“He’s sleep?” Maverick stared at the monitor. “This thing is useful.”
“Yes, you wore him out. All of that baby wrestling and rolling around on the floor, you two did. Now he’ll be tackling me when I walk into a room,” she smiled.
“You look really nice,” he said.
She double blinked. “I do?”
“Yes, like this,” his gaze swept down to her cotton candy pink toes. “No makeup. Just nice.”
“Thank you, Maverick. I think.”
He set the monitor over to the lamp table.
“What happened at breakfast?” he asked.
“Breakfast. Yea, that. Guess we need to talk about it. Queen and I argue sometimes. She’s like a sister.”
“Not what I’m asking,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” Delilah replied.
“What happened between us at breakfast?” Maverick repeated.
“Nothing,” Delilah said.
“This morning, you left without even acknowledging last night, and then I come over here, and you’re dolled up and jumpy. I get not wanting your friend to know what happened between us, but why do I make you so uncomfortable around her?”
She looked down at her wedding ring. It was the first time Delilah realized through it all she was wearing it. That realization broke her heart. Charles had control over her even now. Even after everything he’d done to her. How should she explain it?
“You don’t make me uncomfortable. I never did anything like last night before. Kiss another man? Sleep with another... man, I didn’t know.”
“Never?” Maverick smiled.
She blushed. “I mean, I’ve kissed a man. I never did ‘you know what’ with anyone but Charles. I started dating him young, and then I was his wife. It all happened fast.”
“Okay, I understand.”
“No, you don’t. But thanks for saying that. I figured if I ever was with another man, it would be like it was with Charles. I’m not saying you did anything wrong. It was different with you because I realize that I’m different. I’m changing. The old me suppressed my feelings and dealt with logic. My professor at Harvard told me to take the emotion out of reason when faced with a challenge. Deal with facts. The first fact is you are Noah’s father. The second fact is you are here for Noah, not me. And the most important fact is I’m vulnerable and lonely out here, so I projected that loneliness onto you. All facts. Nothing but facts.”
“You’re afraid?” he mumbled.
“Huh?” she replied.
“It’s fear; that’s the emotion you feel,” he said.
“I fear you because I don’t understand you, Maverick.” Delilah relaxed on that notion. Not understanding her emotions felt logical. Considering everything she’d been through.
“What is it about me you wished you understood?” he asked.
“Simple things,” she began. “With me, you’re so normal and genuine. But the things Queen said, then things you’ve said feel wrong.”
“Let’s take a step back,” Maverick suggested.
“Okay,” she agreed.
“First, what Queen said was true. There is a police advocacy group within the NYPD. They do a lot of good. It was created to change the perception of the department. And it’s needed. It was needed before my time there, and it’s needed even more now that I’m gone. But I wasn’t part of it for obvious reasons. It’s a minority leadership organization.”
“What kind of cop were you?” Delilah tensed but forced herself to ask.
“I wasn’t a cop who looked to change anything.”
“You should want change. You, of all people, should know how desperate change is needed,” Delilah reasoned.
“Why?” Maverick asked.
“To serve and protect. Isn’t that what your oath is?” Delilah snapped.
“True. But not true,” he mumbled.
“I’m disappointed,” she sighed. “I need you to be different. For Noah.”
“Yea. I guess I’m not saying any of this right.” He took a deep breath and thought on it a bit before trying again to explain. “As diverse as New York is, it’s very segregated too. I worked out of the Bronx, but I lived in Breezy Point out of Queens. Almost 45 minutes away. Could I have been a better cop? Yes. There are good cops; there are bad cops like in your field. There are good lawyers, and there are bad lawyers. It’s all about choices. Do you work for the good or the bad? It’s really a choice.”
“Do you have a bias against people of color?” Delilah asked.
“Never a bias. I had preferences, I guess, shit, that could be the same thing. My own kind was my preference. My own traditions were my preference. I lived in Queens, and most of the people I was with had that kind of preference—us against them.”
“And that changed?” Delilah probed.
“I met Camille. Before Melissa died, Camille was a new cadet who I trained. She, Javier, and Alejandro, and Steve were my best friends.”
“Steve was black?” Delilah asked.
He nodded. “Yeah. Suddenly my closest friends, the ones who protected my life, were all people of color. Our squad was put together after the ‘100’ forced the department to diversify the tactical drug units. We learned from each other. We survived with each other. We became a family—still, it was kind of separate but equal family in the department.”
“What happened to the others?” Delilah asked. She already knew the story. It was in the file she read about his court case after he killed Jose Garcia.
“Camille, Steve, Alejandro, all died.” Maverick sat forward. He stared down at his hands. He could recall the blood on his friends when he arrived too late and found them dead. Camille died later, but his best friends Steve and Alejandro died at the scene.
“How?” Delilah asked. Her questions kept pushing him toward the memory he’d used years of therapy to forget. He had to take in deep silent breaths to continue.
“Ambush. I was the reason it all went wrong. We screwed it up. No. It wasn’t Javier. It was me. My informant who flipped on me—gave my team the wrong information. I should have alerted the task force we were assigned to that we were doing a search without a warrant. But we were most successful by doing things my way. Getting in close to cut off the head of the snake. I wish it was for justice, but it's a lot more tribal than justice. You’re fighting against so much. The lines get blurred. You stop thinking about justice, and you become your own gang against their gang. And then, out of nowhere, it’s gang against gang. That’s what you’ve been reading in my file. The choices I should have made versus the choices I did make. It’s all public record, so you know how the story ends.”
Delilah’s hand went over to cover his. Her shoulder bumped his shoulder. “You could’ve told Queen all of this. She would understand far better than me.”
“She knows. If she’s been in contact with Robert Dailey, she knows. I’m the bad guy in this one, sweetheart. I cost lives. There is never an excuse to do that. You see, Queen is a cop that respects the law, the rules, the oath. Then there are men like me who think we can bend it. That’s why your friend doesn’t like me. I’m the one that makes the job harder. I guess you can say she’s right; I am the bad guy.”