This was the best day ever, and Harleen felt like she’d waited forever for it. She and her daddy had spent a lot more time together back when her parents had only had her. But then her baby brother had come along. The baby was cute but, boy, could he cry. Her daddy explained how he was totally helpless and needed a lot of attention, and he was sorry about that, but he and Mommy would make it up to her. She just had to be patient, be a good girl and help out.
So she was patient, she was a good girl and helped whenever Mommy needed her, and right around the time she thought Mommy and Daddy might make things up to her, they brought another baby brother home. Now there were two of them, and all she could do was go on being good and helping out. But Daddy said they were going to make it up to her. Daddy promised.
Then they went to the hospital and brought home yet another baby brother, for a grand total of three. Three baby brothers.
It was hard to believe that her parents really thought her having so many baby brothers was a good idea. But then, grown-ups could be so weird.
If they’d asked Harleen, she’d have suggested going to the movies or seeing the Ice Capades at Madison Square Garden. But what she really wanted was for Daddy to take her to Coney Island for the day, just the two of them. Daddy never got all bent out of shape about how many hot dogs and caramel apples she ate, and he wasn’t afraid to go on the Wonder Wheel with her. When Mommy was there, she’d get after Harleen for dripping mustard on her shirt or having sticky hands from cotton candy or not wanting the rest of the apple after the caramel part was gone.
She knew Mommy couldn’t help it; it was how mommies were. Daddy was different. But now that they had all those baby brothers, it seemed like he was always working and never got a day off. He would apologize to Harleen and tell her they’d have some fun together as soon as he could make the time, something really, really good. He usually said it as he was going out the door.
At least he and Mommy had quit giving her baby brothers. That was something to be glad about. But now Harleen was starting to think that Daddy was working so much, he’d forgotten how to do anything else. And worse, maybe he would rather work than be with her and Mommy and the three very loud baby brothers.
This morning she had been resigned to another Saturday changing diapers and pretending she didn’t hear Mommy muttering about being trapped (which didn’t make any sense because they didn’t even have mousetraps), when suddenly Daddy told her to hurry up and get dressed or they wouldn’t get to Coney Island until noon.
Harleen had actually wondered if it would really happen, afraid that as soon as they left the house, Daddy would get a call and he’d have to go to work after all and she’d be marooned on the dark side of disappointment, changing diapers.
But she and Daddy rode the Q Line on the subway all the way to Coney and got there hours before noon. Daddy told her if he got a work call, he wouldn’t answer it. He wasn’t even going to say the word “work” for the rest of the day.
And it was a wonderful day. Just her and Daddy, riding the carousel, the Wonder Wheel, and the roller coaster, and going through the Funhouse. The Funhouse had been completely repainted and done over. There was new stuff, too, like the big, fat cushioned rollers hanging vertically that pushed you through them like you were cookie dough, and a place where sections of the floor moved separately under your feet, going back and forth so you stumbled and staggered, and lots of funny mirrors that made you look short and squashed, or tall and stretched out, or warped and weird.
Even the long slides were new, bigger and longer. She was too afraid to go down one by herself so Daddy went with her, holding her tight as she screamed with the thrill of it.
For lunch, they had Nathan’s hot dogs washed down with something called coconut champagne, which wasn’t really champagne but it sure was sweet; she couldn’t finish it. Daddy didn’t mind—he couldn’t finish his either. Later, when she had a caramel apple for a delayed dessert, he didn’t mind her leaving the apple for the birds after all the caramel was gone. He said he didn’t want to eat an apple without any caramel either, and they both laughed.
Daddy said he couldn’t go on any rides right after eating so they played games—skee ball, ring toss, Lobster Pot Pyramid Smash, and Grab A Duck. Grab A Duck was best—she and Daddy both won stuffed animals. She won a funny monkey and Daddy won an ostrich. They were small but still wonderful because she and Daddy won them together. Daddy asked her to take care of his ostrich for him because he worked so much and he didn’t want Ozzie to get lonely. Harleen loved that Daddy had already named him.
