Fanfic: A Narrow Place 1/1, for tzuzuku
Title: A Narrow Place (1/1) (for tzuzuku
Author: Dien
Characters: Fusco, Carter, brief Reese
Rating: PG-13 for language, maybe?
Warnings: Snack cakes.
Word count: ~4200
Summary: Set a day or so after the finale, Carter and Fusco are stuck with one of Reese's numbers. Genfic/buddyfic.
Prompt given: "This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
Carter and Fusco, both having to pull out all the stops, and both using their respective talents in order to solve a case. Bonus points if you can weave Reese' and Finch's operation in as a sideline.
I hope you like, tzuzuku!
-----------
Things returned to normal, except they didn't. Couldn't, really.
Carter felt Fusco's eyes on her in the precinct in the days after the hotel operation. It had always set her on edge before-- what was he watching her for, where were his loyalties, were the rumors of his corruption true?-- and now she only glanced up in her own turn and offered him the smallest of smiles.
Felt like being a damn kid again and having a secret with your best friend. Not that they were that.
But it was nice knowing they were on the same side.
This side was not necessarily 'the side of John Reese', but could, perhaps, be called 'the side of bitching about John Reese'.
They got coffee, the first time they each had a breathing space from reports. Fusco gave her a jerk of his chin, a glance at the door; Carter nodded and slid from her desk, more than happy to get out of the precinct.
"I covered your ass in the report I had to fill out for the FBI, I hope you did mine," Fusco said as soon as they were out the door.
"Couldn't cover your ass if I had an umbrella, Fusco," she answered, and Fusco gave her a look, and she smiled and said, "Yeah, I got you. Partners."
Partners.
Long time since she'd had one of those.
Anyway, they got coffee. Without either of them needing to say it they picked a spot in the corner, view of the rest of the place but leaving them sheltered. Carter sat down with a mocha and watched Fusco dump Sweet 'N' Low into his cup.
"That stuff'll kill you," she offered, dry, and he glanced up and caught her smirk and returned it as he stirred.
"If helping you-know-who out doesn't do it first."
They both sipped their coffee. Tasted like... coffee, which was a taste you learned to just tune out after your first twenty stakeouts. Carter didn't even like coffee anymore, but by this point it was habit as much as the gun in the pancake holster on her ribs.
They put their cups down in more or less the same second. Carter toyed with the paper rim of her cup with one fingernail. Fusco rolled his head side to side on his bulldog neck, grunted, leaned back into the pleather of the booth.
He beat her to saying it. "Fuck him, anyway."
The bluntness of the words-- very Fusco-- and how closely they matched her internal dialogue made her snort out a laugh and raise her cup in a wry toast.
"I'll let you have that honor. But I'm down with the sentiment. Jesus. How long has he had you doing things for him?"
Fusco thought about it, running his fingers through his curly hair. "Eight months now? Somethin' like that. You?"
She let the cup go and raised her hands to scrub at her face. She was tired. They both were. The benefit to being someone like John was after he pulled off shit like the escape from the hotel he could just go back to being a ghost, a face in the crowd, could disappear to whatever he did when he wasn't making her life hell.
She and Lionel, however, had to do paperwork.
Death by triplicate forms. The Feds wanted their bit-- they'd spent a lot of money and manpower on a mission and had nothing to show for it, and damned if they weren't trying to scramble to figure out what had gone wrong, and pin the blame on NYPD if at all possible. She would have more sympathy for Donnelly's position if she and Fusco hadn't each had to spend hours accounting for why they'd been nowhere to be found in the heat of the moment. So far, corroborating each others' stories seemed to be satisfying those in charge, but Jesus.
Blowing up the bad guys and just walking away was a lot easier.
She dragged her attention back to Fusco, who was giving her a crooked smirk like he knew what she was thinking. Back to the question.
"Since January, more or less. With some... hiccups... on the way."
"I bet he asked you nicer than he did me."
"You think?"
"Given I'm pretty sure he didn't empty a clip into your vest? Yeah."
Carter couldn't help another laugh, and put her elbows on the diner table, her face into her hands to rub at her eyesockets. Everything was acquiring the surrealism of too many hours awake, too much work to do after the adrenaline was long gone. She wanted to go home, for more than the three-minute stretch it took to grab clean clothes from home. She wanted to spend some time with her son and her mother.
She wanted to go back to being a regular cop.
But she knew the cost of that, already. You couldn't turn your back on the knowledge they had. The chance to help. At least she couldn't. And it seemed Fusco couldn't either.
"Hell of a war we're in," she said, and Fusco nodded.
"What do we do now?" he asked, and Carter shrugged. She leaned back into the seat, like he did on his side, and fiddled with her coffee cup once more.
"Wait for them to call us, I guess."
****
They wound up waiting several days.
Then Carter's phone beeped, CALLER ID BLOCKED. She shot a look around for Fusco and saw he was already heading for the hall to the restrooms. She caught up with him in the parking garage. Fusco threw wary looks around, then gave her a small thumbs up. Coast clear.
It was a little disconcerting, she thought, how easily she could see herself slipping into the habit of trusting Fusco.
"I'm here. What's up?" she said into the phone, leaning against an empty patrol car.
She expected the voice of the man she still knew only as Finch, but it was John instead, soft, like always. A touch of strain to his words maybe.
