The Prophet

When I originally wrote this story it was supposed to be a graphic novel of sorts. An artist friend and I had begun work on it and had actually created some pretty cool panels, but scheduling became an issue and unfortunately the idea was canned. At the time I really liked the story, but I wasn't sure how well it would work without the illustrations so I shelved it for a while. Recently I decided to write it out fully and I think now it might be stronger than it ever was as a comic. Enjoy.
-dale

The Prophet

Let me ask you officer, do you believe in prophecy?

The first thing I notice is the full moon hanging ominously outside the window, just a few inches over a neighboring building. Only after that do I notice the fire. The overwhelming fire, moving like a tiger on the hunt, a blur of orange moving gracefully through the apartment. The fire dances around the room consuming everything in its wake, but there is one thing that is unaffected, a photograph, in a shiny silver picture frame on the coffee table.

It’s a picture of Cindy and me at a carnival; she keeps it on the coffee table in her apartment. It seems impervious to the fire engulfing it. I reach out to grab it, but the fire blocks my way. I try to jump through the flames. I feel my skin burning; I can smell my own flesh. No matter what I do I can’t get a hold of it. Over the sound of the flames I faintly hear sirens.

An axe cleaves the door as I pass out.

That is exactly what I wrote in my dream journal three days ago, Sunday morning, still dripping in sweat from the intensity of the dream. I keep a record of my dreams, because there is no randomness in them; every detail, no matter how small, means something. I started thinking about possible meanings of the dream, though I knew by then that it doesn’t work that way. Dreams are sometimes literal, sometimes metaphorical. You don’t figure out or interpret dreams, you just remember them, and, when the time comes, everything just falls into place and you'll know what to do.

Regardless, the dream haunted my thoughts.

On Monday I was preoccupied at work; I could hardly do my job. Lock picking requires absolute attention and precision and with my mind wandering it was almost an impossible task. My first call that day came from Henrietta Johnson – an old woman who lives over on Christopher street. She has one of these cheap Korean locks that look really impressive but pops open in about a minute when you stick anything in them. On a normal day I could have picked her lock with a toothpick in twenty seconds, but not on that day. Every time I got a pin into place I would lose the previous one, and then when I finally got them all lined up I would fumble the tension wrench and have to start over. It took me nearly half an hour to open the door.

I knew from the full moon in the dream that if there would be a fire it wouldn’t happen until Wednesday, so I decided to close up shop until then. Any one who got locked out of their apartment would just have to wait two days, even if that meant their cats were going to starve. In my apartment I held my copy of the carnival picture and thought about the dream. Try as I might to convince myself that the dream was just a metaphor, I couldn’t shake my feeling of dread. I was concerned for Cindy’s safety; I needed to find out what would happen to cause a fire in her apartment. I knew she would never listen to me if I told her that I saw it in a dream, she hated that stuff.

On Tuesday morning I called her anyway. I didn’t know what else to do. “Hey I’m not home right -” I hung up before the answering machine finished. As the day went on and I was unable to reach her I became more and more uneasy. I looked for her at Old Navy where she works and then at The Great American Health Bar where she generally eats lunch, but she was nowhere to be found. Day became night and my worry continued to grow. I tried calling her again, but again all I got was her voice mail. I knew that there was nothing more I could do, so I tried to sleep. After several hours of sleeplessness I had the dream again.

I couldn’t contact her all day Wednesday, so at about seven o’clock I drove over to her place. There was no elevator in her building, more importantly there was no fire escape, So I walked up five flights to her apartment and knocked on door 5a. There was no answer. I took out my lock pick set and wished I had been wearing my uniform. One of the perks of the uniform is that no one looks twice when you’re kneeling in front of a locked door. Now I had to be quick, I couldn’t be seen breaking in.

I put the tension wrench in place, and inserted my favorite pick into the door. Cindy had an unassuming American lock that told burglars you could probably get through me, but I’m not really hiding anything that great anyway. In truth the average burglar could probably not get through, which is why I had chosen it for her. I heard the last pin move into place with a satisfying click and turned the tension wrench.

I walked in and closed the door behind me. Cindy’s place is a one-bedroom apartment that opens into a small living room with an attached kitchen. I set my tools down on the coffee table next to the silver picture frame. The lights were all on and there was an empty pot on the stove. I checked to see if, perhaps, the burner was on. It was not. I continued to scan the room for possible fire starters.

I walked towards the bedroom to see if perhaps there were scented candles or some other potential fire hazard I could snuff out. When I opened the bedroom door I almost screamed, but I managed to control myself. I silently closed the door, hoping they hadn’t seen me. They hadn’t, how could they? They were too preoccupied. I sat on the couch and looked at the silver picture frame. I was no longer in it. It was a picture of a different couple. Cindy and another man in some undefined place. We hadn’t been apart even a year. I looked out the window; the moon was hanging there just as it had been in my dream.

