Chapter 20
The Boys are Back
The Jared Quinlan situation in "It's all in the name…" left a good number of our characters at odds with one another during that story including Jamie and former staunch friend and mentor now-Lieutenant Anthony Renzulli who were two of the last to resolve their differences. This one-shot chronicles how they did so in a familiar fashion once Sergeant Reagan returned to action at the 3-5.
"JESUS MIGHTY, REAGAN! Have you looked at this new CompStat Auditing Guide that just came down from the holy mount?" Lieutenant Anthony Renzulli griped as he paused in the doorway of Jamie's office at the 3-5 while waving a thick handbook in front of him. "Hot off the presses! Eighty-four pages of changes for 'internal-auditing and quality-control processes,'" he opined. "Updates to every damn step of the process on top of them rolling out new Omniform software and complete with a goddamn four-page flowchart! They're even color-coding our DD-5's now! How the hell am I supposed to get these humps to remember if they're supposed to use blue, pink or green when I'm lucky enough to get their reports filed in the first place!"
"Blue's are for officers to upgrade charges so affect CompStat reporting," Jamie replied flatly as he rolled his chair back without looking up and flipped another file into his completed bin. "Pink's are for detectives to add details that aid the investigation of the crime but do not alter its classification. Changes to a filed complaint report require supervisory sign-off before they can take effect. Simple," he added as he went back to his paperwork. "There are no greens."
"Humph! Well, maybe I was just trying to see if you were still capable of paying attention to what I tell ya, Harvard!" Renzulli huffed with a frown as he was subtly called out by his junior officer when, in fact, he had yet to digest any degree of this official jibber jabber. Of course the college boy already had it memorized and indexed in that great big oftentimes irritating brain of his.
"Yes, sir," came the polite by-the-numbers protocol response once more that nearly drove the new Lieutenant to spit nails. As far back as he could remember, the kid almost never referred to him as 'sir,'... Sarge, now LT, sure, but not sir! Not with that tone! Although Jamie had somehow managed to thwart the concussion protocol testing earlier in the week and get himself reinstated for duty a little too soon after more than a month-long absence following the death of Lieutenant Carson and the subsequent manhunt for the cop-killer Jared Quinlan stalking him, Renzulli was determined that in no way, shape or form would he allow his former boot to step foot out onto the street until he had satisfied himself that the younger man was indeed fully recovered from the rather hard knock on the noggin that his sister-in-law Linda had purposefully inflicted upon him in a successful effort to spare his life when Quinlan had taken her, Eddie and Kaylin hostage that night nearly two weeks ago at the new home. As of today, the rather impressive technicolor bruise that had adorned the side of Jamie's face since the incident had finally faded down to a less noticeable array of greens and yellows while it healed and his CO was getting closer to unclipping the tight leash that had bound the younger officer to his desk all week without one anticipated comment or complaint about it forthcoming thus far.
If the goal was psychological warfare, it was working.
So while NYPD Sergeant Jamison Reagan was back in the building and had seemingly managed to retain most of his wits and faculties despite recent events, the close relationship he once shared with his former TO had not shown any signs of returning since Renzulli had been abruptly uprooted and promoted to the 3-5 as Jamie's immediate superior again and asked by a worried father and Police Commissioner to yank the kid's badge and gun in order to force him into therapy with the department shrink. The older man had done so with a heavy heart while knowing it was for Jamie's own good, and indeed had apparently accomplished whatever goal was in Frank Reagan's mindset at the time, but it had left the once tightly knit partners, colleagues and friends estranged at the moment as whatever forgiveness Jamie had running through his system had not yet made it as far as the corner office down the hall that once housed his most recent mentor, Robert Carson.