"Is Fusco with you?"
"We're both here."
"Then I've got a name for you. Mahmoud Wasem. SSN 314-508-9800. Lives in Queens."
Carter angled the phone so Fusco could hear, thumbing the volume up to maximum. They probably looked ridiculous, hunched over it together.
"What's his situation?"
"I don't know. You two figure it out."
...okay, she definitely hadn't been imagining the initial note of strain. She and Fusco exchanged glances. Fusco spoke first.
"Nice to hear from you too, sunshine. You're welcome for saving your ass. What, that's really all you're giving us? Just tossing us the whole job now?"
"I'm busy." There was a burst of static, then Reese's voice cut back in. "--ikely to be in trouble as he is to be causing it. Figure out which it is, and do something about it, like good detectives."
"I hear if you say 'please' it gets you places--"
She cut Fusco off with a wave of her hand. "Okay, okay. Boys. Is that all you've got for us to go on, John? Just name and number?"
"You've got the resources of New York's finest at your disposal. I'm sure you can handle it."
Carter exhaled and traded another peeved look with Fusco. She opened her mouth to point out that you usually had to explain what you were using those resources for, but Fusco beat her to the punch again.
"What, your buddy Einstein can't even give us a home address as a good faith gesture?"
There was a long pause. For a second she thought the call had been dropped, but then she heard Reese take a breath.
"No. Have fun, Lionel. Carter. Let me know how it goes. Someone's life is depending on you."
The line went dead. Carter exhaled and lowered the phone to her side. She looked at Fusco. He looked at her.
"….I guess we're going to Queens," Fusco said, and Carter muttered a curse and kicked at the tire of the patrol car.
"Yeah, I guess we are. Dammit. Not like we have cases of our own to work, or anything, right?"
****
Mahmoud Wasem turned out to be the owner of a 7-11, and a devout Muslim who'd been in the States ten years after emigrating from Syria.
Carter jostled the phone on her shoulder as she flipped through a stack of papers in the 106th Precinct, under the not-entirely-welcoming glare of a sergeant who had given her access but didn't seem too pleased to have a detective from another part of the city up in his files.
"Okay, we've got... four counts of his calling 911 because of harassment, Fusco, over the last six months. Rock thrown in his window, racist graffiti from local punks, that sort of thing. Looks like he hasn't called in two months, though. ….and we've got-- oooh-- fingerprints on file as well as a gun license. Applied for... two months ago, look at that."
Fusco grunted in her ear. "Ain't that timing. So whaddaya think, he got tired of trying to call the cops and he's gonna engage in a little really-American-style justice?"
"It's a theory," Carter said neutrally. As a theory, she liked it, but wasn't going to commit to it yet. "What are you seeing?"
"That he's having a sale on Marlboro Reds and RockStar drinks. Barred windows. Big ol' flag in the window, red-white-and-black."
"That'd be Syria. Where's he from."
"Whatever you say, miss International Relations."
"How do you do this job in the most ethnically diverse city on earth and not learn things like the Syrian flag, Fusco?"
"How do you this job and not care about who has the best hot dogs in Manhattan?"
The sergeant was looking at her. She lowered her voice a little. "What? I never said I didn't care."
"I asked you two weeks ago if you wanted a dog from Gray's or Nathan's and you were all, Fusco, I don't care, get fucked."
Carter pulled the phone away from her ear enough to make a face at it. She dropped her voice to a hiss. "...I did not tell you to get fucked, and why are we having this conversation?"
"You said it with your eyebrows. Hot dogs matter. He's selling kebabs, I wonder if they're any good."
"...can we focus on this case, and not the fact that you're apparently hungry."
"I'm practicing my skills of observation, Carter. You know what else I'm observing?"
She made a mental note to smack Lionel Fusco upside the head. "What?"
"Some skinhead kids incoming. You better get back here."
Carter swore. She thrust the papers back towards the desk sergeant and headed for the door.
----------
When she got to the shop-and-rob, Fusco's car was outside but he was nowhere in sight. The kids he'd mentioned were leaning against the outer wall, a group of lanky teenagers, maybe a few twenty-somethings, in skinny jeans and shitkicker boots and a few leather jackets. All were white; most had their hair cropped close to the skull or shaved entirely
She scanned for tattoos. An eagle on the side of one neck. Twinned lightning bolts on the hand of another, at which she gritted her teeth, knowing what the tally marks signified. Top half of the clover that marked an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo. No swastikas she could see but she would have bet a twenty that they were there.
She felt her skin itching, and felt their eyes on her as she entered the store. Jingle jingle.
Carter slipped through the shelves, subconsciously checking with a nudge of her arm that her duty piece was still in its holster beneath her jacket. She had her badge tucked away out of sight; the kids outside didn't know she was a cop, or carrying.
Fusco was browsing the store's selection of Hostess snack cakes. The man at the counter had to be Wasem. She gave him a smile and a nod that he didn't seem to see; his attentions were fixed on a CCTV screen next to his cash register.
She slipped over to Fusco, who gave her a grunt. She noticed that he too had his badge out of sight. "Ding Dongs or Twinkies, Carter?"
"Fusco, are you trying to be a stereotype? Focus. There's five of them outside. I saw what was probably a switchblade in one pocket. Violation of Article 265 right there, we've got probable."
