Chapter 4: Freddy's Testimony

A small office in the hospital had been provided for giving his statement. Holdaway had been instructed to wait out in the hall and stormed off instead, cursing and hitting the walls. But Captain Frankie Ferchetti had accompanied him inside. Waiting there was Frankie's old divisional commander, a man Freddy had never met called Gibson. With him were a few other operatives who Freddy ignored.

He gave his testimony slowly, and as accurately as possible. As the story progressed, he found himself slipping back to using aliases for the robbers. Old habits. There were few interruptions, for which he was grateful, but some parts were especially difficult. The woman in the car. Marvin Nash. The standoff.

Freddy paused and took a drag on his third cigarette, noticing that his hand had strayed to the scar on his right cheek. That was where the bullet had entered, blowing out half a dozen teeth, continuing up through his palate and angling into his brain. The doctors told him that they couldn't cure his severe headaches and he was stuck with them, likely for the rest of his life, but they had medication to deal with that kind of shit. He'd had to lie about how intense they were if he wanted any hope of them clearing him to go back on the job, but what was wrong with that? He'd just suck it up.

He stared down at the twin-cassette tape deck lying on the desk between himself and Gibson, wondering how they would react. The old man cleared his throat and leaned forward, clasping his hands and gazing at Freddy in what was supposed to be a fatherly way.

"Mr. Newendyke, I need to get something straight," said Gibson slowly. "Lawrence Dimick killed Joseph and Edward Cabot because he believed your cover, and was defending you." Freddy blew a smoke ring. Here it came… "But it was Dimick who shot you in the head."

A reluctant nod. "Yeah, that's right."

"The Cabots had been killed seconds before our boys arrived on the scene and found him holding you at gunpoint. So how, Mr. Newendyke, within that very short period of time, did Dimick find out that you were working undercover?"

Freddy was suddenly conscious of the gaze of every single person in that crummy little office focussed on him. Screw it.

"I told him."

"You – Could you repeat that, please?"

"I said, I told him I was a cop," said Freddy, raising his voice slightly. Frankie was staring at him. The other officers shuffled slightly and swapped looks, and a few of them murmured to each other. Freddy honestly couldn't give a flying fuck what they thought.

Gibson gave a nervous little laugh. "Now why would you do a thing like that, Freddy?" he asked with affected friendliness. He kept clasping and unclasping his hands. "All you had to do was wait."

Freddy mashed his cigarette butt into the ashtray and leaned back in his chair. "I don't know what to tell you," he admitted. "It was a… personal reason. I had to do it." How the fuck was he supposed to explain the situation? There was no way in hell these motherfuckers would understand what he had felt, what he'd owed to Larry.

Gibson was staring at him as if he was fucking nuts. "Right," he said faintly. He blinked and shook his head, then leaned over to turn off the recorder. "I think that's all the information we need, Mr. Newendyke." He pushed back his chair and started to get up.

"It corroborates the thief's testimony," one of the other officers remarked.

His buddy beside him gave Freddy a swift smile. "We didn't know if he was making it up or what. And he was a weird little fella." Freddy had to grin at the cop's description of Mr. Pink.

Gibson was heading for the door. "Wait a minute," said Freddy, leaning forward. "When am I back on the job?"

Gibson nodded at Ferchetti. "That's for Frankie to decide. You rest easy, kid." He left the office, followed by the other officers.

Frankie moved over to sit on the edge of the desk, and Freddy looked up at him expectantly. "The doctors decide when you'll be released from hospital, which they tell me will be very soon," said Frankie quietly. "You'll have to continue your therapy for a couple more weeks before I can clear you for light duty. I also want you evaluated by one of our psychiatrists."

"That's bullshit –"

"It's not bullshit, Freddy. I was watching you just now, so don't pretend you don't have some major fucking problems, all right? You were shot in the head, and who knows what could have happened to your wiring?" Frankie took a deep breath and calmed down. "Look, I just want to make sure you're okay. Going undercover screws with your mind. I mean, look at Holdaway."