"Well, since you've obviously read and memorized all this craptasticola already, I'm sure you got to the point where it says each precinct will now appoint a Crime Analysis Team of a sergeant and several other officers to review all the complaint reports entered the previous day for accuracy before they are submitted electronically to the big kahunas uptown," Renzulli questioned as he pursed his lips and watched Jamie's shoulders fall as added hours of paperwork and responsibility were heaped on him which he knew were meant to keep him off the street for even longer. "Since this all has a distinct reek of that rookie George Mahoy you turned into some kind of CompStat guru to the brass stars at 1PP, guess who gets that job here? Ah... that would be you, Junior," he added as he stepped into the room and tossed the 300-page addendum binder onto the desk. "Sort that out and set it up. Until then you're still confined to the house and remember to keep me in the loop!" he barked as he walked out and retreated down the hall in a huff.
Two could play at this game.
###
"Oh, Jamie," Eddie sighed as she walked in the house after her own second shift tour closed out after midnight and she arrived home to find her exhausted fiancé slumped over in an uncomfortable-looking manner on the couch, practically buried under a massive official NYPD binder of some sort with his laptop sitting on the coffee table open to some mind-numbing legal contract from Sevinnova and a large bottle of Motrin next to half a bottle of water. Jamie had been warned by the doctors that his concussion was nothing to fool with and he should not be straining himself with too much concentrated reading while still suffering from the side effects including the more-than-occasional nasty mind-splitting headache. A quick check upstairs revealed Kaylin was tucked snugly under her covers with a pair of unrepentant green iridescent eyes blinking back into the hallway light from the foot of the bed. All was obviously well with the little girl and her four-legged self-appointed furry bodyguard so Eddie headed back down to disengage her love from the tangle of work he was nearly obscured by.
"Hey," she cajoled as he stirred when she pulled the heavy folder off his chest. "You need to go upstairs to bed and sleep. You're pushing yourself way too hard already," she added as she could clearly read the pained expression on his face as his eyes failed to focus on her at first. "And why are you bringing work home from the precinct already?" she demanded with a frown as she noted the contents he had been studying. Wilson likewise had offered a few choice words himself about one George Mahoy and this very subject that afternoon as he had also been pegged by the brass at the 12th to head up the new CAT project there. "Renzulli knows you shouldn't even be on modified assignment yet, why would he give this to you? Or did you volunteer?… Stubborn Reagan pride…"
"M'm fine," he interrupted with a barely concealed lie and a stretching rub of the temples. "I quit as soon as it started to hurt; I swear, Ed. I just had to get back to work after all that time… you know that."
"I know that the doctor told you in no uncertain terms that your big bruised over-inflated brain needed heal up first or you were playing with fire. Remember, I had a concussion like that too, and for the life of me I don't know how you fooled that computer for the impact testing, but it was a stupid thing to do," she worried as she pulled him forward a little so she could slip in behind on the cushion and wrap her arms around him. "A few more days at home resting wouldn't have mattered, right?"
"It's my command," Jamie explained as he relaxed back against her and savored her soft touches which were methodically easing the stiffness out of his sore, cramped up neck and shoulders. "They took it from me over all of this, and I had to show the platoon that I wasn't a fragile egg that needed daddy to hire a babysitter," he added with a little remaining contempt, referring of course to Renzulli's appointment.
"Okay, but if you drop over at your desk because you did too much, too soon, it's not gonna look really good for you either, right? I mean it wasn't his idea to get transferred to the 3-5 or do what he did… you've worked things out with your dad and he's the one that put the Sarge, I mean the Lieutenant there and had him pull your badge so why are you still holding it against him? You've always loved working with Renzulli… I was kinda jealous of him," Eddie admitted after a long pause as she continued her increasingly deep massage while a portion of the tension from the past six weeks started to seep out of his rigored muscles. "Geez, Jamie, you're like an old pine plank back here with all these knots," she chided before explaining. "When you left the 12th... you and I… we weren't partners anymore, or anything for a while, but no matter what you always paired up with him like peas in a pod… the boys in the band… two sides of the same coin…"
"Alright, I get it, I get it," he laughed and then grimaced as she hit a particularly sore spot right above his shoulder blade before leaning back into it. "I don't know, I guess he was my partner all those years, and I felt like he sold out to the other side instead of having my back, and then kinda swooped in and took everything away I worked so hard for… I suppose it wasn't his fault though," he paused as he considered that fact. "You were really jealous of him?" he inquired again with a raised eyebrow as he waited for her to knead the tight kink out. "'Cause that's kind of funny considering I was picturing a guy that looks just like that when I heard I had a ride with a certain Eddie Janko," his snicker fading off into a moan as she increased the pressure to a point of delicious agony. "Ow! Ow! Ed, oh, God…" he trailed off as he went limp and his eyes rolled back in his head. "That's… so incredibly… painful…" he gasped. "Don't... stop..."
