“He’s being released,” I said, eyes closed, my head leaning back against the headrest. My phone crackled in my ear, my service spotty.
The parking garage was still full, despite it being rather late in the evening. I’d wanted to leave work the moment I’d arrived that morning, but there had been too much going on. After my meeting with Hale, I had a mountain of paperwork to get through—mine and Gary’s—and, as the day wore on, more and more people became less shy about asking me what happened.
People were popping their heads in my office door all morning under the pretense of “checking in,” but all they really wanted was the gossip. Even Johnson had cracked and shown up to chat.
“I just can’t believe it,” he said, shaking his head. “There are always cops you expect to get into a scrape like this, but Gary was never on my radar. Thank God it was all a big misunderstanding.”
“A misunderstanding?” I asked, looking up from my paperwork for the first time since he’d entered the room.
“Yeah. You know. Sarge sent around your statement. We’ve all read it.”
I took a deep breath and then forced myself to nod. “Right, of course. I just didn’t know that had been sent out yet.”
“Yeah, he emailed it around thirty or so minutes ago. And what a relief that was. I didn’t like thinking Gary was dirty.”
“Yeah, me either.”
For some reason, I hadn’t imagined how it would feel when “my” official statement made the rounds. I hadn’t even thought about it. At the time, I’d just wanted to sign the damn piece of paper and get the hell out of the office.
However, I now realized the power of it. I’d signed off on the statement. I’d inked my name on the bottom of a page full of lies, and if I ever wanted to change my story, I’d be arguing against myself. No one would believe me. I’d signed myself into a corner.
“What are you talking about?” Zico asked, his voice lowering.
I heard other voices in the background, and I wondered where he was. Was he at the cigar shop or The Barre or his place? And who was with him? What kind of criminals did he surround himself with every day? What horrible things had they all done?
“Gary is being released,” I said, my voice quick, impatient. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it, but I also needed to say the words. I needed someone, just one single person, to share my frustration. Everyone at the precinct was thrilled. They were so glad to know the charges were being dropped. Well, that they would likely be dropped. Nothing official had happened yet, but according to the sergeant, it was as good as done already.
“How? Do you mean on bail or?”
“Maybe,” I said. “He might already be out on bail, I haven’t checked. But he isn’t going to prison for this. He may not even be suspended.”
“How is that possible?” Zico asked, his voice pinched and high. “We caught him red-handed. What more evidence do they need?”
“Apparently,” I said, my voice thick with sarcasm, “the men Gary was doing business with were police informants, and he was there to pay them for rounding up illegal weapons. It was all a huge misunderstanding.”
“That’s total bullshit. No one will believe that. Besides, you were there. You can tell people the truth.”
“I signed an official statement.”
“Okay?” he asked, clearly confused. “So, you told your side of the story?”
“No.”
“Okay, Anna, you’re going to need to give me more to go on here. I’m not following. What did you sign?” I heard a door shut on his end of the phone, and the voices in the background disappeared.
“It was a statement Sergeant Hale wrote for me. It said that Gary was doing undercover work, that he was an honest cop, and that he was making a trade with police informants. The statement said that Gary hadn’t done anything wrong and that he should be released.”
“You didn’t even get to write your own statement?” he asked.
“I signed the one they gave me to sign.”
Zico groaned. “Why would you do that? After everything we did to catch him, why would you just give up?”
“That’s the point though,” I said. “After everything we did to catch him, it was this easy for him to get away with it. At some point, I had to come to terms with reality. Gary was going to be released, and the best thing I could do for myself was try to keep my job.”
“Is he still going to be your partner?”
“I don’t know.”
“Are you two going to have to work in the same precinct together? Do people there know what he said to you when he was arrested? Do they know that he threatened your life? Surely, if they knew, they wouldn’t be so quick to let him off,” he said, his words coming out in a quick jumble.
“If they knew, they’d probably have me transferred somewhere else so I wouldn’t disturb Gary. I’m the rookie here, remember? Gary has worked alongside these people for years, and I’ve been here a little over one month. I’m the one who has everything to lose. I didn’t see that before, but I see it now. I’m the one who has to protect myself. If I don’t look out for me, no one else will.”
My voice hiccupped. I hadn’t realized I was crying until then, but then I noticed how blurry my vision had become, how thick my throat felt. Each word felt like it was being squeezed out of me, my breath coming in shorter and shorter bursts.
“Hey,” Zico said, his voice soft and gentle.
I felt stupid. I didn’t want to be crying in the parking garage outside my work. And I definitely didn’t want Zico to know I was crying.
“Everything is going to be fine,” he added. “It isn’t a big deal. You didn’t do anything wrong. Okay?”
I didn’t answer, partly because I couldn’t, but partly because I didn’t believe him. This was my fault. If I’d fought harder to tell the truth, if I’d gone over Sergeant Hale’s head, perhaps Gary wouldn’t be being released.
“Okay?” he insisted.
“Okay,” I mumbled through the tears.
“Come over.”
I froze, my brain replaying his words over and over to make sure I’d heard him correctly. “To your place?” I asked.
“Yeah, you said you wanted to see my place. So, come over. Come over here, and we can talk and we can… not talk.”
