Sorry for the long update wait, I plead writers block. A new update will be up sometime next week!
"Bullshit, when a cop says just to talk, it means its time to roll on all my friends while you pretend to be my buddy while waving a plea bargain over my head." Dorian didn't look up at him, his eyes stayed firmly planted on the wall opposite of him.
"I'm not a cop Dorian." Huang took the seat across from him moving right into Dorian's eye level.
"Let me guess you are some minority filling court appointed lawyer that has been brought in because my Dad's a cop and you are afraid of the newspaper headlines."
"I'm a psychologist." Dorian's head dropped into his arms on the table, cutting off all eye contact.
"Are you worried that your Dad might get in trouble because of what you did?" Huang asked gently.
Dorian's body jolted as his head swung up to look his straight in the eye, their noses only inches apart.
"I didn't do anything." He said it with characteristic attitude that standing on the other side of the glass I almost wanted to chuckle, just remembering that same tone in a little seven year old kid. "As for my Dad, I'm sure you've heard, he's got worse on his record than me."
"Heard what?" I backed away from the glass, wishing I could disappear right into it, instead my back hitting the wall, John looked over at me side-eyed.
"My Dad was seventeen and a crack addict when he had me. My mother was a seventeen, a crack addict when she left me. He became an informant, narc-ed on all his friends, made enough money dealing crack while the police gave him a blind eye to move into the city and join the police academy. It's just shows how far the NYPD will go to get black beat cops." I heard my life being described in three sentences and I was overwhelmed with the want to race in that room, grab Door by the collar hold him against the wall and scream at him, I had tried to give him a better life and all he did was go running back to the life I had taken him from, at least in all my crack exploits, my narcing for the police I had never raped a ten year old girl. I wanted to hit him. I had never raised a hand against Door but at that moment had I the opportunity I could have beat him into submission. I wasn't sure what the feeling racketing in my chest was, whether it was fear, or anger, or disappointment. I slammed the door on the way out, feeling the wall vibrate with the pressure of the steel door. I didn't want to see Huang's reaction, I didn't want to hear anymore at how I had failed so much as a human being that my life now revolved around arresting other failed human beings. John was walking at my heels, struggling to catch up.
"Fin, John. Hold up a second." Cragan called from his office over the head of a woman with her back facing to us.
I felt as if steam should be pouring out of my ears, I could feel my hands shaking, my heart beating with such velocity that it felt like it was rocking the floor beneath my feet. I took a deep breath as I walked towards Cragan, as I entered the door a thought popped into my head I had hopped I would never feel again. I wish I could just forget this, there was only one way to truly forget something as big as a son. Charise had done it, and for a split second as I walked through his door I had to come to the full front that I wanted to get high. It had been sixteen years and god help me I still yearned for that feeling where you slip away, where everything fades into a fog, where nothing matters but your next score.
The woman turned to look at us as we entered, the woman had cappuccino brown skin, large brown eyes and small braids down her back, she looked in her late twenties and distraught.
"This is Jonas Lincon's wife Jenna." I looked at her, really looked at her, and realized that I had never in no context seen this woman before and there was one thing wrong with that.
She shook both of our hands, a soft shake, and a small nod, the shake of a confident and well off woman.
"I was at work, I got his call and I went and picked up our boys and I-I had to tell them that their sister was d-dead." Tears started to stream down her face. "I still can't believe it."
"Jenna we are still working on the case, and we don't have any information we can give you right now, why don't you go home and be with your sons and we will call you when we have some information."
"What about Jonas? What about Harmony? Do you need someone to identify her?"
"Jonas is in Rikers being held on an outstanding warrant, everything else has been taken care of." Cragan's voice was soft, reassuring and practiced.
"How can you arrest him at a time like this?" Jenna's voice was rising, the beginning signs of hysteria showing in her features.
Walking out to the car I strained my memory. "John? Did you remember hearing Jenna refer to herself as Harmony's mother?"
John stopped next to the car for a second. "She called the boys her sons, but never with Harmony. Why?"
"That's not Harmony's mother."
"How do you know?"
"I knew her mother." Knew seemed like too much of a strong word. Maritza had been a whore back in the day, constantly feeding off Jonas, stealing his money, his drugs. Jonas never cared because she was beautiful, and the best lay he had ever had. I had seen him on the street one day when I was picking up Door at my mothers. He had recognized me, and had started a conversation with me. Despite not wanting to associate with anything resembling my old life, we talked for a few minutes. He was leaning against a brick wall, holding keys in his hand, one of which held the BMW logo on it, when he said to me in a proud voice.
"You know I got a baby now. A little girl." I had congratulated him, I had thought to myself that his kid sure wasn't changing him, like Door had changed me.
He had brought up his new house and had mentioned how Maritza couldn't get over having a backyard.
"You still with Maritza?"
"It was an off and on thing because damn that woman and that ass, but when you have a kid you gotta take care of them. I ain't gonna be like my old man." At the time I had talked to him I had just started working the 8-4 beat shift in the 43 precinct, Door had won his forth grade spelling bee, he was nine.
"Fin?" John was looking at me over the hood of the car. I opened the door and got in.
I got on the phone and called in one of my last remaining favours with an old friend in narcotics. I flipped my phone shut.
"Maritza got out of sing-sing two months ago, she'd been in there seven years for manslaughter." My head was swimming, my heart rate hadn't been normal for nine hours.
"Manslaughter?" John asked eccentrically intrigued.
"She attacked a john in self defence and then went beyond the self defence phase when she shot him in the head with his own nine millimetre that was locked in the glove compartment."
"She got seven years? What the hell is wrong with this country?"
"She pleaded down."
"For what? Was someone else in the car unlocking the glove compartment for her?" John kidded in a sarcastic tone.
"I don't know, I couldn't get that much out of her file." She was out, I don't know why there was a little red light flashing inside me but it was there something wasn't right. Maybe I was just desperate to find someone to take the blame from my son and my nephew. Maybe it was just gut instinct.
John pulled in the front of a large bricked building with worn down front grass, and bars on the windows.
There were boys sprawled on the porch smoking in the converging darkness. Young, black and cocky all of them probably thirteen.
"Aw shit I didn't do it!" One called from the back.
"Me neither! I swear." Claimed another.
We walked in. It was an instructional type building, a large living room on one side with couches and chairs and a blasting TV. I could see rooms with bunk beds up the stairs.
"Can I help you?" A man asked us, he was my age, black, wearing jeans and a T-shirt, probably the kind of guy who could act like a great friend, or a horrible hard ass. We flashed out badges.
"We are looking for Alex and Andre Tutuola."
"Sure they are in their room, but can I ask are they in trouble?"
John spoke for me. "No, not at all, we actually just have a few questions for them about their brother, I understand he visited yesterday."
"The famous Q." The man replied raising his eyebrows.
"Alex talks about him all the time, about how great he is. He was here yesterday doped out of his mind, if I had been here when he came in I would have sent him away. He is the last thing any of these boys need to see, especially a boy like Alex. Young, black, living the easy life, fast cash, fast drugs, fast women. He's what most boys here would like to be. He is what they strive for, and him showing up, displaying his nice clothes, nice car. Nail in the coffin."
"Alex heading to it?"
"He's already in it, he doesn't go to school half the time, he disappears, back talking to me, threatening. I just wish his family would stay away it seems like the whole lot of them are bad news." I almost felt numb to people stating how horrible my family was.
"I'm Detective Tutuola, this is my partner John Munch, I'm Alex and Dre's uncle."