"What was that you said about me looking like a middle-aged short thick Italian man from Brooklyn?" she demanded in a breathy voice into his ear as her little shiatsu-like thumbs drove hard into the insertion points of his locked up muscle without mercy and waited for a count of twenty until it released.
"I really have... no... idea... what we... were just... talking about," he finally offered as his senses dulled while a blissfully intense rush of endorphins flooded his system taking away the pain in his head as well. "Oh, Ed… uh… who taught you to... ah, whatever that was... never mind, please... do it again... on the other side…" he begged in a barely managed whisper. "Now… what were you saying?..."
"Renzulli," Eddie replied with a knowing smirking grin behind his back after a repeat performance on his left shoulder had Jamie laying in a completely relaxed puddled heap in her lap, high on his own body chemistry with his eyes closed. Superman, meet kryptonite, she thought. Perfect.
"What about him?"
"You need to make up with him, Reagan," she advised as her attentions turned to rubbing soft, relaxing circles across his chest with a mind to taking this a little further upstairs once she got the desired promise to resolve this conflict out of him. "Kaylin needs her Uncle Tony and Auntie Adele, and he did have your back, always will. He even spent three days upstate with Danny trying to save your handsome ass. That's really saying something since he's not really a founding member of the Detective Reagan personal fan club, is he? Besides, you know you love the guy…"
"Maybe I'll send him candy and flowers…"
"I mean it, Jamie," Eddie insisted softly as she continued to soothe to keep him in this most pliable and receptive state since it was the first time she had managed to get him to open up and be agreeable about this issue. "All of this won't be behind us until the two of you have your mojo back. He is your boss again, and the wedding is coming up… you can't let this drag on. If you want things to go back to the way they were between the two of you… figure out one of those guy things to do that shows him all is forgiven without having to use your words like normal human beings…"
"Make that a cheesesteak from the food truck on 19th…"
"No, c'mon be serious, you know… like your dad always says, you can't apologize like that."
"I can't?"
"Not between men. Not over something like this."
"What then?"
"I don't know... you need to show him somehow that you appreciate the things that he taught you. You're like his special little prodigy out there… like the Karate Kid... Danielson and Mr. Miyagi… you know, wax on, wax off," poor Eddie desperately reasoned as she was now well out of the realm of her comfort zone and grasping at straws here on the hidden language of men if she was quoting from old classic movies with no other clear way to get her message across at this late hour. "You need to flatter him," she added as an afterthought.
"How is that an apology?"
"You show the respect that you didn't show when you did the thing you want to apologize for. Nobody gets all mushy, nobody has to hug it out. Trust me on this. Go talk to your dad, he'll tell you the same thing."
"Well, Renzulli does like hot dogs," Jamie grinned as he had to admit Eddie had a point without giving her the satisfaction of knowing she was right and had gotten one over on him.
"Oh, for crying out loud, I give up," she sighed as she pushed him away and got up. "I tried, now let's go to bed."
###
"REAGAN!" Lieutenant Renzulli huffed more than a week later as he exited his air-conditioned car on the steamy corner of 19th and Amsterdam where Jamie and his trainee for the week, probationary Officer Patrick Sullivan, stood waiting outside their RMP which was parked in the shade. "You want to tell me why I was 10-85'd to this position on your request when the two of you are just standing around outside this blue and white easy-bake oven catching up on paperwork?" he growled irritably as despite the fact he had finally released the hound, as it were, back on the street for normal patrol duty, this uncomfortable tension with Sergeant Jamison Reagan had yet to be resolved.