Just then, the voices in the background grew loud, raucous. Even through the closed door, and over the phone, I heard them. Why was Zico suddenly inviting me over now? I know I’d just mentioned it the night before, but it still felt suspicious. Could it be a setup?
I hated even thinking it, but if I’d learned anything after my meeting with Sergeant Hale, it was that I had to look out for my own interests because no one else would. Zico had told me so much about the Brancati crime ring. He’d told me things he shouldn’t ever have told me. Was there a reason for that? Was it because he knew that at the end of all of this, he’d have me killed?
It wasn’t as if Zico was new to murder. Throughout our “relationship,” if it could even be called that, I’d softened Zico. I’d turned him into a cuddly, protective teddy bear, but that had been naïve. Naïve at best; dangerous at worst. I couldn’t allow myself to forget who he was. What he was.
Zico was a mafia member. He could order any number of men to kill me on the spot, and they wouldn’t even blink. And maybe now that Zico had seen how weak I was, now that he’d seen how willing I was to crack under pressure, he had realized I was a liability. If our relationship ever became public knowledge, I could be a threat to him and his family. I could tell all of his secrets and bring them crashing to the ground.
“What do you say?” he asked.
I realized I hadn’t spoken in a long time. I’d been too distracted by my thoughts.
“I don’t think so,” I replied, trying to sound casual.
“No, come on,” he begged. “Come over here. We’ll order takeout and relax. You need to relax. I can help.”
His insistence only made me more firm in my answer. “No, really, I’m just going to go home tonight. Maybe another night.”
There was a long pause, and I began to wonder whether Zico had hung up, but then he sighed. “Fine, I guess. I think you’re making a mistake. I’ll keep my phone on me for when you change your mind.”
“That’s really not necessary.”
“I really don’t believe you,” he said.
I hung up the phone and threw it on the passenger seat. If Zico was trying to set me up, not going to his house wasn’t going to foil his plan. He’d find me. He’d broken into my house before—several times, actually—so what was stopping him from doing it again? How had I found myself in this position?
My partner had threatened my life, and now the closest thing I’d had to a boyfriend in several years could be plotting my murder. For the thousandth time that day, I questioned whether I’d made a mistake coming to the city. Perhaps I should tender my resignation, go back to the middle of nowhere, and help old lady’s carry their groceries to their car. Maybe that was enough for me to handle. Maybe I wasn’t cut out for big city life.
I sighed and turned the car on, my stomach grumbling. Regardless of whether I’d made a mistake or who was out to murder me, I had more pressing matters to deal with. I was starving, and I needed to grab some dinner.
# # #
There was a pizza place less than two blocks from the precinct, so I stopped there. Screw a diet, screw a salad, screw a fitness smoothie. I needed cheese and grease and carbs. It had been a stressful day, and I needed a treat. My mom had always said, “Don’t treat yourself with food. You’re not a dog.” It made sense whenever she said it, but it stopped making sense as soon as I needed to treat myself and the only thing that would do was junk food.
I ordered two slices and then changed it to three, deciding that if I was going to do this, I was going to do it right. The shop had a few tables inside, but mostly everyone was sitting outside on the red metal picnic tables with matching umbrellas, so I followed suit, picking a table in the corner.
A couple of elderly men were eating a pizza covered in olives and onions while they each read different sections of the same newspaper—trading when they finished their part. A group of young girls was giggling over a cell phone in the corner, four sodas sitting in front of them, but no pizza. And then a leggy brunette and her model-ready beau came strolling out of the shop and sat at the center table. They were both thin, and each was dressed in mostly denim paired with shiny European boots. I couldn’t imagine either of them chowing down on pizza, but then they opened their to-go containers, and I saw that they’d each gotten a salad from the salad bar.
I rolled my eyes, but then stopped. Wasn’t it nice that they’d found each other? Sure, I thought they were ridiculous, but that was probably why the clean-shaven, looked-like-he-just-stepped-out-of-a-billboard guy was with the brunette and not me. It was easy to make fun of them, but then I realized how much I wanted someone to be sitting across the table from me. I also realized, much to my horror, how much I wished it could be Zico.
Suddenly, my appetite vanished. I’d eaten one slice and taken a few bites from the crust of the second, but there was no way I was going to be able to eat three slices of pizza. What had I been thinking? I dropped my greasy paper plate in the trash and walked back to my car.
# # #
It was dark by the time I made it back to my apartment. There was construction on the exit ramp just before my road, so I’d been stuck in traffic for fifteen minutes while people figured out how to navigate their vehicles around orange cones.
My apartment was dark as I walked up the drive, which was a relief. I’d been nervous Zico would show up anyway, and I wasn’t in any sort of mental state to deal with him. I needed to be alone. I needed to think.
I dug through my purse until I found my keys, and then slipped them clumsily into the lock. It was then that I realized why it was so dark—the porch light had been turned off. It had a sensor inside of it, so it turned on when the sun went down, but I figured it must be broken and made a mental note to call maintenance in the morning.
Walking into my own space felt like dropping a twenty-pound weight I’d been carrying around all day. I threw my coat and purse on the mat next to the door, and made my way towards the lamp in the corner, my hands stretched out in front of me to make sure I didn’t bump into anything in the dark.
Suddenly, my hand hit something solid.
Something alive.
I yelped, but before it could mature into a full-on scream, someone spun me around forcefully, and a hand clamped over my mouth.