The pronouncement had been made.

A formality as it turned out.

A few feet away half a dozen pair of Navy blue uniform pants could be seen, stained with water and ice-melt…..visible under the hastily thrown up shielding of curtains……….the black boots shuffled silently.

The absence of discernible voices amidst the sobs and whispers said it all….there was nothing left to say.

Danny was gone.

But all at once, the curtains were thrown back and the staff dispersed…authoritative Uniformed cops, presumably delegates, pulled the gathered Uniform cops into a nearby room.

There he was alone now. A big brawny kid.

Much bigger than the skinny kid whose picture is atop this page. No kid really.

A man.

Odd how I ended up here. After so many funerals, so many wakes. You think you are on they way out…..

We all know Danny’s story. A hero.

A few hours later, in the same Hospital, I watched the skinny actor, the drug addled murderer, dissected like a frog. His entrails carefully placed aside his yellowy street-hollowed ribs…each glistening part still alive…moving, beating, still attached somehow to this…..murdering fvck.

The Surgeon sifts through the abdominal cavity like she’s looking for a needle in a haystack..she’s looking for the bullet that should have killed this fvck…..

Dannys bullet.

The heart monitor never wavers, beep, beep. beep…like clock-work….. a mocking sign that evil sometimes perseveres when good fades…..

You wonder what this scum’s surgeon is thinking. Her heart cannot fathom my hate, my venom, or else she would be useless…..

Yet, there she is, reaffirming my faith with every neutral stroke of the scalpel. An angel with a sh*t detail.

A few hours later….a million miles away….the ME walks out of the exam room and shows us where the bullet cut through Danny’ heart.

A million to one shot.

A tiny cut, almost imperceptable. The cruel irony, the burning anger. This poor kid. THIS POOR KID!

The thought of leaving Danny there is heart-wrenching…..but the phone calls have been made and his co-workers arrive to stay with him until he leaves this cold, forbidding freezer of a building…..there is more investigating to do.

We have to do now in life, what you began in your last seconds…..close a case.

Hey, Danny. I think of you each Christmas now. I cant help but do it. I remember the colorful lights along Pelham Pkwy., the endless sirens…the silence…the descent into despair.

The stoic proud bearing of your beautiful family…..

Rest in peace, my baby brother. Rest in peace.

It should be Robert De Niro, not Robert Downey Jr.