"I just wanted to inform you that operation 3-5 Bear was completed, sir," Jamie replied in that still-irritating ultra-polite by-the-book stiff-backed tone he had maintained with his CO over the course of the past few weeks.
"3-5 Bear?"
"Codename for the C-A-T precinct CompStat Crime Analysis Team review," Jamie explained with just a hint of a smirk now glimmering in his hazel eyes. "Officers Walters, Patterson, Reilly and Peters have been thoroughly prepped and assigned a revolving schedule with myself to make sure all online complaint reports including the seven major index crimes have been compared to the scratch copy and classified correctly, with follow up from arresting officers and complainants if necessary before being forwarded to you for final approval and entry. I wanted to keep you in the loop, sir," he finished smartly although resisted the urge to throw in a sharp salute which by the looks of him would have no doubt pushed his former TO off the edge.
"Yeah, well I figured that out from the sixty-odd goddamn color-coded emails with priority headings that ended up on the top of my inbox every morning for the past two days now!" Renzulli griped while he paused to wipe the sweat off his brow as despite an early morning thundershower, the humidity and heat had intensified on the mid-summer day and the last place he really wanted to be was out on the street here sweating through his crisp white lieutenant's shirt and adding to Adele's growing difficult laundry pile, which had been her chief complaint so far regarding his recent promotion as dark blue made it so much easier to hide the inevitable sweat stains from his hot Italian bloodline.
"I'm sorry, sir, but it's also come to my attention that we might have a highly credible illicit sale situation here that should be addressed immediately," his junior officer revealed as he nodded knowingly down the block and Renzulli's eyes followed before alighting on something familiar standing in front of one of the eating establishments there. "Know what I mean?" Jamie prodded with a raised eyebrow as the two men struggled to contain their smiles at this point while a familiar memory washed over both of them and all the existing tension between the pair vanished immediately. Eddie had been right, this approach was definitely the way to go, not that she would ever find out about that last part, her soon-to-be-husband vowed silently.
"Yeah…" Renzulli trailed off in his patented Brooklynese with a rub of the chin. This was going to be fun and well worth the inevitable rebuke from his wife that evening. "HEY PROBIE!" he barked at Sullivan who went ramrod straight at the unexpected tone from his superior. "HOT DOG, 12 O'CLOCK!"
"Sir?" the nervous young officer responded while he broke out in his own pattern of sweat as if it hadn't been bad enough to be paired up with the Police Commissioner's youngest son the past few sweltering days. "No thanks… um, we just ate lunch," he squawked.
"Nah, suspicious hot dog," Renzulli informed as he directed the kid's attention down to the next block where a costumed character was outside in the boiling heat apparently trying to direct lunchtime traffic off the street and into the cooler confines a sports pub.
"Seriously?" Sullivan questioned as he stared blankly at the man and then glanced back and forth between his Sergeant and Lieutenant's stern faces to discern if he was indeed being punked or hazed in some kind of clandestine NYPD fashion.
"Think we're kidding?!" Jamie snapped in a similar tone as he joined forces with his CO and kept the rookie on edge.
"Son, the sandwich-wearing class is well-known to be problematic," Renzulli explained as he turned the young officer by the shoulder to face their quarry. "They hide all kinds of contraband up there. Look at him," he prodded as the man glanced at them and shied away from the direct eye-contact of the three NYPD officers. "He's getting nervous."
"He doesn't look nervous," the probie gulped uncomfortably himself.
"Yes, he does; the Lieutenant is right," Jamie urged. "Now, go question him!"
"I'm not gonna question some poor guy wearing a hot dog costume," Sullivan balked despite the direct orders of his two superiors. Jamie had chosen him specifically for this mission after scouting the entire precinct for the right officer and opportunity to carry out his plan as the young man and current-year Academy graduate appeared to be as morally bound and rule-abiding as he had once been when he was a fresh-faced newbie.
"See, that is key, kid," Renzulli continued the timeless familiar banter as he continued to push Sullivan a few steps closer. "Why else would someone take a humiliating job in this heat unless there's some upside to it?"
"Unemployment?" the young officer countered as he continued to resist and dig his heels into the sidewalk.