Everything fell into place. I knew what to do.

Once the fire started, I tried to leave, but the fire had already blocked the door. I saw the fire ferociously consuming the contents of the room. It didn’t have a hint of grace, it was a savage beast uncontrollably devouring everything. The picture in the frame was blackened already. I smiled. As my vision began to blur I could hear sirens in the distance. I passed out as the axe came crashing through the door. They never came out of the bedroom.

So let me ask you again officer, do you believe in prophecy?

Faith

As I have mentioned previously, David Mitchell is a major influence on me and I think that really shows in this story. Mitchell's work inspired me to try to write something outside of the conventional format of writing and I had a lot fun tinkering with the conventions of time and interconnectedness within this story. Obviously it is something that is new to me, but I really feel like it opened up a whole new way to consider writing and I'm excited to see how my writing evolves from here. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

-Wes

Faith

1

Thank you for agreeing to participate in this interview. We’ll try to get it over with as soon as possible.

With all due respect sir, I know how these things go and that doesn’t seem very likely…

Heh, true enough. Well the tapes are rolling so we might as well get this thing started. We like to get a little background on our officers before we get into the nitty-gritty stuff so if you wouldn’t mind, could you please state your name and rank for the record?

My name is Sergeant Edward Walker, Emergency Services Unit.

Ah, a fellow Irishman, am I right Walker?

Yes, sir.

Where you from Walker?

Bainbridge, sir, born and raised.

No kidding. Bainbridge? Not too many cops come out of Bainbridge. Usually the other end of the spectrum of law enforcement far as I know. I got three cousins doin’ time from around that area. ‘The Washington Ave. Crew’ they called themselves.

Yeah? I came up right by Washington Ave. Who are your cousins, if you don’t mind me asking?

The O'Connor’s. You know ’em?

I know a bunch of O’Connor’s. Jimmy, Seamus, Pat, Colin, Bill…

Billy and Colin. And our other cousin Gerry Murphy too. Idiots. The whole lot of ’em.

Sounds like they used to give you a rough time…

Rough time? They would abuse me, those punks.

I can imagine. I used to play football with them when I was younger. They ended up starting a brawl every time. Rough guys. How’d they get pinched?

Armed Robbery. Robbed this poor nurse from St. Barnabas on her way to her car. In a hospital parking lot. Can you believe that? Someone saw it, called it in and they got caught twenty minutes later laughing it up right back on Washington Ave. Friggin’ morons.

Crazy. I was born there.

So if you grew up around those guys, how did you get into law enforcement?

Because of my old man.

He wasn’t a cop was he?

No, sir. You see, my parents moved to the Bronx right after Bloody Sunday like a lot of people did. When I was old enough to ask why we came to America from Ireland, my ma told me everything that was going on in Ireland; British rule infringing on Irish rights, the IRA, the formation of the provisional IRA, and how everything culminated in Bloody Sunday. She told me that my old man was a pretty prominent member of the original IRA and after Bloody Sunday, it wasn’t really safe for my us to stick around in Ireland because supposedly he tried to tip off the authorities about the provisional IRA’s plan.

So you came to America to hide from the provisional IRA?

That’s what I was told, yeah. Growing up in Bainbridge wasn’t easy for us either, though. The police were constantly raiding shops and houses, arresting people, breaking stuff. My old man was always badmouthing the police, always saying stuff like “They call this a free country, the land of opportunity, but these policemen treat us like we’re second rate citizens.” They would come in his butcher shop and hassle his customers, call them ‘Mickey’s’ and stuff. “Listen to me boys,” he’d say, “this country doesn’t treat us the way we deserve to be treated. Don’t go breaking the laws now,” he’d say, “But understand me when I say there is nothing worse than the justice system in this G-d forsaken country, and it starts with all these cops. “Right old hoor’s!” he’d call them.

They were pretty rough on the Irish there, but you know as well as I do they were asking for it. There were plenty of guys running weapons and intelligence for the IRA out of Bainbridge. And sadly, even some guys who weren’t involved in that kind of stuff were lowlife scum too, like my cousins.

That kind of bothers me. They crossed the line too frequently. There was stuff going on there and they were right in trying to stop all the illegal activity but they went about it all wrong. Still, my old man wasn’t having any of it. Every week he would have these community protection meetings in our house. One week when I was nine years old, the cops raided our house and arrested a bunch of the people including my father. Scariest moment of my life. I remember it like it was yesterday. My old man looked at me as he was being dragged out and said, “See son? They arrest innocent men just for where we come from! Don’t you worry, I’ll be home in a few hours.” And he was. When he came back, he was all smiles, but when he tried to give my brother Colin, Jr., who’s six years older than me, a hug, Col just turned his back and walked out of the house. My father gave my mother a look before turning to me and saying “Must be girl problems, huh, Eddie? Come here and give your old man a hug!” After dinner, I went out to the porch to talk to Colin. I asked him how he could treat our father like that. The man did just get home from jail after being wrongly arrested. He said I was too young to understand.

