Chapter 21

Goody Two-Shoes (Part I)

I had a request for a piece that includes Erin and explains what happened that mysterious time revealed during the S:03:15 "Warriors" episode with the driving lessons when her little brother was compelled to lie for her to explain the dent in the family car when she "allegedly" tried to hit an ex-boyfriend, although I've adjusted the facts a little to suit my needs by making it Mary's vehicle instead of Frank's as mentioned in order to include more interaction with her and the kids. So this is a rare, but fun five-part quintuple-shot as Reagan tempers flare when a late-night traffic stop drives a wedge between a pair of siblings and Jamie and his sister are forced to step back in time to relive a childhood trauma they both would rather forget.

"So any big plans for the rest of this weekend, Annabel?" Jamie asked as he climbed back in the RPM's passenger side while reaching for his shoulder radio. It was nearly halfway through their midnight tour and the pair had just completed a late Friday night prisoner drop to the 8-1 of North Brooklyn which was located well above their usual Midtown Manhattan territory. "Central, 3-5 Sergeant, show us 10-61 until zero four hundred hours."

"10-4, 3-5 Sergeant," came the reply over the air.

"Let's get home, Officer Anderson," Jamie ordered with a small yawn as he settled in for the ride, content to be a passenger more and more as he allowed his feisty redheaded rookie to take over the wheel on almost every occasion now.

"Yes, sir," Annabel replied as she pulled away from the curb. "And no, sir… no plans for today or tomorrow except to catch up on sleep and laundry at home. Maybe check out the new apartment listings to see if anything reasonable materialized in my price range," she sighed. "Not like that's gonna happen though."

"Getting a little old staying with the 'rents, huh?" Jamie chided as he remembered the trials of trying to live independently on a rookie's salary while paying off his student loans to boot.

"Over two thousand a month for a little studio in Flatbush if it's bigger than a broom closet," the ambitious Annabel lamented as she carefully cruised down the street, all the time keeping a pointed lookout for trouble even while out of their usual patrol area. "Pops won't even let me consider it, and he'd never let me move further… always wants to keep tabs on me and who I might be seeing. Not that there's much to talk about with that either," she griped. "One look at my ex-football defensive lineman papa whenever I bring somebody home is usually enough to make 'em run for the hills if the fact that I walk a beat and carry a gun every day hasn't already accomplished that goal."

"Oh, well I don't think that ever goes away for daddy's little girl," Jamie laughed as he remembered his sister's trials of dating considering the family of cops she came from and particularly their father's most intimidating presence which he had to admit was sadly self-lacking. Still there was always Frank himself or Uncle Danny, plus of course Eddie who tended not to hold back if something threatened their little girl, and if that failed an introduction to Eva would surely cut the pack down to all but the bravest suitors. "Kaylin will not be dating until she's thirty," he assured though.

"Sure, you keep believing that, dad," she quipped back. "We girls have our ways, although I imagine you Reagans have most of those covered…" she trailed off before catching sight of an altercation up ahead at the next intersection as the light changed to red and the pair witnessed a minor tap from behind a few cars in front of them before the agitated lead driver jammed on the brakes and flung the door open to his pickup truck, waving his hands and shouting as he walked back and approached a small silver sedan still in the roadway that had just turned the four-way flashers on. "Uh oh, looks like road rage at twelve-o'clock, sir," she offered as Jamie flipped the siren to offer a 'blip blip' warning while turning the lights on to illuminate the street as they pulled up to a stop behind the incident and the other vehicles cleared ahead.

"Oh, cripes; over a nothing fender-bender," Jamie sighed as he took in the man's state which he was betting was likely inebriated given the late hour. "Central, 3-5 Sergeant, show us 10-53, corner of Nostrand and Halsey Avenue. Annabel, take the driver in the sedan," he added after that was acknowledged. "I'll handle King Kong up front. Watch my six though," he warned.

