by Gary Sapp
Investigations.” Christopher Prince announced.
Blue’s chair whined as she pushed away from the table and made her way to her ex-partner’s side in two heartbeats. Angel tried to control her breathing and relax but was finding that job a struggle. She did see Nicholas Sheridan though—and now it was his turn to glare at imaginary objects on the floor.
“What in the hell happened?” Blue asked him. “Internal affairs reviewed your actions during their inquiry. They reviewed all of our actions. You were cleared of any wrong doings, and concluded that your gun discharged at the moment the quake popped its top. They can’t do this to you. They can’t derail your career like that. Don’t let them, Chris. We have the Deputy Director of the FBI on our side. We’ll fight to get you reinstated…again.”
Neither Sheridan nor Christopher made a sound or moved a muscle.
Blue pushed her hair out of her eye.
“Am I missing something here? I am missing something here aren’t I?”
Sheridan said without looking up, “Tell them, Chris.”
“I wasn’t fired, Blue.” Christopher stood up again and buttoned his jacket. “I resigned just before we arrived up here in D.C this morning.”
“What.” Angel and Blue said at the same time.
Sheridan’s bushy eyebrows shot up. Angel surmised that his cell phone must have buzzed in his jacket’s pocket or he was doing a fine acting job.
“Excuse me,” He said and angled toward the door where the Justices had exited the room earlier. “I have to take this call.”
After Sheridan closed the door behind him Blue slumped in her chair.
“I don’t believe this, Chris. I won’t believe this. Why are you leaving the bureau?”
Christopher found his way back over to where Agent Blue was sitting. Angel sat back in her chair and used the back of it to support all of her weight against it.
“Blue, I want you to listen to me.” He said. “Somewhere, sometime in those final few days and hours during all that hell that we all went through I realized—I recognized that my heart and soul wasn’t in this anymore. I realized that I needed to find my place somewhere else far away from here with the time that has been given me.”
Blue shook her head barely containing her fury.
“So you just pick up and leave, Chris. We’ve been through this before—this same conversation took place on that street corner before the Bishop and his Choir Boys showed. You’ve taught me everything that I know about law enforcement.”
“If that is half true then you were an excellent student. And now you have graduated from all of those lessons with top honors. You’ve grown well past the need to be on anyone’s leash, Tabitha, especially mine. You are ready to leave the nest. Sheridan’s appointment proves that.”
Blue’s gaze hardened further.
“No,” She said simply. “This isn’t about me, Chris, it’s about you. I refuse to believe that you are turning your back on this agency especially now at its greatest time of need. We need people, Chris, good people if we are going to bring this agency back from the brink. Sheridan wanted to appoint you to be his czar. I can see that truth in both your faces but you turned his offer down to run away. It should be you leading the fight to take those who brought such pain and misery to your people, Chris…to people of color in Atlanta and across our country. And it should be you should be leading the fight to bring back those individuals who betrayed this agency and bolted for Pandora.”
“Betrayal, you say,” Chris looked away again to control his temper. “Have you forgotten that I put a gun in your face, Tabitha?”
Blue stepped around him until they were face to face once again.
“I forgave you for that. And if I remember correctly I had one pointed in yours as well. We were both under a lot of stress. We were fighting for the causes that we both strongly believed it. We were both right and we were both wrong. Anyway, the gunshot wound I suffered was a freak act of nature…an accident.”
“I’m sorry, Tabitha, but I’m done here. My decision to leave the FBI is no accident.”
“Chris, I didn’t consider your actions that night as a betrayal to my trust.”
“I’m sorry,” Christopher could manage to utter nothing else.
“But this…if you walk away from me now, if you walk away from the bureau now…”
“I am sorry, Tabitha,” Chris said and Angel recognized the strength of finality in her friend’s voice. “But you are right about one thing: This isn’t about you. I’ve walked away from the bureau because I’ve answered a higher calling. I’m needed elsewhere. I’m going to serve a greater cause than this bureau.”
All of the air seemed to leak out of Tabitha Blue’s lungs and her argument died a whispering death. She raised her shoulders as high as her frame would allow her. She took a deep breath and then walked towards the same door that Sheridan and the others had taken turns walking out of minutes ago. She opened it at last and looked back at the two of them that she would be leaving behind over her shoulder.
“The gun episode is the past and the past to me is prologue.” Blue said evenly. “But what you do today is present and it is no less than a betrayal of the worst kind, Chris. And I won’t ever forget it.”
If Special Agent Tabitha Blue’s words troubled Christopher in the minutes afterwards he didn’t show it in either expression or words to Angel. He turned the chair that he’d been sitting in earlier around and sat in it backwards.
And then he pulled a single penny from his left pocket and began to toss it in the air again…and again…and again…
Angel took her turn at sitting her ass on the table next to where he sat and crossed her legs as they dangled over the edge.
“So when were you going to let me in on this little secret about your next career move.”
