“When did it happen?”
“Four years after I came on the job.” Greco dug into his open bag of Twizzlers and pulled another out. He didn’t offer Vega one. They both knew Vega would call it sugar-coated wire insulation and pretty soon Greco would be ribbing Vega about all the fried food Puerto Ricans eat and Vega would be countering that Italians couldn’t eat anything not smothered in garlic, tomato sauce, and cheese. Working a case with a partner was a bit like being married. After a while you knew everything about the other person.
Or maybe you just thought you did.
“It was a domestic disturbance call,” said Greco. “Sunday morning, February 27. That date will forever be etched into my brain. Me and my partner, Bryan Kelly—he’s long retired now—we got dispatched to this nice, tidy little cape house over on Cliffdale Street. A seventeen-year-old girl had called nine-one-one to report that her twenty-year-old brother was holding a meat cleaver to their mother’s throat.” Greco shook his head. “For as long as I live, I will never forget that young man’s face.”
Greco went to take a bite of the licorice then changed his mind and stuffed it back into the bag. He’d lost his appetite. Vega could relate. He hadn’t eaten more than a few bites since the shooting.
“Me and Kelly, we both tried to talk the kid into putting down the cleaver. Kelly—he’s a veteran cop—he tries to distract the kid so I can get in a little closer and maybe disarm him. But the kid sees what we’re about to do. He turns the blade from his mother and lunges at me. To this day, I keep wondering why I didn’t just step back. Why did I shoot?”
“Because he could have killed you,” said Vega.
“Yeah, well—you die a little anyway. I suspect you’re already learning that by now. You’re still in the denial stage, I imagine.”
“The what?”
Greco pointed through the windshield to a red-tailed hawk hovering overhead. “Isn’t that just the most beautiful creature? I swear I never get tired of watching hawks fly. All that beauty just so they can swoop down and kill something. Pierce it right through the heart. Oh yeah,” Greco suddenly remembered. “The denial stage. You ever heard of the five stages of grief?”
“No.”
“By the time you’re finished with counseling you will.” Greco ticked them off on his gloved fingers: “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Anyway, the first is denial.”
“I’m not in denial, Dr. Freud,” said Vega. “I know I killed a man.”
“Yeah, but right now you’re itching to prove to yourself and anyone who will listen that you did the right thing.”
“I didn’t have a choice.”
“I know that, Vega. So does every cop out there. But you’re looking for someone to absolve you. Like it never happened. That’s what I mean by denial. You’re not ready to accept that good intentions can still have bad consequences.”
Vega found himself watching the hawk now. That magnificent wingspan, the way it just hovered above the earth on currents of air. Vega wished he could be above everything right now, just floating. “I never wanted to be this sort of cop.”
“You think any police officer does?” asked Greco. “I’ve been doing this since you were having wet dreams, Vega. And sure, there are some cops who shouldn’t be cops. They’ve got too much temper in them. They’re too nervous under pressure. They see people as categories instead of individuals. But I’ve never yet met a cop who took this job because he wanted to kill people.”
They were both silent after that. They’d worked two whole murder investigations together before this and they’d probably exchanged fewer words than they had this morning in Greco’s Buick. Vega’s cell phone dinged with more messages. More bad news. He was developing a Pavlovian response to his phone. Each ding made him queasy. He turned his face to the side window and tried to concentrate on the shafts of weak sunlight raking the bare trees. There was no yellow to the light this time of year. It was all gray and white, like the clouds that hovered so low they seemed like distant mountains.
“The man I shot?” said Vega. “Turns out he lived in the same building as my mother—the same building she was murdered in.”
“Here we go again with the denial,” said Greco.
“How is that denial?”
“You’re hoping like hell you can fix your conscience by painting this guy as a murderer—your mother’s murderer, no less. It ain’t gonna happen, Vega. The NYPD’s been all over your mother’s case. If there were some connection, they’d have found it by now. All you’re gonna do is alienate people.”