Chapter 9
VI
"Here's how this works," Armen says to Fischer. "You're not locked up. You move around, you work, you eat, you sleep. Nobody's keeping you prisoner."
Fischer waits.
"What you don't do," Armen continues, "is leave. Not because we're stopping you, but because the people who sent that man here will find you inside of twenty-four hours. And they won't be having a nice conversation with you."
Fischer is quiet for a moment. "You're telling me I'm free."
"I'm telling you the Rot is the safest place you've got right now," Armen says. "What you do with that is up to you."
This is a masterclass in not saying the thing directly, which is classic Armen. He didn't tell Fischer he’s trapped here, which he pretty much is. He knows it. We all know it.
He looks around the table, taking his time, going from Armen to Sting to Rogue and finally landing on me. I hold his gaze and don't give him anything, which I've gotten pretty good at in my time in the Rot. It’s strange, the skills you pick up here.
He nods one time, the way you agree to things you have no real choice about.
"One condition," Fischer says, as if he actually thinks he has some negotiating power.
Rogue makes a sound that isn't quite a laugh.
"I want to know what happens when you find them," Fischer says. "The people above me. I want to know."
I look at Fischer and try, not for the first time, to figure out what's actually going on behind his eyes. Is it guilt? Self-preservation dressed up as something civilized? Does he actually want the people above him brought down, or does he just want to know they can't get to him?
Probably the second. But maybe a little of the first, too.
"You'll know when we have something to tell you," Armen says.
Fischer nods again and looks back at the table.
Rogue stands and Fischer pushes back from the table. Kade, who is there for reasons unknown to me, materializes at his shoulder and walks him out with a hand that isn't quite touching him but is close enough to make the point.
The door closes.
I stay in my chair and look at the empty seat across from me.
Tommy once held the supply room door open for me when my hands were full and said have a good one like he meant it. That's all I had on him. That's what I'm trying to reconcile with everything else.
Fischer signed papers that killed a nursing home. Took money meant for people who needed it and sent it somewhere else. Helped build the machine that destroyed Rothwell, destroyed my father's reputation, destroyed whatever life I had before I ended up here.
I grew up in Rothwell. It didn't fall apart all at once.
That's the thing nobody tells you about a place dying.
It's incremental, almost polite. A business closes, then another.
A family moves away quietly, then another, until one day, you realize the street you grew up on has three empty houses on it and nobody's talking about it because what is there to say.
The Saturday market on Clement Street got smaller every week.
Two vendors, then one, then just the kettle corn guy standing alone by his booth before he gave up too.
The people who ran the corruption left. Of course they left. So did those who could. The rest of us?
Well, look at me.