"Yes, sir," she answered as the pair exited the RMP and approached the accident with Jamie barely glancing over at the car as he kept his attention fully focused on the tall and heavily built twenty-something white male cowboy-type screaming and cursing at the far front.

"ARE YOU EFFING BLIND?!" the man railed as he stood at the front of the car examining the vehicles for possible damage which appeared to be minimal and contained to a barely dented front grill for the car since the jacked-up super duty truck was sporting a heavy drop hitch behind and the rest of it had not been touched. "THE LIGHT WAS RED!"

"Sir, I'm going to have to ask you to calm down and step over to the side here!" Jamie directed even as he kept his hand resting on the butt of his gun while he observed the reaction as Annabel approached the driver of the sedan, a young brunette with shortish cropped hair who had just covered up her face with her hands in disbelief.

"License, registration and proof of insurance, please," the rookie ordered as she stood at the window while keeping a wary eye on the action ahead of her.

"What's your problem? She drove right into the back of me! I stopped for the goddamn light!" the irate truck driver continued. "Why aren't you arresting her? I didn't do anything wrong!"

"That might have been the case, but I'm gonna charge you with disorderly conduct for starters if you don't ramp it down right now!" Jamie barked as he flashed his light around. "I'm looking at the damage here, sir, and frankly I don't see where that's going to be worth a trip down to Central Booking and a court appearance considering your truck doesn't have a scratch and there is minor dent to the front of the sedan. License, registration and proof of insurance, please," he continued to growl as the man suddenly thought better in compliance and Jamie followed him up to the front of the cab, surprised in all honesty that the guy had toned down the unnecessary rhetoric and cooperated that quickly without further protest or seemingly a whiff of alcohol on his breath. No doubt that would have been a very different story if the pair of officers hadn't been present immediately at the scene given the state he appeared to be working up to.

"Sergeant Reagan, I think we might have a bit of a situation here," Annabel advised as she surprised him by stepping forward a few minutes later.

"And what might that be, Officer Anderson?" he questioned without taking his eyes off the mountainous male now fumbling through his glove compartment.

"Our second driver, sir… well, um, here. You should see this," she offered as she handed over the young woman's driver's license.

"Keep a watch on him," Jamie ordered as he pulled his flashlight up and illuminated the card. The name Nicole Reagan-Boyle and her obviously familiar smiling photo immediately jumped out at him. "Nicki? What the hell?! This hour up here in Bed-Stuy?" he muttered under his breath as he turned around to direct an icy glare at his niece through the windshield. "Officer Anderson, please run Mr. Wittman's license and process his statement," he advised after being handed the requested documentation a few moments later by the now more-subdued and contrite party. "You, Mr. Wittman, go sit quietly in the truck," he ordered. "And I'm gonna get to the bottom of this," he muttered under his breath as he turned to stride around to the driver's side of the sedan with his hands on his hips.

"Uncle Jamie, I can explain!" Nicki offered immediately from her seat behind the wheel.

"Almost four in the morning, up here in your mom's car when I know she's away at a conference in Albany until tonight… you're damn right you better explain!" he gruffed. "Please tell me you weren't out at a party drinking and thought it would be cool to take a cruise!"

"I wasn't! I mean I was at a party, but I was the designated driver tonight! I only had one beer, and that was hours ago!" she swore. "I just dropped off my friend Billy Thompson over on Putnam Avenue and I was going home! I looked down for like a second when my phone buzzed and I didn't see that idiot stop before it was too late!"

"That idiot had a red light, Nick," Jamie huffed at what he perceived was a lack of genuine remorse in her tone. "We were two cars behind you when it happened, and given the way he got out of the vehicle, it's lucky for you we were!"

"Yeah, but nobody expects someone to slam on the brakes like that way back here!" she insisted.

"Well he did, and you failed to stop. That gets you a citation for following too closely," he informed her with a continued frown for her insolence, which was quite frankly rankling him at the moment. "Or did you forget everything I taught you in those driving lessons? You're at fault no matter which way you play it."

