The Right Thing Part 10 — "Loaded Questions"
I've never felt like I'm good with this much dialogue, which as you might notice, is why I usually stick to descriptions and inner thoughts. So let me know what you think of this one, good or bad. Thanks everyone for reading and sticking with this even though I'm the slowest person in the world to update! :)
Don't think I don't think about it
Don't think it don't get to me
Between the work and the hurt and whiskey
Three years, six months ago
July 17, 2008
Me and Wolf sit across from each other at St. Mary's, trying to form words as we laugh, while med students prepare to suture and seem confused by the fact that we seem unfazed by our injuries. I guess at first glance it wouldn't seem like we're patients or that a few hours ago we were stabbed by junkies while clearing out squatters in Bedford. How it all actually unfolded is now somewhat of a blur, but I can say they wound up worse than us.
"Did you hear the first one?" Wolf asks, trying hard to stay still. "He was like 'I HAVE A KNIFE!' And I was like…"
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," I laugh, and we finish in unison, 'I HAVE A GUN, BITCH!'"
"You two need to start spacing out these hospital visits," a voice announces, interrupting our laughter. Canyon walks through the door, momentarily letting in a wave of noise before shutting it and sealing it out again. He's looking at me more than Wolf, for reasons I can only assume have something to do with my last visit here, which I don't think was a big deal and something I've already assured him and Wolf won't ever happen again. I'm not sure why they're so skeptical.
"Seriously," he continues. "I see enough cops come through here. I don't want you two to be the ones that I send to the morgue someday. Be careful out there."
We nod obediently.
"You guys have the whole department down here," Canyon says, trying to lighten the atmosphere that he's essentially killed with his solemnity and statistics. He nods toward the hallway. It's funny, really, that there's dozens of cops rallied out in the lobby while the two of us were hardly yellow-tagged and are now being stitched up by a couple of kids.
"The whole department minus one," Wolf says sarcastically, staring at me. Canyon just looks confused and walks to the door.
"I'm serious," he says, pointing, and then leaves.
"I saw her out there, Ryan," I mutter, though I'm not sure if I'm telling the truth or not.
"People see what they want to see, Bosco," he explains, shaking his head. "I used to see Kerry Collins throwing a fifty-yard pass and winning the Superbowl, but really I was just getting the hell beat out of me by my dad and at the end of the day, Collins could only throw picks."
I look at him for a few seconds. Maybe he's right. I glance over at the door. It doesn't open.
Present Day
December 30, 2011
The first time I sat down with Micah, I said next to nothing, just sat, eyes glazed, mind still-not-quite-grasping the concept of alcohol withdrawal. And not the physical pain that went along with detox, but the relentless, persistent need to drink just to numb the emotional agony that remains and is now, without those numbing effects of liquor, even more raw and impossible to confront. But eventually I have to talk — I have to talk or else three months here is going to feel like eternity.
I get annoyed with all the ominous medical talk, after listening to him go on about how chronic my state was and how dangerous my detox had been. Besides, if I wanted a lecture on all of that, I had Canyon on speed dial. I knew he was just reminding me that the battle I'd started fighting wasn't going to be easy, but frankly I already knew and I didn't need a reminder of just how much I'd fucked up. I told him I had one of those every morning I woke up away from home. I don't know, maybe this was just some kind of reverse psychology thing he did in order to get me to actually change the subject to something relevant. In which case, he's more like Wolf than I thought.
"So," Micah says, running a pencil through his hair. It's lighter than Wolf's and dark than mine, he's older than Wolf and younger than me, and his eyes are almost a strange dark combination of brown and blue. It's almost like someone combined the two of us and removed any respective personality flaws. "Your brother is murdered, your mom almost dies, you get shot, you have a falling out with your ex-partner, the only precinct house you'd been working out of since 1992 is attacked, you get transferred to the most crime ridden area of Brooklyn, get assigned a new partner, your ex-partner remarries, you and Ryan essentially take in an orphaned teenager, the two of you get stabbed…" he looks at me expectantly, as if I was supposed to interrupt. "Sounds like a rough seven years, yet you don't think any of that has anything to do with any of this?"
"Look," I start, not exactly sure how to respond after being confronted with all the crap that's happened. "My mom is fine. I'd been shot before, I mean, go back a few more years, obviously you're gonna find stuff. And I wasn't the only one to get transferred to BedStuy. Amber wasn't a bad thing and when we got stabbed it wasn't a big deal…"
"It's hard to know what was a big deal," he says. "Just because you can think of ways to mitigate those things, it doesn't mean it didn't stress you out."
