by E. R. Fallon
“I don’t know,” Tommy said, seeming surprised himself that he’d told her. “I don’t know you well, but for some reason, I felt like I could, like I could trust you. I can, can’t I?” Tommy moved over to the side of the bed where she stood.
“You do know what you’re asking me to do, don’t you? You’re asking me to lie to our boss.”
“You don’t have to lie to him,” Tommy said. “He won’t ask you about it, because he doesn’t suspect anything, so there’s no need to tell him anything.”
“It will jeopardize our investigation.”
“No, it won’t.”
“Tommy, are you really trying to tell me that you’re going to help your own mother get sent to jail?”
A look crossed over his face, as though he hadn’t thought of that before.
“I’ll do what I have to do. That’s part of the job,” he finally said, but he didn’t sound very convinced.
Dana knew what she had to do as well, but she also knew that telling their boss would mean that Tommy would probably be suspended, or fired, for not disclosing he knew Violet McCarthy, when he’d been assigned to the investigation. She wanted to do the right thing, but she knew that would also be a rotten thing to do to Tommy, whom she cared about.
Her silence seemed to frighten him. “Dana, you can’t say anything. Tell me you won’t say anything.”
“I can’t make a decision right now, but I won’t say anything for now,” she finally said.
She sensed Tommy wouldn’t accept an ultimatum, but deep down inside, she felt he would do the right thing and tell their boss, and if he didn’t, she knew what she’d have to do.
Tommy nodded, as if he knew her words would have to do for now.
“I feel closer to you now, now that I’ve told you,” he said after a moment, and she sensed that wasn’t easy for him to have admitted. “But I need a drink.” He gave a slight chuckle. “Do you have anything strong? Whiskey, maybe?”
Dana nodded and left the bedroom for the kitchen, barefoot, feeling unsteady as she walked. If she continued to be with Tommy, what was she getting herself into? Dana had always considered herself a good girl. She wasn’t her mother, that was for sure. Her mother had been quite a bad girl, a drinker who’d associated with criminal types, including Colin O’Brien. But Dana’s father had helped her mother reform herself, and Dana liked to think of herself as her father’s daughter. Tommy wasn’t a clear-cut criminal, but he was concealing the truth. Dana never had had a secret as big as covering for Tommy, so that made him exciting to her. Before Tommy, most of the men who’d come in and out of her life over the years, had been, well, pretty boring. With Tommy, she’d have some excitement to look forward to, but for how long could the good girl keep his secret?
In the kitchen Dana opened the cupboard and found the bottle of Irish whiskey that she, ironically, kept there to share a glass with her father sometimes, when he visited with her mother. Tommy had sounded as if he’d wanted the bottle, not just a glass, so she grabbed two glasses and returned to the bedroom. She found Tommy out of bed and dressed, standing by the window, looking outside at the dark city streets dotted with lights. She could hear the sounds of traffic below. He didn’t face her when she entered the room. He just stood there, tall and solemn.
“Everything okay?” she asked, then felt foolish for asking. Of course, everything wasn’t okay, after what he’d told her. “I have whiskey,” she said, when he didn’t answer her. “Tommy?”
“Yeah, thanks,” he said, turning around to look at her and giving her a warm smile.
Dana handed him the bottle and set the glasses down on her nightstand.
Tommy poured them each a drink and handed Dana hers. He stood looking at her for a moment then smiled.
Dana realized she was just wearing her underwear.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, with a wink.
“Tommy, I want to ask you something,” she said, viewing his compliment as a distraction.
“What is it?” he asked as he finished his glass of whiskey.
Dana had barely sipped hers, but knew it would help take the edge off, so she drank some.
“Are you close to your mother?” she asked quietly.
“Why? Does it make a difference?”
“From the way you talked, I assumed you weren’t, but wasn’t sure. It’s important I know, because, although our boss is in charge of both of us, in a way, I’m also in charge of what happens to you. And I can’t accept lies.”
“I used to be close to her,” he said, then went to pour himself another drink.
Dana sensed he didn’t wish to discuss it further, but that he wasn’t being entirely honest with her.
“Are you trying to figure out whether I’m working with her behind your back?” Tommy said with a smile, and she couldn’t figure out whether he was joking, but she didn’t think he was.
“No,” Dana replied quickly, not wanting to anger him and escalate the situation.
“Good, because I’m not,” he said, and he poured himself another drink.
Dana didn’t know him well enough to truly trust him, although she wanted to.
“Maybe you ought to take it easy with the drink,” she told him.
“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” he said, and she saw a darker side of Tommy, one she hadn’t seen before.
He trusted her, but she wanted to do the right thing.
“I trust you,” he said.
But she felt obligated to tell the truth.
10
Camille awoke to someone pounding on the front door of their house. She turned to Johnny in bed, waking him.
“Who the fuck is that?” Johnny said.
“I have no fucking idea,” she replied, but it wasn’t Anton again, she was sure of that. She’d only been released from the hospital yesterday.
She checked the time on the alarm clock: 5 in the morning. Who the hell would come to their house so early?