2

“Tell me, Boaz, how can you claim to believe in G-d if you’re not even religious?”

“My family walked for two years from Eastern Europe to get to Israel in 1948 and witness the birth of the Jewish state. Since then I have fought in three wars in which our troops were severely outnumbered, yet somehow we still won all three easily. I have seen G-d and his wonders firsthand. I believe in G-d.”

“But you didn’t answer my question, why aren’t you an observant Jew if you believe in G-d? Don’t those two generally go hand in hand?”

“I don’t think so. I believe strongly in G-d but I don’t believe the way the orthodox leaders of the Jewish people determined what it means to be observant is necessarily the correct way. I choose to observe in my own way.”

“But didn’t G-d decree that you must follow the word of the Rabbis?”

“Yes but who is to say that the Rabbis who made the decrees were the right ones, or that they didn’t abuse that privilege. It’s even possible they made that decree up in order to impose their interpretations of how a Jew must connect to G-d.”

“So how do you ‘connect to G-d’?”

“I try to incorporate Him into my daily life. I speak to Him on a daily basis; ask him or things, like the health of my wife – with whom I will soon celebrate our twenty fifth anniversary – and our kids. I also go down to the Harlem River Drive once a week and just sit and paint by the water. Being out there expressing myself, I feel like I am connecting to G-d in a way that no synagogue or church could ever provide.”

3

Wow, what a day. The sun’s reflection off the water reminds me of when Stan and I used to buy fireworks and set them off in the alley behind our house. It’s funny how things can change over the years. Fireworks soon became firearms and my prospects for the future crashed and burned just like those fireworks did; suddenly and with a bang. So things go, I guess. All these people walking along the river have their own stories just like I do, so I really have no right to complain. Still, I help but envy that guy painting over there. He seems so at ease, so relaxed. I hate him for that. No matter what I try – walking along the river, writing poetry, playing my guitar – I’ll never feel as unburdened as he looks. I glance back at him one more time and take a mental picture of him to put into the wallet of my mind to remind myself what it is that I’m striving for.

I begin to head home when it starts getting dark and as I walk along the drive, I pray that douche bag Jose Garcia isn’t there with Stan. Maybe he got hit by a truck. Wouldn’t that be something? I hope that the next corner I turn, I’ll discover the scene is taped off and the sidewalk is splattered with blood surrounding the chalk outline of his runty little body on the ground. That image would be more of a masterpiece to me than anything that painter could have painted.

As I start walking back across Jerome Ave, Sam Berry comes running out of Encino’s. “Timmy, your set the other night was great. You think we can get you at the next open mic night this coming Tuesday?”

Stan told me to keep my schedule open on Tuesday. “I don’t think I’ll be able to make it Tuesday, but I’ll do the next one for sure, Sam.”

He wiped his face with a bus towel that was hanging from his apron. If you work up a sweat running ten feet in the middle of January, it’s probably time for a diet. “Alright, I’m going to hold you to that, though. I’ve been telling my friend Abe who does booking at B.B. King’s about you and he said he would come check you out, so as soon as I know exactly when you’re playing, I’ll let him know. You take care now, Tim.”

B.B. King’s? No way. Sam is so full of shit it’s coming out of his ears at this point. That’s probably not too good for his club as far the board of health is concerned. Regardless, I am not letting myself get worked up over this when I know I’m just going to be let down if I do. I’m not putting my faith in a washed up blues man who busses the tables at his own struggling club. Only a block from home now. I turn onto my street, fingers crossed, but alas, no outline of the recently deceased Jose Garcia to be found, only the pile of frozen dog shit I just stepped in. Awesome. I look down at the bottom of my shoe and after nearly tipping over, I thank my lucky stars it was to hard too stick. Seriously, thank you lucky stars for letting good old Timothy Sutton catch a break. It’s about time. Of course I wouldn’t have minded if it was on a little bit of a grander scale like say, Stan letting me go to college instead of making me feel like crap for not pulling my weight by helping with the bills, but hey, if it’s a shit-free shoe you offer, a shit-free shoe I shall take.

4

“You seem to know a lot about Judaism, Craig. Are you Jewish?”

“Me? No, I’m an atheist. I just work with a lot of Jewish guys. Personally, I think the whole concept of G-d and religion in general is a hoax.”

“I don’t know about Boaz, but I take offense to that, Craig.”

