Avenues: Ch. 5

My thoughts were still having trouble processing what I’d just heard from Detective Johnson’s mouth. He’d been the go-to guy in Willie’s case since its inception and had thought it was a simple open-and-shut situation. Willie had been at the wrong place at the wrong time when he was shot. The assailants had been apprehended at the time and were sent off to county for further processing. Apparently some new information had been sent to him anonymously pertaining to Willie’s case, which led him to re-open it for further investigation.

Marissa’s face immediately popped into my head, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to say anything until I knew for sure. Why would she have sent the evidence she might’ve found to the cops when I specifically asked her not to? You can’t trust them. Even the ones who swore by their moral codes and principles. Throw enough dirt and money on someone and you watch how fast people start to talk.

“So what’s next?” Susie asked beside me, her grip on my hand as deadly as her kissing skills as she waited for him to continue speaking. I hadn’t realized how badly Susie needed this all to be over until now. She was still mourning her brother and to have all this being brought up again couldn’t have come at a worse time. I didn’t see the value in me being here. She did, however. Eventhough we’ve been keeping our distance since the bomb she dropped on me last week about us almost hooking up five years ago, I still wanted to be there for her, for Willie too.

“This is why I asked you to bring Mr. Perez,” he continued, and he had my full attention, “...what can you tell me about Diana Rivera?” Diana? What the fuck did she have to do with any of this?

“She’s in prison. Not much else to say,” I answered, looking at him dead in the eye, wondering where the hell he was going with this.

“Look, I know you two have a history. The Bonnie and Clyde Syndrome as we detectives like to call it. But it seems you’ve moved on to greener pastures,” he paused, gesturing towards Susie, “... so I’m asking you to help yourself now, Mr. Perez. What can you tell me about Diana Rivera’s relationship with Willie Lopez?”

His question didn’t make any sense to me. In fact, it sort pissed me the fuck off. How fucking dare he assume Diana even had a relationship with Willie. They never even met. He was testing me clearly. This is why I hated cops. Any little moment of weakness and they used it against you, no matter how innocent you were.

“Look, I don’t know what you’re getting at here, but I can assure you, Diana never met Willie. They had no relationship.” Diana and I might not be on speaking terms right now, but I’ll be damned if I let this cop insinuate things about her that weren’t true.

“How can you be so sure?” He had the audacity to ask that question as if I didn’t know the woman like the back of my hand. I’ve known Diana my entire life and I knew the type of person she was. She wasn’t the type of person to step out on you out of spite, no matter how many times you did it to her. Even if she did manage to cheat on me, it definitely would not have been with anyone I knew on a personal level.

“Because she'd never do me wrong like that,” I responded defensively, pulling away from Susie’s hand as she looked away and I crossed my arms over my chest. Detective Johnson looked down at his papers once more and took one look at Susie before he continued.

“Mr. Perez, are you aware that you don't recall the brain injury you sustained five years ago that caused you to gain long term memory loss? Surely you can understand how it would be hard for me to take your words into consideration.”

His words forced my pulse to race, my body to tighten at the information he just provided me. Anger then followed as I glanced over at Susie who didn’t seem surprised at all by his question. I couldn’t believe she didn’t tell me a week ago. She had the perfect opportunity for it. And yet here I am, shocked to hear about my damn brain injury from a goddamn cop.

“Are we done here? Or do you actually plan on charging Diana for his murder too?” I asked him coldly, ready to bolt out of here if necessary to call a defense lawyer.

"I never mentioned-"

"You didn't have to. I know how you guys work. I don't know how Diana is involved in all this, but I can bet my life on the fact that she'd never kill anyone," Detective Johnson noticed the tension brewing in the room and nodded, proceeding to warn us to keep our phones on and to stay in town just in case we needed to come back in for more questioning.

Susie and I exited the forty-eighth precinct on the Cross Bronx Expressway and headed towards my car. We didn’t say a word to each other until I pulled up to her building thirty minutes later and parked the car.