They were walking past the roller coaster when Daddy stopped and showed her the framework structure, the way the wood boards crisscrossed. It was called a lattice, he said, and it made a special pattern of light and shadow—if you stood inside and held very still, you’d be so well camouflaged that you’d be practically invisible to people passing by.
“Not that you’d ever need to do that,” Daddy added as they walked on. “Not in a place like Coney Island.”
Harleen nodded, holding his hand and looking back over her shoulder at the lattice.
When the shadows began to stretch and the sunshine turned a soft gold, Harleen thought Daddy would say they should think about going home, but he didn’t. Instead, they went to some of the sideshows, where Harleen saw a lady on an electrified throne with thousands and thousands of volts running through it and she never felt a thing, even though she lit a torch from her tongue.
Another lady was so flexible, she could twist herself into positions that made Harleen’s eyes water. She’d never seen anyone so limber, not even her gymnastics teacher. Then there was a guy who hammered a nail right into his face and didn’t even bleed.
Daddy took her back to the Funhouse after that and they went down the big slide five more times together. By the fifth time, she wasn’t scared anymore and she was shrieking with laughter as she and Daddy sat on the little rug and slid down the long curve. Having his strong arms around her made her feel like nothing bad could ever happen to her.
On the way out, she and Daddy opened a door they thought was an exit and found themselves in a small, stuffy, and very messy room. There were cans of paint and varnish all over the place, like whoever had finished with them had just left them lying around for someone to trip over. Sheets of plywood leaned against one wall. Nearby were big bottles of carpenter’s glue and pieces of blue chalk. A very large sheet of plywood lay over two sawhorses, with a power saw on top of it.
The air was dry and smelled heavily of sawdust, though there were other odors underneath it—wet paint, thinner, and something like rubber cement, only somehow more intense, like it had a lot more chemicals in it. Harleen felt her stomach turn.
“This isn’t a nice place,” she said unhappily.
“No, it’s a work-room,” Daddy said. “Somebody’s got to make the fun stuff.” He led her back out the door, shutting it behind them.
Harleen looked up at him. “I guess making fun stuff isn’t much fun.”
“You said a mouthful, kid,” Daddy chuckled as she pulled him away from the door. That awful chemical smell was still in her nose; she needed fresh air to chase it away. When they did finally get outside, it was dark.
Harleen felt a thrill of excitement. It was so late! Mommy always said when the streetlights went on, it was time to go home. If Mommy had been there, Harleen would already have had her bath and be in her pajamas.
But Daddy still wasn’t in any hurry to get home. Instead, he took Harleen to get something to eat—a real meal, he said, so when Mommy asked if they’d eaten anything besides hot dogs and candy all day, they could tell her they had. So they went to a funny little diner called En-Why, where all the waitresses had big bouffant hairdos, called everyone hon or sweetie, and popped their gum when they talked in heavy Brooklyn accents. Harleen thought it was almost as much fun as Coney Island.
Daddy let her order a bacon cheeseburger, curly fries, and onion rings while he had a meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, and green beans. Mommy made that a lot, although sometimes Mommy’s meat loaf seemed like it was a lot more bread crumbs than meat.
The diner meat loaf smelled awfully good; Harleen felt guilty just thinking it, as if she were being disloyal to Mommy. She thought it was kind of strange for Daddy to order something he could have at home, although she didn’t say so. But Daddy seemed to know what she was thinking and said, “I’m just in the mood for meat loaf and I don’t want Mommy to cook an extra meal so late.”
Well, that made sense, Harleen thought, or as much sense as anything grown-ups did. The way Daddy ate, however, made her wonder. He ate slowly, like he wanted to remember how good it was. He offered her a bite but Harleen said no, thanks, she didn’t feel like meat loaf, which made Daddy laugh. Secretly, she was afraid it might taste better than Mommy’s.
When they were done—Harleen was too full for dessert—Daddy paid the bill and left a big tip for the waitress.