"Stop him, question him, frisk him. Go ahead!" Jamie ordered once more.
"Isn't this an abuse of the policy?"
"He looks suspicious. We have an obligation to check it out. Don't we? Didn't your Sergeant teach you that yet, huh?" Renzulli offered in a tone that let the young man know he wasn't getting out of this situation with anything less than what they were demanding.
"Oh, come on," Sullivan sighed. "Yes, sir… I mean sirs," he finally added with a painful concession and one final pleading look.
"Hey, do your job, rookie," Jamie advised as he refused to give in. "Come on! Go get him!" he urged as the disguised man sensed their intent at this point and threw his board down on the ground in attempt to lighten the load and make a run for it.
"What did we tell you? Go ahead!" Renzulli smirked as he watched Sullivan sprint across the intersection while glancing behind and then proceed down the block to tackle the perp to the ground with small bags of contraband flying out of the suit's many orifices.
"He's got a whole drugstore here!" the rookie gasped in amazement as he struggled to subdue the heavily padded man. "Quit moving!" he ordered.
"Let me go!"
"Settle down. Put your hands behind your back."
"Come on, let me go. I didn't do anything!"
"Stop moving! You got any weapons?"
"No, I got no weapons. Let me go!"
"Got anything else you're not supposed to have? Quit moving around!"
"Hey! What did I tell you, huh? Look at all this stuff," Renzulli gloated as he and Jamie walked up and started gathering the multitude of little baggies laying about.
"I didn't do anything!"
"Let's go. Get up, Mr. Wiener," Jamie advised as he helped Sullivan pull the still-resistant man to his feet. "Settle down!" he commanded. "We caught you with a cache of illegal prescription drugs."
"Hydrocodone, oxycodone…" Renzulli droned on.
"I don't know where they came from. The suit belongs to the restaurant!"
"Yeah, everybody's a comedian," the lieutenant offered. "Get him out of that thing before you put him in the back of the car or we'll be in hot water with 1PP for steaming the sausage in this weather," he chuckled as he elbowed Jamie in the ribs. "You get it? Hot water? Steaming the sausage? Huh? Book that dog!"
"I get it, sir," Jamie forced an obvious laugh. "Ha ha. Very, very funny... isn't it Sullivan? Now c'mon, the wiener's going for a ride. Take him up to the car," he advised his rookie partner as he stood on the sidewalk next to his old TO and watched as the young officer pushed their charge up the street towards the RMP.
"I think it's very funny, personally, Sergeant Reagan," Renzulli observed before pausing. "We good now?" he queried. "Because Adele is dying to visit her goddaughter and take her shopping to wear out my charge card again."
"I'd say so, Boss," Jamie advised with a new term of endearment as his tone had finally softened and drifted back to the their normal friendly type banter. "You know our friends are always welcome over at the house."
"I expect the kid's gonna get the get the credit for this bust, right?"
"Check the DD-5's tomorrow," Jamie smiled. "Top of the list in blue."
So of course a lot of the dialogue in that last part came directly from S01:05 episode of "What You See," which contains the infamous hot dog chase scene that I think is one of the best moments between Jamie and Renzulli the show has ever captured, so recreating it was a fitting guy-type way for them to make up in werks-world without using their words like normal humans as Eddie put it, lol.
The next Snapshot II will have to be a bit of a mystery. I have several others already written but they take place closer to the time when the next installment opens on that upcoming Thanksgiving Day as the Reagans and Eva Janko gather for dinner once more to kick things off, so I think I will hold off on posting them until the end of this run so there is a natural flow into the next piece as we jump around a little here. I do have many suggestions for topics from the younger Reagan years including a few more sibling clashes as well as a Henry/Betty story that I really want to do, a multi-shot covering Mary's passing and Jamie's subsequent sleepwalking episode plus a few others. So I am not completely sure when the next chapter will post, or what the content might be, but I do have a lot of material to cover at the same time I am writing "Resurgence" which is coming along now and want to thank my loyal readers and reviewers for continuing to make these stories fun to do!
