While the Heart Beats
Author's Note: Happy Blue Bloods Friday again! Today, please enjoy part five of "While the Heart Beats." Be advised that this story contains spoilers for episodes 3x22, "The Bitter End," and 3x23, "This Way Out." I'm also reserving the right to tweak the posting schedule for this story. Explanation for that is at the end. Enjoy!
Last time...
"12-Sergeant, be advised 10-85 now 10-13, officers requesting assistance for shots fired." The radio burped, then pealed a tone that made Pierce's face go a shade paler than it already was. "Attention all units, code three on this channel – shots fired at Driggs and Bedford, Bitterman Housing Project. 10-13. 911 callers reporting multiple officers down on scene. Proceed with extreme caution."
Renzulli's skin went cold. The temperature in the car felt as though it had suddenly plummeted twenty degrees. A single thought crowded all others out of his mind.
Jamie.
)()()()()()()()()()(
Now...
For the life of him, Anthony Renzulli would never understand how Reagans could attract trouble the way they did.
As far as he was concerned, there were plenty of sure things in life. His wife, for example, would never be on the phone with her sister in Utica for less than two hours. A hot dog would never taste better than when he ate it, piping hot and loaded with relish and mustard, in a splash of sunlight on opening day at Yankee Stadium. Trash day would never fail to catch him by surprise despite having been on the same day of the week for years, which meant he would grumble through his first hour off tour on Wednesdays while hauling three bags of garbage down four flights of stairs.
But the most certain thing of all?
Anybody in the NYPD with the last name of Reagan was bound to have more drama in a week than he would have in a year.
He'd been around long enough to know about the problems ol' Henry Reagan had had, back in the day, and the current commissioner always seemed to have his hands full. It was the kids, though, who caught the worst of it. Erin had gotten herself into plenty of sticky situations, in and out of the courtroom. Danny was a magnet for high-profile cases and the trouble that came with them. Even as a rookie, Joe had found himself right in the middle of the most dangerous assignments and riskiest patrols, despite Renzulli's best efforts to keep him shielded. In true Reagan fashion, Joe had wanted no part of that.
And then there was Jamie.
Renzulli had been on the force twenty-two years and he'd never gotten so much as a sprained ankle. But paired with Jamie Reagan, he'd been thrown down a flight of marble stairs and nearly cracked his head open. Twenty-two years, and he'd never fired his weapon outside of the training range. Jamie had fired his at least twice already in his three years, once to stop a kidnapping and later to protect a group of school kids from a gunman in Washington Square Park. Then there was the little matter of the Honorable Mention, Jamie's commendation (and the fourth-highest honor in the NYPD, by the way) for rescuing a baby out of an apartment building. Renzulli had never gotten anything like that before, not even close, but now it was on his breast bar just above his shield and the kicker was he didn't even deserve it - he only took credit for Jamie's bravery because, unbeknownst to him, the kid had already been working a dangerous undercover assignment at the time and couldn't risk the public recognition.
He didn't want anyone to get him wrong. He thought the world of the Reagans; loved the fact that they seemed to consider him part of their family. It was just hard to believe how much of their lives played out on a dramatic, public scale. He'd asked Jamie about it once, on a snowy January evening as they'd huddled in the squad car with their hands near the heater vents, trying to thaw out in between rounds of street patrol. "What is it with your family, anyway?" Renzulli had demanded. "There's always at least one of you on the front page every week. How does that even happen?"
Jamie had at least had the good grace to look thoughtful about the question, blowing on his hands and rubbing them together briskly before he replied. "The New Yorker did a piece on us right after I was accepted into the academy."
"I remember." That had happened while Danny was still at the 12th precinct. They would have put copies everywhere and teased him mercilessly over it had Joe's death not been such a fresh wound. "I guess that's par for the course for a Reagan, huh?"
"We go back generations with the NYPD. You know that. The media loves it. It's unusual enough to have three brothers wear the shield, not to mention a sister who's an ADA, a dad who's the commissioner, a grandfather-"
"I get it, I get it," Renzulli interrupted. He knew the Reagan bios about as well as anybody. "You guys gonna write a book anytime soon?"
Jamie's eyes rolled. "Not if I have anything to do with it. Definitely not if my dad has anything to do with it. He hates publicity. Thinks it gets in the way of the work."
"He's right."
Jamie nodded. "It's Merton's principle, you know."
"Merton's principle," Renzulli repeated dryly. "Y'know, there's only one of us in this car who went to Harvard, Harvard."