Fusco didn't answer right away. He looked at her sideways, and she couldn't read whatever he was thinking. Not that she wanted to know, if it was about Twinkies.
"Yeah, okay," Fusco said after a few seconds, pitching his voice quietly to match hers. "So we maybe bust 'em for a knife if we're lucky. Misdemeanor for one of them. You think it's gonna fix this?"
She gave him a sour look in return; she was all too aware it wouldn't. "It lets them know the cops know they're a problem. It's a start."
Fusco picked up two packages of Zingers, and half-turned to her. "His friends come back pissed off, he draws the shotgun he's got under the counter, then what, Carter? Doesn't end well for anybody."
Okay, maybe he hadn't just been sizing up the junk food. She opened her mouth to ask how he knew there was a shotgun, but Fusco was already headed to the counter to pay.
Carter took a breath, peering over the neon orange bags of chips and Cheetohs to look through the bars on the glass door and study the kids. Yeah, you couldn't judge by appearances, or by a little ink, but every instinct she had told her trouble, trouble, trouble.
They weren't going anywhere. They would just wait for her and Fusco to leave.
She looked over to her partner and to Wasem. Wasem seemed nervous; he kept flicking glances at his little black-and-white TV screen. She couldn't see the screen from here, but she'd bet that it showed the outside and the little pack of would-be punks.
They both knew the problem with situations like this. Cops couldn't sit on Mr. Wasem's doorstep 24/7. Just didn't work that way.
Fusco was talking. About the weather, of all things. She could get info from somebody when the case required it, but Carter'd never had patience for screwing around with small talk, especially not when on the clock. She exhaled, trying to shake the tension that was building in her shoulders.
She didn't want to walk back past the five young men outside whose gaze would focus on her. She didn't want her back to them. That wasn't a cop thing, or a soldier thing, it came from a deeper gut place where the knowledge that their cold eyes were taking in her body made her skin crawl, and it was something that Fusco, that John, that every male partner or ally she'd ever had would never understand.
She wouldn't let the looks stop her-- she never had-- but she still felt the itch of fear, which made her angry.
Fusco was still talking. Carter pretended to care about the tin of cheese dip on the shelf in front of her face.
The problem was two-fold: the kids outside, the culture of hate that motivated them-- and Wasem himself. Of course he had the right to defend himself, and the right to own a gun-- gone through all the legal hoops for it, too-- but Carter didn't want to pull off an arrest here only to see Wasem in the news a week later for a shooting, however much it might be in self-defense.
People weren't supposed to have to have guns in their shops to protect themselves. Not on her watch, goddammit.
Okay, technically Queens wasn't her watch, but John and his mysterious friend had made it her watch today.
Fusco left Wasem at the counter and came back over to her. He offered her a Zinger from the now-opened package; she gave him an eloquent Look.
"See, this is what I'm talking about," Fusco said with his mouth half-full. "You could just say no thanks."
He was back on food again?? "Save it," she muttered. "Man, I want to go kick their asses."
Fusco shrugged and brushed yellow cake crumbs from his shirtfront with one hand. "I ain't stopping you."
Carter huffed under her breath. "Well, we're going to have to do something. Like you said, leaving Wasem here with a gun and the perception the cops aren't gonna come help him the next time something happens... recipe for a bad headline down the road." She sighed. "Maybe I can talk to him-- give him my number, let him know to call me something comes up."
"Yeah?" Fusco asked, giving her a brow arch. "So what, you're gonna be on call for a guy out in Queens every time he has some wannabe Neo-Nazis in his space? You know you can't promise that, Carter. We got shit to do back in Manhattan."
She fell silent. Her eyes slid from Fusco's broad, cynical face to Wasem, then out to the scratched glass between them and the sunny parking lot, the bars separating them from the kids outside.
She remembered Yusuf. That sonuvabitch sergeant Harris. Accidents happen.
Couldn't save everyone. Couldn't promise everything. It was a lesson the world kept teaching her and one she stubbornly kept challenging, one-on-one throwdown with the universe because Joss had never been good at taking her licks and shutting up like she was supposed to.
This was getting nowhere. Carter sighed, rubbed at her temples with her fingers. Fusco was wiping out the second Zinger.
"...John would make this look easy," she muttered with a little head-shake. "He'd just go out there and beat the hell out of all of them and tell them he'd kill them if they came back."
Fusco gave a wry snort and a nod. "Sucks having a fucking badge, doesn't it?"
"Some days, yeah. Some days. Alright, how about this, we give the kids a warning to clear off, throw our weight around a little, and we talk to Wasem and give him the number of someone in Queens-- you know any guys on the force there?"
Fusco shrugged. "Brooklyn's where all my boys are. Here? Nah. But it's getting him to believe this that's gonna be the hard thing, you know?"
"Yeah," Carter murmured with a sigh. "I know. This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and--"
The door opened, the bell jingled. The punks came on in, all swagger. Well shit, maybe they'd gotten tired of waiting for her and Fusco to leave.
Wasem was sweating, but she watched his hands drop down behind the counter, watched him clench his jaw with the resolve of a man determined to make his stand.
Despite herself, Carter smiled. She got ready to go for her gun when it became necessary, and saw Fusco shifting his weight to do the same.
"--and extreme violence."
***
For as long as they'd spent on it, the actual shit went down pretty quick. It usually did.