Phoebe spoke outside of their closed bedroom door, “What’s going on?” The pretty, dark-haired teenager knocked and came into their room.
“We don’t know, sweetie,” Camille said to the slender girl.
“It’s going to be okay,” Johnny said to the both of them. He got out of bed and went to the bedroom window that overlooked the street. “Holy fuck,” he muttered under his breath, but Camille heard it. “Camille, there are police cars out there. The police are here.”
The first thought that crossed Camille’s mind was, what had they done lately that could have warranted their arrival? She could think of many things. She quickly hid their gun in the dresser at the side of the bed.
“What’s going on?” Phoebe asked with apprehension thick in her voice.
Camille urgently felt the need to comfort her. “It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay, sweetheart,” she said, rising from the bed and touching the girl’s arm.
Phoebe turned to Johnny, which she often did in times of need, and that was something that really bothered Camille.
“I’m scared, Dad,” Phoebe said.
He turned to her and smiled. “Don’t worry. Dad’s going to make everything all right.”
Phoebe didn’t know what they were involved in. She just assumed they were business people and had a gun for protection, and Johnny and Camille let her think that because it was better that way. Phoebe was young, and didn’t need something that complicated in her life.
“I’ll go downstairs and see what they want before they break the fucking door down,” he said to Camille, who followed him out of the bedroom. She told Phoebe to wait there.
Camille walked downstairs shadowing Johnny. She tried to think if there was anything besides the gun that they needed to hide before it was too late.
The pounding on the door continued. It had never stopped.
“We’re coming!” Johnny shouted when they reached the door. He unlocked and opened it and Detective Highland stood facing them with a mass of police officers stan
ding behind him, all of them staring at the pajama-clad Johnny and Camille.
Oh, fuck. This wasn’t good.
“What are you doing here?” Camille asked the detective, pushing her way to the front. She didn’t let fear invade her voice. Long ago, she’d made a promise to herself that she would never show fear to the police.
“I’m here to arrest you,” Highland replied with a smirk.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” Johnny demanded to the detective. “Camille’s the victim here.”
“Apparently not,” Detective Highland told him.
Phoebe came rushing down the stairs. “Mom? Dad? What’s happening?” she asked.
“Stay back, sweetheart,” Camille told her, and Phoebe recoiled in fear.
“Are you going to make this easy or hard?” Detective Highland asked Camille as he dangled a pair of handcuffs.
“First, tell me what the fuck this is about. I have rights,” she said.
“Yeah, you better tell her,” Johnny said to the detective.
“Watch it, honcho,” he replied to Johnny.
“Fuck you!” Johnny shouted back at him.
“Are we going to have trouble from you too?” Detective Highland gave Johnny a nasty grin. “Am I going to have to arrest the pair of you in front of your daughter?”
“Leave her out of this, and tell me what the hell is going on,” Camille said.
“Violet McCarthy,” the detective told her.
“What about her? You arrest her yet?”
“No, we haven’t.”
“Why the fuck not?” Camille demanded.
“Because you’re a damn liar, that’s why,” the detective said through his teeth.
Camille felt as if all the life had been drained out of her and she went numb. She’d been caught. Fuck. She feigned innocence anyway. “I don’t understand,” she said, glancing from Johnny to the detective, as though in shock.
“We determined that Ms. McCarthy was somewhere else during the time you said she attacked you.”
“Maybe it was somebody else who did it. I can’t be sure it was her,” Camille quickly said.
Detective Highland suppressed a chuckle.
“Save it for someone else. I know all about you, Mrs. Garcia. I looked you up,” he replied, as though he’d only recently discovered her criminal ties.
Despite a long life of crime, Camille had never been arrested before, and she feared it.
“Not in front of my daughter,” she told the detective in a calm voice.
“You’re not taking her anywhere, motherfucker,” Johnny said to the detective. The cops standing behind him moved closer, toward Johnny and Camille.
“Am I gonna have to arrest you also?” Highland said to Johnny.
“Johnny, please,” Camille said, pleading at him with her eyes. She didn’t like giving in to anyone, especially to the police, but she didn’t want the situation to get out of hand in front of Phoebe.
“I’ll go in peace,” she said to the detective. “But you’re not putting cuffs on me in front of my kid.”
Detective Highland seemed to think for a moment then he nodded. “All right, step outside. We’ll do it there.”
Which was worse, being arrested in front of her daughter, or her entire suburban neighborhood?
Detective Highland wouldn’t let Camille take her cane with her, so she was forced to limp. She braced herself as he took her by the arm and stepped outside into the early morning’s strengthening sunlight. When she looked back at Johnny, he seemed to be deciding whether to come to her defense and attack the detective. Camille glanced at Phoebe then at Johnny and shook her head. “Don’t,” she mouthed to him.
She wondered what she must look like to her neighbors, the few who were up early leaving for work, as she was escorted away from her home by a suited detective and a half a dozen police officers. Then again, the police cars had already shown up a while ago, and although they hadn’t used sirens when they arrived, their presence by her driveway was very obvious. So if her neighbors had noticed that something was going on, they already had noticed.
