Jonathan Santlofer - Anatomy of Fear

“You see her much?”

“Not really. Once or twice a year.” I didn’t want to talk about my mother either.

“No sisters or brothers?”

“You read my file, didn’t you?”

“Right. Forgot.” She smiled. “You don’t seem like one of those spoiled only children types.”

“Thanks. I think.” I smiled and Russo smiled back.

“It must have been hard after your dad died.”

“It was.” My muscles tensed. “Is it okay if we don’t talk about this? It’s not my favorite topic.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds.” She laid her hand on mine and said she was sorry again.

“It’s okay,” I said, aware of her hand, the heat it was producing.

She smiled up at me, lifted her hand, but kept smiling.

“You’re quite something, you know that, Russo?”

“How do you mean?” She tilted her head back and waited for my answer.

“For one, the way you handled Karff in that interrogation; you were good, a little scary too.”

“Oh. That.”

“What’s the matter? You expected me to say something else?”

“Yes,” she said, looking into my eyes.

A moment passed, the two of us sharing a look, then Terri took a big slug of her martini, stood up, and peered down at me.

“What?” I said.

“I was just wondering…You feel like taking me home?”

Terri’s apartment was a one-bedroom on East Thirty-seventh in the Murray Hill section. She’d fixed it up nicely, walls painted in shades of gray, a big brown leather couch with lots of pillows. She said most of her salary went to pay for the place, but it was worth it because she loved the city.

After five minutes in her apartment I didn’t know what to say. We were both pretty uncomfortable. I could see Terri was having second thoughts, her facial muscles ticking off a whole slew of nervous expressions.

She offered me another drink, and I said yes though I didn’t want one. She got a beer out of her fridge, handed it to me, and said, “You’d better kiss me before I totally chicken out on this.”

I did.

It was going pretty well until I got my pants stuck on my shoe and practically fell off her bed. Terri helped me yank my shoe off and we laughed, which helped ease the tension until we were both naked and stopped laughing. I backed up to look at her and she tried to hide under the blanket, but I held it away and told her she was beautiful. Then we kissed and our bodies took over, and for a first time I thought it went pretty well. Afterward, she curled against me.

“Was that like a huge mistake? You don’t think I’m like some big slut now, do you?”

I laughed.

Terri slapped my chest. “I’m serious. I need some reassurance here, Rodriguez.”

“Well, for starters, how about calling me Nate?”

“Nah, I like the way ‘Rodriguez’ rolls off my tongue. Rod-riiiguezzz, see? Nate doesn’t have any rhythm.”

“How’d you get this?” I touched a scar on her shoulder.

“Bullet. Pretty cool, huh?”

“Oh, sure, Wonder Woman. That’s you, I’m sure.”

“No question,” she said. She outlined the angel tattoo on the inside of my arm. “What about this? When did you get it?”

“When I was too young.”

She rolled over and displayed her ass, which was very nice, her left cheek sporting a small rose. “Night of my high school prom. I was totally stoned. Lucky I didn’t end up with an anchor.”

I ran my fingers over the rose tattoo, and Terri leaned back against me. “I’m glad we did this.”

“Me too,” I said. “Even if you are a big slut.”

She slapped my chest again, harder, and we both laughed.

“Well, it wasn’t so bad, was it?” she asked.

I could see she needed the truth. “Bad? No. I think it falls under the heading of ‘really good’.” I pulled her closer. “But hey, I come from a long line of Latin lovers, so how could it be bad?”

“Pretty sure of yourself, aren’t you, Rodriguez?”

“Oh, yeah, that’s me.”

“Well, you did okay,” she said, and curled into my side. “So, Latin lovers…” She stopped and her mood turned serious. “Earlier, when I asked about your father-”

I felt my muscles tense again.

“Talking about it can help, you know. Didn’t anyone ever tell you that?”

“A shrink or two.”

Terri ran her fingers along my arm. “I don’t want to push, but I swear I’m a good listener.”

I shrugged.

“Don’t you trust me?”

“Sure, but…” I took a deep breath, thought about the picture I’d been carrying around of myself for a very long time. It was a cartoon of a guilty little boy looking for his dad.

Terri touched my cheek. “You okay?”

“Sure,” I said, but the movie had already started to play, with all the attendant feelings I could never sort out: sorrow, guilt, grief, anger. The shrinks hadn’t helped, but maybe I hadn’t given them a chance because I didn’t want to admit all the things I’d worked so hard to bury.

“Hey, Rodriguez, talk to me, okay?”

I looked into Terri’s face, compassion in her eyes, a bit of sadness in the furrowed brow and slightly down-turned mouth, and that, coupled with our lovemaking, was enough to loosen me up, so I told her.

I didn’t go into details, but enough so she would understand.

After I finished she questioned my guilt, but I thought she was trying to make me feel better and said so.

“No,” she said. “I’m just being a detective. I like to know all the facts. How can you really know?”

“I know it in here,” I said, and tapped my heart. I swallowed a few times and blinked because my eyes were burning, and turned the subject around. “So, what about you?”

“What about me?”

“What happened with you and the feds, before this case, I mean?”

“Oh, that.” She sighed, and hesitated. “I ignored a tip line they’d set up. The NYPD was logging calls for them, which was my job. I’d logged in like a thousand, but how was I supposed to know which call out of that thousand was on the level? I didn’t assign anyone to check it out, so it became my fuck-up. And maybe it was, but we didn’t have the manpower.” She sighed again, and I wrapped my arm around her. “I got six months suspension along with six months of mandatory therapy. Like neglecting a tip line means I should be on a couch with Dr. Freud?”

“So how was he?”

“Who?”

“Freud.”

“Better than you.” Terri laughed and hit me.

“Do you always hit?”

“Only when necessary,” she said. “According to the NYPD shrink, everything I’ve been doing in my life, from becoming a cop to ignoring the tip line, is all due to my selfish son-of-a-bitch father. Apparently I was trying to get his attention.” She gave me a look. “Guess we both have father issues.”

Then she told me what it was like growing up on Staten Island, the daughter of Old World Italian Americans who thought she should marry and live next door with her Italian husband, three and a half kids, aluminum sided house, and aboveground pool.

“I figured since I didn’t like aluminum siding I’d skip the whole thing.” She laid her head on my chest. “I can feel your heart beating, Rodriguez. Good to know you have one.”

“It’s a loaner,” I said.

“So you consider yourself Catholic or Jewish?”

“Both. Neither. My mother’s parents were Polish Jews who decided the Lower East Side was a lot better than Eastern Europe’s pogroms. My father’s parents exchanged Puerto Rico’s Mayaguez for Manhattan’s El Barrio. I tried Judaism on for about a minute, went to temple a couple of times, put the yarmulke on and all, but it wasn’t for me. Same thing with the church, all those smells and bells. I guess my religion is New York.”