The Shooting (26 page)

8

THE MYTH

What have I done? What did I do?
—I shot someone, Lee tells the 911 dispatcher as he stands in the baby's room, baby in his arms and the kid still out in the living room. He cannot look at him, he cannot bear to see his blood.
No wrongdoing
, he thinks,
no wrongdoing.
The baby is very calm and Lee inside is screaming. The dispatcher asks what happened. He tells her.

—And you
shot
him? she says. She sounds incredulous.

—Yes
, I shot him,
of course
I shot him.

—Why'd you
shoot
him? she says.

—What do you mean
why
did I shoot him? Lee says. —He was
in my apartment.
And the dispatcher asks who the person is. —I think he's the super's kid, he says. The dispatcher asks what age, what race. Lee does not want to say what race. —I think he's twenty-two, twenty-three? The dispatcher asks again what race. —He's black, Lee says.

Police come. Gun is unloaded on the ground far away from Lee in another room. When they arrive he starts to explain, but the cops scream at him and have guns out and they tackle him even as he still holds his baby, the baby is screaming now, his face red and twisted up, little fists clenched and shaking—maybe his baby has been hurt, his leg pinned beneath Lee's, his little ankle broken—and they are trying to take his baby, have guns in Lee's face, there is the
barrel of a gun pushed deep into his right eye, they are shouting things he cannot understand, they are animals. They are prying the baby from his arms, he holds on as tightly as he can but they are so much stronger and they take him, they take his son. They turn Lee over and put a knee into the back of his neck and he cannot breathe. They are twisting his arms, punching his kidneys, his head. They are screaming in his face, —WHERE'S THE GUN? WHO'S HERE? WHERE IS IT? and they are running through his house, one kicks his son's jumper out of his way like it's trash. They are taking over his home.

He remembers his father. It has been four years since he has seen him, maybe five. Or it could be more, it could be as many as ten. Not since his father's third wedding has he seen him.
You will understand,
he tells his father now.
They are breaking my arms and taking my baby and you will understand that.

Only temporary,
he hears his father say back.
Protocol. Relax. They will investigate and see there has been no wrongdoing on your part and you will be cleared.

They put him on the couch in the living room, about a dozen uniformed cops standing over him. They are jacked up, sweating and red, eyes so all-seeing they seem unseeing, heads darting around, huffing loudly through their noses like fighting dogs. He is cuffed at the wrists and ankles. Behind the uniforms across the living room against the front door he can see the kid's feet. He is wearing Nike Air Jordans. They are bloody. When the cops pushed their way inside the kid was against the door and he was shoved aside against the wall. So much blood.

—What will happen to my son? Lee asks them again and again. They do not answer. He keeps asking them again and again, he keeps telling them that he is a good guy, that it was self-defense, but they say nothing, just stare down at him.

Stay patient and calm and do what you're told, it will all get straightened out,
he hears his father telling him. The voice of a father in the ear of a child. Familiar as if he heard it yesterday. Remembers now his mother too, her high heels clacking, her smile as she bent down to him; she was orange, she smelled like tangerines:
Good-bye.
He
sees his son vanish through the door in a cop's arms and he sees his mother getting into the car and Laura's hiking boots dangling from the tree branch and he cries out, —Don't go!

Then they bring him out past the body. The kid's eyes are still open.

—You're not just going to leave him there, are you? Lee says to the cops.

Still they say nothing. And Lee says nothing more because he wants the cops to see that he respects them and is on their side, that he will let them do their job and get all this straightened out. Someone has pulled the fire alarm, he only now realizes in the hallway. It has been going off the whole time and he has not noticed it. They bring him downstairs, through the basement, to take him somewhere away from the chaos and talk to him, he presumes, so he can explain. But when they take him out through the rear entrance and he sees a cruiser waiting with lights on and the door open and the backseat apparently ready for him, he becomes terrified. Things have escalated, seemingly of their own accord, he has no control. —No, no, no, he says. He says it just like he said it to the boy. And adding to the realization that his fate and his life are not in his hands anymore—that his self-determination is null—a crowd of people has materialized, stark and silent, with their phones held up, videoing him. The dozens of red record lights are like laser sights from sniper scopes. Their expressions are void and sinister. Heartless. Inhuman. It is a mob. It does not matter to the mob what is true—they will rip Lee apart. They have been here this whole time just waiting for him, needing only a reason.

My son
, he realizes, staring into them.
My son is in danger now. Real danger.

Dangerous, crazy people out there,
his father says.

—What will you do with my son? Lee is crying out to the cops as they bring him through the crowd, which now shouts violent, hateful things at him, spitting on him, calling for his imprisonment, his execution. It does not matter—
imprison me, execute me, just don't hurt my son.
Still the cops pretend not to hear him. —They'll come after him, he tells them. —You understand that? Don't the cops
see that he is not asking what will happen to himself, that he is not complaining about being arrested, that he is not concerned for himself—don't they see that he is not a criminal but a father whose sole concern is for his child?

They put him in the backseat and close the door. Off to the side in handcuffs is the super, the kid's father. The cops are pouring water over his face and he has no shirt on, and when the water gets all over him it catches the police lights and reflects them, making him look supernatural, wicked in red and blue. Lee knows they are pouring water over his face because they have pepper-sprayed him. And then he understands. Since the moment he turned on that light and the home invader became just a boy and he felt his own body go cold with guilt, he has been looking for the way in which he is not a murderer—and here it is.

