NICK
Nick yawned, and looked away from a bad counterfeit of the Constitution to check his watch. Then glanced up at John's office, hoping for a glimpse of a hungry FBI agent. Instead, he saw a worried-looking one standing from his desk and dashing out of the office, eyes fixed on a point behind Nick.
Nick ducked and spun. There was something in John's intense trajectory that read danger.
There was a stocky, uniformed NYPD officer thirty feet behind him, near the entry door. The officer's face registered confusion as he took in Nick ducking behind his desk and John clearing the steps three at a time like a charging tiger.
The officer put his hands up, palms out. "Oh, Jesus Christ, I'm sorry. Guys -- oh, fuck."
John stopped his charge ten feet from the officer, stepping between him and Nick. "Can I help you?" John's voice was distinctly less than helpful.
The officer's eyes were fixed on Nick, who emerged from behind the desk. "You're Nick Aster, right?"
Wash and Kelly took up flanking positions just behind and to the side of John, forming a protective phalanx between Nick and the offending uniform.
"Yes," said Nick, giving his ankle a worried glance. The green light was on....
"Good lord, people, I'm sorry," said the officer, dismayed. "I'm Officer Karl Yamil. I -- came to see if I could take Aster out to lunch."
"You what?" asked John, dubious. Nick came and stood beside him. John put a protective hand on his back.
"God, this sounds stupid now," said the officer, wiping his ruddy face. "Agent Langley?"
John nodded.
"You told one of our IA guys that you didn't think Aster would ever feel safe around our uniform again. He passed that on to our precinct, and a bunch of us, uh, wanted to see if we could change that. We thought -- every day, one of us would show up at the FBI office to take Aster to lunch, and -- I'm sorry, this sounds like a child's propaganda play."
"Nick?" asked John, giving his back a tiny, gentle rub with his thumb.
"Can John come?" asked Nick.
"Of course," said officer Yamil. "Sorry I scared you guys, I'm sorry for -- if this was a really dumb idea." He looked flustered, and his cheeks flushed.
"Invitation accepted," said Nick, extending his hand and trying to ignore his heart's panicked, thumping objections.
The officer shook hands with a light grip out of character with his bulldog physique. "Nice to meet you. I, uh, obviously have no clue what to do here. I wouldn't want you to fear me if we meet on the street, and neither do my friends. Your radius is mostly our precinct, and if you'll let us take you out for lunch ....maybe you can at least meet a bunch of us over time and feel safer in your neighborhood. Or something."
Nick couldn't help but smile. His and John's reaction had to have been disconcerting for a well-intentioned cop to encounter. "I'm not five, and I don't need an ice cream cone. But I think the idea's touching, not dumb."
The officer gave him a relieved and sincere smile. "For what it's worth, it's genuine. If we could all say we're sorry, and we want to protect you from ever being hurt again or being scared of us ....we would."
"It's worth a lot," said Nick, meaning it. His soul relaxed at the idea of a bunch of busy, jaded cops empathizing and caring enough to do this.
John didn't once move his arm from Nick's back as they left the office with Officer Yamil and rode down the elevator. By the time they reached the ground floor, Nick was feeling considerably better about the world.
NICK
There were tears in Dan Fisher’s eyes. He wiped them with his arm. “Yesterday, I got a copy of the judge’s order to release Lyndon Green from Sing Sing into Matharu’s custody. He’s innocent, and we proved it. That was my last day in the FBI, and I got to spend it releasing an innocent man. I think I’ve spent my whole career wanting to feel like this. For the first time, I just won. I just got to be a good guy.”
Nick beamed. It reminded him of the exultant feeling of closing his first few cases with John. “Being a good guy feels amazing, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” Fisher’s face twisted. “Here’s hoping I can feel like that at Rikers.”
“I still can’t believe that,” said Nick. “You, in charge of Rikers for the NYPD?”
“Pretty cool, huh?” said Fisher with a wry smile. “I start smacking around injured inmates, and they hire me to run their jail.”
“I’d like you to come out there with me,” said Fisher. “Something I want you to see.”
Nick’s eyebrows sprang up like hackles on a frightened cat. “Hard pass on fun little field trips to Rikers, thanks anyway.”
“Please?” asked Fisher.
“No.”
Fisher sighed. “I promise you’ll be safe. I trust the people we’ll be having contact with, and I won’t lock you in anything. Please.”
Nick huffed. “If this is about healing or something, John already took me to a nice, pretty prison camp for a tour. I have NYPD officers taking me for lunch every day. Everyone’s being sickeningly nice to me. You don’t need to fix me by dragging me there.”
“I’m not trying to heal you,” said Fisher. “I want to show you something I think you’ll find gratifying. Because I’m proud of it. Okay? It’s for me.”
Nick glared at him. “Go show it off to a felon in Rikers.”