“Willie wanted us to keep it from you...” Susie started, her gaze staring straight ahead as her hands came together and she sighed in defeat, “...he didn’t want to hurt you more than he already did. It was his only chance, Julian. His only chance at redeeming himself for what he’d done.”

Her words were registering inside my mind as I began to think about the accusation the detective had made earlier.

“Was the detective right, Susie? Did your brother fuck my ex-girlfriend?” I spat out angrily. She looked at me sharply and I could see the storm forming behind her brown eyes as she reached for the door handle and showed herself out of my car. I followed in her footsteps, not willing to let this situation slide anymore. I wanted answers. I deserved some goddamn answers.

“Space is really the best option for us right now,” she suggested and I scoffed, jogging ahead of her to stop her from running away. As soon as her body crashed into mine, an electrical current zapped us both and we pulled away, but not far enough to make this emotional and physical gap worse.

“Julian,” she said my name, and eventhough I was furious at her for not telling me the truth, and at myself for not bothering to push the subject when I had the chance, I completely melted around her. I reached for her face and craned her neck so she’d look up at me.

“I know you want to protect me. And if that’s really your intention, then protect me with the truth. Because right now, I’m questioning my own fucking shadow,” I insisted, while she bit her bottom lip and took my hand, leading me back to my car.

“Where are we going?”

“We’re going to pay Diana a visit.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It took us about an hour and thirty minutes to arrive to the co-ed Green Haven Correctional Facility from the city. Susie had yet to tell me how she knew when Diana had been transferred back to New York and where she had been transferred to as the guards took our phones and anything else that could be perceived as a weapon and placed them into lockers after searching us. She insisted it was part of Diana’s story and she was the only one who could explain everything.

I also wondered how she had gotten Diana to agree to see me as well. She’d made it pretty clear she wanted to cut all ties with me. Given that Susie could be a pretty convincing ally, I didn’t read much into it as we waited for Diana to show up in the visiting area, where the prisoners were allowed to see their visitors.

“You’re nervous,” Susie observed, as her gaze skimmed over my face, and my pulse began to race when the doors opened to the visiting area and some of the prisoner's began to enter. It wasn’t Diana the guards brought out to the visiting area last, but another familiar face from my youth. Oliver Polscotti, the Italian street mafia lackey who’d gotten himself in way over his head when he decided to help the feds raid half of Staten Island and the Bronx too. It was his fault the feds found Diana and I about to go on a drug run five years ago. The fact that he walked around this place without a care in the world spoke volumes. Something wasn’t right here. Prison wasn't paradise to snitches. Was he being protected by someone? If so, by whom and why protect a rat like him?

“I’m just on high alert,” I explained, gesturing over to Oliver. Her gaze followed and confusion filled her face, followed by recognition.

“Is that...Oliver Polscotti?”

“Unfortunately,” I answered as I leaned back into my chair and reached for her hand before kissing it, hoping her touch would be enough to calm my simmering rage.

“Oh, Diana,” Susie said her name sympathetically, as if she felt sorry for her. And just as I was about to ask why, Diana was escorted into the room by the guards. Her stoic hazel gaze softened when she saw me, and it briefly turned to relief when she saw Susie. But it grew hostile when it landed on Oliver Polscotti. I’d be pissed too if the guy who put me in here was standing just a few feet away and I couldn’t do shit about it.

There was no touching allowed between inmates and visitors but Diana and Susie seemed to feel comfortable enough to break that rule and greeted each other with a hug. Diana looked over at me next, crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side before she spoke.

“You haven’t been feeding this kid, Susie. He’s losing all the good meat,” Diana teased, lightening up the awkwardness by using her dirty humor before we all sat down.

“He’s been burying himself in work, unfortunately. Coping mechanism, as you know,” Susie claimed and I raised an eyebrow at how easy this conversation seemed to be for them. Not that they should be enemies. But it was a bit weird seeing them get along so well considering Diana and I had broken up not too long ago. If I hadn’t known any better, I’d say this wasn’t the first time Susie had come to see Diana in prison.

