Chapter Twenty-Seven
Phil
I kept staring at the ceiling of my cell, seeing people’s faces in the grainy gray stains of the wall. The more I stared, the defined their features got until I was staring at someone from my past, wondering how I’d gotten to this place. It seemed almost inevitable that I would find myself in a jail cell, and that scared me more than any other thought. I realized that I had felt that way since I was fourteen or fifteen years old.
I had watched my dad’s life and then I had watched my brother, and somewhere along the way I’d become part of a drug gang. I suppose that given the life I’d led, it would be realistic to assume that this was where I would end up. I shook my head and frowned. That was the very reason I had given it all up. I didn’t want to end up in a jail cell for any significant period of time. I wanted to become more than the men I had seen around me growing up.
I wanted to contribute to society. I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to help people. Those were the reasons I gave people when they asked me what had led to my decision to become a firefighter. They were the selfless reasons that made me look a better man than I probably really was.
There were more reasons, though, and they were less selfless. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be liked. I wanted people to look at me with admiration. I wanted to be included in a society that I didn’t think had any real room for me. I had watched my mother, my father, and my brother and the one thing they all had in common was the fact that they were all misfits. They didn’t fit in anywhere. They were loners who built walls around themselves, and it had succeeded in keeping everyone out.
I thought about my mother. I had been so young when she left, but I still remembered the atmosphere at the time. Dad was furious, but I sensed a deeper pain hidden beneath the fury, and it wasn’t until a few years later that I was able to identify it as hurt. Somehow that knowledge made me feel a little better about my father. If he could be hurt, then that meant he had had some feeling towards my mother, right? Maybe in his own way he had loved her…just a little. And maybe that meant he might have loved Paul and me a little, too.
I knew that being trapped in this cell was letting my thoughts run wild. I wondered if I was making up scenarios just to entertain myself. I wondered how Paul had lived like this for years. I knew that his prison had a large courtyard, a garden, a television room, and a library. But it was still one contained space—it was still a cage, and Paul had never been one to stay in one place for long.
He had been angry when they sentenced him. No one but me could have said as much, but I saw the emotion plain as day on his face. He blinked rarely and the vein in his forehead popped slightly so that I could see its purplish tint against the pale white of his face. He didn’t make eye contact with me as he walked away with his jailer and I understood that. It must have been hard to look at anyone who was free when you yourself were trapped.
I wondered if prison had changed him, and if it had, I wondered how it had changed him. Had he softened, seen the error of his ways and reformed, or had he hardened, gotten angrier, and more likely to fuck up his life after being released? It was a tossup, and I realized that I had no clue who my brother was anymore. He was a stranger made up of biased memories and foggy recollections.
I wondered if I would end up in the same prison that he was in. I almost laughed at the thought. What if that really happened? Would he even recognize me? I had changed a little since we’d last seen each other. I had built muscle and lost facial hair. I didn’t look like the boys we had rolled with when we were teenagers. Now I looked like I had a chance. I looked like someone you could trust…at least, I liked to think I did.
I was trying to imagine Paul’s reaction to me if we happened to land in the same prison when I heard footsteps approaching. I sat up quickly and turned to my cell door. A few seconds later, Manolo appeared. He opened my cell door and walked inside. I stared at his face, hoping that his expression might give something away.
“How are you?” he asked.
“Fine,” I said impatiently. “Any news?”
“We’re working on things.”
I raised my eyebrows. “You’re working on what?” I asked desperately. “Did any of the leads I gave you pay off? Did you find Brent? Was he in his apartment? Was Megan there?”
“Whoa…” Manolo said, holding up his hands. “Calm down, Phil.”
“Sorry,” I said, breathing deeply. “I just… I’m anxious.”
“I can see that.” He nodded. “And I understand, but unfortunately, I can’t disclose any information to you. I just came to see how you were holding up.”
“There’s nothing you can give me?” I asked desperately. “Nothing at all?”
“All I can say is that there has been movement in the case,” Manolo said.
I tried to bottle up my hope so that I could live off it for the next few hours, but it vanished as soon as it appeared. Manolo’s face was a blank canvas that gave nothing away. His words were somewhat encouraging, but they could have meant anything.
