by James Boice
He remembers his father. It has been four years since he has seen him, maybe five. Or it could be more, it could be as many as ten. Not since his father’s third wedding has he seen him. You will understand, he tells his father now. They are breaking my arms and taking my baby and you will understand that.
Only temporary, he hears his father say back. Protocol. Relax. They will investigate and see there has been no wrongdoing on your part and you will be cleared.
They put him on the couch in the living room, about a dozen uniformed cops standing over him. They are jacked up, sweating and red, eyes so all-seeing they seem unseeing, heads darting around, huffing loudly through their noses like fighting dogs. He is cuffed at the wrists and ankles. Behind the uniforms across the living room against the front door he can see the kid’s feet. He is wearing Nike Air Jordans. They are bloody. When the cops pushed their way inside the kid was against the door and he was shoved aside against the wall. So much blood.
—What will happen to my son? Lee asks them again and again. They do not answer. He keeps asking them again and again, he keeps telling them that he is a good guy, that it was self-defense, but they say nothing, just stare down at him.
Stay patient and calm and do what you’re told, it will all get straightened out, he hears his father telling him. The voice of a father in the ear of a child. Familiar as if he heard it yesterday. Remembers now his mother too, her high heels clacking, her smile as she bent down to him; she was orange, she smelled like tangerines: Good-bye. He sees his son vanish through the door in a cop’s arms and he sees his mother getting into the car and Laura’s hiking boots dangling from the tree branch and he cries out, —Don’t go!
Then they bring him out past the body. The kid’s eyes are still open.
—You’re not just going to leave him there, are you? Lee says to the cops.
Still they say nothing. And Lee says nothing more because he wants the cops to see that he respects them and is on their side, that he will let them do their job and get all this straightened out. Someone has pulled the fire alarm, he only now realizes in the hallway. It has been going off the whole time and he has not noticed it. They bring him downstairs, through the basement, to take him somewhere away from the chaos and talk to him, he presumes, so he can explain. But when they take him out through the rear entrance and he sees a cruiser waiting with lights on and the door open and the backseat apparently ready for him, he becomes terrified. Things have escalated, seemingly of their own accord, he has no control. —No, no, no, he says. He says it just like he said it to the boy. And adding to the realization that his fate and his life are not in his hands anymore—that his self-determination is null—a crowd of people has materialized, stark and silent, with their phones held up, videoing him. The dozens of red record lights are like laser sights from sniper scopes. Their expressions are void and sinister. Heartless. Inhuman. It is a mob. It does not matter to the mob what is true—they will rip Lee apart. They have been here this whole time just waiting for him, needing only a reason.
My son, he realizes, staring into them. My son is in danger now. Real danger.
Dangerous, crazy people out there, his father says.
—What will you do with my son? Lee is crying out to the cops as they bring him through the crowd, which now shouts violent, hateful things at him, spitting on him, calling for his imprisonment, his execution. It does not matter—imprison me, execute me, just don’t hurt my son. Still the cops pretend not to hear him. —They’ll come after him, he tells them. —You understand that? Don’t the cops see that he is not asking what will happen to himself, that he is not complaining about being arrested, that he is not concerned for himself—don’t they see that he is not a criminal but a father whose sole concern is for his child?
They put him in the backseat and close the door. Off to the side in handcuffs is the super, the kid’s father. The cops are pouring water over his face and he has no shirt on, and when the water gets all over him it catches the police lights and reflects them, making him look supernatural, wicked in red and blue. Lee knows they are pouring water over his face because they have pepper-sprayed him. And then he understands. Since the moment he turned on that light and the home invader became just a boy and he felt his own body go cold with guilt, he has been looking for the way in which he is not a murderer—and here it is.