Detective Highland stopped halfway to the cars to handcuff Camille, right in the middle of her front yard. The man across the street, whom she and Johnny would wave to whenever they saw him, was getting into his car and stopped to watch the scene unfold. His mouth hung open in shock.
Camille looked at him and shrugged, because she couldn’t wave with her hands behind her back, and what the hell else was she supposed to do?
“Thanks for making me look like an asshole in front of my neighbors,” she muttered to Detective Highland.
“It’s my pleasure,” he replied, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
“Screw you,” Camille said, not quietly. She twisted around and spat at him, missing his face by an inch.
“Looking to get an assault charge on top of filing a false report?” he said, no longer smiling.
“Fuck you,” Camille said, and he shoved her into the backseat of a police car, with Johnny and Phoebe watching from the doorway. The nerve of the scum, arresting her in front of her family.
“Call Mickey,” she shouted to Johnny through the window, but she didn’t know if he’d heard her. Regardless, she knew he’d ring Mickey, her stepbrother and her lawyer anyway.
The motorcade of police cars drove off with Detective Highland in the passenger seat and another officer driving, and all of their sirens blaring.
The bastards hadn’t even let her get dressed out of her pajamas.
They booked her at the station on charges of filing a false complaint, and then transported her to a local prison while she awaited her chance for a bail hearing.
As Camille stepped off the bus in her new orange jumpsuit, courtesy of the New York Department of Corrections, her stomach tightened, and she disguised her apprehension with a swagger, albeit with a bit of a limp. If the name of the prison sounded familiar to her, that’s because it was. It was the same prison where Catherine McCarthy was being held, and Camille and Catherine hated each other almost as much as she and Violet hated one another.
She tripped on a rock in the filth-strewn parking lot and stopped, and the woman behind her, a girl, really, who looked about nineteen years old, bumped into her.
“Watch where you’re going, bitch,” the girl, a pretty, ginger-haired thing, said when Camille turned around. She gave Camille a menacing glare.
This wasn’t her neighborhood, which she controlled, and Camille was outside of her element.
To apologize would look very weak, but to give her silence would create conflict.
Instead, Camille made a joke. “I’m such a clumsy ass,” and to her surprise, the girl laughed.
“What they bust you for?” the girl asked her, becoming increasingly more friendly as they walked single file into an entrance, under the command of a muscular female guard.
“Some nonsense. You?” Camille asked.
“Assaulting this bitch I caught with my boyfriend. What’s your name?”
“Camille.”
“I’m Joy.”
“Shut up!” the guard yelled at them as they neared her.
“Bitch,” Joy muttered under her breath, and Camille suppressed a giggle.
The guard ordered the line of women to stop, which they all did, some faster than others. She marched straight up to Camille and Joy and came to a halt an inch from their faces. Camille could smell the woman’s rancid breath.
“You two think this is funny?” she shouted with sweat glistening on her furrowed brow.
Her expression looked almost comical to Camille, but she didn’t dare laugh. So, this guard was evidently the official asshole of the prison. Johnny, who had spent time in prison, had warned her there would be more than one.
Joy smirked at the woman, whose name was Officer Neale, according to the tag on her dull uniform. Officer Neale took her baton and hit Joy across the knees. The young girl howled in pain and fell to the ground, moaning and writhing.
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“What about you, you want some, too?” the guard yelled at Camille.
Camille didn’t look at her.
“Hey, I’m talking to you!” the guard screamed in Camille’s face.
Camille stared at her.
“What about you? Am I going to have a problem with you?”
A surge of bravery rose through Camille. “You shouldn’t have hit her,” she told the guard, her voice very calm.
Officer Neale laughed in disbelief. Then she smacked Camille across the knees with her baton. Camille flinched, but she didn’t fall. Instead, she breathed out her pain.
Officer Neale seemed surprised at Camille’s reaction and stared at her in silence. Then she took her club and smacked the back of Camille’s legs.
That did it, and Camille couldn’t take it any longer. “Fucking bitch,” she said under her breath.
“What the hell did you just say to me?” Officer Neale sneered.
“You heard what I said,” Camille replied, keeping her gaze on the guard’s.
“You’re gonna be sorry,” the guard replied. She stepped over Joy on the ground and grabbed Camille by the arm. She called for a male guard in the distance, one with a thick mustache, who ran over and grabbed Camille’s other arm. Camille considered resisting, but knew they would just beat her more if she did, then she resisted anyway, kicking the dirt and pushing against them, as best she could in her cuffed wrists and shackled ankles, as Officer Neale transferred full control of her to the burly male guard, who proceeded to drag her off the line, away toward the ugly prison building. What did they plan to do with her? To her? Camille didn’t know what, but she knew it couldn’t be good.
“Hey, thanks,” Joy called out to Camille.
She sweated in the heat of the afternoon in the unshaded prison grounds, as she was taken away to a side door on the other side of a gate, which the male guard pushed open with his foot as she elbowed him.
“Little bitch,” he whispered. “Stop fucking fighting.”