“Have you spoken to Brent?” I asked, hoping his answer would give me a clue.
“I can’t say,” Manolo replied.
“How about Megan?” I asked.
“I can’t say,” he repeated.
I sighed. “What can you say then?” I asked.
“Try doing some push-ups,” he said, with a slight smile. “Keep active in here…it’ll help you from going crazy.”
I sighed. “I doubt it.”
“You know your boys are with you, right?” Manolo said. “Everyone down at the fire station believes you a hundred percent. They want you to know that they have your back.”
That did make a small difference, and I managed to crack a smile. Then I thought about the person I cared about most in the world right now and my smile faded. Manolo noticed that immediately.
“Don’t be too hard on her,” he said, as though he knew exactly what I was thinking. “She really does love you.”
I looked up at him. “So you have spoken to her.”
Manolo only smiled.
“She didn’t believe me,” I said softly. “I thought she knew me better than anyone else in the world… Turns out it took one measly arrest to change her mind and break her faith in me.”
“There is overwhelming evidence that points to you in all this,” Manolo reminded me.
“I don’t care,” I said heatedly. “She knew me. She should have known what I was capable of.”
“Sometimes love can blind…”
I frowned. “I just told you, she believed me when I was accused of—”
“What I mean is that she probably thought she had been blind because she loved you,” he explained. “She probably thought she had missed the signs because she cared about you so much.”
“Is that her excuse, or yours?”
Manolo smiled. “You’ve been in there barely five days, Phil,” he said. “You don’t get to be this bitter.”
“Is it strange that I’m more worried about my relationship than about my job?” I asked.
Until I’d said it out loud to Manolo just then, I hadn’t actually admitted as much to myself. I felt a small amount of release, except that it was hollow because I was so hurt and angry with Megan for actually believing that I was guilty, especially when it was her own brother who had put me in this position.
“It’s not strange,” Manolo said kindly. “You love her.”
“Fat lot of good that did me.”
“Hey, you haven’t been found guilty yet—remember that,” he said sternly.
After Manolo left, I had an hour to myself that felt more like five and then a cop came to get me from my cell. He didn’t tell me what it was about, and I didn’t ask. He led me to a room where Victor sat, waiting for me.
“I have good news,” he said, as I walked in.
I held my breath and sat down, hoping that it was really good news and not just spin that he was trying to dress up for my benefit.
“Okay?” I said cautiously.
“They caught the guy who framed you,” Victor said immediately.
“No!” I said, my voice coming out in one heady breath.
“Yes.”
“Fuck!” I nearly yelled. “You really did?”
“We followed the leads you gave us, as well as the leads that Megan gave us—”
“Megan?” I said, frowning at him.
“She visited Officer Manolo two days ago,” Victor told me. “And, she told him about her brother.”
“Her brother?” I said, in confusion. “I thought she believed Brent was innocent and I wasn’t?”
“As to what she believed, I can’t say,” he said. “I only had a short conversation with her. But she discovered a few bags of drugs in her brother’s closet, and she connected the dots I suppose.”
“She came to the station?”
“Yes, and she also gave us a few leads as to where we might find her brother.”
“So it was Brent who set me up,” I said.
“We don’t know yet.”
“What?” I said, in disbelief. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“We don’t know that Brent was the mastermind in this operation or if he was merely the pawn,” Victor told me. “The police are still trying to figure that part out. He might be part of a bigger drug conspiracy. The police are keeping quiet about a few things. I think they want to catch everyone involved with this.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Does that mean—”
“You can’t be released just yet,” Victor said, in a measured voice. “There will be a hearing and after the hearing, you will be absolved of all charges and you will be free to go.”
“When will the hearing be?” I asked.
“Possibly two days,” he replied. “They just want to cover all their bases and be sure that you’re completely innocent first.”
“You mean there are a few people who think I might have been in on this drug thing?”
“A few, yes,” he admitted. “But only a very few. I’ve never seen such an overwhelming majority of people come and speak for someone in my life, particularly someone they don’t really know”
“What can I say?” I said. “I inspire trust.”
But even as I said it, I couldn’t help thinking that the one person who I thought had known me best hadn’t believed me when I said I was innocent.