“Do you? And what religion do you affiliate yourself with, Patricia?”

“I am a devout Catholic.”

“Catholic? Now there’s a worthwhile religion. Not wrought with controversy at all. Clearly the whole celibacy was a great idea…”

“I really don’t appreciate your tone or your implications that my religion and for that matter religion in general is a hoax. What makes you so sure that G-d doesn’t exist?”

5

And did you find out why he was so mad?

Not then, but his and my old man’s relationship was never the same after that. One night during dinner toward the end of his senior year in high school, he looked straight at my father and said “I’m going to the police academy when I graduate high school. I’m gonna be a cop.” You could have cut the tension in the room with a knife it was so thick. My father got real mad, all red in the face, ya know, and started screaming, “This is how you repay me for putting a roof over your head for eighteen years? By joining the ranks of that swine?” Col just kept his gaze and replied, “You don’t have to worry about that anymore because I don’t even want to be under the same roof as you.” Before my father could even respond, Colin was up the stairs. I was shocked. My dad turned to my mom and yelled “This is what we get for coming to this country! I should have never listened to you! We would have been fine there!” He grabbed his coat and stormed out. I turned to my ma and she broke down crying. I mean bawling. She couldn’t get a word out. Just babbling. So I went up to Colin’s room and he was already packing all of his things up. I asked him what the hell was going on He stopped and sat me down on his bed and said, “Eddie, this is gonna be hard for you to understand but I need you to listen to me, okay?” He said, “You know how they told us we came to America because dad was in danger from the IRA, the bad ones? It’s all bullshit Eddie. Dad is one of the bad ones.” I tried to interrupt him, tell him he was wrong, ya know, but he just stopped me. “Listen!” he said. “Dad had to leave Ireland because he was one of the people who planned Bloody Sunday. He wasn’t in danger from them. He was one of them. He was in danger from the police. He’s a wanted terrorist back in Ireland. Those meetings we have in our house, they aren’t community protection meetings. They’re IRA meetings. Dad is one of the heads of an organization called Noraid, the Northern Irish Aid Committee. They run guns for the IRA back in Ireland. The butcher shop is a front. Eddie,” He said, “dad is a terrorist. He is responsible for killing tons of people. They lied to us Eddie! They lied about everything!” I was shocked, but it all made sense once I thought about it. After that things really changed. Colin went and stayed with his friend Mike until he started the academy. After he graduated, I would go stay with him a lot when he was doing beat work. He moved up the ranks pretty quickly. He’s actually a Deputy Chief in the OCCB now.

Organized Crime? Did he go after your father and the rest of the guys in the neighborhood?

Nah. I don’t think he could ever throw my old man in jail no matter how mad he was. Anyway, my father closed down the butcher shop soon after Col moved out and the meetings stopped in our house too. He had a bum ticker and it really started causing him trouble around then. I think he was too sick to continue doing the work he was doing for them so he kinda bowed out. Pretty much from there on in, he spent most of his time on our sofa watching TV. Drank a lot too even though the doc told him it only made his heart worse. Ma used to kick him out of the house and he used to take a walk down to Webster Ave. All his old buddies would be there and say “Hey, looks who’s back from the dead! If it isn’t our old buddy Colin.” He would never stick around long though. He would come by the park afterwards and watch me play football; scream things like “There ya go son! That’s how you catch the ball!”, “The NFL! That’s where you’re headin’ you keep playin’ like that!”

NFL? Were you were a good football player?

Yeah I was pretty good. It was gonna be my ticket to college after my old man retired. Hofstra and Fordham were both looking at me, but I ended up turning them down and followed in my brother’s footsteps. It wasn’t to spite my father as much as the influence of my brother that I decided to do it. He seemed to really enjoy being a cop and he always spoke about making a difference in the community, helping people who needed our help. He was always talking about atoning for the sins of our father. He always told me that our old man was going straight to hell and unless we tried to right the wrongs that he committed, we would see him there, because that would mean we were no better than he was. I was never as hard on my father as Col was. I decided to reserve my judgment on him. That’s for G-d, ya know? I didn’t grow up in Ireland; I can’t pretend to know what it was like there. I’m not excusing violence obviously, but at the same time, I just find it hard to condemn my father just like that. Still, not a day goes where I don’t think about all the people who died on Bloody Sunday and I do hope that in some way, my being a cop and trying to help people does make up for that bad that my father did.

So you weren’t really close with your father once you found out what his story really was.

