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Some people, they might want a bit of extra cash, someone watching their back, or a special perk now and again; Fusco knew no one wanted to be a dirty cop. People like him, sometimes they didn't even want to be a cop, but it was what you ended up with. His Dad had been a cop, both his grandfathers, and an uncle… It's just the way it was. Then, when it comes down to something like "look the other way" or "let your career fizzle out like a bad firework"; "take the money" or "spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder," well, how does a man make a choice like that? And in some ways those choices became easy. When men like that know you have a son, when men like that let you know they know you have a son -- a boy you somehow think is more innocent than you ever were -- those choices become downright easy. Compromise a witness, contaminate the evidence, look the other way, forget what you saw, be here at midnight or there at dawn, hold something for some man and give it to this woman… God, he got used to it.
That didn't mean he slept any better or justified it to himself. He could see how people would, how you would tell yourself it was for your family, for your own good, the best way… He could see how that might be a person's way of holding onto to some part of yourself that resembled honor, but Fusco couldn't even do that. He knew he didn't do what he did because it was the only way. It was just the easy way, and he didn't let himself forget that either.
The man who called him Lionel -- God, he hated his own name -- and the man who always called him Detective: they were like some kind of God-damned avenging angels holding out something like redemption that was no more legal than what he'd been doing for years. Yet somehow he started sleeping better. Not right away. Not when he thought he might wake up to the man in the suit casually pressing a steel-cold gun to a sweating temple. And then he was working with Carter. God, he'd never worked with anyone like Carter. Shit, he wanted to be a good cop for these people. And even though he slept better every night, each morning he woke to wonder if today was the day, the day he'd have to tell Carter he wasn't a good cop, wasn't a clean cop, hadn't been for a damn long time. The day he'd have to give up weekends with his son because it was too damn dangerous. The day someone would ask him to go one step too far.
He wondered what that day would bring, what choice he would make. And even though everyday of this clusterfuck-of-a-career made him feel about a year older, he still somehow felt he would die young. After all the things he'd done, all the sides he'd played on, he couldn't imagine he'd live much longer, and recently he'd been wondering what the hell kind of legacy he'd be leaving. What would his ex tell his son? That his Dad had made the wrong choices, that his Dad was a crooked, lying son-of-a-bitch? What would Carter learn about him once he was cold in the ground? That her partner had taken bribes, passed intel… that her partner had spied on her, on HER, spied on Joss Carter for two men who'd shown up out of the blue one day like something from a surreal dream where suits were worn like armor and phones wielded like hot pokers to bare skin. What would his gravestone say? Lionel Fusco, born and died, father and son… and what? Lionel Fusco, Sell-Out. Lionel Fusco, Dirty Cop. Lionel Fusco, Crooked, Corrupt and Done-in by a Tall Man in a Suit. Maybe; who among men could tell where their death would come from?
Protect and Serve. Words that scattered through his head without meaning anymore. He somehow doubted they'd make their way onto his grave. If he'd even have a grave. Men like him didn't always leave bodies behind them. They were just gone.
He thought about the Hudson in winter.
Bodies froze, swelled, decomposed there. He knew dead was dead, but he still thought about the cold water filling desperate lungs, the shock of it. Not a good way to go.
Come spring, bodies turned up in the same places, the same currents faithfully bringing home the human flotsam. 'Course, some went out to sea, and some never turned up at all.
He suspected that when he went, it wasn't gonna be some glorious rooftop gun battle in the limelight of a helicopter's search beam or an alleyway shoot-out with red and blue flashers backlighting his silhouette for all to see. It was going to be someplace dark and lonely where he only half-knew what was coming before it was too late and if anyone ever even knew what happened to him, it was likely to be the two men on the other end of the phone. He was disloyal to too many people now, and as soon as someone realized what he was up to -- that he was a threat, or simply no longer a convenience -- he was done. He was the very definition of expendable. When it came down to the wire, who'd be going out of their way to protect Lionel Fusco?
The End