"Why make it a problem if it wasn't?" I ask, tossing my hands up a little.
"Fine," he clears his throat. "So assuming nothing you just justified contributed in any way, then we're left with your brother, Ryan, and Faith."
I sigh, "What about them?"
Micah doesn't seem deterred by my resistance, "You tell me," he says simply.
I wring my hands in frustration, "It's not like I know what the problem is and just won't tell you," I explain, and it's the truth. I really don't know what incident or combination of incidents has led me to feel how I feel, I just know that something has.
"I'll tell you what I think," he says, leaning forward. "I think you've had one traumatic thing after another happen, no time to recover from any of them, you spent three years trying to help Ryan cope with problems you already had to deal with yourself and the rest of your energy went to Amber and your job."
"That's a good theory," I nod. "But other people have jobs and kids and partners and problems and they don't all turn to this at the first sign of trouble."
Micah shrugs, "You're not 'other people'."
I stare past him for a few minutes before sighing and giving in, "It's a long story," I warn. But I have a feeling it isn't going to get me out of answering.
"I have time," he shrugs, as expected.
"Why are you spending so much time on me?" I ask. "You don't owe me anything, you don't owe Wolf anything. Hell, if anything, he makes it sound like he owes you."
I've been waiting for Micah to get pissed off, to tell me to leave, to stop wasting his time, to come back when I decide to make it remotely evident that I actually want his help, something along the lines of the shrink Sul sent me to back when. But he never does. Instead he just silently evades my question and continues.
"Your brother," he starts. "You still think of him?"
"Of course," I shake my head when I realize he isn't going to tell me why he feels like he has to spend several hours a day trying to get me to do more than argue about why I'm here in the first place.
"Alive?" he questions.
I clench my jaw and stand up, "I missed the part where you thought it would be a good idea to ignore aggravated battery and a history of child abuse."
Micah seems hardly fazed by my words and instead just starts writing calmly on his legal pad. It strikes me as almost inhuman the way he remains completely composed. Even Wolf doesn't have this much patience with me. Then again, it's not Micah Stamford's past that we're digging up. Yet.
"What are you writing?" I nearly snap, watching him finish and look up.
He hesitates and then reads, "Immediately deflects when confronted with past trauma," and I'm a little surprised because I didn't think he was actually going to tell me. I sit back down and say nothing until the silence becomes deafening and I can't take it anymore.
"Mikey…that was over seven years ago," I explain, a little less hostile than before.
"It doesn't seem like you had a chance to deal with it," he observes. "Do you remember when it actually hit you? Think."
"I didn't sleep well for the whole year after Mikey was killed," I admit quietly. "I'd just lay there seeing him. And then, when I got sent to the 7-9, I felt like I left something at the 5-5. I don't even know what, just this feeling that I had unfinished business there, when I didn't, not really. I got pre-occupied with Faith and with Wolf, and then I was sitting at my mom's bar one night and I started thinking of him again, and I realized that if I drank just enough, it all went away — his cut up body, being transferred, Faith not speaking to me, Wolf's childhood — it all went away. If I just drank enough."
"How much was enough?" Micah asks, studying me.
I shrug, "At first? A few beers, a few shots."
"And later?"
"It got harder to forget everything. I'd just drink more. A few more beers, a few more shots. A six pack, a twelve pack, a bottle of vodka, a bottle of Jack," I explain, feeling nervous to be revealing this much about myself. "Eventually nothing really went away anymore. I just kept drinking to numb myself out. To make it suck a little less."
Micah listens intently and nods. Finally he says, "Do you know when you first ended up in the ER because of it?"
I shake my head. I do remember the night, I just don't remember the date.
"It was June 16, 2008," he announces, noticing my confused expression. "I have all of your medical records." Of course he does. "I find it a little hard to believe that all of this stems from a misunderstanding with your ex-partner."
"Faith?" I'd call the the whole I-asked-you-to-shoot-for-me-and-instead-you-went-to-Swersky thing a little more than an understanding, but, I don't argue.
He shrugs and it's the first time he hasn't looked completely confident in his theory, "I think she's a big part of it, I just don't think she's all of it. Wolf didn't speak too highly of her."
I scoff, unsurprised, "Of course he didn't. He thinks she didn't help me enough."
"Well, Wolf is the one who brought you here," Micah reminds me. "But you think she did? Help you, I mean. Enough?"
"I don't think it was her job to help me."
"It's not Wolf's either."
