I sat at the far end of a long blank table. My skin stuck to it every time I slightly raised my hands to readjust my cuffs. Random blood stains still covered several ends of the table. I could tell they loved the good cop/bad cop routine. The guy staring at me from the opposite end of the table must've been the good cop; he had only hit me 17 times. To my benefit, it wasn't anywhere the jurors could see. He'd been asking me the same question in slightly different words for the past 15 minutes, flaunting some nicely laminated piece of paper in my face with legal definitions that even my public defender didn't understand. Every 6th or 7th time he'd ask me that faithful question, I'd decorate his pretty piece of paper with freshly hocked saliva. If I could reach my nose I'd shoot something else at it.
I knew eventually he'd get tired of threatening me, maybe he'd even feel bad about hitting me after hearing my ribs crunch like a bag of chips. Tired he became, and routinely came in the bad cop. She was dressed in a red jazzy skirt and a blouse and jacket that matched. Celia was her name. Celia Johnson. She looked more like a secretary. A secretary for god himself, but her badge reminded of why we were both here. She pressed an ice pack firmly against my soft ribs, then she sat on the table in front of me. She played her role well, I felt threatened. She didn't cut to the chase, she asked me how I was feeling first. I didn't get asked that often. I responded, "Other than the fact that, my insides might come out of my ass later, I'm fine." Lord knows I was a smart ass, but she was smarter. She knew not to wear clothing that would cause her to stick to the table, but she also knew to wear clothing that would leave little to my imagination. Unfortunately, at some point she must've used a word that my public defender had learned before he flunked out of law-school, because he used some fancy word for "Enough". He asked for a moment to speak amongst ourselves.
"You're fucked Brian. There isn't much I can do for you now". That's how he opened up his glorious speech. Just imagine if Dr.Martin Luther King had opened up his "I have a dream speech like this" or had Barrack Obama given his first public address that way. I tuned out most of what he had to say next. He told me to plea down unless I'd get the chair. That idea didn't sound so bad. The bad cop returned...She asked what I had decided. I was still motivated from my pep talk with my lawyer, I told her if she sat in my lap I'd sign whatever she wanted with my very own pen and ink. She had a killer cross.
It was a short trial... The judge asked me how I pled, "Guilty as the fucking whores you pay for". That's how I began my trial. Pointless now to say it was short. Kind of regret it. The press couldn't even believe it. The judge through the book at me literally and figuratively. The good cop hauled me away. Later that night the bad cop met me in confinement. She asked what really happened. Why one of the richest men in the city sat in front of her with a public defender. Why I had flipped and killed those cops and what happened to Susanne. I tried my best to tune out that name every time someone had mentioned it. But she caught me off guard. She told me the story didn't add up...Why would someone with such a promising career do something so heinous ?
I told her New York's wasn't the finest. She told me to tell her the full story and she'd do everything she could to help. I told her the dead didn't talk and that I deserved to burn in hell for what I'd done. She replied "You did what any father would've done". I flipped the table, I was tired of talking. She visited me one day more than the last week, every week for 11 months. A few of the visits turned conjugal. Wonder what it's like fucking a dead man. During my final week, I was granted a last meal. She shared it with me. She asked me again for the full story. I gave in.
22 months ago I was almost the most well liked politician in New York. Maybe because of my former boxing career, 72 and 1. I say almost because apparently I had rubbed elbows the wrong way with the competition. Cindy Giovani, a politician too old and too out of touch with anything with that had color. Including the people who had it. Her brother had also fallen victim to my right hook once or twice during his short-lived boxing career. Nevertheless, nobody wanted to run against Cindy because her grandfather was Alfi Giovani, the most notorious Italian gangster in New York. Everyone knew, but no one spoke up. No one but me. When I did, I exposed every heinous crime he had committed. It ruined her, put a lot of her family out of business. People came to their senses and realized they didn't want to add to the city's corruption. They didn't want a washed up boxer as a governor either, but they wanted a racist, Italian gangster even less.
Needless to say I was winning the popular vote. Cindy didn't like that a whole lot. One night I was on my way home from a rally when I was stopped by New York's Finest. They said I'd had a broken tail light. One of the 4 officers whom surrounded my car smashed it. The crash of the glass simultaneously woke up my 9 year old daughter Suzanna. I told her to stay calm and everything would be fine. One of the officers reached in through the back seat and pulled her out by her hair. My boxing days kicked in, I jumped out and caught the officer off guard with my famous hook. I still had it, he hit the ground like a ton of bricks. My daughter jumped back in the back seat. Another officer went after her with his gun drawn. I got to him before he could get to her. We struggled to gain control of his 357 magnum. It wasn't police issued... I knew what he'd come to do. I caught him with the same hook. Although he didn't go down so easy. While he was on the ground he let off three shots. I heard the thunder of the hammer, but I felt the lightning of the bullet pass straight through me. I looked back at my daughter Suzanna as she lay lifeless. Much of her face was spread across the back seat in pieces and parts. I crawled into the car. I cradled her... I cried... I screamed. It was a sight so horrible the officer on the ground looked shocked at what he'd done. I used that moment get back out of the car. With tears in my eyes I raised my boot as high as I could and stomped down with the force of a rhino. I didn't stop... I didn't stop. I-I.... never stopped... He quickly became a squashed tomato, much of his brain matter covered my dress boots. Another cop let off a few more rounds of lightning into my back. The next morning I woke up in the county hospital. I've been here in jail ever since. The bad cop asked why I hadn't told my side of the story. I told her because not a juror in New York was going to sympathize with a cop killer. Also because I had lost the only person that mattered to me. She exclaimed then she'd done her job. I was confused. She slammed a newspaper on the table, the headline read "Rookie cop, takes down crazed politic, in rape/homicide." They had found my semen inside of my own daughter or that's what the botched autopsy revealed.
As I read a bit further into it, it exclaimed Celia Johnson, or Bad Cop as I'd known her as, was the officer who'd shot me. I was confused. I asked why'd she'd done this, she whispered the last words I'd ever hear from her. "Giovani is my maiden name." That washed up brother of Cindy was her father. She apparently, didn't share the same dis-taste for black men the way her aunt did with a name like Johnson. She slipped a ring on the finger that told people you were married. "But I do take family very serious." She said before she exited my cell. I'd been played. That's all I could think... I'd been played.
The next day I tried to tell my public defender the entire story but he didn't believe me, the judge wouldn't grant my appeal. He denied it as they strapped me to the chair. They didn't cut to the chase. Cindy asked me how I was feeling then she flipped the switch to the lightning herself. She and Celia smiled...