Wasem had said a thickly-accented, Please leave; the kids had responded by pulling down a display rack of chips and spilling them over the floor. The racial slurs had started coming, sneers plastered on blue-eyed faces, towelhead, camel jockey...
One of them had looked at her while his friends had started their shit. She saw it on his face. It'd be nigger bitch or something that meant the same thing, a sneer for her to get the hell out unless she wanted to be next.
She was going to enjoy this a little more than she should, she thought.
One of the kids had drawn that switchblade. Wasem had gone for his shotgun, all sweat and shaking fingers, but she and Fusco had both their guns out in the same second.
She got to break the knife-wielder's wrist when he wouldn't drop the blade. It was justified by the rules. It still felt good.
When it was done, a bunch of gunshots later (only two people had actually gotten hit, but there were a lot of broken bottles and ceiling lights) and Fusco was calling it in to the 106th, Carter leaned on the counter. Wasem looked ready to throw up.
"You're going to have to give the police a statement, sir."
"Oh no. Oh no. I will go to prison."
"Mr. Wasem-- no. You won't. You weren't doing anything wrong. In this country you have the right to defend yourself. And Detective Fusco and I will testify to that."
He didn't look convinced; he put his head in his hands and muttered miserable words in Arabic, which she'd managed to get at least conversational in during her time in the Middle East.
Their official story had to be they'd merely stopped for a snack run and been in the right place at the right time-- because they were well out of their jurisdiction here-- but she had to give this man a little more than an official story.
"Mr. Wasem," she said quietly, "we knew you were having problems. We weren't here just by luck. You're being watched out for. Understand?"
His gaze snapped up to her, wide-eyed. The same desperate hope she'd seen in Yusuf's eyes... she put it out of her head.
"You cannot mean this."
"I do." She smiled at him. "It's going to be alright, Mr. Wasem."
"I... I was sure the police did not care..."
"I'm police. I care." Carter took a breath. "There's a saying I've heard before. Maybe you know it."
In her somewhat-broken Arabic, she said, "A narrow place can contain a thousand friends."
She was pretty sure she'd mangled the pronunciation, but his eyes widened to hear his native tongue, and he reached across the counter-- across the Lotto ticket displays, past the cheap Bic lighters and the car air fresheners-- to grip her hand, tightly, and whisper thank you, thank you in English and Arabic both.
***
"What'd you say to him?"
"Subtle psychology shit."
Fusco snorted. "Yeah. Right. Come on, throw me a bone."
Carter shrugged as she sat down on the curb. All five of the kids were lined up on the sidewalk next to them, sullenly silent now. They'd only had the two pairs of handcuffs between them, but it was amazing what you could find in a 7-11 to tie somebody up. Wasem's bike chain. A roll of duct tape.
"It's Arabic. A narrow place can contain a thousand friends."
"You speak Arabic."
"Learned in the Army."
Fusco gave her a little headshake, a snort, and sat down with a whuff on the curb next to her. "You got a way of making a humble Brooklyn boy feel real inadequate sometimes, you know that?"
"Not my intent."
They sat in silence a little bit. They were waiting for the cops, and the paramedics. The statements weren't going to be fun, but they'd fabricated a lead they were supposedly chasing out here in Queens, to justify their presence.
"You know," Fusco said, "it applies to you too."
"Sorry?"
"The friends crapola. It applies to you too. You got friends, Carter."
She frowned, crossed her arms on her knees, looked out over the parking lot. Her mind replayed every dirty look from a fellow cop or an Army SOB, over the years; every word uttered just before she was quite out of the room.
"Not so much, Fusco."
"You got me."
Carter gave him a sideeye. Fusco was giving her a little smile, a shrug. She smiled a little in answer despite herself.
"Guess I do. God help me."
Fusco barked a laugh. He reached into his jacket and pulled out-- oh Jesus-- the second pack of Zingers, a little squished by this point. Carter groaned as he opened the packet and offered her one.
"Fusco, those things are disgusting. Jesus, no."
"You're gonna eat one."
"Why the hell am I gonna do that?"
" 'Cuz we're friends. Cuz we're partners. Cuz I got your back but I don't got any bread or salt."
"...What?"
"Don't give me that fucking look. You know. You break bread together. It's how people show they're not, you know, gonna fuck each other over. It's a thing. You're miss-international-relations-and-speaks-Arabic. You should know."
She stared.
Fusco kept holding out the package, jiggling it a little.
Carter exhaled. Not quite a laugh. Being lectured by Lionel Fusco on the rules of hospitality and courtesy as they pertained to food had not been on her plans for today. She took a Zinger, fished it out from the package, sticky cake on her fingers. She didn't let this crap in the house, Taylor needed healthy food, but...
It tasted good.
"Fuck John Reese, huh?" said Fusco as he stuffed the other snack cake into his mouth.
Carter nodded, licking the sickly-sweet frosting off her fingers, listening to the sirens getting closer.
"Fuck John Reese," she agreed, and it was shorthand between them both for emotions regarding John that were a hell of a lot more complex than that.
Joss Carter sat with her partner. She ate a snack cake. It sat in her belly alongside the knowledge that they'd done good today. Tomorrow was its own thing, with its own problems, and you couldn't save everyone and you couldn't promise everything, but...
...you didn't have to do it alone, either.