Freddy smiled, and some of the tension eased from his shoulders. "Okay," he agreed. "If that's what I have to do to get back on the job, I'll see the motherfucking psychiatrist."

Frankie hesitated. "There's one more thing," he said. Freddy waited as the older man unzipped his briefcase and procured a newspaper clipping.

Freddy scanned the article, and sat up in his chair. "Who the fuck…?" he said faintly. It was a rather short article, taken from one of the back pages. The headline: "Police officer shot in head, remains in coma." There was a blurred photograph accompanying it. Freddy looked up at his superior and waved the piece of newsprint. "What piece of shit would sneak into the hospital to take my picture when I'm in a fuckin' coma?"

"Same bitch who wrote the article," said Frankie. "Now listen. The press don't know that you were working undercover, but any one of Cabot's boys could link your injuries to the diamond robbery. Besides, they know your name and your face now. You can't go undercover ever again, Freddy."

"It's a shitty picture!"

"They could still recognize you. We can't take the risk –"

"I had a dozen fucking tubes stickin' outta me, Frankie. And even if someone does read this shitty little social problems newsletter bullshit of a paper, who's gonna recognize me? Every crook I met with is dead anyway, except Pink and he's behind bars." The other man stared down at him with an inscrutable expression. There was that feeling, the same one he'd gotten from Holdaway. They weren't telling him something. But Frankie wasn't going to enlighten him.

"You're not going undercover."

Freddy threw up his hands in defeat. "All right, all right."

Frankie put the article back in his briefcase. "Are you planning on returning to your apartment when you get out of here?"

"Yeah," said Freddy, lighting a fresh cigarette. He was taking advantage of the absence of hospital staff. Even Strawberry Blonde wouldn't let him light up on her watch. "Back to my shit apartment. I owe Holdaway a couple months' rent."

"He's a good guy. He always said you'd wake up." Frankie grinned suddenly. "You know, most guys move in with their mothers after going through something like this."

"My mother left me under a stairwell when I was a couple weeks old."

The other man's smile faded. "I'm sorry."

"Doesn't matter. Fuck the bitch. Better to grow up in a foster home than be raised by a teen hooker or junkie or whatever she was." He couldn't hold back a wry smile. "You know, it's kinda because of her being a piece of shit mother that I became a cop, and that I'm in this fucking situation right now?"

"What do you mean?"

Freddy rubbed the back of his neck. "A cop found me under the stairwell. You ever heard of Pete Kricher?"

The other man frowned. "Sure. He died last year. A heart attack, I think."

"Yeah. Well, this used to be his." Freddy toyed with the ring on his finger. "I put it on for luck during my last job. D'you believe that?"

Frankie smiled. "Well I think you should send a couple of thank-you prayers Kricher's way."

Freddy snorted. "And why should I do that?"

"Because you're still alive."

A/N: "Dimick" is spelt in a deleted scene with one "m", which also agrees with the script. Of course, Tarantino's character in Pulp Fiction is Jimmie Dimmick. Gah!

Here's a Quentin Tarantino tidbit from the DVD commentary, where he gives the reason for Mr. Orange's confession, a Japanese term "jingi": "The closest thing to jingi, as far as trying to describe it in America, is honour and humanity – but that's a weak description of jingi. Jingi is beyond honour. Jingi isn't beyond humanity, but it's beyond honour, with a little bit of humanity in there. The best way to describe jingi (and it's also often used in Yakuza movies), it's the thing you MUST do, even if you don't want to. When Mr. Orange tells Mr. White he's a cop, in that one sixty seconds that Mr. White can do something about it – that's jingi." Hmm… If Freddy knew Japanese, maybe he could've explained himself better to Gibson.

Next chapter, Freddy actually gets out a little. Reviews are welcome!