Jamie grinned. "Robert Merton. Self-fulfilling prophecy."
"Right." He actually had no idea what the kid was talking about, but if he knew Jamie Reagan like he thought he knew Jamie Reagan...
Jamie leaned back in his seat with a sigh. "Have you ever had a bad day and a really crappy night's sleep, and you woke up and said, 'This day is going to suck,' and then it did?"
"Who hasn't?"
"Self-fulfilling prophecy. It just means that you decided the day was going to be bad, and so you made it be that way. The prophecy fulfilled itself."
"And this has what to do with you?"
"I just wonder if that's what happened to us, sometimes. People get so wound up over the name, y'know? Maybe there's nothing special about us at all. People just expect us to be great and so they give us big cases; put us in positions of power. They push greatness on us whether we deserve it or not."
Renzulli frowned over at him. "Well, first of all, kid, I only caught a few parts of that, but whatever." Renzulli leaned forward to fiddle with the temperature switch on the heater. "People expect great things out of Reagans. Okay, sure. But, y'know, sometimes that happens not because of reputation, or legacy. Sometimes it's because you really are good at what you do."
"Why Sarge." Jamie grinned cheekily at him. "I didn't know you cared."
"I don't. Just trying to make sure I don't get dragged to the circus along with you and your pop and the rest of the family."
Jamie leaned forward himself, to look out the windshield toward the halo of light cast by the streetlamp. The snow was falling thick and silent. "No clowns or elephants around here tonight."
"Well, let's go make our own fun, then." Renzulli grabbed his door handle. "C'mon, time's a'wastin'."
Good kid, that Jamie Reagan. He could've turned out to be a real asshole what with the privileged upbringing and all, but he was all right. Wore the Reagan name well. Pretty damn good cop, too, and Renzulli was sure that whatever trouble might find the kid, Reagan name or not, he could handle himself with the best of them.
Renzulli liked to think that maybe, just maybe, he could take a tiny bit of credit for that.
"Holy shit, Sergeant." Officer Pierce Benning, Renzulli's temporary boot out of the 15th, was gripping the dashboard in one hand and the doorframe with the other. His words yanked Renzulli back into the moment, and he glanced quickly at the kid. Pierce's face had gone chalk white and he was staring at the radio system like it was spitting out cockroaches. "Holy shit."
"Hang on," Renzulli replied tersely. His hands were wrapped impossibly tight around the steering wheel, and he pushed the squad car as hard as he dared, gunning it around slowing traffic, managing only the thinnest shreds of control to maneuver his way through red traffic lights and around oblivious pedestrians. His mind was racing almost as fast as the car.
Shots fired in Bitterman. Jesus, they're escalating this crap way past a few glass bottles.
Even in the privacy of his own thoughts, he couldn't think about the call. He wouldn't let himself think about what a 10-13 meant, or officers down, or what the hell kind of scene he was racing into. The sudden dump of adrenaline in his veins, causing his heart to stutter and his hands to shake, was reminder enough.
"Can you trust those 911 reports?" Pierce asked. "I mean, are those usually accurate? Do people even know what they're looking at?"
Renzulli didn't have time to answer. He leaned over to snatch the radio receiver. "Central, 12-Sergeant en route. Is 12-George communicating with you?" he snapped into the fray of communication. He knew he had no business leaping into the emergency traffic, but for this, he would ignore protocol.
To his surprise, the answer came quickly. "Responding units, be advised - officers involved on scene are unresponsive. Code three remains in effect. 10-46; ambulance ETA four minutes."
"Dammit." He threw the receiver in the general direction of its cradle, and Pierce proved himself useful for something as he managed to snatch it before it fell. "We gotta get there. Now."
"Okay, so... when we do..." Pierce's voice faltered.
Renzulli cut him another quick glance before returning his eyes to the road. "Just stay behind me. Stay close. Watch my back and protect yourself. They just called a 10-46 so there's gonna be cops all over the place. Make sure you stay with me at all times, got it?"
Pierce's eyes, already big on a normal day, looked halfway out of their sockets. "Do I need to pull my gun?"
"Do you need to- yes, you need to pull your gun. How long have you been out of Academy, for cryin' out loud?"
"I've never responded to anything like this," he protested, and flinched involuntarily as Renzulli narrowly avoided a bright red Mazda. "I've never even seen a felony arrest."
"Just get ready. And be ready to do exactly what I say, you understand?"
"Yes sir."
