Here's the final chapter. Thanks for putting up with me.
Defenseless: Part 4
4 months earlier
It was 10 p.m. on a Tuesday. In their father's office, his elder brother and father were waiting for him.
The silence was deadly. Dad and Danny weren't even talking.
"Hey Dad. Danny," Jamie greeted his father, Frank Reagan and his brother, Danny. They didn't even nod, let alone say 'hey' back to him.
"What's up?" Jamie asked anyway even though he had already guessed the reason his father and brother had called him to their childhood home.
"What did the Feds say to you?" Danny attacked without warning.
"What?" Jamie responded incredulously.
""He knows," his father said.
"And he knows now that you agreed."
It was a statement, not a question.
"Yeah."
"What?"Danny said and got up from his chair.
"I knew Malevsky isn't the end of that story. We all knew Joe's death was the repercussion of a bigger conspiracy," Jamie explained himself even though he knew it had always been futile when it came to convincing Danny about anything concerning Jamie's capability to do anything.
"So what? Doing this can't bring Joe back!" Danny yelled.
"Danny, calm down. You'll wake Grandpa up," Jamie said.
"I don't care if he knows. In fact, I'm gonna wake him up right now," Danny said and headed for the door.
"Danny, don't," Frank said. Danny stopped in his track.
"Things are already in motion.
Danny stared at Frank with a look that signalled as if his father had had another head sprung from his neck.
"Unbelievable. I can't - I can't f**king believe this," Danny swore.
"Sit down," Frank ordered.
"You're also in this?"
"I'm the Police Commissioner. Even if I wasn't the officer's father, I would be informed of an operation of this scale and level of complexity."
"Jesus Christ," Danny pushed his own head between his two hands.
"What is the plan Dad?"
"We're going to fake Jamie's death. And then send him to prison where he'll meet this guy there who got intel and then we'll go from there."
"That's just brilliant. There are million ways for this thing to go wrong. What if he got jumped in prison? What if this thing got out?"
"We've already planted a few of our guys there. Jamie will be protected. He'll be in and once he's got the info he'll get out on the trail of the said intel."
"Which could be a week or a month or a year or God knows how long. Some plan you got there, Dad."
"There's something else that you need to know," Frank said solemnly and looked at Jamie. Jamie cleared his throat.
"I really have to die. There are risks of getting exposed if I disappeared," Jamie explained.
"Of course, numbnut," Danny gushed angrily.
"So what is going to happen to Jamie, dad?" He asked.
Frank let out a heavy sigh and prepared for the onslaught of Danny's cussing.
"The NYPD and the Feds will stage a police chase that will end with Jamie being killed."
"Jesus. For real?"
"By knife. Because a gun would be too unpredictable. And the knife would give him a mean scar. We're giving him a back story for that scar."
"Holy mother –"
"We'll be designating a team of highly skilled and experienced EMT personals for Jamie's 'evacuation'."
"Huh. Evacuation from certain death?"
"He will be pronounced dead and he would be given the burial service fitting of a law enforcement officer of this country."
"With his picture enlarged and everything," Danny's voice trailed.
"I can't go back, Danny. I got to do this," Jamie said. Danny nodded. Jamie could see that it was painful but perhaps Danny was thinking that Jamie could do worse by not coming clean at all.
Danny was finally quiet, deep in contemplation, with desperation and fear in his eyes. After a while, he spoke.
"I want in."
"What?" Jamie asked. Frank just clenched his jaws.
"If somebody's going to stab my kid brother, let me be the one. I wouldn't trust anyone else to do it."
"That makes me feel a whole lot better," Jamie said tensely.
"Don't worry, kid. I know where every damn organ in your body is exactly placed. And don't pull out the knife. The knife will stop you from bleeding out. "
"Everyone knows that."
"Yeah. Wait until you got one in you. But I need you to do a body scan, or whatever they call it. I think you might have grown fatter after snacking too much on the job. Janko is a bad influence."
"Hey!"
But Jamie knew Danny was joking because that was Danny's way of masking his fear and his anxiety.
"Now that we've got this cleared, I want to tell you something, son," Frank said to Jamie.
"Dad?"
"You won't know when it's going to hit you. You just have to follow the plan as it happens."
"I understand."
"This is the real deal. Not to leave this room."
There was utter silence before Frank nodded to Danny.
"Thanks, Danny."
Jamie expected something witty or abbrassive from Danny, like how lucky he is to able to stab his own annoying kid brother, or somewhere along that morbid line, but Danny just sank to the sofa, a broken man, hands on his face.
"Jamie," Danny called his kid brother's name in a way that it was both a sigh and a fond mention.
"It's OK, Danny. It's OK," Jamie said and took the place next to his brother. Jamie put an arm across Danny's shoulders. Danny just kept his head down. Jamie thought he saw tears on Danny's face, glinting in the semi-darkness of their father's office.
Present
"What's up, sis?"
Danny got a call from Erin and she had asked to meet her at the Reagan's grove, the graves of three.
"I went to Shawangunk this morning."
Danny's heart skips a beat hearing that.
"What were you doing there?"
"I interviewed an inmate about a past testimony."
"Same old, same old."
"And I thought I saw Jamie."
"That's ridiculous. Jamie's dead. In the ground," Danny says, perhaps too angrily.
Erin lets out a small laugh, more like a sigh.
"You're right. I was hallucinating. I wanted to see him. The guy got tattoos and his got this mean hair cut. I was at a safe distance. I was mistaken, imagining things."
"Yeah. You were," Danny says, half scolding her.
Erin stays standing at Jamie's grave and it seems to Danny that she isn't going to leave yet.
"Look, I gotta get back to work."
"Go."
"What was he doing?" Danny asks.
"Huh?"
"The inmate who got a lot of tats and a mean haircut."
"Shooting hoops."
"Huh," Danny huffs.
Erin smiles a fleeting small joy.
"See ya, sis."
"See ya, Danny."
The End.