Don't you remember,
his father says,
when they were in your apartment not long ago to fix the sink? Did they seem right to you? Me neither. Made you very suspicious, didn't they? And apparently for good reason. Your instincts have always been spot on, pardner. You can always tell a bad guy, no matter how nice they might try to act to you. Remember you spent the entire time very anxious, ready to spring if they made some kind of move? They were taking photos, weren't they? And they kept murmuring to each other in their language. You thought maybe it was Arabic. Whatever it was, it was clear they were up to something. And now this, handcuffs and pepper spray—it can only mean he was involved in what happened tonight. And what happened was a break-in. An attempted attack on you and your infant son. And you thwarted it. The police will see this. Welcoming them into your home was where you made your mistake. Trusting them. Bad guys take that as a sign of weakness, seeing the nice things you had and how good-natured you were—it must have given them an idea. The super leering at you as he worked, sneering at you but pretending to be polite, and the kid saying darkly in English,
Cute kid,
and taking a picture of your baby with his phone. They saw your baby as their ticket to wealth, didn't they? That's all anyone's looking for here. And so they began forming their plan—their heinous, sick plan—in the elevator on the way down. You did not have the gun on you that day, did you? It was in your nightstand, wasn't it? If it had been on your hip instead. If they had seen it there. That was your first
mistake, Lee. Thinking for once you were safe. Your next mistake—God you have made so many—was letting yourself drink too much tonight. You somehow forgot to lock the door. You thought the baby was down for the night, but he woke up screaming and you could not figure out why, and as that was happening the pizza you'd ordered arrived and you could not handle the confusion, the situation overwhelmed you—maybe if you were sober you could have handled it, but you were a bit drunk, and you hurried to the door with the baby screaming in your ear and writhing in your arms and you grabbed the pizza with your one free hand and closed the door with your foot, no hands free for the deadbolts, but you would come back for them, and you hurried off to check his diaper again, and while changing it he spit up a bucketload all over himself and so now you needed to put him in a new onesie or he would never go back to sleep, and after that he was still crying, so now you had to try feeding him, and when you finally got him down again all you wanted was another drink and you forgot to come back and lock the door. That is the way life is. You keep your guard up all your life and the one time you slip up... But while you might have picked the wrong night to lose control, those two picked the wrong guy to come after, didn't they?
Lee can almost feel his father's hands on his shoulders as those words come and it feels good:
The wrong guy. They picked the wrong guy. Lee Fisher is not a murderer. Lee Fisher was simply the wrong guy to come after. And they paid the price for it.

The cops leave him in the cruiser for what feels like hours. The super writhes in the hands of the police where, Lee sees now, he belongs. The neighbors are trying to get between the super and the cops, demanding they let him go. They do not know the truth yet, Lee thinks. They will. It is not their fault. He fooled us all. Then Lee and the super meet eyes through the cruiser window. Lee sees nothing in them. Nothing. Chills go down his spine.
Cold blooded.

At last they take him away. He asks them again as respectfully as he can if they know where his son is. They say nothing. He asks them with so much respect and humility that it verges on inferiority that they are not treating this like a murder, are they? That they understand what happened, don't they? Because he—They interrupt to tell him to shut up and he apologizes and does so, then apologizes again and hopes the truth about who he is and
what has happened radiates off his essence and off his apologies and makes them understand, so when they get to wherever they are taking him they will enter him into the machine appropriately for the man who he is and this will all be straightened out.

When they turn the corner up Hudson Street, a black woman in a ratty old bathrobe jumps out in front of the cruiser, forcing it to stop. She looks homeless, emaciated from drugs, obviously insane. She slams both her hands on the cruiser's hood and stares through the windshield at Lee, then comes around to his window. The cops are doing nothing about it. Red eyes and woolly hair stand from her head in unwashed tufts. White spittle is hardened in the corners of her cracked lips, between which stringy goo stretches as she opens them and yells at Lee in a foreign language. To Lee she is like a witch. She punches the window, trying to break through it. The cops just keep letting her do it. He does not understand. It is like they do not see her. And then the one in the passenger seat turns halfway around to Lee, showing Lee enough of his face to see the smirk, and says, —Bro, aren't you gonna say hello to her? Common courtesy, you murdering her son and all.

Lee's voice cries out, —No! I'm not a murderer. I'm not.

The woman punches the glass. Lee jolts back, yelping. She screams. She punches the glass again and again, she will not stop until she breaks through it and grips him around the throat and tears out his eyes. He turns his face away and ducks his head, almost feeling her blows striking the back of his skull. The cops pull away, closing up back into their impenetrable silence, and the witch chases after them down Hudson Street for an entire block before collapsing to her knees in the middle of the street and that is where she is when they turn the corner and at last put her out of sight.

At the precinct, because he is wearing nothing but underwear, they give him an old oversized FUBU T-shirt from a storage bin. The tail of the FUBU T-shirt comes down to his knees, the sleeves come down to his wrists, it smells like mildew and cigarette smoke and stale body spray. Such an insulting, degrading thing to make him wear. Humiliation. He is furious now, thinking of the witch,
the cops. The super. The kid. Inside him, the cold guilt is leaving, replaced with a hot, rumbling anger.
Guilty?
his father says.
Why should you feel guilty? You should be furious. First you were the victim of evil and now you are the victim of injustice. Everything is in confederation against you.

He is no longer being polite and respectful. He tells every cop he sees that he is not a murderer and he demands his attorney, and that is all he says to them. They make him wait for hours before letting him call the multinational firm that represents the Fisher family interests. Hours after that, an attorney arrives. John Potter talks too quickly, keeps interrupting him, makes too little eye contact, is too impatient, is interested only in legal procedure and does not make Lee feel like he understands what has happened—the bigness of it and that he is not a murderer; he does not understand how the media will misinterpret this.

—Where is my son? Lee asks urgently. —Who the hell has him?

—For the time being, emergency care.

—What's that mean?

—Means the cops have him.

—People are going to think I'm racist and want to hurt me. They are going to want to hurt him.

—He's fine, he'll be there a few hours until a friend or relative can take him. So give me some names and numbers.