Ben approached me the moment Vincent took off, but he wasn’t exactly biting at the bits to break the silence. So while we both stewed in our thoughts a little longer, we walked back to his house. As we stepped over the threshold and into the living room, I realized that for the first time since I’d stepped foot in it, it didn’t feel like a sanctuary. It felt like the foyer to hell - like I was in some twisted waiting room while I helplessly anticipated the bullet that would end it all.
We stood in silence in the living room, neither of us sure where to begin. Vincent had clued me in where to begin my inquiry, but I wasn’t sure whether I was ready to hear the answers to the questions that had been percolating in my mind.
Those thoughts quickly shifted to Alaina. He’d said she was safe, but his word, as much as I wanted to take at face value, was not enough and I called her to ease my worry.
Every ring of Alaina’s cell phone increased my anxiety tenfold. I was working my way into a fit of hysterics when she finally picked up.
“Adrienne?” she mumbled sleepily, “what’s the matter?”
I smiled into the phone as relief flooded my body, grateful that I’d given her the cell phone for my emergency calls. The fact that she automatically knew it was me, told me she hadn’t broken the rule by giving her number to anyone else.
“Nothing kiddo. I just had a bad dream and had to hear your voice to make sure you were alright.”
She breathed into the phone and cleared her throat. “What time is it?” she asked lieu of a response.
“The time is. Four. Forty. Five. A. M” an automated voice announced.
“Nevermind,” she mumbled, “my watch told me.”
I smiled even wider at the thought of her using the watch I’d bought for her. Well “bought” was a poor choice of words… “acquired” was infinitely more apt.
“Why are you really calling?” she asked, the sleep no longer heavy in her voice.
“What makes you think there’s something wrong?” I returned.
“Adri, I’m blind not deaf. That means there’s nothing at all wrong with my hearing, if anything it means I can pick things out even better than you. I’ll admit the fact that it is you helps tremendously.”
I thought back to what Vincent said. He told me that the decisions I made would affect who lived and died. If he really was serious, which I had no doubt in my mind that he was, I wasn’t about to tempt fate into including my little sister in the mix. The less she knew, the better.
“Things are just really crazy and I flipped and needed to hear your voice.”
It was the closest thing to the truth and I hoped that her aptitude for figuring out my moods would work in my favor.
“Alright,” she said indulgently. I could tell she only half believed me, but she didn’t push the subject any further.
“Go back to sleep Lanie,” I urged. “I’ll call you later.”
“Okay,” she yawned into the phone, “good morning or night Sis, whatever works. Call me if you need me.”
“Okay,” I chuckled into the phone.
I hung up and sighed to myself. My sister was so old for her age, though it made me smile just a little because she reminded me a lot of our grandmother.
I snuck a peek at Ben from the corner of my eye. He looked so tired and sometime during my little chat with my sister he had sat down on the couch. His head was in his hands and he massaged at his temples with his thumbs.
“Do you want to tell me what the hell is going on or should I just guess? Who are you Ben? What happened to the little boy I once knew? How do you know a guy like Vincent. Answer me!”
He tilted his head up toward me, a half smile on his face. “It’s amazing how the more things change, the more they stay the same. You’ve never been one to beat around the bush.” His half smile blossomed into a slightly bigger one as he added, “Or to be patient.”
Ben patted the spot next to him and even though sitting didn’t sound particularly appealing, I sat anyway. It was either that or pace until I found the willpower to leave. For now, however, answers were more important to me, so I sat down next to him and stared at a picture I hadn’t even noticed was set out.
A folding picture holder sat upright next to the television and if I squinted I could barely see enough detail to discern who was in them. The one on the right was of Alex, Ben and I as children and the one on the left was of his parents. Parents that I would ask about after we ironed out some other details.
He reached out a hand and set it on my hands that were folded in my lap. It was warm and rough, but still managed to have the comforting effect it had when we were just kids. His hands had stopped many fights by the time we were ten and kept us from doing even more property damage than we had managed to take care of.
“How about I start at the beginning?”
I tried my hardest to refrain from giving him a dirty look, but I imagine all I managed to do was look constipated. His hand left my hands to lift my face and his thumb rubbed at the area of my forehead located between my eyebrows as he smoothed away crease caused by my frowning.
I didn’t comment for once. Instead I waited for him to begin. Maybe I was trying to turn over a new leaf called ‘Patience’ or maybe that was a lame excuse to delay the inevitable. Either way, our silence didn’t last long. He pulled away to stare at the picture I had noticed only moments ago.
“I saw you run out after me when we were turning off of our old street. In fact my mom did too. She tried to get my dad to stop the car real quick, but I told him to keep going. I was, to my embarrassment, crying like a little girl and I didn’t want you to see me that way. I didn’t want that to be our last memory together. My parents understood my two word demand for them to ‘keep going’ and we didn’t stop until we got to L.A.”
The last place I wanted to look was at Ben, but the ebb and flow of his voice as he retold the past from a view I had only been able to guess at, had my full attention and I was unable to look away.
“Things were so different there. L.A didn’t have the small town mentality that Blasé managed to maintain. It was every man for himself and it changed me. I tried my hardest to be a good boy and when I got older, a good man. Everything changed though, when I found out my family wasn’t the all American family I thought they were.” He scoffed. “I found out my dad wasn’t even my dad. Apparently my real one had died some time ago while my mom was pregnant with me. As my father’s best friend, he stepped up to the plate to take care of us, first as just a friend and later as something more. At any rate, he had treated me like flesh and blood until then so I honestly didn’t love either of them less.”
He smiled, his eyes unfocused as he slouched into the couch to look up at the ceiling. Not wanting to make him uncomfortable by staring at him, I followed suit to stare up at the white ceiling.