"You're gonna write me up?!" Nicki gasped in disbelief. "Seriously? Oh, c'mon, Uncle Jamie! Please! I just tapped him! I heard you tell him there was no damage! I was doing the right thing by driving my friend home tonight! Can't we just forget about it? What about grandpa's courtesy card? This isn't fair! Any other cop would let me go! Uncle Danny would never get me in trouble!"

"Well, I'm not any other cop, and don't ever play the Uncle Danny or commissioner's cards with me, especially when my partner and I just saved your butt from a guy that's three times your size! Even if there's no damage to his vehicle, you've got a nice big baseball-sized dent in the front grill from the hitch. How are you gonna explain that to your mom, huh? Does she even know you have the car out tonight? Besides, Billy Thompson, isn't that the guy she doesn't like? The one with two priors for DWI?"

"She didn't tell me I couldn't have it!" came the still-irreverent answer. "Well not exactly… please! Can't we just not tell her? You know how she'll react; I'll be grounded until I'm thirty! I'll get it fixed before she finds out, I swear!"

"Stay in the car," Jamie advised as he shook his head and walked away for a few seconds to clear it. Truth be told he would have likely let this little bump and kiss slide but for the fact that his niece continued to show little regret for her actions and now let it slip that she intended to keep this from his sister which hit a little too close to home considering a childhood trauma he had honestly not recovered from to this day. "Annabel, did you come up with anything?" he queried his partner as he joined her back at the cruiser where she had just finished running the man's particulars.

"Clean," she reported. "Nothing outstanding; registration, insurance and license valid. No priors... I assume for Ms. Reagan-Boyle too," she added.

"Yeah, not worried about that," he huffed as he clasped his hands behind his neck. "Any alcohol on either of them?" he asked, having not detected any signs himself but knowing that his partner had a gifted nose for that sort of thing that was sharp as a bloodhound's and had proven as reliable as the breathalyzer to this point.

"Negative," she reported.

"Alright, we'll let Wittman off with a stern warning for the temper. I'll handle that. He's lucky he cooled down as fast as he did. Issue Ms. Reagan-Boyle a citation for following too closely, please."

"Sir?" Annabel asked in surprise as she looked up. "That's four points on her license and a $135 fine plus court costs for a first-time offense. You're sure?"

"No, but I'm gonna do it anyway," he sighed. "I'm sure not living through that nightmare again."

###

"Cripes, kid… I gotta hand it to you. I didn't think you'd have the cojones to show up here today," Danny smirked while he greeted Jamie as his brother arrived through the front door at the family home for Sunday dinner with Eddie and Kaylin in tow. "I'd stay out of the kitchen if I were you though. Erin's got a big knife flying around chopping salad… we'll be lucky not to be picking body parts out of it by the time she's done, and Nicki's in the sunroom unloading about it with Pop. Guess who her favorite uncle is now?" he added with a wide grin.

"You would have done the same thing, Danny," Jamie gruffed back irritably as he knew the direction today's conversation would undoubtedly take. "That hour in north Brooklyn? The guy was a real animal, and she didn't even care! She wanted me to lie and cover it up, too! I couldn't do that, especially not in front of my rookie!"

"Oh, no. Don't put this on me. Detectives don't issue traffic tickets, that's for you car jockeys and we all know you'd crack under that kind of pressure anyway… just like the last time," Danny snickered as he headed towards the dining room.

"What's he talking about… the last time?" Eddie questioned as she was busily kneeling down and unzipping Kaylin out of her jacket. She had been fully on Jamie's side when he had come home and revealed the likely cause for upcoming family strife, but then again perhaps it wasn't surprising given her own experience the year before when the DA's office, with her future sister-in-law in charge, had incited a blue flu by arresting a number of cops including herself for the age-old practice of pulling tickets in certain circumstances. Maybe turnaround was fair play although she knew that was not the reason he had done it. "You gave Nicki a summons before? I thought you were the one who taught her to drive?"

