I stand in my bathroom looking in the mirror. I’m a real sight, with a huge black eye and a scraped-up face. I look like I got knocked to the pavement and hit in the face with a gun.
I’m trying to get some athletic tape straight on the bandage over my eye when Mason shows up in the doorway.
“What happened to you?” he asks. I didn’t expect him. I haven’t made up my mind to tell him what I’ve been doing, or whether or not I want to know if he’s been doing anything. Call me crazy.
“I fell,” I say, with as little agitation as possible.
“On what?” he asks.
I manage a fierce glance through my pain-induced scowl. “You making your rounds?” I ask.
“I am,” he says, “but I missed you.” I guess he doesn’t pick up on my mood, because he grabs my waist like he’s ready to sex it up as I try to get out of the bathroom.
I can’t take it. I push him out of the way and go into my bedroom.
“What did I do now?” he asks, and I feel like his wife.
“Absolutely nothing.” There. I said it.
“Okay, Sam,” he says and it sounds condescending. “What’s with the attitude?”
“You come here after a shitty blow-off phone call over twenty-four hours ago and you want to know why I have an attitude? You expect me to sit around and wait for you to work on someone else’s case, to spend another night with your wife, to tell my boss I’m insane, and then be grateful when you stop by for a piece of ass?”
“Are you just going to be a bitch or do you want to know what’s been going on?” he asks.
“I’m being a bitch because I don’t know what’s going on,” I say. I know I’m jumping to conclusions because I have no answers. I’m picking a fight because I lost the last one with Birdie. And I’m scared I’m in over my head.
Mason sits on the bed and invites me to join him. When I do, he takes the roll of athletic tape to help fix my bandage.
“You talked to your Sarge?” he asks.
I nod and the tape gets stuck to my eyebrow. Mason is careful detaching and repositioning the tape.
“He said you think I’m crazy and the case is a waste,” I tell him straight out.
“What did you want me to say? That I’m in love with you, and I want to kill the asshole who did this to you?”
I shrug; I guess that wouldn’t work.
He tears the tape and folds it over, finished with my head. “You want to know what I told MacInerny? I said, ‘Samantha Mack just lost the guy she came up with. She’s fucked up in the head. If it was an accident, so be it, but if we don’t make sure, we’ll be losing two good cops instead of one.’ However that was translated to you is no fault of mine.”
I can believe that Sarge put a spin on Mason’s words, but it’s that last part that gets me, because Mason wouldn’t say anything like it. He wouldn’t say I’m a good cop. If he did, Sarge would know he was bullshitting, because as far as Sarge is concerned, Mason has no interest in me or in my case. Mason’s got to be bullshitting one of us.
“So what’s next?” I ask, hoping I can call him out on something more concrete.
“We’re going to close it.”
Son of a bitch! Did Mason just pick up a shovel and throw dirt over my hole?
“Listen,” he says, because he can tell whatever’s about to come out of my mouth isn’t going to be dainty. “My guy at the state’s office is getting the warrant. IA can’t touch that. If I can pull in Trovic on another charge, I’ll get so far up his ass he’ll be begging to confess to Fred’s murder. Sam, I’ve thought through all the options. It’s best this way. No internal investigation, no pressure from the chief, no press, no link between us . . . and you’ll be cleared.”
He smiles at me, twirling the roll of tape around his finger, proud of himself and his plan. And for a moment, I think maybe he isn’t throwing dirt over my hole. Maybe he’s helping me dig.
But then he looks at me. And in his eyes, I see a flicker of exhilaration. Like he’s getting away with something. Like he’s lying.
I wonder if his wife ever notices this look. I wonder if I’ve overlooked it. Because somehow, Mason always seems to get what he wants.
“What happens if you don’t get Trovic?” I ask. “There’s no investigation, no questions, and no link between us. Sounds like you’ll be cleared, and I might as well turn in my star.” And there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.
“What else do you want me to do?” He tosses the athletic tape on the bed with the offhanded indifference of someone who knows he has control.
“I want you to quit telling me what I want to hear. I want the truth.”
Mason gets up. He’s had enough.
