INITIUM NOVUM: Part 1 (6 page)

“She can’t be serious. Right, Hec?” Corey asks
his partner.

“Just give her the seat,” Hector replies with
a smile, amused by Laura’s bitchy antics.

Reluctantly, Corey vacates the spot, staring
hard at Laura who requites his stare, as he climbs out and then
back into the car, resenting her for making him do so.

Once they’re on their way, Hector’s cell phone
goes off, playing an ironically funny ringtone as he’s receiving
the call.

Whoop, Whoop, That’s the sound of
the police.

Whoop, Whoop, that’s the sound of
the beast.

Whoop, Whoop, That’s the sound of
the police.

Whoop, Whoop, that’s the sound of
the beast.

He silences the phone after one loop of the
ringtone, disregarding whoever it is that is attempting to reach
him and turning his attention to his friend.

“Laura, looking as youthful and beautiful as
always, it’s very nice to see you,” he greets her.

“Likewise, except for the youthful and
beautiful part,” she quips. They laugh. “But seriously, thank you,
Hector. I owe you.”

“Nah, get out of here. It’s my pleasure.
Besides, we’re on the same team, you and me. I cuff them and you
put them away for good. Teamwork.” Hector Santiago turns his head
to face her and smiles.

There is a definite affinity held for Laura in
Hector’s heart. She knows this, but the feeling is unrequited. To
her, Hector is just a friend; more specifically, he is a useful
friend, one that does not mind dirtying his hands for her, nor she
for him.

And no matter how many times she’s used her
powers to the point of abuse, it never ceases to amaze her just how
efficient law enforcement can be, especially when one bypasses the
law in search of the quickest justice available. And as anyone
(anyone dirty, that is) in law enforcement can tell you: there is
no justice like quick justice. What they don’t tell you is: quick
justice is no justice at all, because justice must be considered
from all angles. Justice, like the reach of one’s actions, is a
complex geometric shape. It’s never just one straight line. And the
times that it is a line, it isn’t straight; it’s twisted, crooked,
and eventually spirals out of control. Justice should be
straightforward. Too bad that’s just not the way things work.
Ever.

In her mind, she recreates the young man’s
face, detail by detail. A nearly eidetic memory aids in the task of
snapshotting the recent past. She likes the young man, there’s no
question about it. The only uncertainty there is concerning the
matter is whether or not she likes him more as a person (hard to
believe since she knows nothing about him, not that it matters, it
is said that females decide whether they like someone in the first
couple of seconds after initial meeting anyway) or as a conquest
(of which she can never have too many). Only time will tell what
the outcome will be, but if her current train of thought serves as
any type of indicator, Mr. William Freeman best to take the
“Initium Novum” clause very seriously. The only other option he has
is to ride it out and hope he can effectively maneuver his own life
choices so as to avoid tempting the authority of Ms. Cohen and
provoking a grim fate. One might go so far as to say that he should
attempt to tempt her in a different fashion, so that he might
remain off of her list of accomplishments.

CHAPTER 5:

Detective Hector Santiago, high-ranking
officer and Senior Investigator for the NYPD’s Crime Syndicate
division, has a wife, Ruth, who at the very moment is sitting at
their home, rolling a joint by the window still, watching the
clouds move across the gray and solemn sky. On her lap lays her
personal cell phone, open and ready to be used.

Prior to rolling the joint, she had been
readying herself to place a call to her sister, who she has not
spoken to in a very long while, too long for her taste. Her last
interaction with her beloved sibling ended in an unnecessarily
heated fashion. Ruth’s sister does not like Hector’s womanizing
ways, especially when Ruth calls crying because she, once again,
suspects her husband of infidelity. During their last outing, the
sibling’s manner of support was a bit too intrusive, causing an
explosive riff between the married couple which threatened to
dissolve the marriage. As Ruth’s sister alleged, Hector had been
cheating. However, then, and as always, there was only the
knowledge of an affair, never any proof. The lack of evidence,
which is not too surprising considering that Hector Santiago is
specially trained to seek out all forms of evidence, was the
deciding factor in Ruth siding with her husband rather than with
her sister, who knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Hector was
guilty.

The phone displays Ruth’s sister’s number
along with her contact image, a snapshot of both sisters playfully
squishing their faces together for a silly picture taken at the
beach a few years back. The only thing left for her to do is to
touch the call button and wait. Her finger hovers over the button
but it never lands. She cannot bring herself to call her, no matter
how much she wishes to hear her little sister’s voice.

She places the phone gently by her side and
lights the joint with a match, despite there being a lighter in her
pocket. She, much like her younger sister, has always enjoyed the
scent of sulfur dioxide produced when a match is struck and then
dies. She inhales deeply, holding the smoke inside her chest for a
few seconds before releasing it. Repeating this process, she smokes
the joint down to the halfway before she is seized by a fit of
coughing. Instead of snubbing out the joint, she buckles down and
finishes her smoke, choking slightly in between every strong
toke.

Within minutes, the weed is kicking into full
effect, producing a large enough euphoric sensation that her entire
body slouches back against the wall of the windowpane, completely
relaxed. Her mind, on the other hand, does the exact opposite, it
races, darting to and fro different thoughts as if her mind were
playing a game of cognitive ping pong. Finally, she settles on the
thought which had consumed her in the moments before she sparked
the ganja, her younger sister.