I never really looked at my old man the same way, obviously. From there on out, I had a functional relationship with him. We made small talk when we were together. We weren’t too close, ya know? Even when I became a cop, we still spoke. He would always joke “I don’t know why you didn’t continue with football, you had a real shot, son,” but I don’t think he really held it against me that I became a cop. He knew I looked up to my brother. The two of them barely ever spoke after that fight though. He did show up to the funeral though, Colin, Jr. That was nice. We weren’t sure he would. After my dad passed though, my mom really started to deteriorate. Alzheimer’s. Crept up on her fast. She had to leave her flower shop, and eventually the house. She’s over in the Judith Lynn Assisted Living facility. Great place over there. They take real good care of her. I visit her twice a week. Bring her flowers from her old shop. She always says, “You know, Edward, I used to have a flower shop, and if we sold arrangements that looked like this, we would have gone out of business real fast!” I tell her, “Ma, they’re from your shop, and they’re beautiful.” Bless her soul, my mom. She always tried to keep our family together.

Yeah, I know Irish mothers…Anyway, I see you’ve been working with the ESU for about five years now.

Yes, sir, I got my promotion to Sergeant about two years ago and I’ve been leading my team from right around then. Being in those situations, helping innocent people from serious threat gave me this feeling that if I really wanted to make up for what my father has done, this was the best way to do it. The people I was saving were in a sense becoming the victims of Bloody Sunday to me. If I couldn’t save them per se, I would replace them with people I could save.

And how many situations have you handled since you’ve been leading?

Six sir, although nothing that really compared to gravity of this situation.

6

“What makes me so sure G-d doesn’t exist? A number of things. Have you ever looked around America? There’s only one thing people really worship here and that is the Almighty Dollar. It is clear that religion is just a system created to make people feel like they actually have purpose in life and aren’t just chasing money and leading a meaningless existence.”

“You look pretty well dressed for someone who bashes the idea of money. What do you do for a living exactly?”

“I’m an investment banker, and I never bashed the idea of money. I live a lavish life in a cushy loft on the Upper West Side. I wine and dine ladies and shower them with jewelry and clothing. I drive an expensive European car. I just told you what I realized about America. Did I say I am above it? Absolutely not. If that is how our culture operates, who am I to act differently. Just don’t expect me the put my faith in something that isn’t tangible just because putting your faith in something that is tangible seems shallow.”

“But what about all the wondrous things in the world? How do you explain all of that?”

7

As I walk in the front door, I hear Jose’s whiny voice. Wow. I take it back lucky stars. You suck. Touché, though, for finding a new way to mess with my head. Distracting me long enough to forget what it is that I was hoping wouldn’t happen is a new way to get to me, you sneaky bastard.

“Jewelry stores man, I’m telling you.” He can’t be serious...

“Why is hitting jewelry stores a safer bet than liquor shops?” You have to give Stan a little credit for realizing the obvious, which isn’t a given these days considering all the bullshit Garcia fills his head with.

“Because man,” He stops and looks at me with contempt as I walk in. He’s holding a blunt the size of New Jersey.

Stan looks up at me. “Where the hell have you been, Tim?”

Stan’s concern for my well being is somewhat of a conundrum considering he usually enlists me to help him in his various “money making ventures.”

“I was out for a walk along the Drive.”

Stan shakes his head. “Always with those walks. Well sit down, Jose was explaining his latest idea to me. You should hear this.” Right. This should be good.

“As I was saying…” Again with the look of contempt, “I think we need to hit some jewelry stores.”

Now it was my turn to acknowledge the obvious. “And why do you think that’s a better idea than the liquor stores again?”

“Well like I was saying…” If this guy looks at me one more time like that, I swear I am going to put that blunt out in his eye. “Everything in the jewelry store is insured. The clerks in there know it too. They aren’t gonna risk their lives over some shit they’ll get the money back for. They’ll just back up, tell us to take what we want, and we’ll be outta there in no time, homes.”

What an idiot. “Well, homes, they also have advanced security systems in jewelry stores wheras the liquor shops don’t have any. We don’t know what kind of alarms they have on the cases or what kind of silent alarms they have under the register. It’s too much of a risk. Also, we would have to do it during the day, as opposed to the liquor shops. Liquor shops are easy because it’s some quick cash and we can hit them late at night. Jewelry stores aren’t in the same ballpark. It’s too risky.”

Jose looked flustered, which is what I was hoping for. If I couldn’t fluster a guy who was high as Ricky Williams, I was really no better off than Stan was. “Listen, I’ve worked this all out, okay? I’ve been scouting out shops in the city and this one shop on Amsterdam and 81^st is the place, man, I’m telling you. It’s only got this one old geezer working there. I’ve been watching him for weeks. Believe me, he could care less about what goes on in the shop as long as he’s alright. It’ll be easy as long as we get in there, get the shit, and get out within a few minutes.”

I turned to my older brother. “Stan, you really think this is a good idea?”

He looked at Jose and then at me, and after some hesitation, said, “Yeah, I do.”