Renzulli brought the squad car in hot next to the western buildings of the Bitterman Housing Project. The massive structures fit together like Lego blocks, this particular section framing the sea of white concrete that was the main quad. He knew the place mostly for its drug activity and copious trash, although he'd been by before in the summer when the boys would get a good pickup basketball game going and life in Bitterman seemed almost normal.
There was nothing in the area save a few squat, sad little landscaping bushes and a garbage can overflowing with styrofoam cups and crumpled Wendy's wrappers. No ambulances yet, and no other first responders either. "12-Sergeant on scene," he spat into the radio, then threw the car out of gear and bailed out, leaving the lights flashing and the siren pealing. Later, he wouldn't even recall drawing his weapon, but as he moved low and fast around the front of the car, his gun was solid and reassuring in his hands. Instinct was guiding him and he let it take over with no small measure of relief. He went for the narrow entrance between buildings that fed back to the main quad and saw Pierce fall in beside him, a slim shadow at his side. "Stay with me," he hissed, and Pierce nodded in response.
Renzulli moved quickly to the entrance of the quad, steeling himself, but stopped short. He wasn't exactly sure what he was expecting to find - a gang of raging young men, perhaps, brandishing weapons, or people screaming and running for safety with small children clutched to their chests. He thought he might still be able to catch the stench of gunpowder in the air, or see his guys, Jamie and Vinny. His anxious gaze swept the areas of the quad he could see from his vantage point, looking for anything and everything, including sprawled bodies, but there was...
...there was nothing.
The quad was silent, and devoid of even a semblance of life. If it weren't for the collection of soiled newspapers that had been left in a soggy pile in one corner of the common space or the abandoned basketballs on the court, he would think this place was abandoned. He didn't see a damn soul.
A sudden spin of movement on the opposite side of the quad grabbed his attention, and he instinctively took one hand off his weapon, putting out the free arm to stop Pierce from raising his gun at the two officers who were emerging, their stance similarly defensive. Quickly Pierce lowered his weapon, skin flushing, but Renzulli had no time for that. His eyes were on the officers - a portly, twenty-year vet named Gordon and his partner, Doyle; he recognized them even from the distance - and as he moved out into the quad, trying to look everywhere at once and still pulling in the details of the scene, it all suddenly began to take shape around him.
He saw the weapon first, one of their own, lying unsecured on the pavement. He saw a few shells next, glimmering gold in the late afternoon light.
And he saw blood.
It was smeared here and puddled there but it was fresh, and garish red against the white grit of the concrete. There was a wall nearby, part of a ramp that led down into the center of the quad, and he saw chunks of it missing, blown out by bullets.
"Jesus," Pierce breathed in his ear.
Gordon and Doyle had entered from the quad's opposite side, and thus they could see none of the evidence from their angle. But suddenly, Gordon darted forward, swearing a blue streak as he dove low towards something on the ground, just around the corner from Renzulli's line of sight. Doyle went low at the same moment, weapon suddenly aiming toward the rooftops as he keyed his shoulder-mounted radio with his free hand. "Central, be advised we can confirm officers down on scene. I've identified two, possibly three hostiles on roof. Be advised, scene is hot!"
Renzulli didn't think. Not for a moment. Moving still on instinct, he darted wide around the shells and blood, Pierce glued to his side. "C'mon, get to cover," he said, pushing the kid ahead of him as they ducked into the small bit of cover where the other officers were.
Thus, he was completely unprepared for where his eyes landed as he came around that shallow corner.
Jamie Reagan was sitting back against the wall, his body still, his eyes glazed. Smeared blood on his mouth and chin was a shock of red against his colorless face.
For one horrific, endless second, Renzulli thought he was dead.
But Gordon was crouching in front of him, and had taken Jamie's face in both his hands; he was talking to him urgently, as if there was some sliver of soul left to reach for, and a heartbeat later Renzulli realized why.
Jamie was clutching Vinny's limp body in his arms.
"If there's no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I'll follow you into the dark..."
- Gavin Mikhail, "I Will Follow You Into the Dark" (cover)
Author's Note: I'm really sorry I don't have more for you this week. I suck. This is fact. Seriously, I had intended for this chapter to cover a lot more territory for you all, but I've had a heck of a week and this, such as it is, is absolutely all I've been able to get done. So, I'll try to post again in the week ahead (a special Memorial Day update, perhaps?) to finish this scene off, at least, and get back on schedule. Your comments are welcomed, appreciated, and will receive replies (eventually! Probably not tonight though; just keeping it real. LOL, my suck quotient grows...). Thank you very much for reading!