Don’t you remember, his father says, when they were in your apartment not long ago to fix the sink? Did they seem right to you? Me neither. Made you very suspicious, didn’t they? And apparently for good reason. Your instincts have always been spot on, pardner. You can always tell a bad guy, no matter how nice they might try to act to you. Remember you spent the entire time very anxious, ready to spring if they made some kind of move? They were taking photos, weren’t they? And they kept murmuring to each other in their language. You thought maybe it was Arabic. Whatever it was, it was clear they were up to something. And now this, handcuffs and pepper spray—it can only mean he was involved in what happened tonight. And what happened was a break-in. An attempted attack on you and your infant son. And you thwarted it. The police will see this. Welcoming them into your home was where you made your mistake. Trusting them. Bad guys take that as a sign of weakness, seeing the nice things you had and how good-natured you were—it must have given them an idea. The super leering at you as he worked, sneering at you but pretending to be polite, and the kid saying darkly in English, Cute kid, and taking a picture of your baby with his phone. They saw your baby as their ticket to wealth, didn’t they? That’s all anyone’s looking for here. And so they began forming their plan—their heinous, sick plan—in the elevator on the way down. You did not have the gun on you that day, did you? It was in your nightstand, wasn’t it? If it had been on your hip instead. If they had seen it there. That was your first mistake, Lee. Thinking for once you were safe. Your next mistake—God you have made so many—was letting yourself drink too much tonight. You somehow forgot to lock the door. You thought the baby was down for the night, but he woke up screaming and you could not figure out why, and as that was happening the pizza you’d ordered arrived and you could not handle the confusion, the situation overwhelmed you—maybe if you were sober you could have handled it, but you were a bit drunk, and you hurried to the door with the baby screaming in your ear and writhing in your arms and you grabbed the pizza with your one free hand and closed the door with your foot, no hands free for the deadbolts, but you would come back for them, and you hurried off to check his diaper again, and while changing it he spit up a bucketload all over himself and so now you needed to put him in a new onesie or he would never go back to sleep, and after that he was still crying, so now you had to try feeding him, and when you finally got him down again all you wanted was another drink and you forgot to come back and lock the door. That is the way life is. You keep your guard up all your life and the one time you slip up... But while you might have picked the wrong night to lose control, those two picked the wrong guy to come after, didn’t they? Lee can almost feel his father’s hands on his shoulders as those words come and it feels good: The wrong guy. They picked the wrong guy. Lee Fisher is not a murderer. Lee Fisher was simply the wrong guy to come after. And they paid the price for it.
The cops leave him in the cruiser for what feels like hours. The super writhes in the hands of the police where, Lee sees now, he belongs. The neighbors are trying to get between the super and the cops, demanding they let him go. They do not know the truth yet, Lee thinks. They will. It is not their fault. He fooled us all. Then Lee and the super meet eyes through the cruiser window. Lee sees nothing in them. Nothing. Chills go down his spine. Cold blooded.
At last they take him away. He asks them again as respectfully as he can if they know where his son is. They say nothing. He asks them with so much respect and humility that it verges on inferiority that they are not treating this like a murder, are they? That they understand what happened, don’t they? Because he—They interrupt to tell him to shut up an
d he apologizes and does so, then apologizes again and hopes the truth about who he is and what has happened radiates off his essence and off his apologies and makes them understand, so when they get to wherever they are taking him they will enter him into the machine appropriately for the man who he is and this will all be straightened out.
When they turn the corner up Hudson Street, a black woman in a ratty old bathrobe jumps out in front of the cruiser, forcing it to stop. She looks homeless, emaciated from drugs, obviously insane. She slams both her hands on the cruiser’s hood and stares through the windshield at Lee, then comes around to his window. The cops are doing nothing about it. Red eyes and woolly hair stand from her head in unwashed tufts. White spittle is hardened in the corners of her cracked lips, between which stringy goo stretches as she opens them and yells at Lee in a foreign language. To Lee she is like a witch. She punches the window, trying to break through it. The cops just keep letting her do it. He does not understand. It is like they do not see her. And then the one in the passenger seat turns halfway around to Lee, showing Lee enough of his face to see the smirk, and says, —Bro, aren’t you gonna say hello to her? Common courtesy, you murdering her son and all.