“Don’t start with me,” Christopher said in a serious tone, but a tight smile hinted at a lighter reaction to her words, the whiteness of his straight teeth against the darkness of his skin was a marvel to behold. “And if you truly know me as well as you claim you do, Doctor, then you would already have known that I couldn’t go back to them—not after they accepted Lucy Burgess’ account of my past troubles with my stepdaughter without my consideration or intake. Where was their loyalty to me, Angel? I can’t do this anymore. I can’t afford to be naïve to what is going on in the real world any longer. This blanket of presumed innocence I’ve been lying under needs to be removed.”
“Alright,” She said moving past point’s bygone and wanting to get into her friend’s immediate present and possible future. “I’ll play your little game, mister. I’ll take a guess that you made your mind up about this decision some time ago. Making life changing pronouncements on a whim is not your M O. You may have even decided this during all of that hellfire we were going through in April. You didn’t want to resign until you were absolutely sure that you had your next job lined up.”
“I told Blue that it was a ‘higher calling’,”
“Whatever,”
They both laughed. Laughing felt good. She couldn’t recall the last time she had a good laugh. But I can remember the last time that I had a drink. I can remember the day that all the laughter in my life died a harrowing death because I can’t celebrate it with a toast. As for Christopher, and the matters at hand, Angel could feel the tension easing between them—even if that wasn’t likely to last moving forward.
The therapy that she was enrolled in to aid her kick her bad habits wasn’t easy on her mentally or physically to say the least. She understood now more than ever before why people hated shrinks. They forced you to confront the worst aspects of your own personality. And the worse aspect of her personality is that couldn’t go through a single day without wanting a drink, needing one. Yet, without her husband Seth’s support she wouldn’t have made it this far.
But is this the day—this day and no further; is this the day that I fold?
And yet, she still had matters to settle with Chris moving forward
about her role in Pandora—her dealings with Louis/Hugh Keaton that may sever their lifelong friendship after he found out those truths that were yet to come. Get it over with, Doc, tell him now. Was that her voice shining through in herself conscious or Roxanne Sanchez’s? Even with the countless interviews by Internal Affairs or her testimonies still to come in front of a Grand Jury about the disaster of Atlanta would expose the truths of who was probably behind his stepdaughter’s death—and why.
Today should be that day after all.
But she knows that it won’t be.
“If you want to talk about your new job, Christopher,” She said instead. “If you ready to reveal some details about your starting date or salary—“
Instead of talking Christopher hopped up from his chair, checked his watch, tossed the penny up one last time, caught it and put it away all in one motion while whistling softly.
“Wow, time really flies when you are having fun, Doc,” He kissed her on her cheek. “But you should keep your eyes and ears open. You never know where I’ll land on my feet.”
“Come here,”
Angel straightened out his tie for him. He looked good…the lone exception was the dullness and lack of focus in his eyes that she’d never seen before. She told herself that it was only the obvious stress they’d all been under, or fatigue, or something or the other to do with his new job—
But then she smelled alcohol coming out of his pores of his face.
I’m imagining this, she thought; I know that I’m imagining this. Don’t go where I’ve gone, Christopher. Don’t become who I’ve become.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Christopher said when she finished at last. He checked his watch one last time. “I’ve got to go now. I’m running late for my flight back to Atlanta.” He flipped the penny in the air once again. If there was an explanation in this repeated action it had escaped her so far. “I have business—and then I have business. I’ll call you after I land.”
Five minutes after he had left her in the conference room alone—she worked out a matrix of possibilities in her mind and the probable truth of Christopher Prince’s new occupation caused her to cock a brow and hit her like a punch in her gut.
“Son of a bitch, Christopher,” She said aloud. “Tell me you didn’t do what I think you have.”
Chris
It was raining.
Can you believe that, after months and months of drought, that it would rain today here in Atlanta, today of all days.
Christopher Prince rubbed at his jaw and wondered how many more lives could have been spared from Serena’s Whirlwind if this city had any sufficient amounts of precipitation in the weeks before that deranged woman unleashed her inferno upon them all.
What is past is prologue, his former partner’s voice of several hours ago echoed from the depths of his subconscious.
Christopher Prince looked out past Atlanta’s latest tempest—and he could bite back his stubbornness and his smile playing on his lips no longer. An estimated crowd of 5000 people of color were squeezed together here in the courtyard outside Georgia’s State Capitol to hear him speak on the future.
He took one final breath before walking from underneath the shed out into the rain himself to podium that awaited him the way a groom awaits his bride. A local minister was leading all of those who had come—and the several millions that watched from the broadcast method of their choice—in a prayer.
The people came this evening holding up pictures of loved ones lost during the various flashpoints of Atlanta’s hideous events. Many came wielding banners showing the names of the fallen, some conveying biblical passages, and a few…just a few wielded signs that ushered his father’s words from long ago that still resonated today:
Brothers and sisters, what do you see when you visualize our people’s future? And the next line always issued the same response. We see days filled with misery and pain.
And by all that was holy, Isaac Prince’s one surviving son could see all of that misery in the eyes of those that 411 had left behind. He could see the pain as they stood here together shoulder to shoulder out in this downpour.
And yet if one looked hard enough…you could see something else entirely.
Serena Tennyson’s Whirlwind had not taken the fight out of these people…it had not snuffed out the flame of their resolve completely.