"No," I agree. "I've been telling him that for years. But he's a fucking altruist."
He tilts his head, some kind of doctor thing I've decided, since Canyon does it too. "You seem hesitant to place any blame on her at all. You're not angry?"
Fuck. "Of course I'm angry. I'm fucking pissed!"
"But you haven't told her…" Of course I haven't told her. It's been a little difficult to strike up conversation over yellow crime scene tape the past six years.
"If you're really not that angry and you really don't blame her, then fine. Good. But if you do, it seems like you feel like you still have to defend her."
"I don't defend…" I trail off, getting flustered. Didn't I tell him I was pissed?
"You've defended her thirteen times since I met you," he says, tapping his papers. "I wrote them down and—"
"I hit her," I mumble, interrupting him. He looks up sharply.
"You hit her?"
I run my hands over my face and through my hair in sheer frustration. I regret saying it. I nod and regret confirming it. I wanted to never say it and hope that somehow it never happened. But it did. Micah writes some more. I can hear nothing but his pen, scribbling away, and the silence just makes it so much easier to hear the guilt. And knowing that there's no way to quiet it — no way to drown it away with alcohol — just makes it that much worse. So I sit feeling like I've just revealed some horrible secret that I never meant to keep in the first place. Micah seems to realize that it's probably all he's getting out of me today.
"I can tell you about Ryan, if you want," he says softly. I push away the lump in my throat and nod. I'm grateful for a chance to change the subject, even if my mind insists on replaying that night in fast-forward, over and over again, even if for several seconds I continue to hear that sickening sound of knuckles meeting jawbone and bright red blood.
I focus on Micah until I can actually hear him again.
Don't think I don't wonder about
What could've been, should've been all worked out
Six years, seven months ago
May 9, 2005
The locker room at the 7-9 isn't much different from the one at the 5-5, and as I find mine and begin filling it, I'm not sure if the thought comforts or depresses me.
"Hi," a voice interrupts me mid- half-ass folding of my blues. I would hang them, but it seems like too much effort, honestly. Hopefully I won't need them soon anyway. I turn around a face the voice — a kid I noticed several minutes ago when I walked in, out of my peripheral vision, but was too anti-social to acknowledge. The idea of starting over here is still looming ahead of me and so far it hardly seems worth the trouble. What if I get transferred again in thirteen years? Would I be supposed to start over again at forty-five? I've watched so much fall apart, I can't help but walk around thinking, 'why bother?'
"Ryan Wolf," the kid says, outstretching his hand. I look at him a little suspiciously before shaking it. He can't be more than twenty-four or –five. This just reinforces my silent hope that I don't get a partner. I don't want one. I don't want to babysit some kid for twelve hours. Do or Die, whatever the fuck they call this place, I can do it alone.
"Hi," I say, but I don't tell him my name. Apparently I'm unfriendly enough to make him uncomfortable enough to retreat. I feel a little bad, but then decide, no, not really. I transform quickly from civilian clothes to my uniform and then wander downstairs in search of roll call.
The roll call room is about half the size of the 5-5's, but has about twice the officers crammed into it. All of the school-like desks are full, everyone else is leaning against them or, like me, is left to stand by the entrance while the lieutenant talks.
My eyesight hasn't gotten any better since the Monroe shooting, in fact, it's only deteriorating. In spite of this, I spot Faith quickly. She's standing between the lieutenant and John Miller, who I met briefly before we all got reassigned. Something about him bothers me, but then again, something usually bothers me about most people.
"Major Cases has a sketch of the Heights Killer and an updated M.O.," the lieutenant says. He seems harmless enough, almost sedated or something. He motions for Miller to speak, but Miller turns to Faith instead. He whispers something in her ear and she laughs and shakes her head, then finally stands up. She's saying something about the case but the rest of her words are inaudible to me, as I zone out, and all I see are her lips moving and Miller hovering in the background like a vulture.
The lieutenant takes over again after Faith finishes, and he announces something about improved line of duty casualty statistics, as if BedStuy's patrols haven't been dropping like flies for five years. Finally he gives the okay for everyone to leave, but not before telling me to stay. He stops the kid — was it Wolf? I wasn't listening — on the way out and tells him to wait in the hall, and I start to get suspicious.
"Kid's been begging to get away from his TO for four years," the lieutenant explains, motioning out of a window into the hall where Wolf stands, almost in anticipation. He must notice my 'I'm so screwed' expression because he immediately continues, "We have more rookies than TO's right now, more 10-13's in a month than the 81st has in six, and this kid is as close to a vet as you're gonna get. You're comin' here from a tame part of the City. If I were you, Boscorelli, I'd take him and run."