“I want to show it to you,” said Fisher with the most saintly patient look of frustration imaginable.
Nick didn’t stop glaring. “John!” he yelled upstairs.
“What?” asked John, stepping out on the landing.
“A barely-stable former FBI agent wants to drag me off to the abusive jail he runs. If I’m not back in an hour, send in the Marines.”
Fisher grinned and adjusted his glasses. “Might take longer than an hour.”
“Don’t care,” said Nick. “Marines. Lots of them.”
“There’s a hefty deposit on consultants,” warned John. “Bring him back with scratches or dents, the repair cost can be in the hundreds of thousands.”
“I have excellent credit,” Fisher assured him.
NICK
Nick kept his expression neutral and his body language relaxed as they drove into the sprawling complex of jails that was Rikers Island. His heart raced when Fisher pulled into a parking lot and he recognized the intake area where he’d been beaten.
He followed Fisher inside, bracing himself.
There were the benches along the wall, the rings with sullen, angry, or frightened prisoners handcuffed to them, the desk with unformed COs, the many intake rooms.
It looked different, though. It’d been painted bright white, and given shiny new floors. The lighting was a mix of track lighting and skylights rather than fluorescents, giving the space a relaxed feel.
Framed artwork hung on both sides of the oversized corridor, above the line of prisoners and decorating the wall they faced.
Nick’s breath caught. It was his artwork.
Every one of the twenty-odd photo contrast pieces he’d released, professionally printed and framed.
“Every inmate is gonna walk past these on the way in here. And every officer who works here, every single day,” said Fisher.
Nick was speechless.
“And I get one single officer that steps over the line, I’m dragging him by the scruff of the neck over to this wall, and telling him to pick a side,” said Fisher.
Nick looked at the long concrete bench he’d been handcuffed to, and his eyes found where he’d been sitting when he’d been punched. He walked to the intake room where he’d been beaten, and gave an involuntary shiver.
He took a few paces forward, looking at the floor where his blood had pooled when he was beaten. It’d been bleached and mopped white, but the rough painted surface of the floor was dappled ....Nick knelt down. Those weren’t shadows. Caught against bumps in the floor were pockets of rust. Of died blood. His blood.
Nick’s vision blurred, and he blinked and shook his head to push back at the g
ray tunnel pressing at the edges of his sight.
He looked up at Fisher. “You can be hard and cynical. Please, don’t forget this blood. When something makes you hate everyone, go find an inmate who’s having a hard time coping and talk to them. Make yourself listen, even if they just stole a phone from one of your COs, and let yourself care about them anyway.”
Fisher extended his hand to help Nick up, and rested his palm on Nick’s back. “I won’t ever forget you, I promise. And I’ll try to make this a place a free country can admit to without flinching.”
Nick looked at him directly. “Try, for the love of all the innocent people out there, to rehabilitate. You don’t have these inmates as long as a prison does, but sometimes five minutes can change a life for better or worse.”
Fisher was still eying Nick with that thoughtful, sideways look of a man holding something back. “Do you think there was hope for many of the guys you did time with? If a real rehabilitation effort was made?”
“Yes,” said Nick with utter certainty. He looked away and nibbled at his lower lip.
“John’s been trying so hard,” said Nick. “Neither of us know how it’s gonna wind up. But it’s taken me years of watching how a good man does things, and being forgiven and cared about. He’s trying to heal me, and it’s taken years for me to start to listen. But I want to try now. It may end up he reforms me, and prison -- I was willing to listen there, too, but it was just this really long exhausting kidnapping where I learned the merits of Stockholm Syndrome.”
“You’re a prisoner,” said Fisher, looking at him with curiosity. “Do you think there’s any way a jail can reconcile itself with being a part of the apparatus of a free country?”
Nick was taken aback, and chewed on that for a minute. “Only if they stop acting like dictatorships. If the sincere goal of the people working in them is the eventual freedom of the inmates, and the safety of the society they’ll be released into ....and if we stop using them as revenge. Taking someone’s liberty is a serious thing, and has a hell of a psychological impact.”
“I get that,” said Fisher. “Sometimes you have to make an impact on someone to control them, though. You know I’m not saying that as someone who approves of violence. It’s reality, and reality doesn’t always bend to what we want.”
Nick closed his eyes and shifted his focus. “You come in, you’re literally in chains, you’re stripped naked, you’re made to feel helpless and worthless, forced to obey strangers, and locked up in tiny cement and steel cages. It has -- all the trauma and violation of a violent kidnapping.”
Fisher ran his fingers through his short hair and pushed his glasses hard against the bridge of his nose. “That’s the second time you’ve equated it to kidnapping. It really feels like that?”
Nick nodded. “You know nobody’s gonna rescue you, and even worse, your country completely approves and thinks you’re not suffering enough unless you get gang-raped. I know if you’re doing it to utter shits who beat their wives or molest children there’s some justice in that, but ask anyone who’s been kidnapped if the fear and shame and violation of their autonomy made them a better person.”