"I did teach her, and no… it was Erin, and it wasn't a ticket, and never mind!" Jamie snapped back a little uncharacteristically. "Can we just go eat?" he added before moving off.

"Daddy has a frowny face," Kaylin observed as she hopped down off the landing step holding Eddie's hand. "Him be mad?"

"Oh, maybe just a little today, sweetie," Eddie answered. "But not at us, so let's go mind our manners at dinner and keep it that way. I have a feeling this one could get interesting," she added as followed the little girl into the room.

###

"Nicki, honey… you're going at your food like it's trying to escape," Frank chided as he tried to break the sound of silence in the room which had been eerily quiet after grace with the exception of the somewhat louder than necessary scraping of knives and forks on the dinnerware from a few members of the family in particular.

"Well, maybe Uncle Jamie could write me a ticket for disturbing the peace or something else then too!" his oldest granddaughter remarked flippantly as she continued her assault on the innocent piece of pot roast on her plate. "May I be excused?"

"Dinner just started, so that's a big, fat NO," Erin replied as she buttered her bread with equal vigor, nearly shredding the roll with her efforts. "And I guess we're just lucky that he didn't have to add possession of a stolen vehicle to your rap sheet," she snarked, still livid that her daughter had taken the car out at that hour without permission to meet a boy she had no use for. "Although I bet he was tempted. You should see what this is gonna do to my insurance premiums… Nicki is still on my policy!" she added with a shake of the knife across the table, equally annoyed with her own brother for making the situation a federal case as it were.

"Well then, I suppose I should have just gone along with her when she wanted to lie to you about it in the first place! Typical Erin, always wants it both ways," Jamie unleashed finally as he had taken about enough stares and snide comments from the both of them by this point. "Follow the letter of the law unless it applies to me," he mocked.

"Hey, let's keep it civil," Henry warned with a frown, although he too had been against his grandson's decision not to comp his niece a pass in the first place. Family first, it was against the sacred Reagan blue-blooded code as it were.

"Nicki, I'm sure Jamie was just concerned for you at the time. It sounds like that man could have turned violent and you were out alone late at night after going to a party with a boy that your mother doesn't approve of," Linda advised as she tried to instill a modicum of reason into the conversation.

"Your uncle is right," Danny added his two cents into the already contentious fray. "The DA's always want to tie our hands with following every little rule when it comes to taking down bad guys, unless it hits a little too close to home and then they're ready to duck behind the big blue wall when it suits them. Surprised she didn't tell you to contest the ticket and then try to get Jamie not to show for the hearing so it gets dismissed. Besides, remember that boys," he added as he brought his own two sons to attention. "Your uncle is too much of a goody two-shoes to let you slide on something like this so never get caught doing anything bad when he's on duty."

"Oh, here we go," Jamie sighed as he could see the road his brother was pointedly leading them down.

"What's a goody two-shoes?" Sean asked in confusion. "Is that another name for a cop?"

"No, it's a person that is virtuous… morally and ethically honorable," Linda explained. "It's a saying that comes from a fable about a poor little orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who went through life with only one shoe, but doing good deeds. When a rich gentleman gave her a complete pair, she was so happy that she told everyone she had "two shoes". Later, Margery become a teacher and was rewarded with wealth for her good works when she married a rich widower."

"Yeah, maybe that's what it means everywhere else except in this family where it's really about what happens when a little do-gooder kid loses one of his brand new baseball cleats defending a helpless maiden's honor and then cracks under the pressure when she turns around and tries to get him to fib about what really happened to keep herself out of trouble."

"Who are you calling helpless?" Erin grumbled as she likewise had no appetite to relive this particular hellish piece of Reagan family lore, especially in front of a daughter she had already punished for a similar offense. "And I didn't need defending."