“Thanks, sweetie,” the waitress said, popping her gum. Her name-tag said “Millie” and she had the biggest blonde bouffant of all, almost as large as a beach ball, Harleen thought. “Ya got a big heart, I can tell.” Then she turned to Harleen and said, “You take care a him, okay, hon? Make sure he gets home safe.”
“I sure will, hon, doncha worry about that,” Harleen replied, imitating the woman’s thick Brooklyn accent. Everybody around them burst out laughing, but it was good laughing, like for a comedian on TV.
Millie kissed the top of her head with a loud smack. “You got a precious little puddin’ there,” she told Daddy as they left the restaurant.
“You’re full of surprises, Harleen,” her daddy said as he picked her up and carried her toward the subway stop. “Thinking fast is a gift. Something tells me you’ll go far.”
Harleen put her arms around her daddy’s neck and rested her head on his shoulder. She really was tired now. This was the perfect end to the best day ever, being carried home in her daddy’s strong arms. She was barely aware of going into the subway and getting on the train. Her daddy kept holding her even after he sat down and the motion of the train rocked her to sleep.
* * *
She didn’t wake up until they were back on the street and only because she heard a man’s voice growl, “So where’d you stash the haul, Nicky?”
“Yeah, Nicky, tell us,” said another man, also growling. “Inquiring minds wanna know.”
Rubbing her eyes, Harleen raised her head and saw two men standing in front of Daddy with their arms crossed, looking real mad.
Her daddy gave a big sigh. “Come on, guys, I’ve got my little girl here. Can’t this wait till I take her home?”
“No can do, Nicky-boy,” said the first guy. “We found out the hard way it’s a bad idea to wait on anything where you’re concerned.”
“Like when you told us to wait till Friday,” added the second guy. “You said we’d get in and out and no one would know? Well, guess what? Our big fat payday turned out to be a big fat goose egg.”
Her daddy put her down then, even though she was so sleepy she could hardly keep her eyes open. Harleen hung onto his pant-leg, but Daddy gently pried her hands off and made her stand back a few feet.
“That safe was so bare, it was indecent,” the first guy was saying. “Somebody beat us to the goodies. Only one person coulda done that—the only other person what knew about the job. So after we was done shooting our way out and running for our lives, we asked around. And son of a gun, we found out you were there on Thursday, having drinks with the broad what owns the joint.”
“I told everyone we shoulda known better than to trust Slick Nick Quinzel,” the second guy said. “But callin’ in a police raid—that was low even for a worm like you.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” Daddy said urgently. “I didn’t know the DEA was planning a raid—”
“You mean that was just a coinky-dink?” the first guy said. “Oh, well, that’s different.”
The second guy suddenly stepped forward and, before Harleen quite knew what was happening, he punched her daddy in the face, knocking him off-balance so he almost fell.
“Hey!” said the first guy. “Don’t do that!”
“Why not?” the other guy asked.
“I got first dibs.” Then he punched her daddy in the face, knocking him to the sidewalk.
Harleen screamed for them to stop. They ignored her as they hauled her daddy to his feet. The first guy held him with his arms behind his back so the second one could punch him again and again. She kept on screaming, but it was like they couldn’t hear her, like she wasn’t even there.
“I’m getting the cops!” she hollered at them and ran back toward the subway, where Mommy said you could find a cop if you needed help. But just as she got to the corner, she saw a patrol car and ran into the street, waving her arms and yelling.
Red and blue lights snapped on as it stopped. The cop who got out of the passenger side was a big guy, bigger than her daddy. Trying to pull him up the street was like trying to drag a tree out of the ground. The other one followed slowly in the car, the lights on the roof still flashing red and blue and red and blue.
The bad guys were gone by the time they got to her daddy; Harleen felt her heart break at the sight of him lying on the pavement like a heap of bloody rags. “Help him, help him,” she begged as the other cop stopped the car and ran over. He was shorter and a little younger but he seemed just as solid as his partner. Their expressions were all concerned and worried, the way her mommy’s was when Harleen skinned her knee or bumped her head. But when they saw her daddy’s face, they changed completely.