---------
Author: Dien
Characters: Fusco, Carter, brief Reese
Rating: PG-13 for language, maybe?
Warnings: Snack cakes.
Word count: ~4200
Summary: Set a day or so after the finale, Carter and Fusco are stuck with one of Reese's numbers. Genfic/buddyfic.
Prompt given: "This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and extreme violence."
Carter and Fusco, both having to pull out all the stops, and both using their respective talents in order to solve a case. Bonus points if you can weave Reese' and Finch's operation in as a sideline.
I hope you like, tzuzuku!
-----------
Things returned to normal, except they didn't. Couldn't, really.
Carter felt Fusco's eyes on her in the precinct in the days after the hotel operation. It had always set her on edge before-- what was he watching her for, where were his loyalties, were the rumors of his corruption true?-- and now she only glanced up in her own turn and offered him the smallest of smiles.
Felt like being a damn kid again and having a secret with your best friend. Not that they were that.
But it was nice knowing they were on the same side.
This side was not necessarily 'the side of John Reese', but could, perhaps, be called 'the side of bitching about John Reese'.
They got coffee, the first time they each had a breathing space from reports. Fusco gave her a jerk of his chin, a glance at the door; Carter nodded and slid from her desk, more than happy to get out of the precinct.
"I covered your ass in the report I had to fill out for the FBI, I hope you did mine," Fusco said as soon as they were out the door.
"Couldn't cover your ass if I had an umbrella, Fusco," she answered, and Fusco gave her a look, and she smiled and said, "Yeah, I got you. Partners."
Partners.
Long time since she'd had one of those.
Anyway, they got coffee. Without either of them needing to say it they picked a spot in the corner, view of the rest of the place but leaving them sheltered. Carter sat down with a mocha and watched Fusco dump Sweet 'N' Low into his cup.
"That stuff'll kill you," she offered, dry, and he glanced up and caught her smirk and returned it as he stirred.
"If helping you-know-who out doesn't do it first."
They both sipped their coffee. Tasted like... coffee, which was a taste you learned to just tune out after your first twenty stakeouts. Carter didn't even like coffee anymore, but by this point it was habit as much as the gun in the pancake holster on her ribs.
They put their cups down in more or less the same second. Carter toyed with the paper rim of her cup with one fingernail. Fusco rolled his head side to side on his bulldog neck, grunted, leaned back into the pleather of the booth.
He beat her to saying it. "Fuck him, anyway."
The bluntness of the words-- very Fusco-- and how closely they matched her internal dialogue made her snort out a laugh and raise her cup in a wry toast.
"I'll let you have that honor. But I'm down with the sentiment. Jesus. How long has he had you doing things for him?"
Fusco thought about it, running his fingers through his curly hair. "Eight months now? Somethin' like that. You?"
She let the cup go and raised her hands to scrub at her face. She was tired. They both were. The benefit to being someone like John was after he pulled off shit like the escape from the hotel he could just go back to being a ghost, a face in the crowd, could disappear to whatever he did when he wasn't making her life hell.
She and Lionel, however, had to do paperwork.
Death by triplicate forms. The Feds wanted their bit-- they'd spent a lot of money and manpower on a mission and had nothing to show for it, and damned if they weren't trying to scramble to figure out what had gone wrong, and pin the blame on NYPD if at all possible. She would have more sympathy for Donnelly's position if she and Fusco hadn't each had to spend hours accounting for why they'd been nowhere to be found in the heat of the moment. So far, corroborating each others' stories seemed to be satisfying those in charge, but Jesus.
Blowing up the bad guys and just walking away was a lot easier.
She dragged her attention back to Fusco, who was giving her a crooked smirk like he knew what she was thinking. Back to the question.
"Since January, more or less. With some... hiccups... on the way."
"I bet he asked you nicer than he did me."
"You think?"
"Given I'm pretty sure he didn't empty a clip into your vest? Yeah."
Carter couldn't help another laugh, and put her elbows on the diner table, her face into her hands to rub at her eyesockets. Everything was acquiring the surrealism of too many hours awake, too much work to do after the adrenaline was long gone. She wanted to go home, for more than the three-minute stretch it took to grab clean clothes from home. She wanted to spend some time with her son and her mother.
She wanted to go back to being a regular cop.
But she knew the cost of that, already. You couldn't turn your back on the knowledge they had. The chance to help. At least she couldn't. And it seemed Fusco couldn't either.
"Hell of a war we're in," she said, and Fusco nodded.
"What do we do now?" he asked, and Carter shrugged. She leaned back into the seat, like he did on his side, and fiddled with her coffee cup once more.
"Wait for them to call us, I guess."
****
They wound up waiting several days.
Then Carter's phone beeped, CALLER ID BLOCKED. She shot a look around for Fusco and saw he was already heading for the hall to the restrooms. She caught up with him in the parking garage. Fusco threw wary looks around, then gave her a small thumbs up. Coast clear.
It was a little disconcerting, she thought, how easily she could see herself slipping into the habit of trusting Fusco.
"I'm here. What's up?" she said into the phone, leaning against an empty patrol car.
She expected the voice of the man she still knew only as Finch, but it was John instead, soft, like always. A touch of strain to his words maybe.
"Is Fusco with you?"
"We're both here."