This is what drives me insane about Stanley. He is a fairly smart guy but for as long as I can remember, he has constantly let people influence him. After our mother died and we had all that trouble with the government, he became convinced there was no place in conventional society for someone like him, and by extension, me as well. That’s why right now we’re sitting in our living room talking to a guy whose rap sheet is longer than the Mitchell Report.

“The way I figure it, we go in there towards the end of the day, right around closing time, and do it right before he closes up shop. If there are people in there, we just wait until they’re gone before we do it but we want to make sure we’re inside before he locks up. Just pretend you’re looking to buy something, you know, be cool.”

8

“Wondrous things? I assume you are referring to the oil profiteering and rising body count in Iraq, or the Tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands in India and Thailand, or the genocide in Darfur, or the constant fighting in the Middle East, or the constant threat of terrorism, that by the way, is caused in large part by the very institution of religion that you hold on to so dearly. Those wondrous things?”

“Yeah, but what about…”

“Or, maybe you are referring to the poverty, sickness, and overall deterioration of society that is happening all over the world. The lowering of standards that get lower every single day, when again, the same religions that most people ascribe to preach morals and decency.”

“You’re not taking into account…”

“OR, maybe you are referring to the fact that my torso and arms are covered in third degree burns which I endured while running out of a building in which hundreds of people, hundreds of my friends died for absolutely no reason. I would like either of you to explain why ‘G-d’ would do that?

9

Take me through the day, Sergeant Walker.

Well we got the call around three thirty. An alarm had been triggered from the jewelry store around three twenty and several people called in reporting gunshots from within the store. We arrived on the scene around three forty five and found the store completely closed up from anti-theft grates along the inside of all the windows.

So the suspects holed themselves up inside the store?

That’s what we thought at first but we got a schematic of the security system of the store and discovered that they had a system in place that would basically lock potential thieves in the store and alert the authorities if someone breaks in, keeping them there until the police arrive.

Yeah, but why would that system be active during the day? Any number of things could trigger it and everyone would be locked inside for who knows how long?

That’s exactly what we were wondering so we got the security people on the phone and asked them how the system could have been triggered during the day. Apparently, there is a test button under the cashier’s desk that manually activates the system.

So the clerk activated the alarm and in essence, forced the suspects into a hostage situation.

Exactly, sir. The question was, why would he want to trap himself and three other people inside the jewelry store with three armed men?

Obviously, you never got that answer…

Right. Around four o’clock, we got a line to inside the store and spoke to the suspects for the first time. Stanley Sutton, the leader of the crew gets on the phone and tells the negotiator that the clerk tried to be a hero and got his head blown off and if we try to be heroes like him, the same thing is gonna happen the to the other three people inside. The thing is, he didn’t exactly sound so convincing when he said that. That’s when we knew exactly what kind of situation we were dealing with. We asked them what happened to the clerk and they said he pressed something under the counter and locked everyone inside the store. They said they never wanted a hostage situation, they only wanted some money; real nervous sounding, ya know?

Sounds like maybe the clerk thought that he was pressing a silent alarm and didn’t realize what would happen if he pushed the button.

That’s as good a guess as any, sir. Again, we’ll never really know for sure.

So now you had a volatile hostage situation with dangerous criminals who are apparently trigger happy. Not the easiest situation to navigate I imagine.

Exactly, sir. The negotiator basically told me that he can’t guarantee anything but from his conversation with them, they seem very nervous and scared and the killing of the clerk was probably more of snap reaction than calculated killing. He said if he had to guess, he would say that the hostages weren’t in immediate danger but he also said we shouldn’t take too long figuring out a plan because you never know with these things.

Tell me about the men inside.

There were two brothers, Stanley Sutton and Timothy Sutton, 29 and 23, respectively, and Jose Garcia, 32.

Previous criminal records?

Stan Sutton and Garcia had priors, Sutton for armed robbery and Garcia for armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, grand theft auto, and drug misdemeanors for possession with intent to distribute. The younger Sutton was clean.

As far as we know anyway…So what were the suspect’s demands?

Oh, right, that’s another reason the negotiator told us he doesn’t think they wanted a hostage situation. They said they would call back with their demands which to him seemed like they honestly were not planning for a something like this.

That could have been all the more reason they could have been a danger to the hostages.

Right, sir. Again, the negotiator was just telling us his impressions of them from the conversation. He mentioned that as a possibility as well.

Okay, so what happened next?

Soon after that, we got the blueprints of the building. The room was sort of pentagonal, with a back room in the far corner of the store. We suspected that’s where they were keeping the hostages. Logically, it made the most sense to keep them there while they worked out a plan. Anyway, while the negotiator kept in contact with them, my team and I worked on a plan to extract the hostages and apprehend the suspects. After studying the blueprints, we figured that our best method of entry was to go in through the eastern wall from the store next door.

