Disclaimer: No infringement of copyright is intended. All characters originated with CSI:NY. Poetry not otherwise referenced is original.
A/N: Continued thanks go out to those who are still traveling this long road with me. If you have written to me in the past few weeks, and I have not answered, please accept my apologies – life has been 'interesting' (using that word to mean borderline awful). I owe so many of you messages, but I am trying to get back on track.
Spoiler Alert: Spoilers for Seasons 2 & 3, up to and including "Silent Night".
Seismic Upheaval
Grounded: meaning being in touch or centred
Feet firmly planted on the ground
Solidly based in reality,
Rejecting the fanciful or strange.
Knowing what is real and true
And what is mere dream,
Fantasy, phantasm.
The earth remains beneath the feet
Season in and season out.
Until far beneath the surface
Earth's core, trapped
By the unrelenting weight of matter
Revolts against its confinement
And flings itself desperately up and out.
And the fixed and stable earth
Shudders beneath suddenly uncertain feet,
And all that has been constant
Disappears.
Chapter 40: Endurance
Flack slid back in beside Mac, a damp sheen on the sides of his pale face, but composed once again. "Dad's illness was fast," he said quietly in response to the older man's awkward concern. "And he only let us tell a couple of old friends. Strictly on the q.t."
"Don…" Danny tried again, but gave up this time, waving his hand uselessly in the air. "Stella know?"
Flack nodded, "Took her last night. He asked to see her."
Danny just nodded.
"Look, Danny, that's part of it - my dad I mean. But there's lots more shit we have to tell you. So just hang tough if you can, okay? We don't want to tell you this stuff any more than you're going to want to hear, but we gotta. There's too much crap flying right now."
"Lindsay? Is she okay? She's not involved?" His head came up and panicked blue eyes ripped through Mac, who shook his head slowly.
"Not yet. Not that we know about."
"Just me? Just me … and my family, is that it?' Danny sat back. All the open concern and worry for his friends that had been apparent on his face only a moment ago was wiped off his face, and he showed them the cool confidence of a street kid caught dead to rights who was sure his connections would get him a free pass.
He'd been here too many times before.
Mac nodded this time. "Danny, I told you I would keep you in as long as I can. But we have too many things going on now to know what to keep you in and what to keep you out of."
He took a sip of coffee and grimaced before adding sugar. "So, I'm going to tell you everything I can. Let's see if you can help us figure any of it out. And if you shouldn't have been told, or something I've told you gets out …" he raised his hand as Danny started to protest, "Then you and I go down together. Got it?"
Danny swallowed hard. Mac wasn't just offering to trust him. He was offering to stand by him no matter what. It was a huge weight to carry, and Danny unconsciously straightened up. Mac nodded approvingly and waved to Flack to start.
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY
Stella grabbed the tray with their tuna sashimi and California rolls to a table by the windows to watch the planes coming in. Lindsay sighed a little as an Alaskan flight left for the West.
"Are you okay?" Stella said, chopsticks poised above wasabi and soy sauce.
"Just a little homesick, I guess," Lindsay admitted slowly. She looked at Stella, worried. "Which is weird seeing as I just was at home and all I could think was how much I wanted to be back here."
Stella shook her head firmly, "Not weird at all. How were things in Montana?"
"Pretty lousy," Lindsay admitted, her eyes on the table, picking nervously at some grains of rice as they fell out of the rolls.
"How have things been here?"
"Kind of strained and awkward."
"So why wouldn't you feel that things would be better if you were with your family in a place you knew well and lots of friends and support?" Stella completed the thought. "Feelings are feelings, Linds. They aren't supposed to look like logic. Don't worry about feeling homesick sometimes. I still sometimes think I should have followed Sister Mary Theresa's advice and become a nun." She plopped a slab of raw fish in her mouth and giggled at Lindsay's big eyes.
"You? A nun?"
"Don't sound so shocked! I was a Catholic orphanage girl, after all! Sister thought with a little discipline I could have become a good nun." Stella's eyes darkened, although her voice remained calm and light.
Lindsay looked Stella over and raised her eyebrows. "I don't know, Stella. Not much fashionista potential in the convent."
Stella agreed gloomily, "It was the shoes that were the deal-breaker - no heels allowed!"
The flight from Washington was announced and the two women made their way to the baggage pickup.
"Peanut!"
Stella stepped back as Lindsay was enveloped by a big man whose strength was evident in the effortless way he lifted the petite woman off her feet, and whose care was evident in the way he avoided hurting her. When he looked up, Stella recognized the steady brown eyes and firm mouth that had spoken to the team on the webcam when they were sharing information about the cold case in Montana, the one that had turned hot enough to nearly destroy the team.
