Chapter 6: Keaner--A Bruised Lip

Chapter 6: Keaner—A Split Lip

Mike Keane lost sight of the masked man, whoever he was. Basterd. Up and over a fence, into the street, who knew where he could have gone. "Shit," Keaner said and he horked a loogie onto the grass and turned around, back into the Roy house.

Alex Tanguay was helping Michele sit up. Keane’s stomach burned with anger as he saw the dazed look in her eyes and the line of blood trickling down her chin. Where were the kids?

"Who were that?" Alex kept asking Michele.

Michele’s eyes were closed now and her shoulders were so frail and tiny as she crouched against Alex’s chest, she was trembling.

"Kid," Keane snapped, "I doubt she knew who it was."

Alex looked up at Mike, his lamblike eyes wide and full of tears. Mike went to the freezer and pulled out a couple of ice-cubes. "Where are the kids, Meems?" he asked Michele as he squatted next to her, wrapping the cubes in a dish towel. "Here ya go hon."

He pressed the cubes gently against Michele’s bleeding bottom lip.

Michele clasped her tiny hands over Mike’s as he held the ice there. She opened her pale blue eyes and looked into his. She looked more lucid now. "Merci," she said softly.

Mike patted her on the thigh. "Meems," he said, "Where are the kids?"

"I left them with Cheryl," she said, her voice was tired and vaguely husky. "There’s no one else here."

Mike smiled. It wasn’t often that he’d seen Michele Roy knocked off her feet. Of course it would be a vicious criminal to do it. What a pretty little woman she was. He leaned forward and kissed her on the forehead, mussing her frosty blond hair. Michele squeezed his hand.

"How long did he had you?" Alex asked. His voice was quavering back tears. Mike shook his head. The boy would forever be soft as butter.

Michele sighed and looked at Alex. The kid blushed immediately to his eartips.

Mike knitted his orangy-red eyebrows in bemusment. The pup was in love with her!

"Help me up," she said.

Keane wrapped his hand around Michele’s tiny arm and he easily hoisted her to her feet. Alex kept his soft hand on her little waist, steadying her. She leaned back against Alex again, Keane watched him redden all over again.

There was a sound like a herd of large horses crashing into the house, deep yelling voices. Michele crouched into Tanguay’s arms and he looked more scared than her. Mike merely blinked at the pair of blue-uniformed police men who burst into the kitchen. One of them had a gun pulled. "Step away from the lady!" one of them barked.

Tangers took a leap back from Michele, his hands in the air. Mike grinned and looked back at the cops.

"No," Michele snapped, she suddenly looked annoyed. "These are my friends."

One of the cops looked at Keane as if to confirm it, and Mike nodded slightly, winking at them and mouthing out, "Yup."

"You’re bleeding, Ma’am." The cop said.

Michele’s eyes slitted over the ice she had reapplied to her lip. "I know." she said.

Mike almost laughed out loud. Ever since that incident a couple years ago when Michele had landed Patrick in the drunk tank, Mike knew that Michele had never liked policemen. Even now, when they were looking to help her, it looked like she still was bearing a grudge.

"Eh, some guy was attacking her, we chased him off, masked guy didn’t see his face, you know the sort," Mike said in his rapid-fire voice.

"This true ma’am?" The cop said, looking at Mike with distrust after Mike had winked at him.

Michele sniffed, and nodded.

"Where did he go?" The cop asked.

"Out back over the fence got away, fast sonufabitch," Mike said.

One of the cops jogged out the kitchen into the back while the other one remained where he was, holstering his gun.

"Moooooom!"

Mike’s heart melted for Michele when she crumpled into tears at the sound of her children’s voices. Clattering into the kitchen and running through the policeman like a pack of hyper kittens. She was smothered in all three of them, and the pile of them fell to the floor in a ball.

"OK, OK, OK," Mike said over and over as he grabbed various kids by their scruffs, depositing them onto the kitchen tile only to have them hop back onto their mother. "C’mon!" he said with a laugh, "You’ll break her!"

Michele sat up, wiping tears from her face. She was hugging Jana onto her lap and kissing Freddy on the cheek. Mike looked at Jonathen, who was winking over and over with his left eye. "I called the police, mom," he said, "I’m sorry, is everything OK?"

"Naw," Mike said, "She wouldn’t have been, some guy was here. You’re a good kid."

Jana started crying and she hid her face in Michele’s neck. "I want daddy!" the little girl wailed.

Keane raised his eyebrows. When he first met Michele, she was newly pregnant with Jonathen. A feral, sharp little woman...she never acted like a proper pregnant wife. She was quick with an ill French temper, and lavish with dirty jokes. He had liked her immediately upon meeting her and he had like her immensely. As her belly had grown larger and larger, Keane had still found it hard to imagine her as a settled housewife. How could she have gotten pregnant in the first place? She just didn’t seem the type.

"C’mon, Mike," she had purred to him once in ’89, "Patrick has gone celibate, help a girl out!"

Mike hadn’t known if she was serious or not, nine months pregnant and making lewd remarks. She had been kidding, of course, but she seemed to love catching men off guard like that. And here she was now, three white mice for children, glaring at policemen and nursing a split lip. Would he have her any other way?

Alex Tanguay was nursing a crush on her, he could tell...and why not? It was nothing new, lots of young men had fallen fast and hard for her, including Keane. He chuckled inwardly, thinking about how wickedly she seemed to take advantage of these innocent hearts.

"We’re gonna need a statement from all of you," the policemen said.

Michele sighed, slowly standing up and giving Mike a look of resignation. Mike shrugged. "You wanna catch this guy, aye, Meems?" he said.

"What the hell is going on here?"

Michele wasted no time in darting to the front door where Patrick had just entered. His eyes flashed sparks as he zeroed in on his wife’s split lip. He held her narrow face in his hands and he looked daggers at the kitchen full of men. Mike knew that look, as far as Patrick was concerned, no doubt everyone was a suspect.

"Daddy!" Jana squealed as she scrabbled to her father and hung on his leg.

"I need to take a statement here!" the policeman said.

"Hey, Mark!" the other cop yelled from outside the kitchen, "I think I found something here."

The policeman jogged outside.

"Someone was after your wife, Patty," Mike said. "Tangers scared him off, hell if it were me and I saw that mug, I’d run too."

"Hey!" Tanguay cried. "Who’s calling who ugly?"

"What?" Patrick said.

As Michele began to recount her ordeal to Patrick, Keane peeked out the kitchen window. He saw the cops poking at the torn fence and one of them talking into his squawk box. Greenwood Village police, they were more than often unused to handling any case other than domestic spats and car thefts. The evidence they were looking at was damage from a week ago. Freddy Roy had tried scaling that fence on a dare and toppled most of it over.

Keane shook his head and turned back to the reunited family. Jana was now scaling the very heights of Mt. Alex Tanguay, and Patrick was hugging Michele to him.

"I wish you didn’t have to go on a road-trip tomorrow," Michele said with a sigh.

Patrick closed his eyes tightly.

"Hey, hey, hey," Keane said, "Danny Hinote ain’t going on the trip, his bell’s rung. You wouldn’t mind having damaged goods protecting ya, aye, Mimi? That West Point training of his has got to be good for something, aye?"

The smiles that spread across Patrick and Michele’s face at that moment made Keane raise his red eye-brows and stand back.

"That’s a lovely idea, Mike," Michele beamed.

Mike frowned and looked at Patrick. He was going to haveta ask to be let in on the joke later.

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