Wouldn’t they see your team entering the store next door?

That was the one advantage of the grates. While it prevented us from seeing anything that was going on inside, it also prevented them from seeing anything we were doing outside. We easily brought all the necessary equipment into the store next door with them being none the wiser. My team started setting up all the equipment around seven thirty and we began really working on our entry around then. By then, the suspects had gotten their demands together and said that they wanted safe passage to Mexico or they would start killing hostages, so we needed to have a solid plan to go in there and get the hostages out safely.

Did they give a timeframe for when they were going to begin killing the hostages?

At around nine o’clock, they told us that if they weren’t on their way to Mexico by midnight, they would kill the first hostage and in the succeeding two hours afterward, they would kill the remaining two. So we knew we had to be in there by eleven o’clock to give us enough time to ensure the hostages would still be in the back room away from the suspects.

So tell me how your team proceeded in.

The first thing we did was drill a small hole in the wall toward the back to ensure that the hostages were indeed where we thought they were. We placed C4 along the wall far enough from the hostages to prevent injury to them and draw the suspect’s fire toward us. At ten after eleven, we set off the charges and went in, in two waves of four.

And how did the assault unfold?

I led the first wave in and we were immediately fired on. We returned fire, striking one of the suspects multiple times. Shortly after that, the firing stopped and my men apprehended the remaining two suspects.

Were you aware you were struck with a bullet?

Not at first. My first reaction was, ‘I’m going to the floor out of instinct,’ but I didn’t fall into my tactical assault position. I kind of just crumpled to the floor. I immediately started to check my body for where I was hit, which didn’t take long because when I tried to lift my left arm, I could barely move it. The bullet caught me under my left armpit. After that, things got pretty foggy and I blacked out shortly after the shooting had stopped.

10

“A person can’t try to understand why G-d does what he does, Craig. He works in mysterious ways. Faith is trust that G-d has a plan and has reasons for what He does.”

“Besides, the whole question of how can good things happen to bad people is an oversimplification. There are many reasons why these things can happen. For example, my sister Judy – who has never so much as hurt a fly and is so religious she makes me look like a heathen – was held up in the parking lot of St. Barnabas hospital where she worked as a nurse about six years ago. Three guys surrounded her with guns pointed in her face, threatened her life, and took all of her money. As they were leaving, one of them decided to pistol whip her in the face, breaking her nose and her orbital. Why did she deserve that? She was a saint. But you know what? Instead of questioning how G-d could let this happen to her, she took it as a sign that she needed to make a change in her life and left the hospital for a convent to become a nun. She actually just finished her five years as a Novice and is coming home this week.”

“So your sister is crazy. You’re not explaining why faith is something rational or worth considering. You are only proving my point.”

11

I do not want to rob a jewelry store. I don’t care if Stan thinks it is a good idea or not. A heavenly voice could come from the sky proclaiming “Timothy, this plan is ingenious!” and I still wouldn’t feel comfortable with it. For years Stan has been making me feel like I had to help him with his schemes. The pressure of looking after me and keeping me safe has somehow led him to putting me in more danger than I ever was before. He threatens to beat me if he ever catches me with any drugs when, not only has he dealt them and had friends over who always do them, he does them himself. He warns me about walking around alone at night and then he puts a gun in my hand and brings me along on his robberies.

He most certainly isn’t the perfect role model, but he is my older brother and he means well so I agree to listen to him and go along with what he says. Until I find a way to make a better life us, I have no choice but to stick with him. I will find my salvation somewhere, whether it is through my guitar, my poetry, or some yet to be discovered talent. I am talented, my mother always told me as much and my teachers and Stanley echoed those sentiments all my life. It’s not a lack of talent that concerns me, but rather, the burden of leaving behind the one person I believe in that may ultimately hold me back from utilizing that talent.

For as long as I remember, Stanley has told me to have faith in him and he would never let anything happen to me. When I got my first bike, he was the one who taught me to ride, holding on to the back of the bike as I peddled awkwardly down the street. I kept crying his name out nervously; too scared to look back to make sure he was still holding on to the bike. He kept telling me “trust me, Timmy, I got you. I won’t let you fall.” The last time I called his name, it took him a second to respond and then I heard his voice from a distance yelling, “I told you, you could trust me! You’re doing it Timmy; you’re riding all by yourself!”

When I had a crush on Judy Pinciotti in the eighth grade, Stan told me that I should offer to carry her books home for her. Who else could I trust concerning matters of the heart than “Stan the Ladies Man” he asked me? And he was right, it worked and a few weeks later she would be my first kiss, again, thanks to some helpful tips from my brother’s alter ego.