I sigh quietly to myself and then nod, "Yes, sir."
.......
May 12, 2005
Day three in BedStuy is no different, so far, from the first two. I've managed to establish verbal communication with my twenty-five year old partner, but am having no success doing the same with Faith. If anything, we pass each other on the stairs and occasionally one of us says something generic like, 'Hey'.
I'm still somewhat haunted by the look on Wolf's face the night I mentioned his father. Honestly, I'm not sure why it's stuck with me as much as it has, maybe because it seemed so familiar, like I'd seen it before, except in the mirror. I'm heading out of the locker room when I make a right instead of a left. I stop, remind myself this isn't the 5-5 and turn around. I nearly run into another uniform, who moves over and apologizes.
"You're the transplant, right?" the man asks. He has dark hair and looks like he's probably eight or ten years older than me.
"Yeah," I reply, and I shake his hand and tell him my name. I can't help it if I find it easier to take other cops more seriously if they were born before the eighties.
"Vandt," he says. "I hear Lieu gave you the Wolf cub. I was his T.O. Anyway, just wanted to say good luck, the kid's a wreck."
With that, the man pats my shoulder and walks off, leaving me wondering what exactly I've gotten myself into here at the 7-9.
.............
May 24, 2005
I didn't expect to hit it off with anyone at 7-9, not ever, so when I find myself standing outside, smoking with Mason Royal after two weeks, I'm officially relieved. For the record though, I'm still confused with my new surroundings even if I'm told I'm adapting well, and still angered by Faith's increasing ability to make phasing me out of her life look like some kind of art. She was the one who went to Swersky. If anything, I should still be pissed at her.
"How long have you been on?" I ask Royal, through a thin veil of smoke.
"Fourteen years," he says. "You?"
I cough, "Thirteen. Well, almost."
Me and Royal get along well. He's my age and he's bitter and jaded and cynical and always fighting over the phone with his wife and he smokes like a chimney which is very convenient for me because it makes sure my new habit is never deprived. We seem to agree on most things — the law, the job, politics, religion or lack thereof, etcetera.
"How's your partner?" he asks, catching me off guard. I stop, confused for second, wondering why he would care about Faith, since he doesn't really know her. Then I realize he's talking about Wolf, and I wonder if I'll ever get used to the idea of referring to him as my partner.
"Fine I guess," I tell him. "Whatever. I don't know why people seem to think he isn't. His T.O. stopped me the other week, said good luck because he's crazy or something. What don't I know about this kid?"
"I don't know," Royal shrugs. His cigarette fizzles out and distracts him, "Fuck, where's the lighter? Anyway, Wolf's been here four years, I've rode with him what, maybe three times? So I don't really know. Mostly he was fine, good really, but then he'd get weird, like, he'd freeze. Never any way that he couldn't back me up, but where he'd be sitting there and then he'd just lose it, like he was having a flashback or something. So, he'd go back to Vandt and it seemed like the longer he was with him, well then the next time I rode with him he was worse."
I study Royal's face for answers, but he seems genuinely confused by Wolf and now, since he's not his partner, not that concerned either.
"Lieu said Wolf had been wanting a new partner for awhile. I think it's why I got him."
"For awhile?" Royal laughs, exhaling. "No, Wolf's been begging for a new partner every day for four years. Even asked to go solo after his probation year was up."
"Solo? That would've been a death wish out here back then, right? Was Vandt that bad?"
"Sure. That's the part I don't get," Royal shrugs. "Vandt isn't bad. Guess he can have a temper, but who wouldn't after two decades? I've been partnered with him a lot over the years, never had a problem with the guy."
I take a long drag. I'm officially confused. So far Wolf has done nothing obvious to indicate he's as much of a liability as Vandt made him sound like.
"So," Royal speaks up again after a few seconds of silence, his eyes curious. "What's the deal with you and the detective?"
..............
..............
It isn't until about a month into riding with Wolf, that I get my first look at the side of him that until now has only been alluded to. It's exactly like Royal described, a sort of flashback that left him either freaking out or frozen in the passenger seat. I recognized it as well as I'd recognized the look on his face the first day I met him. Now it's all starting to get to me. Nothing's really supposed to do that anymore.
"Me and Royal are getting drinks," I tell him as we all prepare to leave the locker room.
"I have to get Amber," he says, as if God himself has placed the responsibility of the girl's wellbeing on him.
