Chapter 3: Moroccan; Good Cop; Good People
Washington, D.C., October, 2014
This was working out well, Root thought. She was back down in Washington after two quick days in Manhattan. And Harper was in Manhattan with Grace. So, rather than stay in hotels, where they were both a little more exposed, the two had agreed to stay in each other's apartments while they were away from their home offices.
Harper was young and had a fun sense of style, quirky things she had collected or had been given by friends with even more outrageous styles. Her apartment was on the third floor of an older building, with nice high ceilings and tall windows, rather stately-looking. But Harper had decorated her bedroom with Moroccan moucharabieh octagonal tables and white cut-out canvas mandalas on the walls around her bed.
She had a bright, intricately-patterned red tapestry hanging from each of the four corners of a canopy surrounding it and gauzy white drapes hanging inside the canopy, gathered and knotted in a thick loose knot on each side.
The bedspread was tufted, shiny, and the color of persimmon. At the end of the bed was a comfortable light-blue couch with a small soft Persian rug in front for your feet. The effect was lovely, exotic, so much like Harper herself, Root thought. It would be fun to crash here for a little while and live in her style.
She sat down on the couch and ran her bare feet through the silky nap of the Persian rug. This was a little like an unexpected spa surprise, or maybe more like a lover's hide-away. Hmm. Shaw.
She picked up her phone and clicked Shaw's number, leaning back, getting herself into the right state of mind, ready to use her most seductive voice when Shaw answered.
That's funny - she usually picked up right away...
Manhattan, October, 2014
Fusco had his fingers in the fencing, leaning forward, watching Lee shoot hoops on the other side. Lee missed half of them, mostly on the right side. Fusco was watching and his body kept bending to the left, as if bending himself would make it fly truer and help the ball make that satisfying sound, falling through the net. He could see that Lee was getting frustrated. He was throwing a little harder and the ball was ricocheting off the backboard harder, and Lee had to run after it. Interesting. He didn't seem to know the angles. He didn't anticipate where the ball would be when it bounced off the backboard.
Fusco thought that was something all boys were born with. He had certainly never struggled with anything like that when he was growing up. Stickball, baseball, football, basketball – he did all of it. The streets were full of kids in those days. Plenty of them for big teams. Their parents pressured them to let the little kids – and the girls – play, so the games were a joke sometimes. But they had to do it, or the excluded ones would go in and tell on them and they'd be in trouble. He shook his head, remembering some of the kids from the block. Probably half of them were in jail, or dead, he thought to himself, smiling. Rough crowd. But some had made something of themselves – got themselves out of the projects, moved up in the world. No drugs. No vice. Just normal lives.
Of course, being a cop for so long, Fusco had had a little looser concept of what normal meant. And that had been a problem. There were cops who did things by the book, who would never even think of accepting a little extra cash for a favor, of turning the other way for a fellow cop's poor choice. But, you know, these things were complicated. Not black and white. Sometimes things happened in the heat of the situation, and choices were made, and everyone had to decide what was going to happen next. One thing would lead to another and another, and pretty soon, there was no going back. You were a dirty cop.
Fusco looked up at his son, and nodded his head. Lee was a good kid. He wanted to be a better father to Lee than his father had been to him. Now that Lee was growing up and understanding more about how things really were, Fusco had to decide who he was going to be. That chance meeting with The Man in the Suit had changed everything. Reese could have killed him that day. Reese had gotten out of the cuffs in the back seat, when Fusco was driving him out to the dumping grounds in Oyster Bay, on Long Island. But, not only had he not killed him, Reese had made sure Fusco could explain why Reese wasn't dead. He'd given him a way out. But there was Hell to pay, and Fusco was paying it.
Fusco looked at his son again. Whatever the cost, it was going to be worth it – to be a good cop again.
Manhattan, October, 2014
It was her turn to stay with Grace tonight. Fusco had been there last night, on the couch in the living room, and the couch still had traces of corn chips and some smears of green – guacamole? – and rings from a cold drink were clearly visible on the coffee table. It was supposed to be a safe house, not a frat house.
Harper was going to have to have a little chat with her new partner. She should have kept her mouth shut back in Bethesda. If she hadn't made the comment about Fusco's fashion sense, he would never have made her go with him to pick out clothes for Grace. It was her own fault – par for the course. Her quips had gotten her into more "situations" than she could count. And plenty of practice talking her way out of them.
Anyway, Grace was in the kitchen pouring some tea after they had come back from the walk past her old apartment. It was slow-going, trying to get Grace to remember what had gone on when she was held prisoner by Greer.
When Grace's number had come up that day in their office, for the second time since the office had opened, none of them had had any idea who she was. They didn't know that she was more than a typical Person of Interest. She was Family.
Sam had contacted the Team up in New York to see what they knew, since Grace's bio had given her last known address up there, in Manhattan. Hundreds of millions of people living in the U.S., and Reese had known who she was after two sentences from Sam.
They stayed up all night trying to track her, but it had turned out that Harold had made her disappear when she moved overseas to Italy. He had erased her from view, trying to protect her from Greer, and from Samaritan. No one else on their team could find her, and yet Greer was able to get to her in Italy. How had he done it, when no one else could?
Once they had realized who Grace was, and that she was in trouble, Shaw had been the one to make the call to Harold. Harper thought about that call – not one she would have wanted to make with Harold. He seemed like a nice guy. A total geek, for sure, but he seemed like a good guy. Reese and Sam seemed to really like him. Funny that Fusco didn't seem to know him as well as they did.
The Team's trip to Bethesda had been her first face-to-face meeting with Harold. She had heard about him, and tried to imagine what he'd look like. Old-guy clothes. Who wore plaid suits like that anymore? She kind of liked his haircut, though. And the glasses. They fit him. The clothes, though, definitely needed a serious update. She expected to smell mothballs around him, like at her great-aunt's house, when she was a kid.
Grace was just coming back from the kitchen with two cups of hot tea. Before she even got to the coffee table, Harper could smell the vanilla-cinnamon scent that had wafted out of the kitchen, ahead of Grace. That was nice of her, to make tea for the two of them. That should have been her job, not Grace's. But Grace was not the kind to be fussed-over. She liked to do for herself. Harper accepted the mug from Grace, with a smile. She liked Grace. She was good people.