Lee’s voice cries out, —No! I’m not a murderer. I’m not.
The woman punches the glass. Lee jolts back, yelping. She screams. She punches the glass again and again, she will not stop until she breaks through it and grips him around the throat and tears out his eyes. He turns his face away and ducks his head, almost feeling her blows striking the back of his skull. The cops pull away, closing up back into their impenetrable silence, and the witch chases after them down Hudson Street for an entire block before collapsing to her knees in the middle of the street and that is where she is when they turn the corner and at last put her out of sight.
At the precinct, because he is wearing nothing but underwear, they give him an old oversized FUBU T-shirt from a storage bin. The tail of the FUBU T-shirt comes down to his knees, the sleeves come down to his wrists, it smells like mildew and cigarette smoke and stale body spray. Such an insulting, degrading thing to make him wear. Humiliation. He is furious now, thinking of the witch, the cops. The super. The kid. Inside him, the cold guilt is leaving, replaced with a hot, rumbling anger. Guilty? his father says. Why should you feel guilty? You should be furious. First you were the victim of evil and now you are the victim of injustice. Everything is in confederation against you.
He is no longer being polite and respectful. He tells every cop he sees that he is not a murderer and he demands his attorney, and that is all he says to them. They make him wait for hours before letting him call the multinational firm that represents the Fisher family interests. Hours after that, an attorney arrives. John Potter talks too quickly, keeps interrupting him, makes too little eye contact, is too impatient, is interested only in legal procedure and does not make Lee feel like he understands what has happened—the bigness of it and that he is not a murderer; he does not understand how the media will misinterpret this.
—Where is my son? Lee asks urgently. —Who the hell has him?
—For the time being, emergency care.
—What’s that mean?
—Means the cops have him.
—People are going to think I’m racist and want to hurt me. They are going to want to hurt him.
—He’s fine, he’ll be there a few hours until a friend or relative can take him. So give me some names and numbers.
—My dad’ll be here, he’ll take him. Does he know yet, do you know?
—I don’t know.
—He probably does. I bet he’s on his way now, I bet he’s already on the plane. That’s the kind of guy he is. When do I go home? We have to post bail, right?
—We’re working on it. Tell me what happened.
Lee thinks about it for a moment. Face still in his hands.
—Lee?
—I don’t know, he says.
Potter is quiet. Lee can hear him breathing, he can hear the ink on the point of his pen sticking and unsticking on the paper of the legal pad as he waits. He can hear sirens outside. Then a cop’s voice in the hall saying something about football and laughing. Then he can hear his father and his father says, You know what happened. You know. So tell him. And Lee tells him. His father tells Lee, then Lee tells Potter. He tells how in the middle of the night he heard a noise and got up to investigate. He tells how he grabbed this dinky old gun he has, a family heirloom he keeps around only for decoration and was not sure even worked. He tells how he hoped just the sight of it would be enough to scare off the intruder because he had no intention of using it, could not even remember if it was loaded. He tells how he encountered the intruder in his living room. It was dark, he could not find the lights, he could only barely see the guy. He made to retreat and call the police, but before he could, the intruder was speaking. He was saying, I got a gun and I’m going to kill you and everyone who lives here. Lee tells how this made him fear for his life and the life of his son. He then thought he saw the intruder point a gun at him. Terrified, reasonably believing he was facing imminent death, Lee did the only thing he could and raised his own gun and pulled the trigger. It did in fact work, it was in fact loaded. He fired only until the intruder was no longer a threat and then he called 911. Then he attended to the intruder to see if there was anything he could do to keep him alive until first responders came—but there was not. And that is what happened.
Potter nods his head and stares at his notes, clicking and unclicking his pen. —Okay. Okay. He reads it over then says again, —Okay.