"Then I've got a name for you. Mahmoud Wasem. SSN 314-508-9800. Lives in Queens."
Carter angled the phone so Fusco could hear, thumbing the volume up to maximum. They probably looked ridiculous, hunched over it together.
"What's his situation?"
"I don't know. You two figure it out."
...okay, she definitely hadn't been imagining the initial note of strain. She and Fusco exchanged glances. Fusco spoke first.
"Nice to hear from you too, sunshine. You're welcome for saving your ass. What, that's really all you're giving us? Just tossing us the whole job now?"
"I'm busy." There was a burst of static, then Reese's voice cut back in. "--ikely to be in trouble as he is to be causing it. Figure out which it is, and do something about it, like good detectives."
"I hear if you say 'please' it gets you places--"
She cut Fusco off with a wave of her hand. "Okay, okay. Boys. Is that all you've got for us to go on, John? Just name and number?"
"You've got the resources of New York's finest at your disposal. I'm sure you can handle it."
Carter exhaled and traded another peeved look with Fusco. She opened her mouth to point out that you usually had to explain what you were using those resources for, but Fusco beat her to the punch again.
"What, your buddy Einstein can't even give us a home address as a good faith gesture?"
There was a long pause. For a second she thought the call had been dropped, but then she heard Reese take a breath.
"No. Have fun, Lionel. Carter. Let me know how it goes. Someone's life is depending on you."
The line went dead. Carter exhaled and lowered the phone to her side. She looked at Fusco. He looked at her.
"….I guess we're going to Queens," Fusco said, and Carter muttered a curse and kicked at the tire of the patrol car.
"Yeah, I guess we are. Dammit. Not like we have cases of our own to work, or anything, right?"
****
Mahmoud Wasem turned out to be the owner of a 7-11, and a devout Muslim who'd been in the States ten years after emigrating from Syria.
Carter jostled the phone on her shoulder as she flipped through a stack of papers in the 106th Precinct, under the not-entirely-welcoming glare of a sergeant who had given her access but didn't seem too pleased to have a detective from another part of the city up in his files.
"Okay, we've got... four counts of his calling 911 because of harassment, Fusco, over the last six months. Rock thrown in his window, racist graffiti from local punks, that sort of thing. Looks like he hasn't called in two months, though. ….and we've got-- oooh-- fingerprints on file as well as a gun license. Applied for... two months ago, look at that."
Fusco grunted in her ear. "Ain't that timing. So whaddaya think, he got tired of trying to call the cops and he's gonna engage in a little really-American-style justice?"
"It's a theory," Carter said neutrally. As a theory, she liked it, but wasn't going to commit to it yet. "What are you seeing?"
"That he's having a sale on Marlboro Reds and RockStar drinks. Barred windows. Big ol' flag in the window, red-white-and-black."
"That'd be Syria. Where's he from."
"Whatever you say, miss International Relations."
"How do you do this job in the most ethnically diverse city on earth and not learn things like the Syrian flag, Fusco?"
"How do you this job and not care about who has the best hot dogs in Manhattan?"
The sergeant was looking at her. She lowered her voice a little. "What? I never said I didn't care."
"I asked you two weeks ago if you wanted a dog from Gray's or Nathan's and you were all, Fusco, I don't care, get fucked."
Carter pulled the phone away from her ear enough to make a face at it. She dropped her voice to a hiss. "...I did not tell you to get fucked, and why are we having this conversation?"
"You said it with your eyebrows. Hot dogs matter. He's selling kebabs, I wonder if they're any good."
"...can we focus on this case, and not the fact that you're apparently hungry."
"I'm practicing my skills of observation, Carter. You know what else I'm observing?"
She made a mental note to smack Lionel Fusco upside the head. "What?"
"Some skinhead kids incoming. You better get back here."
Carter swore. She thrust the papers back towards the desk sergeant and headed for the door.
----------
When she got to the shop-and-rob, Fusco's car was outside but he was nowhere in sight. The kids he'd mentioned were leaning against the outer wall, a group of lanky teenagers, maybe a few twenty-somethings, in skinny jeans and shitkicker boots and a few leather jackets. All were white; most had their hair cropped close to the skull or shaved entirely
She scanned for tattoos. An eagle on the side of one neck. Twinned lightning bolts on the hand of another, at which she gritted her teeth, knowing what the tally marks signified. Top half of the clover that marked an Aryan Brotherhood tattoo. No swastikas she could see but she would have bet a twenty that they were there.
She felt her skin itching, and felt their eyes on her as she entered the store. Jingle jingle.
Carter slipped through the shelves, subconsciously checking with a nudge of her arm that her duty piece was still in its holster beneath her jacket. She had her badge tucked away out of sight; the kids outside didn't know she was a cop, or carrying.
Fusco was browsing the store's selection of Hostess snack cakes. The man at the counter had to be Wasem. She gave him a smile and a nod that he didn't seem to see; his attentions were fixed on a CCTV screen next to his cash register.
She slipped over to Fusco, who gave her a grunt. She noticed that he too had his badge out of sight. "Ding Dongs or Twinkies, Carter?"
"Fusco, are you trying to be a stereotype? Focus. There's five of them outside. I saw what was probably a switchblade in one pocket. Violation of Article 265 right there, we've got probable."