"John, this is Stella Bonasera. Stella, John Monroe." Lindsay performed the introductions half hidden in her brother's arms.
Danny was right, Stella thought: they grew them big in Montana. "I'm pleased to meet you, John. Thanks for your help before; it made all the difference."
The hand that stretched out enveloped hers in a restrained handshake. "Detective. I can't tell you how much we appreciated what the team did for Lindsay. We would have been too late without the support from NYPD."
Stella smiled, "On Mac Taylor's behalf, I'll give those sentiments right back at you, Special Agent. We couldn't do without Messer and Monroe."
"Okay, okay," Lindsay grumbled, "Butt-kissing is all done. You're all heroes. I don't know… seems to me Danny and I did all the work. We certainly did all the bleeding!"
Stella looked at Lindsay in pleased surprise. That was the first time she had heard any lightness in Lindsay's voice when talking about the Montana experience. She grinned at John Monroe over Lindsay's head.
"Aaannnd, she's back!" she thought to herself.
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY
Danny sipped coffee he couldn't taste and fought a desperate urge for a cigarette, although he'd quit back when being a ball player made him cool enough not to need the James Dean look.
Don sat, slightly hunched over his coffee cup, exhaustion pouring out of him like a blues song from a New Orleans café.
"Okay. When I went out to tell your parents about you being in Montana, Mouse Mauser caught up to me," he started. "He told me that there was another Sassone brother, an older one, who was a Fed with a different last name. Ring any bells?"
Danny frowned, "Naw, I never heard that. Sassone family was always good for a story or two, you know, but that's new to me."
Flack nodded, "Me too. But when I talked to Mouse later, he said even Sassones don't know about this one. Not Sonny's generation, that is."
"This kid supposed to be Lorenzo's? Who's the mother?" Danny sat back, musing.
Mac cleared his throat and glanced sideways at Flack.
Flack sighed and said, "Rumour - and it's just rumour, Danny - says one Maureen Riley." He flicked a glance at Danny.
Danny could feel the colour drain from his face. His first thought was, "Hell, no!" His second was, "So that's it." But underlying those conscious thoughts was the sound of his mother screaming, and his father cursing her in Italian. No little boy, he thought, should know the meaning of the word puttana or zozzona. His grandmother had refused to tell him what they meant, but there were lots of older boys in the neighbourhood happy to educate him about his mother the whore, the slut.
No little boy should hide under the bed at night waiting to find out who would come into his bedroom - the weeping, battered woman who would coax him out, wrap her arms around him, and cry; or the screaming virago who would drag him out by one arm and strike him in the face until his ears rang.
"Danny?" It was Mac's voice that brought him back.
Deliberately, he searched for that toughness which had saved him on the street more than once. "What do you want me to tell you? That it's true?"
He couldn't look at Don, see the compassion in his eyes. He focused on a spot on the wall between their heads: these two men who were closer to him than his own family. This felt like a betrayal of everything they had ever meant to him.
They sat in silence for several minutes. There seemed to be no way to continue.
"Mouse had a few other things to say." Mac decided to start the discussion in a different direction. "Evidently Gino is trying to infiltrate the university market. According to Mouse, Tag was killed because he screwed something up."
"And you think it might be Reed that he screwed up? Kidnapping him was a mistake?" Danny started searching his pockets for something, his eyes still guarded.
Mac reviewed the information Reed had come up with, glossing over the fact that the kid had broken into private property to get it. Judging by the frown on Flack's face, the information had been stored away for another day.
"So, Gino is using his usual charming tricks to make sure he controls construction at Chelsea," Danny grunted. "Not particularly new, though he's never gone to these lengths before. What does he want there?"
"And how far does it go? According to what Reed overheard, there's at least one Councilwoman on the payroll."
"And Reed's afraid it's his mother," Mac added slowly, his eyes on Flack.
"Naw, she's in the clear," Flack said absently, "She's been asked to head up the inquiry into Organized Crime specifically in the construction trades - that info will go public next week when the mayor and Gerard do their big unveiling of the Master Plan."
Flack may have been heading up the Task Force, but his dismissive tone left no one in any doubt about his feelings towards the politicians who would make their names and reputations on his team's hard and dangerous work.
Mac sat back with a sigh of relief, "I hoped that was it. Why the hell couldn't she just tell us that?"
Flack shrugged, "Ms. Garrett likes the limelight, but not the security needs that go along with it. Gerard is keeping her name under wraps until she'll agree to protection for all of them."
"I think she'll agree now," Mac said with a hint of anger under his smooth voice.
Flack nodded, "Could have saved Reed a couple of uncomfortable nights."