“What the hell is going on right now? Are you two friends?” I asked, not because it mattered, but because I wanted to clear the fog that's been surrounding me without me knowing all these years.

“That’s a story for another time,” Susie answered first, and capped it off with a wink.

“You wanted to know what happened at that party five years ago...” Diana began, and glanced over at Oliver one more time before swallowing hard and looking down at her hands, “...I’m going to tell you my part in it.”

As Diana began to tell her story, the night of the party began to replay in my mind. I started to remember what happened the day before to cause the friction between Diana and I, and that was where Susie came in. Apparently, I had shown up at her place after a night of bar hopping, and she ended up taking care of me until morning. I hadn’t realized how many missed calls I received from Diana the night prior until after Susie and I had managed to share the kind of kiss that almost led us to her bed. She stopped us from going further of course, when she learned I had lied about breaking up with Diana. I had stormed out of Susie’s place and headed over to Diana’s for her birthday party.

I also remember Luey offering me some more liquid courage to tell Diana I had kissed Susie, the only girl in the world she felt I always had a connection with even when I consistently and vehemently denied it. When I ultimately did confess to Diana what actually transpired between me and Susie, she stormed out of her own party for a while. That was when I caught her in her room crying her eyes out, shaking uncontrollably, curled up in a ball by the foot of her bed.

“I’ve never seen you so upset,” I commented, as she recited the same memory currently paused in my mind.

“I’d called...a friend after you left the room,” she said, glancing over at Susie before continuing “...and asked him to meet me downstairs, but Oliver and his friends caught me halfway down the block before I could end the call and…” Diana paused momentarily, her fists slamming lightly against the table between us as she closed her eyes. She was having trouble telling her truth as did my memory when it tried to go back to what happened after I found Diana in her room. I just couldn’t remember.

“That...that sick fuck pulled me into his SUV...and tried to force me to tell him where we were hiding our stash. When I refused...that was when he..." she paused again, taking a deep breath, "...he raped me. His friends watched the whole thing and did nothing. Nothing…” Diana confessed, trying to hold back her tears, but they streamed down her cheeks anyway, as I began to feel sick inside. The fact that my own girlfriend had been going through that at the time and I was too busy getting high and drunk to protect her, only reminded me of the same night I lost my mother. I'd been in the same headspace, lost and angry, doing anything and anyone that would help me push the pain out long enough for me to breathe.

"At the time, I couldn't understand why he didn't put a bullet in my head after he was done. Death was better than living the rest of my life with the shame and disgust--"

"Stop it..." Susie interrupted, reaching for her hand under the table while the guards weren't looking, "...you've made it this far. Your resilience is breathtaking, Diana. Don't let anyone, especially a guy like that, take that away from you."

I couldn’t believe what she just told me. I was riddled with guilt and frustration, and the kind of rage that made your entire body shake and your stomach feel heavy with nausea. And what made it all worse was I still couldn’t do anything about it with the culprit sitting just a few feet away from me. The old me was itching to serve him the kind of street justice that would undoubtedly land me back in prison, but I knew it wouldn't do Diana any good. I needed to make this right from the outside of these gray walls.

“Asshole,” Susie cursed out loud, her glare going straight to Oliver across the room when the guards took him away after his visit was over. He didn’t bother glancing our way. If he had, I’d be in handcuffs right now.

“Julian...you wanted to go after him. I knew you’d kill him without a second thought. I called Luey for help the second I told you what happened and you charged out of the apartment. And that’s what the three of us were arguing about on the staircase before you slipped on a piece of a broken beer bottle and landed on your head,” Diana continued as I reached for the back of my skull instantly, trying to find the scar. I found the same one who's origin I've been questioning every time I scratched the back of my head.

“My brother showed up at the hospital after Luey called him. I was also taken in for alcohol poisoning. Turns out I’m a lightweight,” Susie added, explaining how Willie was involved in this to begin with. I wanted to ask her why she’d been drinking at all. But I had the feeling I already knew and it was just another thing I needed to add to the list of things I felt guilty about.