Fusco didn't answer right away. He looked at her sideways, and she couldn't read whatever he was thinking. Not that she wanted to know, if it was about Twinkies.
"Yeah, okay," Fusco said after a few seconds, pitching his voice quietly to match hers. "So we maybe bust 'em for a knife if we're lucky. Misdemeanor for one of them. You think it's gonna fix this?"
She gave him a sour look in return; she was all too aware it wouldn't. "It lets them know the cops know they're a problem. It's a start."
Fusco picked up two packages of Zingers, and half-turned to her. "His friends come back pissed off, he draws the shotgun he's got under the counter, then what, Carter? Doesn't end well for anybody."
Okay, maybe he hadn't just been sizing up the junk food. She opened her mouth to ask how he knew there was a shotgun, but Fusco was already headed to the counter to pay.
Carter took a breath, peering over the neon orange bags of chips and Cheetohs to look through the bars on the glass door and study the kids. Yeah, you couldn't judge by appearances, or by a little ink, but every instinct she had told her trouble, trouble, trouble.
They weren't going anywhere. They would just wait for her and Fusco to leave.
She looked over to her partner and to Wasem. Wasem seemed nervous; he kept flicking glances at his little black-and-white TV screen. She couldn't see the screen from here, but she'd bet that it showed the outside and the little pack of would-be punks.
They both knew the problem with situations like this. Cops couldn't sit on Mr. Wasem's doorstep 24/7. Just didn't work that way.
Fusco was talking. About the weather, of all things. She could get info from somebody when the case required it, but Carter'd never had patience for screwing around with small talk, especially not when on the clock. She exhaled, trying to shake the tension that was building in her shoulders.
She didn't want to walk back past the five young men outside whose gaze would focus on her. She didn't want her back to them. That wasn't a cop thing, or a soldier thing, it came from a deeper gut place where the knowledge that their cold eyes were taking in her body made her skin crawl, and it was something that Fusco, that John, that every male partner or ally she'd ever had would never understand.
She wouldn't let the looks stop her-- she never had-- but she still felt the itch of fear, which made her angry.
Fusco was still talking. Carter pretended to care about the tin of cheese dip on the shelf in front of her face.
The problem was two-fold: the kids outside, the culture of hate that motivated them-- and Wasem himself. Of course he had the right to defend himself, and the right to own a gun-- gone through all the legal hoops for it, too-- but Carter didn't want to pull off an arrest here only to see Wasem in the news a week later for a shooting, however much it might be in self-defense.
People weren't supposed to have to have guns in their shops to protect themselves. Not on her watch, goddammit.
Okay, technically Queens wasn't her watch, but John and his mysterious friend had made it her watch today.
Fusco left Wasem at the counter and came back over to her. He offered her a Zinger from the now-opened package; she gave him an eloquent Look.
"See, this is what I'm talking about," Fusco said with his mouth half-full. "You could just say no thanks."
He was back on food again?? "Save it," she muttered. "Man, I want to go kick their asses."
Fusco shrugged and brushed yellow cake crumbs from his shirtfront with one hand. "I ain't stopping you."
Carter huffed under her breath. "Well, we're going to have to do something. Like you said, leaving Wasem here with a gun and the perception the cops aren't gonna come help him the next time something happens... recipe for a bad headline down the road." She sighed. "Maybe I can talk to him-- give him my number, let him know to call me something comes up."
"Yeah?" Fusco asked, giving her a brow arch. "So what, you're gonna be on call for a guy out in Queens every time he has some wannabe Neo-Nazis in his space? You know you can't promise that, Carter. We got shit to do back in Manhattan."
She fell silent. Her eyes slid from Fusco's broad, cynical face to Wasem, then out to the scratched glass between them and the sunny parking lot, the bars separating them from the kids outside.
She remembered Yusuf. That sonuvabitch sergeant Harris. Accidents happen.
Couldn't save everyone. Couldn't promise everything. It was a lesson the world kept teaching her and one she stubbornly kept challenging, one-on-one throwdown with the universe because Joss had never been good at taking her licks and shutting up like she was supposed to.
This was getting nowhere. Carter sighed, rubbed at her temples with her fingers. Fusco was wiping out the second Zinger.
"...John would make this look easy," she muttered with a little head-shake. "He'd just go out there and beat the hell out of all of them and tell them he'd kill them if they came back."
Fusco gave a wry snort and a nod. "Sucks having a fucking badge, doesn't it?"
"Some days, yeah. Some days. Alright, how about this, we give the kids a warning to clear off, throw our weight around a little, and we talk to Wasem and give him the number of someone in Queens-- you know any guys on the force there?"
Fusco shrugged. "Brooklyn's where all my boys are. Here? Nah. But it's getting him to believe this that's gonna be the hard thing, you know?"
"Yeah," Carter murmured with a sigh. "I know. This calls for a particularly subtle blend of psychology and--"
The door opened, the bell jingled. The punks came on in, all swagger. Well shit, maybe they'd gotten tired of waiting for her and Fusco to leave.
Wasem was sweating, but she watched his hands drop down behind the counter, watched him clench his jaw with the resolve of a man determined to make his stand.
Despite herself, Carter smiled. She got ready to go for her gun when it became necessary, and saw Fusco shifting his weight to do the same.
"--and extreme violence."
***
For as long as they'd spent on it, the actual shit went down pretty quick. It usually did.