“Look who’s talking about truth,” he says. He starts pacing the room. “You’re the one flirting with rookies and faggots in Jaguars. You’re the one drinking yourself into a pathetic hole. Next you’re going to tell me you fell into whoever’s fist gave you that eye. It’s no wonder you’re suspended. Misunderstood. Alone. I mean, look at you.”
“You’re no help,” I say, “if you’re watching me instead of Trovic.”
He stops and looks at me. For a second I think that if he was ever going to hit a woman it’d be me and it’d be now, but he takes a controlled breath and goes back to his pacing. Maybe because he was thinking the same thing.
“I’m no help?” he asks very calmly, and in a distinctly softer voice, “I’m the only one trying to solve your case. You are the one sabotaging my every move. I can’t get any of those Yugos in Trovic’s neighborhood to talk to me because you went in there and shook them up. In fact, I can’t get a line on anyone connected to him because your outburst at the hearing tied everything up in evidence. And all the evidence does is incriminate you. I don’t have any legal right to go after Trovic, and you’re not making it any easier by snooping around on your own.”
His voice has been building with every word, so he stops talking, quits pacing, and puts his anger in check. Then he looks at me, and that damn smile takes over. He can’t help laughing at his own words, as though explaining this to me is futile, and the situation painfully ridiculous.
“And you want to talk about us?” he asks like it’s the most outlandish request of all. “I got that asshole O’Connor breathing down my neck because he’s got a small dick so he thinks he’s gotta fuck everybody. I got a boss asking why I’m so interested in an open-and-shut and I gotta convince him how important I think it is to ‘take care of our own.’ I got a suspect who’s probably just arrived at the tropical get-and-stay-away of his choice, and on top of all that I got you, my own little fragile headcase, who asks more questions than a five-year-old. So you’re right, I am no help.”
Mason waits for me to say something, but my foot’s already pretty well lodged in my mouth. And I already have a black eye.
We both stand our ground, me with my silence and him waiting for my apology. He won’t look at me, and I don’t even know what to say because I feel like I just cross-examined my own witness. I can’t tell him that a snitch and some guy from IA put ideas in my head. I can’t tell him I doubt him. But I can’t tell him that I believe him, either: he said I was a good cop and a headcase with equal conviction.
After a moment the silence wins, and he turns to leave. When he gets to the door he takes one last look at me, and it’s then that I can see his eyes are welling with tears. I have never seen him cry.
“Mason, don’t leave.” I really need to get my head checked if I let him walk out on me. “You’re right,” I say, “I’m sorry. I know I’m screwed up.”
“You hit your head, baby,” he tells me, the familiar reason back in his voice. “I’m just trying to make this right.” He waits, his hand on the doorknob, and I try to think of something to say.
I want to tell him that someone else hit my head, that Birdie cracked me in the eye with my own gun. That Fred and I were set up, and Birdie thinks I know why. I want to tell him that O’Connor believes someone else killed Fred, too, and that he wants my help. And that I don’t have a clue what to do.
I want Mason to give me answers that will point me in the right direction. Details about the case. About his marriage. Anything that will help erase my doubts.
He doesn’t say anything. Instead, he answers me in a way that could never be rehearsed, with a look that I can only explain by its effect: I feel it in my heart. It is the simple truth. He believes in me. My doubts are in myself.
I’m halfway across the room to start with a hug and finish by telling him everything. I know we can get through this. I just have to be honest.
Then that generic version of “Little Red Corvette” chimes from my bag, and I am caught again.
“Funny,” Mason says, opening the door. The tears stay in his eyes. “I thought you hated Prince.”
He slams the door when he leaves.
I don’t know what I’m gonna say when I catch up to him, but I throw on my coat and grab my shoes as I go for the door. I bolt down the hall and I’m at the elevator in seconds, but I’m a second too late. I take the stairs.
Sixteen flights later I run through the lobby and out the front door. I get out to the sidewalk just in time to see Mason drive away in a squad car.
Omar’s outside too, putting someone in a cab. He whistles for another when he sees me. He hints at a smile when I jump into the cab, and I’m almost offended. Then I realize I’m carrying my shoes. I hold them up through the window, as a concession, as we drive off.
“Follow that car,” I tell the cabbie.
“The squad car?” he asks.
“Yeah. The squad car.”