“Well, if it isn’t good old Slick Nick Quinzel,” said the taller cop as he and his partner lifted her daddy to his feet.
“Be careful, don’t hurt him!” Harleen shouted.
“Pipe down, kid, your old man’s okay,” the taller cop said. “Hey, Nick, you got any idea how many people are looking for you?” He pulled her daddy’s arms behind him.
Thinking the cop was going to hold Daddy so the other cop could punch him, Harleen leaped at him, flailing her fists wildly.
“Take it easy, kid,” the shorter cop said as he pulled her away. “We’re just cuffing him so we can take him in. Nobody’s gonna hurt him.”
“But he’s already hurt! You’re supposed to help people!” Harleen sobbed.
The cops looked at each other, then at her daddy. “Are you hurt, sir?” the taller cop asked in a stiff, formal tone. “Do you require medical attention?”
Daddy spat blood and said, “It’s just a scratch.”
“He says it’s just a scratch,” the taller cop told Harleen.
They put her daddy in the back seat of the squad car and let her sit with him. She held him all the way to the police station. But he couldn’t put his arms around her, and that was scary.
* * *
At the police station, the cops handed her and Daddy over to a couple of detectives. One was older, with dark brown skin and watery eyes large behind the lenses of his black-framed glasses. Here and there in his short, curly black hair were single white ones, like someone had sprinkled little white threads all over his head. He introduced himself as Detective Jack Thibodeau. His partner, Brian Li, was Chinese. He had longer hair tied back in a ponytail and, under other circumstances, Harleen would have had a crush on him. He was kind to her but his face was so serious, she couldn’t help being a little afraid of him.
Neither detective was dressed very well. Their clothes were so rumpled, Mommy would have said they must have slept in them. Maybe they didn’t know about how to dress for an important job, like Harleen’s teacher said you were supposed to, or maybe they just didn’t care. If so, none of the other detectives did, either.
Worse, though, they said her daddy was a bad guy, and that couldn’t possibly be true. A bad guy wouldn’t take her to Coney Island for the day and ride all the rides and play all the games with her. Millie at the diner said her daddy had a big heart—no one would say that about a bad guy. And a bad guy wouldn’t carry her all the way home. Bad guys never did that stuff; they were too busy doing bad things.
The detectives kept calling her daddy a “con man.” Harleen had no idea what that was; she suspected it was something the cops had made up just to be mean. They claimed her daddy was behind a series of robberies and had planned one at a nightclub owned by a rich lady. But then he double-crossed the other bad guys and now everyone was looking for him, bad guys, good guys, any guys. All the guys.
Harleen tried to tell them her daddy couldn’t have done anything wrong because he’d been having fun all day with her at Coney Island. She started to tell them for what seemed like the thousandth time about everything they’d done together. Her daddy was sitting on a chair next to Detective Thibodeau’s desk and he suddenly pulled her onto his lap.
“Let me talk to her,” he said to the detectives and swiveled so they were facing away from them. Harleen wrapped her arms around his neck again, glad he wasn’t handcuffed anymore so he could hug her back. “Honey, these guys are just doing their job,” he said, speaking barely above a whisper. “But they can’t do anything if you keep interrupting.”
“But—” Harleen started.
“But nothing.” Daddy pressed his finger against her lips. “This is going to take a little while so you have to be my good girl and be patient, okay?”
“You want me to call your wife to come get her?” Detective Thibodeau asked.
Daddy turned back to him with Harleen still on his lap and shook his head. “No, Sharon needs her sleep. We’ve got three in diapers at home.” He looked around, then pointed at an empty bench along the nearest wall. “Harleen, how about you sit over there and wait for me?”
She heaved an enormous sigh. “Okay.”
“And maybe the detectives could find someone to sit with you?” Daddy added.