Wasem had said a thickly-accented, Please leave; the kids had responded by pulling down a display rack of chips and spilling them over the floor. The racial slurs had started coming, sneers plastered on blue-eyed faces, towelhead, camel jockey...
One of them had looked at her while his friends had started their shit. She saw it on his face. It'd be nigger bitch or something that meant the same thing, a sneer for her to get the hell out unless she wanted to be next.
She was going to enjoy this a little more than she should, she thought.
One of the kids had drawn that switchblade. Wasem had gone for his shotgun, all sweat and shaking fingers, but she and Fusco had both their guns out in the same second.
She got to break the knife-wielder's wrist when he wouldn't drop the blade. It was justified by the rules. It still felt good.
When it was done, a bunch of gunshots later (only two people had actually gotten hit, but there were a lot of broken bottles and ceiling lights) and Fusco was calling it in to the 106th, Carter leaned on the counter. Wasem looked ready to throw up.
"You're going to have to give the police a statement, sir."
"Oh no. Oh no. I will go to prison."
"Mr. Wasem-- no. You won't. You weren't doing anything wrong. In this country you have the right to defend yourself. And Detective Fusco and I will testify to that."
He didn't look convinced; he put his head in his hands and muttered miserable words in Arabic, which she'd managed to get at least conversational in during her time in the Middle East.
Their official story had to be they'd merely stopped for a snack run and been in the right place at the right time-- because they were well out of their jurisdiction here-- but she had to give this man a little more than an official story.
"Mr. Wasem," she said quietly, "we knew you were having problems. We weren't here just by luck. You're being watched out for. Understand?"
His gaze snapped up to her, wide-eyed. The same desperate hope she'd seen in Yusuf's eyes... she put it out of her head.
"You cannot mean this."
"I do." She smiled at him. "It's going to be alright, Mr. Wasem."
"I... I was sure the police did not care..."
"I'm police. I care." Carter took a breath. "There's a saying I've heard before. Maybe you know it."
In her somewhat-broken Arabic, she said, "A narrow place can contain a thousand friends."
She was pretty sure she'd mangled the pronunciation, but his eyes widened to hear his native tongue, and he reached across the counter-- across the Lotto ticket displays, past the cheap Bic lighters and the car air fresheners-- to grip her hand, tightly, and whisper thank you, thank you in English and Arabic both.
***
"What'd you say to him?"
"Subtle psychology shit."
Fusco snorted. "Yeah. Right. Come on, throw me a bone."
Carter shrugged as she sat down on the curb. All five of the kids were lined up on the sidewalk next to them, sullenly silent now. They'd only had the two pairs of handcuffs between them, but it was amazing what you could find in a 7-11 to tie somebody up. Wasem's bike chain. A roll of duct tape.
"It's Arabic. A narrow place can contain a thousand friends."
"You speak Arabic."
"Learned in the Army."
Fusco gave her a little headshake, a snort, and sat down with a whuff on the curb next to her. "You got a way of making a humble Brooklyn boy feel real inadequate sometimes, you know that?"
"Not my intent."
They sat in silence a little bit. They were waiting for the cops, and the paramedics. The statements weren't going to be fun, but they'd fabricated a lead they were supposedly chasing out here in Queens, to justify their presence.
"You know," Fusco said, "it applies to you too."
"Sorry?"
"The friends crapola. It applies to you too. You got friends, Carter."
She frowned, crossed her arms on her knees, looked out over the parking lot. Her mind replayed every dirty look from a fellow cop or an Army SOB, over the years; every word uttered just before she was quite out of the room.
"Not so much, Fusco."
"You got me."
Carter gave him a sideeye. Fusco was giving her a little smile, a shrug. She smiled a little in answer despite herself.
"Guess I do. God help me."
Fusco barked a laugh. He reached into his jacket and pulled out-- oh Jesus-- the second pack of Zingers, a little squished by this point. Carter groaned as he opened the packet and offered her one.
"Fusco, those things are disgusting. Jesus, no."
"You're gonna eat one."
"Why the hell am I gonna do that?"
" 'Cuz we're friends. Cuz we're partners. Cuz I got your back but I don't got any bread or salt."
"...What?"
"Don't give me that fucking look. You know. You break bread together. It's how people show they're not, you know, gonna fuck each other over. It's a thing. You're miss-international-relations-and-speaks-Arabic. You should know."
She stared.
Fusco kept holding out the package, jiggling it a little.
Carter exhaled. Not quite a laugh. Being lectured by Lionel Fusco on the rules of hospitality and courtesy as they pertained to food had not been on her plans for today. She took a Zinger, fished it out from the package, sticky cake on her fingers. She didn't let this crap in the house, Taylor needed healthy food, but...
It tasted good.
"Fuck John Reese, huh?" said Fusco as he stuffed the other snack cake into his mouth.
Carter nodded, licking the sickly-sweet frosting off her fingers, listening to the sirens getting closer.
"Fuck John Reese," she agreed, and it was shorthand between them both for emotions regarding John that were a hell of a lot more complex than that.
Joss Carter sat with her partner. She ate a snack cake. It sat in her belly alongside the knowledge that they'd done good today. Tomorrow was its own thing, with its own problems, and you couldn't save everyone and you couldn't promise everything, but...
...you didn't have to do it alone, either.
---------