This time the silence was a bit easier between them.
Danny finally found what he had been looking for in his pockets. "Here," he said, thrusting a piece of paper across the table.
It was the list of connections he had started the night before.
-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY-CSI:NY
"So, John, other than checking up on the kid here, you have any plans for being in the big city?" Stella asked as they walked to the car.
"I have to check in with my office; they are putting me in a new department." Monroe walked like a Fed, Stella thought, all intense focus. People automatically moved out of his way and he seemed to take it as his due.
"Not again? How many changes does this make in the last three years, John?" Lindsay said in surprise. Her brother rarely talked about work to the family, but his constantly changing locations could hardly be missed. "Does this mean you are going to be based in New York?"
He smiled at the excitement in her voice, but shook his head. "No, still Quantico, I'm afraid. But I'll be up here more often, liaising with NYPD's new Organized Crime Unit. The one headed up by your buddy, Detective Flack," he said to Stella with a smile.
She smiled back, "He'll be glad for the support, I'm sure."
John threw back his head and laughed. "Not if he's like every other cop in the world! He won't thank me for stepping on his territory. But I have some expertise and info to share, so he'll get it whether he likes it or not."
He looked into Stella's strained face and said a little more gently, "Don't worry. I won't have to force-feed him. What I got, he'll want, trust me."
Stella nodded briskly. Don was a big boy. He could look after himself and his team even now, her head coached her heart. Even with the strain he was under.
Lindsay stepped between them, a little protectively. "How long will you be here, John?"
He grinned down at her, perfectly aware of what she was doing. "About a week, I guess. We'll see what happens. Messer got tickets to the game?"
Lindsay nodded, "Cup playoffs. Danny's a little upset about having to root for Buffalo."
John laughed and the conversation remained light until they got to Stella's car and stowed his gear in the trunk.
Stella said casually, "We'll drop you at Lindsay's place, John. We have an appointment."
John slid into the front passenger seat, finding to his surprise that the seat was far back enough to accommodate his long legs. "This something official?"
Stella looked at Lindsay in the rear view mirror, an action John caught out of the corner of his eye. Lindsay shrugged and said calmly, "Not exactly. Just a line of inquiry we are following up on."
John twisted around in his seat and stared Lindsay down. "Peanut, when you go all official on your big brother, I know you're lying. What's going on?"
Stella opened her mouth to put John off, but before she could, everything came pouring out Lindsay in a flood of self-recriminatory panic. Stella settled back in the driver's seat and headed out to contend with gridlock in downtown New York; by the time they got anywhere, she thought, Lindsay would have finished.
John sat listening calmly to his sister's confused concern over Danny and the various things that had happened in the few days since she had returned from Montana, but noticed that she quickly began to pull things together as an investigator, connecting Reed's kidnapping to the Messer Construction company and Taglia's death effortlessly, for example.
Evidence without context be damned; Lindsay knew there was something wrong with Gino Messer, and probably with Nikki as well. Danny's reaction to his cousin's phone call had told her that.
Stella added a few things as they sat in mid-afternoon traffic, telling both Monroes the bare facts of Lieutenant Flack's illness, for example, and the highlights of Flack's interview with the malodorous Mouse. "So we are going to talk to his source: Gunter Mauser," she finished. "According to his grandson, he is leaking information as he loses his grip. Hopefully we can shake something loose in his memory, something that will tie a few things together."
Lindsay said, "John, is it really possible for a person with connections like a Sassone to be a Federal agent? Aren't there all kinds of background checks for security clearance and things?"
"Unto the second and third generations," John agreed absently, musing on the information the two detectives had dumped on his lap. "I nearly got turned down because of Uncle Harry."
"Harry Fredricks? Mom's cousin?"
John nodded.
Stella looked at the siblings sharing a smile. "What was wrong with Uncle Harry?"
"He was a draft dodger in the '60s. Left Montana and ran to British Columbia, Canada. Lives in some little valley in the middle of the mountains with a bunch of other old hippies." John's voice was only a little mocking; Diane Monroe still mourned the loss of a brother and three cousins in Vietnam every Memorial Day.
"He sends us honey," Lindsay volunteered, "From his own hives. They live off the land and off grid as much as possible."
Stella looked around her: the traffic was barely moving, horns were honking, drivers were yelling, singing, eating, and even putting on makeup in their cars. There were bike messengers and pedestrians weaving through the stalled cars, billboards blinking their messages of over-consumption and consumer greed, and the smell of food wafting through the early spring air from street vendors and small restaurants open 24 hours to indulge the city's constant appetite.
She sighed contentedly. Off-grid? No thank you!