“Diana, why didn’t you press charges against the moron?” I asked, not understanding how she could possibly allow this guy to get away with it for this long.

“Pretty girl with alcohol in her system. Who do you think they’re going to believe?” she fired back, and I sighed in defeat. She was right. The system was not in favor of rape victims no matter how overwhelming the evidence was against the other party. There were always loopholes the defense team could throw to the judge to benefit their claims. And Diana was in no position to hire the kind of lawyer she needed to win her case.

“Anyway, the doctor said there was a possibility of your memory loss becoming permanent. When the four of us realized you had no plans of retaliating against Oliver a week later, Willie decided it was in your best interest to let you not remember what happened. We simply made up stories over the years to cover it up long enough to make you lose interest. But we all knew, as soon as Willie was dead, the trauma would bring all this back up and well....here we are.”

“Unfortunately, Oliver wasn’t done after that night. I'm assuming he was afraid she’d tell the cops about what happened and the idiot snitched on you guys three months later. He took a plea bargain of five years with parole. He’ll be out in January,” Susie offered the information, which only served to piss me off further.

“Well, couldn’t your friend have testified? He was on the phone with you before Oliver took you,” I reminded her and Diana pursed her lips as she and Susie shared a look.

“It would’ve been a conflict of interest. His testimony wouldn't have been any good.”

“Why?”

“It was Willie,” Diana stated quietly, as I looked back and forth between them, putting two and two together before I realized why they were acting so odd. The detective had been on to something back at the station.

Diana and Willie had been involved and apparently I’d been the only one completely oblivious to it. Brain injury or not, I should've been paying more attention to the people closest to me.

“I’ll go find the restroom and give you two some time alone,” Susie excused herself, leaving Diana and I to the elephant in the room breeding curiosity from me. How could I not have known? When did they even meet? Had I been so caught up in my own shit that I completely ignored what was going on in front of me?

“Willie? It had to be Willie?” I questioned her, and as pissed off as I felt, I knew I had no right to be. I’d done my share of cheating on Diana throughout our relationship. But never with anyone she’d been close with.

I thought I knew her. Turns out I didn't know her as well as I thought I did. There was more to her than just the girl I've known all my life. She had secrets too. More secrets than I ever thought possible. And probably more I still didn't know about. And Willie...man, how could he have kept this from me all this time? I looked up to the man. Wanted to honor him in a way that I could never honor my own biological father. I wanted to make him proud. I had no idea how I was going to be able to look passed all this, but I had to try. The good he had done for me definitely outweighed his wrongdoings.

“I’m sorry,” Diana uttered the words she knew damn well I hated, shame in her demeanor as she stood up when the guards announced it was time for the prisoners to head back to their cells.

“Take care of each other. It’s tougher out there than it is in here,” Diana mentioned to both of us the moment Susie rejoined us with snacks from the vending machines for the ride back home.

“Will do. We'll be back to see you soon,” Susie replied as we watched the guards handcuff her again and haul her out of the visiting area.

“I don’t think she was transferred back here by accident. Someone wanted to keep an eye on her,” I stated the second we got into my car. Susie turned to me curiously and gave me her full attention. If my suspicions were true, our visit to see Diana just put her in some serious danger.

“You think someone is behind this?”

“Yeah. And I also think it’s the same person behind that mysterious text message that was sent to your brother’s phone,” I added, while igniting the engine and pulling out of the parking space.

“Oliver Polscotti put the hit out on my brother,” Susie read my mind in disbelief, her tone drenched in disgust before she turned up the heat in my car and opened a bag of heavily salted chips and fed me one.

“We need proof. He might not be the one getting his hands dirty from prison, but his friends could still be doing all the work for him.”

“Do you know their names?”

“Street names, yes. And I know just the person who can help us track them down.”

“Marissa?”

“Close,” I complimented with a grin, “Luey Rashad Davis.”