I hesitate, noticing the perpetually dead look in his eyes. "I'll come," I announce, to his surprise. I figure he probably hasn't gotten the impression I do anything but tolerate him for the sake of my job.
"Really?"
I nod. "Sure."
.................
.................
"Look, Wolf," I say, on an unusually quiet Thursday. "You gonna tell me what's going on? What happened with Vandt? Why you were so desperate to get away from him?"
He runs a distressed hand through his hair for what might be the tenth time today. This isn't the first time I've asked him about Vandt, or why the subject seems to evoke panic attacks, it's just the first time he looks like he might actually tell me.
Finally, after a few painstaking minutes, he mutters, "Reminds me of my Dad."
"What?" I ask, thinking I didn't hear him right.
"He reminds me of my dad," Wolf repeats, motioning with his hands. "He looks like him, he talks like him, he yelled like him, I could never do anything right. And I thought that coming here four years ago was my ticket away from it all and then the academy sends me here and I walk in and get Vandt. Every time I got in the car with him, I heard my dad saying, 'You'll never entirely get away' and he was right. It just got worse after that."
"Jesus," I mumble. "Wolf, if you told Lieu the truth, they would've had to put you with someone else."
"What?" he looks confused.
"If you'd gone to the lieutenant and told them what you just told me," I shake my head. "Ryan, they would've split you up."
"I did tell him," Wolf insists. "Not at first. I mean, the first day I didn't just walk up and say, 'Hey, Lieu, you mind changing the entire schedule to put me with someone else because I'm kind of damaged goods and see my dad in just about anyone fifteen years older than me'…but eventually, when I couldn't take it anymore, yeah, I told him."
"And he didn't do anything?" I ask, somewhat appalled.
Wolf nods sadly, "No. Not sure he believed me at first. I don't know what Vandt was telling him, that I was just insane or something. But, no, he told me I was lucky have to my FTO out on these streets and that if I went out in a one man car I'd end up dead and that would be too much paperwork for him to deal with. Said I should suck it up or take my problems to the department shrink."
"And did you?"
"What, go to the shrink?" he scoffs. "No."
We fall silent for a minute, and then I sigh, "You gotta tell me what happened to you eventually, Wolf."
..................
..................
July 11, 2005
It's Monday, I'm sitting outside the precinct on cement steps smoking, ignoring the scorching heat as it beats down on my uniform. In front of me, Royal pulls up in his squad car, gets out and slams the door.
"Fucking slacker!" he shouts.
"Bite me, Royal."
He laughs and then looks over me and nods, "One o'clock," he says.
I turn around just enough to see Faith emerging from the door. She walks toward me and sits down, something I find slightly unusual since our communication has been fizzling down to daily platitudes for several months now. It's not that we can't or don't get along, it's just that it's getting harder and harder to do.
"Aren't you hot out here?" she asks, looking disgusted.
I just shrug, "Waiting for Wolf."
She nods, "How is he anyway? Has he told you anything?"
I take a long drag, "About Vandt, yeah. Can't get anything else out of the kid though."
Faith looks at me sympathetically, "He'll come around, he trusts you."
"Well, whatever," I mutter. "How's, um, Miller?"
"He's…okay, I guess, why?"
"So you're sleeping with him?"
Cue her standing up sharply and going back inside. I'm not sure what makes me sabotage our already-infrequent conversations, but I look down and feel like shit. Royal walks over and shakes his head.
"Fuck. That went well, Bosco." He takes her place beside me and motions for me to light his cigarette. "I thought you were trying to fix things, not fuck them up. You know what? I don't think this is really about, you know, your sight or that, uh, shooting anymore."
"No kidding?"
"Yeah," he continues. "I think, I don't know. It's jealousy or something."
"You know Miller better than me," I remind. "You're saying he's not a jerk? I should want her to be fucking him?"
Royal exhales, "No, he is a fucking jerk but I just think—…"
"Whatever you think," I start, between coughs, "I don't care. I have a sixteen year old and twenty-five year old psych-major drop out giving me enough advice already. So you can take your opinions and your suggestions and shove them up your ass, Royal. Or maybe everyone could just take their own advice, then Amber wouldn't be half an orphan, Ryan wouldn't be so fucked up, and you wouldn't be on the verge of a divorce every other day!" I stand up and toss my cigarette down as a fitting finale to my rant, and announce I'm going inside to find Wolf before the sun literally roasts me.
"Make sure you check the locker room," he calls. "He likes to stand in there and stare at the fist-sized hole in the wall that Lieu made him spackle over last week."