A House in Chains wasn’t quite dead yet.
It was time for him to speak.
It was time for Christopher Prince to clock in with his new employer.
It was time for the One to continue the legacy that his father founded and that his brother had steered from a high level of honor and respect to an even elevated level of existence.
He took the short/long walk to the platform into the posting that had always by rights by his and his alone.
“Thank you for coming. It is good to see you all here in this most historic of grounds. This is a place where your ancestors and mine once walked to and then stood here in protest of our denial of the most basic of human and civil rights. Now, I know that most of you standing here in this rain this evening weren’t even born yet, but the facts in hand make the truth of what happened then no less relevant.
“I will apologize to all of you in advance before I go any further. I regret that I have failed to write a speech that will stir up emotions or perhaps that will leave its mark on history when people listen to it decades from now. My brother, a man that you all knew as Xavier Prince, once told me that I had a gift for words that he would never had. I loved my brother more than any of you will ever know. And yet, he was wrong in that assessment of his older sibling. Today I will leave speech and prophecy and innuendo to brighter and better men than the one who stands before you. The truth is all that I brought with me today.”
A woman shouted yes from his far left while he heard pockets of faint to polite applause every time he would pause for breath. And the rain had seemed to subdue with each passing minute making it easier for everyone to play closer attention to his words and not the elements.
“This is the saddest of all occasions we share here this evening. I don’t think that I need to tell you that. I look around this state capital and I see the pictures of our loved ones that we have lost forever. I see your pain. I feel your pain. We wear it together. The minister who prayed with you before I stepped over here is a wonderful pastor and an even better man. I know him personally. And as any good Christian would—he would remind all of us that if you except Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior that you will be with your loved ones again…you will see them again—“
Chris heard a dozen hallelujahs and the polite applause had increased in number and volume.
“I can only pray that I may become a better man—a better Christian so that I will see my brother Xavier again. I hope that I may lay my eyes on my father Isaac prince and the woman who birth me as well. I hope to see all of those who have gone on to eternity and left me behind to carry on.
“And yet, I know that this is likely unlikely because ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls I know that I am not a good Christian man.”
Laughter prevailed even after a thunderous applause dies down.
“I am prideful. I am sinful. I am resentful. But I have one redeeming value: I stand before you this evening carrying the truth with me. And that truth shall set me free.”
Christopher Prince heard a new roar of approval from those who had braved the storm—all of the storms that had befallen them to see him speak live this evening. He could see the bright lights of the television cameras in his face. And the rain had slowed even further, enough that when he wasn’t speaking, the grounds around the capital were virtually silent.
“A pessimist would say that a House in Chains had accomplished everything that it set out to do. He would tell us that there is nothing left for us to achieve. 411 knocked us down. The last minutes of Scar kept us down. He would tell us that it would be highly unwise for our House to ever exhibit such power and influenc
e over the lives of so many ever again. I can tell you that I am an optimist. I can tell you that I don’t believe in such pessimistic lies. I can tell you not to believe in these lies either. Change comes slowly—but I don’t have to tell any of you this do I? Change comes slowly in the hearts and minds of men. It comes at a snail’s pace to nations and civilizations. My pastor would tell you that the fundamental inability to change is the reason we fail as human beings in the sight of our God.”
The roar of the 5000 or so that had come to hear him was deafening. Chris backed away from the podium to let his people have their vocal moment before he tried to speak again.
“Never forget that those who perpetrated 411 did so not because of hate, but because of fear. If you hear nothing else that I say to you today please remember this: It is their fear that fans the flames of hate and discord in their hearts. It is their fear that brought destruction to the Andrew Young Youth Center. It was their fear that brought a massacre to the Fox Theatre. It was fear that caused them to take away President Adolphus Sweet and Mayor Ernestine Johnson. And it was fear that allowed them to set a monster on our streets by the name of Keaton to terrorize our children…
“And make no mistake—they still fear us. And as long as that fear remains we must be prepared to do what we must to protect ourselves from their aggression. There are a few of you here today who have lived long enough to have followed my father. We honor you. We honor the patience and the resilience that you’ve shown. A great many more of you served my brother Xavier. I honor you. I honor your loyalty. Both of those great men of color died for what they believed in. They both shared the single minded purpose of making life better for every one of you who have come here today. I want you to know that their single minded purpose is my purpose as well. I have answered a higher calling. I am here for you. I am at last here in this place where I belong.”
The rain had stopped but Chris could feel the sweat pouring down his collar towards his chiseled chest as the crowd cheered and began to chant his name over the next several minutes.
He finally was forced to silence them the masses by raising his hands high into the dark of the Atlanta night.
“Our House has accomplished a many great deeds under my family’s leadership. In particular I feel that the liberation of the Carver Housing Projects from the thugs and drug dealers was the right thing to do. We saved our missing children by using any and all means necessary was the right thing to do. Striking back at any uncompromising, unrelenting and unholy enemy like Pandora who would oppose us is the right thing to do. Let no man tell you any different. Do not allow the media to tell you anything different. Do not elect officials that would tell you anything different.”
The crowd’s decibel level raised two fold and it took Chris a full five minutes