After our mother died and they were going to put me into foster care, Stanley fought like hell to keep me. He used the money our mother left us to hire a lawyer and contested them taking me away. With the rest of the money from our mother and the job he got in the auto shop, his argument was that he could support me through my senior year of high school until I turned eighteen and could become self-sufficient. I will never forget it; he looked the judge right in the face and told him, “Have some faith in me, sir. If you take my brother away, he will lose the only person he has left and I will too. The rest of the money our mother left us and my job at the auto shop is enough to support us for the next year. Please sir, I can do this. Trust me.” There is something about those words that when Stanley looks you in the face and says them, you have no choice but to believe him. I always did, and the judge did as well.

12

“It may seem like she is crazy, but I think what Patricia is saying is that things can happen for any number of reasons. For instance, there is a concept in Judaism called ‘Ma’aseh Avot, Siman L’Banim,’ which translates as ‘the deeds of the father are reflected upon the son.’ Does it seem fair for a child to suffer for his father’s sins? No, but we believe that all people are one and that if one person does something wrong, we all suffer for it. The point is, there are calculations made in heaven that factor in all sorts of things we can’t understand. As long as you have faith that if you try to live your life the proper way, you will ultimately be rewarded, you won’t have these questions because you will realize it is all part of a larger plan that we can’t understand.”

“It just all seems like a cop out to me.”

“That’s a convenient way to look at it because it gives you the luxury of denying everything instead of facing these issues head on a looking for the truth. Faith isn’t easy, but if someone works hard enough at it, they will see that ultimately, it is a far more rewarding choice.”

“Holy crap! What the hell was that sound?”

“It sounded like an explosion.”

“It must be the police. They are finally here to save us.”

“Thank G-d.”

13

What’s the next thing you remember?

Waking up in the hospital. I immediately reached for the entry point with my right hand and discovered that it was bandaged up. The nurse told me to relax and stay in bed. The doctor would be right with me she said. You know, it’s funny, sir. I always believed that because I was so intent on righting the wrongs of my father, I was protected. Like there was this force field around me. I had faith that G-d would protect me when I was innocent people. That I was His messenger. Maybe my faith was misguided, I really had no right to assume that. Maybe you can’t outrun the sins of your father, ya know? Maybe what he’s done has tainted me because we share the same blood. Maybe no matter how hard I try, I can’t outrun my fate.

This was not your fate son. You had nothing to do with your father’s past. You have helped save dozens of lives including those three in there. You are G-d’s messenger and you protect His innocents every day. Nobody is invincible. Sooner or later, we all come up against something that will pierce our armor, literally or figuratively, but believe me, this is not your fate for being your father’s son. You are not suffering for him. Do you understand me?

Yes, sir.

I want you to know that I am recommending you for the Medal of Honor, the highest honor that can be awarded to a New York Police officer. You acted heroically in the face of imminent danger and saved three people’s lives. Don’t forget what I told you either, you hear? Never. You hold onto your faith and you hold onto it tight.

Than you very much sir, but honestly, how am I supposed to have any faith after I was responsible for the death of a young kid, Timothy Sutton, and after I ended up in this wheelchair?

14

Still, this jewelry store thing had bad idea written all over. I got up and went to the kitchen, leaving my brother and Jose in the living room. I have this weird habit that when I get nervous, I eat a ton of cereal. I mean I plow through bowl after bowl like a serial killer plows through victims in a cheesy horror flick. Now, I am a cereal killer and today my victims are the sweet little o’s of Honey Nut Cheerios, their holes resembling the open mouths of screaming victims. You can scream all you want, little o’s, but nobody is going to hear you. My thoughts are interrupted by my brother who walks in and says, “Look, I get that you are nervous. Still going straight to the cereal, I see…Listen though; I think Jose is onto something here. If we do this one job, we will be set for a lot longer than those little liquor store jobs. With the money we can get out of there, you can go to college, get away from this life. You have a real future and I am trying to get that for you. I’m a lowlife, but you, Tim, you have a gift.”

Have I mentioned that my brother’s treatment of me is somewhat of a conundrum?

“Tim, I swear to you, we do this one job, and that will be it for you. You can go.”

The prospects were intriguing, I’m not going to lie. Here, for the first time, I had my brother’s approval to get away from his lifestyle and try to make something of myself. After constantly pressuring me to stay with him and help him pull jobs, he was finally going to let me go. With his blessing, I no longer had the guilt of leaving the one person who has provided for me and looked after me. Still, I couldn’t decide if it was worth it.

“That’s real nice of you to say Stan, but I still don’t know. So much can go wrong.”

Stan looked me right in the eyes, the same way he did so many times before and said,

“Timmy, everything is going to turn out fine. It’ll be in and out and then it’s off to a better life for you. We got this. Have some faith in me, Tim, trust me.”

And I did.