He and Potter speak with a detective. The detective is a chubby blond guy with a buzz cut and a sport coat similar in style to what Lee likes to wear. The detective starts by looking at Lee’s FUBU shirt and apologizing for the limited selection of men’s apparel available here but, he says, their fall line has not come in yet. A little joke, Lee guesses. He does not laugh. The detective says anyway he just sent someone to swing by Lee’s place and grab him some clothes, they should be here shortly. The detective waits for Lee to thank him and at last Lee does and the detective waves him off, humble. —Least I can do. You’ve been through hell tonight. He stands, takes off his sport coat, drapes it over the back of his chair and sits back down, sighing. —How you doing? You holding up?
—I’m okay.
—I’m sorry you had to go through this. I know where you’re at right now. I’ve had to fire my weapon in the line of duty. No one understands what it’s like. No one gets it. Not unless you’ve been there, like we have. Even when it’s someone who gave you no choice, it sucks, right? It sucks. All I can say is, what you’re feeling right now never goes away, but it does get easier with time.
He goes quiet and looks at Lee like he’s waiting for him to say something, but Lee does not know what to say. Lee looks at Potter, who looks straight down at his notes.
The detective says, —I know you want to get out of here, but my job is to ask you some questions first. Don’t worry, it’s all just basic stuff. It’s not a test, you won’t be graded on it or nothing. The detective chuckles, winking at Lee. —It’s just protocol. I think we can probably knock this out in a few minutes, then get you back home with your family, which, God knows, is where you want to be tonight. How’s that sound to you, Lee? The detective looks at Lee closely, then suddenly laughs, shaking his head and looking down at his papers. —I’m sorry, you know, I just got to admit here, it’s a trip looking across this table and seeing a guy like you. It’s kind of a breath of fresh air. Obviously something has gone wrong here because usually I’m sitting here across from, you know, crackheads and gangstas. People who, well, they’re bad guys. They usually look more like that kid than like you. You understand? And they sure as hell don’t like me much. Even getting them to tell me basic information like name and address is like pulling teeth. I swear. Makes things much more difficult than it needs to be. Very time consuming, very frustrating. It makes me not want to help them much, to be honest
. They just don’t understand that the system relies on guys like me who know the ins and outs and who to talk to, know how to help them, to keep them from getting locked up for twenty or thirty years. Or worse. If not for me? Hoo boy. And I enjoy helping them. I do. I see it as my duty, as a matter of fact, being a Christian. It’s a relief having you here because I know a guy like you understands the process and will get me home at a decent hour tonight so maybe I can take my kids to school for once. So thank you for that in advance.
He sits back in his chair, opening his body to Lee, and, again, waits for Lee to speak.
—What do you want me to say? Lee says.
Potter says, without looking up from his papers at either of them, —Just tell him what you told me, Lee.
Lee tells the detective what he told Potter. Disappointment comes over the detective’s face.
—Lee, he groans, —I know you’re scared right now, buddy, but lies do neither of us any good.
—I’m telling the truth.
The detective shakes his head. —I mean, I want to see it, Lee. I’m really trying to. But I just don’t. This kid walked into your house, okay, and you got scared and shot him, right? Of course. Who wouldn’t? Perfectly reasonable. I would have done the same thing. That’s what they train us to do. I mean, you did everything right, Lee, tactically speaking. I mean, Jesus, what the hell did that kid expect? You can’t just walk into a man’s house. Especially not in New York City. You’re a single father, you’ve got your baby, you see someone—you don’t know who—come through the door, you get your gun and go after him, right? So you have a gun—as is your constitutional right. Nothing wrong with a law-abiding citizen owning a firearm for self-protection in his own home. It’s not like you’re outside waving it around or nothing. So you get your firearm, right? And you creep out into the dark silently, and you sneak up on him, right? You have no idea if this guy’s got a gun and you’re not going to wait and find out. You have to assume the worst. You’ve got to go after him. You know you gotta be aggressive. You gotta neutralize the threat right away. Right? You get the first move on him. You shoot him before he can shoot you, right? That’s what I would have done. That’s how they train us at the academy. You know that. You’re competent. You’re skilled. It’s not like you have a character problem or something.