have a hard time of it once he gets out of prison. I went to see Shirley Profaci and told her everything I knew about Gianni and how lucky her husband was to be in jail right now instead of a pine box. Or worse, at the bottom of the Hudson River, having been shot through the head and tortured beforehand. I don't know how much good it did, but she's apparently made peace with my partner. And I used to think Mike could use all the peace he could get.

Staten Island's pretty much paradise for a cop like me. Nothing real big happens. So it would figure that out of all the cops on Staten Island, I would be the one shot during a bank robbery while off-duty. Mike was outside waiting for me so he could drive me home. We'd just gotten off duty and I was trying to talk him into having dinner with Leo and me before I went into the bank. I don't remember much about it except I was going for my sidearm when I realized what was going on. I guess I wasn't quick enough. According to everyone else at the scene, Mike shot the guy that got me and got the other two cuffed. He swears up and down that I told him to look after my kid before I went under. Maybe I was just out of it enough to ask something like that from him. I honestly don't remember. But I do remember the moment I woke up in the hospital and looked around.

I was in a room with all the requisite stuff. Hospital gown that no one bothered to tie around my waist. Uncomfortable bed in an uncomfortable position. I never sleep on my back, but there I was. Flat on my back in a hospital room after being shot off-duty. I was working my way towards frustration and rage until I lifted my head to look around and saw Mike in the chair beside the bed. He was holding Leo, who was sleeping on his chest. It couldn't have been comfortable for either of them, because Leo was at the stage where he'd been small enough to hold three, maybe four months before. Then again, Mike is bigger than I am and Leo's ten now. So maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.

Mike must have sensed I was conscious, because he looked at me and smiled that smile that reminds me there are probably just a few women left in Manhattan he hadn't dated yet. He left Leo in the chair and came over to the bed. Of course, my ex wasn't there. He was probably at his damn country club with that woman Miranda, also known as my son's stepmother, which means I can't say anything bad about her. Even if she is a... ah, forget it.

As Mike came closer, I realized there was something there I hadn't seen before. And when he spoke, I was blown away by the intensity in his voice.

"Don't you EVER do anything like that to me again, Silvera." he said quietly. "You want me to get a complex?"

And I regretted the first words I had spoken to him when we met for the first time. Because, in spite of the pain and the wooziness, I could tell he was thinking of his other two partners. Max Greevey, who had been killed in his own driveway. I still hope Mike made him pay for it. I've never asked him about it. And Phil Cerreta, who was lucky to survive the way Mike tells it. He was probably hoping the curse had been broken when that Briscoe guy survived three years with him unscathed.

I was about to answer him when Leo woke up. He would have jumped on the bed if Mike hadn't caught him in time. It was a couple hours later they left and I asked Mike to drop him off at Dan and Miranda's. He looked at me like I was crazy and informed me that he and Leo decided that Leo was going to stay with him for the night. He would go off to his father's like a good camper in the morning after seeing me again.

I found out later that Dan and Miranda had taken an impromptu trip to Boston to visit Miranda's snooty folks and Mike spent the entire week I was in the hospital with Leo at our house. Looking back, I'm glad I didn't know that. The energy I had put into regaining my strength and equilibrium would have been spent trying to figure out how I could murder Dan and get away with it. Not that I didn't trust Mike with my kid, but I think Leo could have used his dad around for reassurance. But I ain't no child psychologist, so I'm willing to let sleeping dogs lie on occasion.

Now, let me say this right now. I don't do the whole together thing well. The only relationship I've been successful with is the eleven-year one I have with my kid. I did alone so well when I was kid that it became kind of a habit when I grew up. I think any shrink would be scratching their head trying to figure out how I'm so good with the mother thing when I suck at just about any other relationship. I had some friends up to that point who were really just casual friends in a lifetime of casual friends. I learned early not to get attached to any living creature. That was a big part of the divorce. Dan claimed there was a wall he'd never been able to break through to get to me and maybe he was right. I maintain it gave him no right to cheat on me, but that's a different story. Even my former partners and I never got past the mutual respect and admiration stage into friendship. But that changed with Mike Logan. After I was shot and put on sick leave, he spent a lot of time at my house. And maybe I was loosened by the prescription painkillers, but I told him more about myself than even Dan knew. I told him about my love for old movies and the time I spent in the Man's office. I told him of the year I was shuttled to and from more than six different foster homes all over Staten Island. He heard about my marriage and my kid and the how and why of the divorce. And I heard about his bitch of a mother, the priests and nuns, Max Greevey, Phil Cerreta, and what happened to get him dropkicked to Staten Island. He even opened up about being the one to put his friend Tony Profaci in jail.

I even found out why he likes to go over the speed limit in Staten Island. It makes him feel like he's on vacation. Speeding is something that's a little tricky in Manhattan during rush hour.

Leo absolutely adores his uncle Mike. He sulked for days when I was well enough for Mike to go back home. He made Mike promise to come over at least once a week for dinner. I still have no idea when the two of them got so buddy-buddy. I was only in the hospital for a week. But Mike's really good with kids.

Something changed about Mike during those few weeks. He still talks about Manhattan, but something's not there that used to be there when he spoke of it before. He doesn't have the same desire to be back there. Mostly he just brings it up when there's some relevant information or when he's trying to impress someone. He never used to try and impress the higher-ups on Staten Island and I wonder about that a lot lately. When I finally asked him during my first week back on the job and he was offering an opinion to a coupld of the other guys, he didn't have much to say.

"I was just trying to give them another angle to work from. When Lennie and I had a hard time getting through the red tape of financial statements -- something, given your ineptitude at math, you should stay away from, by the way -- we'd give a call down to Anti-Corruption and make something up about needing the statements for a full report."

That was it. It wasn't punctuated by anything about how much he missed Lennie or how he couldn't wait to get back there and try that move again just to see what would happen. And he seemed very pleased with himself at being able to lend a hand (and some corruption) to some of the guys our side of the river.

And he still gets lost on Staten Island when he goes too fast.