“Are you suggesting - Aster, there’s literally nothing we can do about that. Not at a procedural level.”
“I know reality,” said Nick. “You were asking me a philosophical question, and I answered. A jail can’t take someone’s freedom, free country or not, without it having the same impact as kidnapping them or making them a POW - just because they deserve it doesn’t change what you’re doing.”
Fisher nodded slowly, studying the photos on the wall. The future inmates were silent, listening to the exchange.
“If we care about liberty, we have to use our prisons to make people better,” said Nick. “That’s how you reconcile the existence of a prison within a country that values freedom. You acknowledge the impact you’re having on that person and their family, and instead of trying to make them suffer because they’re bad, you show them that they can be good. I literally didn’t know I could be good until John told me that flat-out.”
“Seriously?” Fisher looked dubious.
“Seriously,” said Nick. “All prison and society told me was that I was bad and deserved punishing. That was all John told me for a long time. It took him telling me I was good, and could be good, to change my thinking.”
One of the handcuffed prisoners spoke up. “I ain’t been told I had a good bone in my body since eighth grade. Only thing says I can go from bad to good is the Bible, an’ that ain’t for me. I got no idea how to be good. I just want to survive, an’ I can’t do that bein’ good any more.”
Nick nodded, and pointed Fisher towards the future inmate. “There’s your task, right there. There’s maybe a quarter of inmates who take pride in being bad and don’t have any interest in changing. The other three quarters’ll tell you something exactly like that.”
“Thanks for speaking up, sir,” said Fisher. “How long you reckon you’ll be here?”
The inmate shrugged. “Months, years — I ain’t got no money for bail or a real lawyer.”
“Once you’re booked, can I talk to you?” asked Fisher.
“If you’re actually wantin’ to listen, sure thing, boss.”
NICK
The door opened at lunchtime, and Nick looked up to survey the cop-of-the-day.
His breathing stopped like he'd been hit with a bullet. It was one of the officers who'd arrested him. They looked at each other uncertainly.
Nick's head buzzed, and little spots started fuzzing up the back of his skull.
Breathe.
Breathe.
"Aster?" Nick recognized his no-nonsense voice from the car ride.
Guy hadn't been terribly nice, and hadn't let him call John. He'd been rough during the arrest, as had the other two, but not brutal. Just.... domineering. Probably not someone to be afraid of.
"Believe me about my anklet now?" asked Nick.
"Yes."
Nick felt the instinct to goad him. "Still feeling real good about not letting me call my handler before you threw me in jail?"
"I feel fine about it," said the officer, looking at him evenly and without anger. "I'm not the one that beat the shit out of you. I had no reasonable expectation that would happen."
"Now that you know better, how many people you think you've dropped off to be tortured in your career?" asked Nick.
"If I think about that, I'll never sleep again," said the officer, not rising to the bait. "I'm gonna hope you were the only one."
"I wouldn't have pegged you as naive," said Nick sarcastically.
The officer met his eyes. "I'm very sorry about what happened to you. I meant you no ill will, and in hindsight of course I'd let you call your handler. I'd never have taken you in if I had any idea what would happen."
"Thanks," said Nick, relaxing. His goading had resulted in a sincere apology. The guy was rough and cynical, not cruel. "What's your name?"
"Antoni Carelli." The officer extended his hand with a hesitant waver as though it might get slapped.
Nick shook his hand with equal trepidation. "Nick Aster."
"I don't have a lot of patience with criminals. I know we were a bit rough during your arrest, and I hope ....you don't think that translates into us wanting to beat the shit out of you. For what it's worth, I found you endearing when you were in my car."
"Also for what it's worth, I understand your not letting me call," said Nick. "I hope you'll give me the benefit of the doubt next time, though."
"I will," said Carelli. He eyeballed Nick. "Can you forgive me for my part in what happened that day?"
Nick returned the look. His heart was still pounding unpleasantly, but it was involuntary and physiological, not psychological. "Of course I forgive you for doing your job."
"But my standing here is freaking you the hell out," observed Carelli.
“Shall we fix that?” asked Nick. “I’m hungry.”
NICK
&
nbsp; “Nick, sit down.”
John was holding a clipboard with papers on it, and he gave them a serious look. “This is from the DOJ, regarding an adjustment to the terms of your work release.”
Nick closed his eyes and stopped breathing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
To Another World
JOHN
“They’ve granted permission for you to leave the state, once, under close supervision.”
Nick opened his eyes, still looking nervous. John lifted up the papers and pulled an envelope out, handing it to Nick.
Broken Blue Lines: Love. Hate. Criminal Justice.: An FBI Crime Drama / LGBT+ Love Story Page 57