"You also better have been a maiden at that point," Frank interjected with a growl of his own as he recalled the circumstances.

"Okay, so now I'm thinking this is a story that I really have to hear!" Eddie nodded as her eyes lit up mischievously. "I always told him he was too much of a Boy Scout, now spill," she demanded as she nudged a downturned and red-faced Jamie and looked around the table until her gaze landed on her brother-in-law. "And don't leave out the details."

"Yeah, I want to know what happened too, Mom," Nicki added with her own contentious frown. "From the way you yelled at me last night I thought you were a little miss goody two-shoes at my age."

"Heh!" Henry snorted from the end of the table. "Lay it on them, Daniel," he encouraged as he sought to even the score for his oldest great-granddaughter's predicament.

"Okay, well once upon a time," Danny started with a wide smile as he sat back and prepared to inflict as much torture on his younger brother and sister as possible. "In a land far… well, actually in this very house… a little eight-year-old boy named Jamison Henry Reagan was bouncing around like he was strung out on Sugar Smacks or something one Saturday morning, bothering his scholarly older brother while he was sitting at the kitchen table working hard at his studies…"

"You were in summer school because you failed the last semester of American History your senior year and you needed the course credit to graduate!" Jamie scoffed. Scholarly older brother my ass, he thought. If there was going to be pain inflicted on this little walk down memory lane, it was going to come on all fronts.

"Dad failed history?" Jack snickered from across the table. "That's like the easiest class!"

"I didn't fail, I just missed a chapter test assignment and had to make it up, and, hey! This is my fairy tale, right?" Danny growled back. "Like I said, this irritating little kid was bouncing off the walls because he had gotten a new pair of super special baseball cleats after the dweeb had all A pluses or something on his report card and he couldn't wait to try them out at practice that morning…"

"You failed, and Mom and Dad grounded you to the house after they found out you wouldn't get your diploma until you made it up," Jamie clarified.

"I got it eventually, didn't I, Harvard?" Danny barked back. "Like I said this brat was only worried about himself and going to practice with all the other little dweebs on his team to show off his precious new shoes, but his daddy had been called into work at his very important job as Chief of Detectives at 1PP and his mommy couldn't drive the car for a few weeks after she had broken her big toe and had a boot on her right foot…"

"Because she kicked the back tire of the Chevelle on the way out of the stadium after graduation once she found out they put a blank piece of paper in your folder," Jamie continued to snipe and fill in the whole picture. "Mom and Dad spent the rest of the night at the ER getting her X-rays."

"So that just left the helpless maiden in the household who had a brand spanking new driver's license, but was grounded in her own right for sneaking out to meet a boy her mommy and daddy didn't like," Danny continued to move on with a flippant eye towards his little brother before settling a self-satisfied grin directly across the table at his scowling sister.

"Mom!" Nicki gasped as she mocked surprise. "How could you ever do such a thing? And you were three years younger than me at the time!"

"C'mon, what happened next?" Eddie prodded as she was completely into this sordid tale and dying to find out what was making her husband squirm so hard in his seat next to her.

"Well, like I said the little kid was relentless, so he somehow talked his mommy into letting the helpless maiden take him to practice, but if you ask him now, I bet he'd say he would have been better off staying at home that day…"

Yup, ending it there for today. Apologies for getting a little behind schedule on my normal weekly updates, but mr. werks had a bit of an oopsie with one of his two-wheeled boy toys and relegated me to chief cook, bottle washer and uber driver for two very active kids for a few weeks, plus I've been on a good run getting in some chapters for "Resurgence," and I've gotta write where my mind is at that point. Came up at a bit of a wall there so it's back for a Snapshot while I percolate on that. Tune back in tomorrow for Part II to see where our little Reagan fairy tale takes us and what exactly happened to the shoes in all this as a virtuous little brother jumps to the defense of his older sister only to find himself strapped with guilt when the whole magical adventure goes awry.