“I’m sure you urging for me to get to the point of the story.”
Since I wasn’t looking at him anymore, I couldn’t see the smile on his face anymore, but I could hear it in his voice. Oddly enough, I actually didn’t mind him telling me the unnecessary details. It wasn’t like his story was boring. I never would have guessed that Mr. DioGuardi was his adoptive father. He’d definitely shown more love to the three of us growing up than my, Alex and Alaina’s fathers combined. It was pathetic, but true. Three dead beat absent dads were practically equivalent to having no dad at all. And people wondered why I had commitment issues.
Pulling away from the memories that wanted to resurface, I prompted Ben to continue with his story.
“Well anyway six years go by before things started to get weird at home. My parents, who were never in the habit of arguing, were at each other’s throats. They never went at it in front of me, but they apparently thought I was deaf and couldn’t hear their yelling in the middle of the night. One particularly noisy night, I decided that I was fed up with being out of the loop and I got out of bed to confront them. I still remember walking down the hallway that was packed with family photos, photos of happier times, determined to get to the bottom of whatever was going on. Little did I know they had company.”
Something in his voice made my head loll in his direction and my suspicions were confirmed when I saw an angry tic in his left cheek.
“That was the night I met Vin. Apparently he was sent to induct me into the family business.”
His words held weight to them and my stomach turned, letting my brain know that it agreed with my formulating hypothesis.
“Sweet Mary mother of Jesus, you’re related aren’t you?”
“No,” he denied. “He’s just one of the many people who found themselves tied to our not so merry band of thieves and dealers. Turns out all the fighting between my parents was because my mom wanted out and my dad wasn’t so set on that particular idea.”
“So what happened?” I breathed, no longer caring whether or not my staring made him uncomfortable. It was impossible to look away.
“What do you think happened? My eyes were opened to the true nature of our family’s income and I willingly joined the business. You see, I wasn’t the good little boy anymore and I understood that it was every man for himself. When I graduated high school, I joined the police academy, graduated at the top and using my father’s connections as a cop, I immediately got a job. It wasn’t long before I was practically running the thing.”
He looked over at me briefly and it wasn’t until after he told me he helped with money laundering and drug trafficking that I realized he was watching for my reaction. I had never been too keen on anything drug related because of my mother. For once in my life, I bit my tongue, afraid of what condemning comment that would leave my lips. Weirdly enough, it reminded me of a sermon Alex’s mom had made us sit through. It was probably one of the few Bible verses I knew, but even then, I had no idea where in the Bible it was located. I mostly liked it because it made me feel better in knowing others didn’t have the right to condemn me. It went something like, “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.” Lord knew, I’d done my fair share of sins. He had his work cut out for him once I died. So with that in mind, I held my tongue and waited for Ben to carry on with his story once more.
“People died Adrienne and I helped by botching up the investigations.” He confessed sadly. “And I probably would’ve continued on living that life if someone hadn’t murdered my mom.”
I could feel the anger that emanated off of him in waves. His eyes were hard, cold and uncaring – not toward his mother, but toward her murderers and I could feel his burning desire for revenge.
My hand moved of its own volition toward one of Ben’s balled up fists and I think I surprised us both by holding it in both of mine. It was hardly going to make his problems go away, but it felt right. He seemed to think so too, because his hand moved to intertwine with mine and I gave it a squeeze.
He looked up at the ceiling again and I could see him fighting back the tears. I was never a fan of people getting weepy, men in particular, but if anyone deserved to be cried over, it was Ben’s mom. She never balked at being everyone’s mom. It hurt me that she was dead and I hadn’t even known it. It showed me the extent of my own selfishness, because I should’ve asked about them sooner. They had treated me like family, even if it was a long time ago.
“So I’m guessing you either shot the guy who killed her or put him behind bars.”
“Oh, I put someone behind bars, but not the one I wanted.”
“Who did you-” I stopped midsentence, because it felt like I was struck by lightning. “Vincent.”
“Yeah, the dirty bastard knew who shot my mom, but wouldn’t fess up. Even though I know he was with her when she died, he denied knowing altogether. So I hurt him the best way I knew how: I let him take the fall. For the record, I didn’t really make me feel better, because whoever shot her is still out there.”
“And your dad?” I questioned.
“Died of an overdose a week after her funeral.”
“And that’s why you came back. Roy offered you sanctuary from the rest of your family in L.A.”
“Yeah,” he nodded all trace of emotion absent from his face and voice.
I didn’t think it was the best timing for a question, but I asked it anyway. “So which are you now Ben? A good cop or a bad one?”
“Do you want the truth or a lie?”
“Do you even have to ask?” I replied.
“Then honestly? I’m not sure.”
His answer, even in the simplicity of its words, was too complex for me to understand. How did one not know whether they were good or bad? It was almost too perfect when he turned my own question on me.
“How about you? Do you consider yourself a bad person because you do bad things, or do you view yourself as a good person who does bad things?”
And with that, I understood exactly what he meant. It wasn’t enough to switch teams. It wasn’t about being “a good cop” or even “a bad one” in that moment. Because that was exactly what it was: A moment. And regardless of how far back in his past his wrong doings were, they still affected his view on who he was as both a cop and a person.
Despite the importance of our conversation, I could feel my eyelids getting heavier. The adrenaline of my earlier encounter with Vincent had long since faded and that in combination with my general lack of sleep made keeping my eyes open that much harder.
Ben seemed to be having similar problems, only I could tell he had no intention of getting off of the couch. Instead he shifted to the side so he could lay down right where he was. I shifted as well so I could share the couch with him and rested my head on his chest. His steady breathing calmed me and with one final squeeze to the hand that I was still holding, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.