She palms her phone, contemplating whether or
not she should call. Postponing it, she decides to call her husband
instead. Truthfully, she doesn’t want to speak to him. She’s
actually hoping that he does not pick up the phone. If he does
answer the call, she’ll make up a random question concerning dinner
later. This is her version of the coin flip. Undecided about
calling her sisters, she tells herself that if Hector picks up, she
won’t call her sister. However, if Hector doesn’t pick up, she will
call her sister. Her reasoning, obviously impaired by the high,
does not require logic, only the delusion of having an excuse.
Because no matter how badly she would like to speak to her sister,
she does not have an excuse to call her, mainly because there was
truly never a good excuse for why they ceased talking to each
other. Of course, Hector is to blame for their now sour
relationship; but Hector himself should not have been reason enough
to keep two sisters apart for so long. In his defense, he couldn’t
care less whether or not they ever talk to each other again. In his
opinion, the issue isn’t that important anyway.

Two rings later, her phone call is being
redirected to Hector’s voicemail. This relieves her. She had no
desire whatsoever to talk to her husband; not enough time has
elapsed between now and the morning when she last interacted with
him. A brief interaction it was too, over breakfast which he
scarfed down hurriedly as she sipped her coffee, watching him eat
like an animal. A kiss on the top of her head later and Hector was
rushing out of the door and into his Dodge Charger, still chewing
his eggs and toast, leaving her where she sat, at the table in
front of her own plate, her hopes of sharing a nice breakfast with
her husband deflated yet again.

It takes Ruth a few more minutes, but she
finally gains the courage to call the one person she wishes to
speak to more than anyone. While she didn’t quite expect her sister
to pick up, hearing her voicemail message comes as a bit of a
surprise to her. Feeling worse than being flat left at breakfast,
she decides that she’ll roll another joint in a little while. It’ll
be hours until Hector comes back from work, which leaves her with
more than enough time to air the apartment out and rid it of the
scent of her leisurely activity. Although, at times she toys with
the idea of letting him catch her in the act, she doesn’t. She
wouldn’t want to place him in a conflict of interest due to his
career. Yet, the prospect of scandal has an allure that she cannot
deny.

Striking another match, she listens to the
rest of the voicemail, hoping that she’ll hear her sister’s voice
when the music stops playing, but the music plays until the very
end of the voicemail message, right up until the beep.

Nobody can tell ya

There’s only one song worth
singing

They may try and sell
ya

Cause it hangs them up

To see someone like you

You gotta make your own kind of
music

Sing your own special
song

Make your own kind of
music

Even if nobody else sings
along

Ruth puts the phone down, and takes a deep
breath. By the time she’s done exhaling, she’s already crushed
nearly an entire gram of weed. The gram breaks up well enough to
form three heavy joints from it. She doesn’t need that much pot to
feel good. She knows this. Not that it’ll stop her from smoking all
of it just to fill the time, and more importantly than time, to
fill the void.

Halfway through her second joint, she decides
on calling her sister again. She presses the call button but the
attempt fails due to a network communication error.

“That’s weird,” Ruth says to herself. “I
always get good service here.”

After examining her phone and seeing that the
device has full bars, she becomes confused as to why it has no
reception. Maybe it’s a sign from beyond, she thinks. Of course,
she isn’t entirely wrong. Not to say that she’s right either. There
is a reason for her phone malfunctioning and it is not a case of
damaged hardware of any sort. The phone, a gift from Hector,
represents something to Ruth. It represents that Hector is capable
of moments of unexpected sweetness. Given that Ruth’s sister and
Hector do not mesh well, she gives considerable thought to the
ironic belief that maybe Hector’s sweetness could never connect her
with her sister. This brings her far closer to the truth than her
previous suspicion that a higher force had been issuing signs and
hints about her attempts at reuniting with her sister.

The phone was brought by Hector to keep Ruth
from asking questions regarding his whereabouts earlier that
particular evening. That very night he presented the gift to his
wife, his excuse was that he was buying her a new phone. The truth
is that Hector was late because he was with another woman, buying
that woman a new phone. As a matter of fact, if Ruth had done just
a little snooping she would have found his credit card statement
listing two phones, one full price, one free. It had been part of a
buy one, get one free promotional deal. Ruth had gotten the free
phone, the secondary phone. The dark humor in it being that if Ruth
were to get wind of it all, of every single detail, what would
break her heart more than the infidelity itself is the fact that
Hector, her husband, gave his wife the secondary phone and brought
the original for his sidepiece. For all it’s worth, he might as
well have put them on the same family plan.

Hector, was happy using the same cell phone
he’s had for two years already. If Ruth were to get any wind of
that second phone, she would most assuredly ask questions. If her
sister were to get her hands on that phone, she would have the
proof she needed back when she accused Hector of being unfaithful
to her sister. Especially since both phones are part of a limited
edition set, each stamp with a signature Union Square insignia, a
promotional tactic for the store.

The urge to hear her sister does not subside.
She dials her sister’s number one last time. It rings once. It
rings twice. It rings three times.

“Hello,” says the voice on the other
side.

“Hello, Heather?” Ruth asks unnecessarily, as
she knows it is her sister on the line. She recognizes her voice
instantly.

“Ruth?” Heather inquires, “Is that really
you?”

“Let’s get together later, it’s been too
long,” Ruth suggests, choking up as she speaks to her younger
sibling.

“I’d like that. I’ll call you when I’m on my
way.”

They say bye and hang up. Although it was
anything but an in-depth conversation, for Ruth, it was more than
enough to make her feel like she’s found a part of herself that’s
been missing for far too long. After drying her eyes, she lights a
half-smoked joint, this time she does so with joy instead of the
solemnity she had been trying to quell by getting high.

CHAPTER 6:

“I said take the West Side Highway, not the
streets!” William argues.