Detective Li took Harleen’s hand and walked her over to the bench. “I know you don’t understand what’s going on,” he said as he sat down next to her.
“Yeah, I do,” she said. “You’re being mean to my daddy.”
“That’s not—” The detective stopped, hesitated. “We don’t want to be mean to your daddy,” he said. “But your daddy has been mean to people. A lot of people.”
“My daddy’s never mean,” Harleen informed him, although she couldn’t help squirming a little because that wasn’t quite true. Sometimes he was mean to Mommy and Mommy was mean right back.
“Your daddy stole money that didn’t belong to him,” Detective Li told her. “He stole jewelry, too, and other very valuable things. Stealing is a very mean thing to do.”
Harleen’s urge to squirm vanished. The detective was trying to make her feel bad toward her daddy and that was wrong. He was her daddy. She looked up at him and she saw that he was waiting for her to agree with him that her daddy was mean. Well, he could wait forever; she’d never say that.
“It’s wrong to steal, isn’t it?” the detective prodded. “It’s wrong and it’s mean, isn’t it? Your daddy was mean to steal, wasn’t he?”
Harleen sat up a little straighter; something she’d overheard her mother say popped into her head. “They can spare it.”
Detective Li’s expression changed from serious to startled. He hadn’t seen that coming, Harleen thought. Without another word, he got up and went back to his partner and her daddy, and she knew he was telling them what she’d said, like it was some great big deal. Detective Thibodeau gave her a sidelong look; maybe he was thinking about handcuffing her, too.
But her daddy only shrugged. “She’s right—they can,” he said and winked at her, a secret wink that made her feel better, but only for a few seconds. The detectives just kept at him, asking him the same questions over and over. Harleen wanted to ask them a few questions—like, was this really their job? How did it make them good guys? Daddy still had blood all over his face and his clothes and it was getting later and later and she felt like her eyeballs were coated with sand. And now she had to go to the bathroom.
She probably had to get special permission for that. Maybe they’d want to handcuff her, even though the Ladies’ was really close—she could see it from where she was sitting.
Harleen tried to get someone’s attention but everyone was too busy. Even her daddy was facing away from her, talking to a third detective. Finally, she just couldn’t wait. It was probably a crime to pee your pants in a police station anyway. Nobody tried to stop her as she went into the bathroom, which smelled like it had just been hosed down with double-strength bleach.
Afterward, Harleen started to go back to the bench, then hesitated. No one seemed to have noticed she wasn’t there anymore; they were all too busy. Detectives were bringing in other people in handcuffs and sitting them down next to desks. Once she would have taken it for granted people in handcuffs were bad guys, but now she knew better. Cops made mistakes. But they never owned up to being wrong; they just kept saying they were right until they forced everyone else to say they were right, too.
Harleen looked over at her father and the detectives. How many times would they ask him the same questions? Were they going for a world record?
This wasn’t how the best day ever was supposed to end. Her daddy was supposed to take her home and put her to bed. She’d be so knocked out she’d sleep through the argument he and Mommy would have about his keeping her out so late.
Instead, her daddy got punched out by some bad guys and when she’d brought the police, they’d treated him like he was the bad guy. None of them cared her daddy was hurt. No one had said, That was wrong. They shouldn’t have done that to you.
Everybody said cops were supposed to protect and help people. Harleen saw now that they only helped some people; whoever those people were, she and Daddy weren’t included.
The swinging double doors marked “exit” weren’t locked or even guarded. Cops and detectives were going in and out, sometimes with prisoners. Harleen remembered her daddy saying you could go anywhere you wanted as long as you looked like you knew what you were doing.
I’m supposed to do this, she said silently as she headed for the double doors. I’m right where I should be, I’m official, don’t worry. I’m not the droid you’re looking for.
No one gave her a second look as she went downstairs, out the front entrance, and onto the street. Harleen made herself walk at the same confident, unhurried pace until she was almost a block away from the station house. Then she broke into a run.