he huffed, eyeing the group evilly.
“Yo, man, we were just trying to help the girl. You know what I mean,” the main guy tried to explain with his hands raised in surrender, unwilling to challenge Brice’s shield.
Brice spun around to display his badge, hoping to disperse the crowd that had gathered to watch. Out of his peripheral vision, he watched his sister’s pink jacket disappear around the corner. Exasperated, Brice finally walked back to his car and promised that he would be giving his sister a serious talking-to when he caught up with her.
That day would forever be etched is Brice’s mind, as it set off a series of life events he wouldn’t ever forget.
* * *
“Nothing is wrong,” Ciara answered, breaking up Brice’s memory of the past. “I wish you and Mommy would stop asking me that constantly. I’m not a kid anymore,” she said, slightly annoyed. She wanted to understand her big brother’s concerns, but at the same time, she wanted to forget all that had happened to her. It had been a dark time in her life, but everyone around her acted like they were the victims and not her.
Brice drank the last of his beer. He lowered his eyes. “I know, baby sis. You’re right, but I’m always super worried about you. I love you more than you know,” he said softly. The even tone of voice and understanding way was a sign of Brice’s growth. The old Brice, the one who’d been haunted by his past and had always been angry, would’ve taken offense and gotten defensive with his sister. Not the new Brice Simpson. He’d learned fast that being on the job had the potential to take you out if you let it. He’d found himself a good therapist and wasn’t afraid to say it.
As a homicide detective, Brice saw some of the worst crimes against humanity. After all, his career as a detective had blossomed out of one of the most horrific cold cases in New York. Brice had been a young street thug turned police officer when he was promoted to detective. That was kind of unheard of in the Department. Before gaining his gold shield, Brice was a New York City patrol cop for six years. He’d shot two fleeing armed robbery suspects who had turned their weapons on Brice’s partner, wounding him in the stomach. Brice was lauded by the NYPD for his heroic and courageous actions and earned a promotion to detective as a result.
What the Department didn’t know was that, yes, Brice had given chase and drawn his weapon, but the only reason he hadn’t also been shot was that one of the robbers was Brice’s childhood best friend, Earl. Brice and Earl Baker had been friends since before they were born. Their mothers met in the free prenatal clinic in downtown Brooklyn and realized they only lived a block from each other in the same projects. Brice and Earl were born two months apart and had literally grown up together. On their first birthdays, each was the first guest to arrive at the other’s party. Before they started school, they had play dates when their mothers had face-to-face appointments at the welfare office, and when they started kindergarten at the same school, they held onto each other like Celie and Nettie from the Color Purple after the school tried to put them in separate classes.
Brice and Earl had always been inseparable in everything they did. For as long as each could remember, they had done everything together, including committing the heinous act of rape. When Earl first suggested that they rape one of their middle school classmates—a special education student who had a huge crush on Earl—Brice had told him no. But Earl always had a way of getting in Brice’s head, calling him a faggot and sissy if he didn’t give in to Earl’s every whim. Brice would always remember that day so clearly—the girl’s screams, her vacant eyes after the third boy climbed off her, and the fact that she never returned to school.
When Brice went to high school, he poured himself into his academics, and Earl became more immersed in street life. The day Brice received his diploma, Earl got sentenced to three years upstate for armed robbery. In the time that Earl had been locked up, Brice became a police officer. He thought that if he fought enough crime, he could erase his past. Brice had never shared his profession with his best friend or with any of his friends from the old neighborhood, until that fateful day when he came face to face with Earl on opposite sides.
Brice could still hear Earl’s words every time he thought about it.
* * *
“Wait, nigga. Don’t shoot. Wait the fuck a minute! B-boy? You a fuckin’ cop?” Earl asked, calling Brice by his childhood tag name. Earl’s wide-stretched eyes and hanging jaw said that he was clearly shocked to see his former best friend in the gravee blues. That was what they called the navy blue NYPD uniforms on the streets, making reference to how many black boys the NYPD had put in the grave.
Brice ignored Earl’s question but kept his gun trained on his old friend. They locked eyes, their past indiscretions standing between them like a giant ogre, scary and threatening to eat them alive.
“Drop your weapon!” Brice screamed like Earl was any other criminal in the streets.
“A’ight, B-boy, I’ma drop my weapon,” Earl said, calmly placing one hand up and preparing to bend down to drop his weapon.
“Fuck that!” Earl’s accomplice screamed out, raising his gun.
With that distraction and without thinking first, Brice opened fire on both of them. He watched Earl fold to the ground like a deflated balloon.
“Damn, B-boy, you was my brother from another mother,” Earl rasped before throngs of police officers descended upon the scene in response to the 10-13 that Brice had previously called over the radio.
Brice found out a few hours later that he had “heroically” taken the suspects down. He had not planned for Earl to find out his secret like that. Brice was determined to take his promotion to detective and fuck the wheels off of it to move up the ranks. The further removed he was from the streets, the easier it would be to live with the choice he’d made during the robbery.
So, Brice’s first day as a detective was both sad and proud for him. He looked at his new gold badge again and again. He even breathed on it and rubbed it on his shirt to get it to shine. Brice was enamored with himself, and he liked the sound of his new title, Detective Brice Simpson.
That first day, he’d placed his belt badge back on his brand-new Armani suit pants, stretched his arms out, and looked around the bustling detective squad room of the Brooklyn North Task Force. He tapped his fingers on his new desk—an old, gray, rickety holdover from the 70s. He had finally made it. As a patrol cop, the only thing Brice had was a tiny steel locker sandwiched between slews of other lockers in his precinct, but street patrols and uniforms were a thing of the past. Brice was a detective, and he had a chip on his shoulder the size of the Rock of Gibraltar.
Brice looked around the room at the WANTED posters. Being only twenty-eight years old at the time and from Brooklyn himself, he recognized more than a few faces on the posters. He probably knew where to find the suspects, too.
“Hey, Simpson, you think the good commissioner promoted you to sit there and look at the manicure Kim Ling gave you?” Detective Sergeant Carruthers yelled out as he walked toward Brice. His joke garnered snickers from the rest of the squad.
Brice felt his cheeks flame over. He opened his mouth to pipe up, but he didn’t get the chance.
“Save it. Here you go, some work. I know you’re not used to it, but up here, we work,” Sergeant Carruthers said, slamming a stack of case files on Brice’s desk.
“I ain’t never scared,” Brice came back jokingly, letting out a short, nervous chuckle.
Looking
