When Ray was telling Anthony about his son, we saw Frankie appear with Taylor. His gaze seemed a little lost, but overall he looked okay. I stood up and Frankie mouthed something to the officer, who murmured something back and withdrew the arm he had around the boy's shoulders. Frankie then ran joyfully to hug me. As soon as I hugged back, he began to plant kisses in both my cheeks. I responded with a lonely, long one on each of his, hoping it'd be enough to pour all I felt at that instant. To tell him how much I loved him, how proud of him I was, that I'd fight for us. The way he smiled, staring deep into my eyes, told me he got my message.
"Y-you know, G-gee? I...I d-didn't like the man m-much and he was so an-annoying and as-asked so many qu-questions but...but the w-woman was nice and...and she made me d-draw so that w-was fun!" he whispered, as if fearing something he said could bring more problems.
"Oh that's good, they didn't make me draw so it was boring!" I commented, watching Taylor walk toward us.
"Sorry, but I have to take him back to the other side of the room before someone else comes." he apologized. "But if it helps, I can tell you from what I heard of the interview with the kid, that they got practically nothing to back up the accusation."
"Thanks." I shook the man's hand.
"I...I w-wanna stay with Gee!" Frankie pouted.
"Be strong, baby, this will be over soon." I caressed his face before retreating to my seat.
I contemplated Taylor guiding Frankie to where Greg was waiting. The drummer wrapped his arms around him, comforting him like a father would. When the cop was again within my reach, I called him.
"Excuse me...I need to give Frankie his meds. It's already past the time and it's very important that he have them. Would you please get me a knife, spoon, fork...anything I could use to grind the pills? Oh, and something for him to drink if possible." I solicited politely.
"No problem." he patted my back. Two minutes later he was back with a spoon and a glass of orange juice. He lead me to the front desk -which wasn't as replete as the chief's- and handed me a clean piece of paper to work over.
With the candy ball ready, I was only allowed near Frank to provide the medication. He took it eagerly, saying his head wasn't feeling good and if the voice in there started to talk it wouldn't let him tell the policemen what he wanted.
**********************
I was sick of that chair, sick of that cold wall, sick of seeing Frank just across the room and yet not having permission to break that distance.
"I better go over there with Frankie." Tony decided.
"Yes, please. I know he's scared even though he's trying to be strong for me. And tell him I love him?"
"I will." he nodded. "You Ray...take care of your friend, he needs it."
"Of course!" Toro stroked my hair making me feel like a dog.
Anthony didn't get too far when O'Hara stepped into the room and beckoned us both. "Iero, Way...follow me. I have some more things to converse with you two." he told us dryly. Great, a presumably homophobic chief of police in the same room with two gay men to discuss the fate of a third one. I was again wondering why it was that teleportation didn't exist for real.
I found myself back into the suffocating, diminutive moldy room. A second chair had been placed beside the filthy plastic one I had used before. The cold I'd felt while sitting outside died right away and trails of sweat ran down my forehead. I discharged my jacket, pressing it in a ball against my chest like a child and his teddy bear. The squeeze Tony gave to my knee brought me back to reality and what O'Hara was saying.
The first part of this double interrogatory featured the same questions I had already heard. Going by Anthony's face, I deduced he was having the same sense of deja vu. My guess was that the chief wanted to see if the other's presence would make us change our answers. Once he became aware that there was no kind of tension between Anthony and me, we went deeper.
"Way, would you tell me why you didn't take Frank to a local police station as soon as you found him?"
"I didn't..."
"I think it's enough." Tony interrupted. "Gerard has already explained it all and so have I. I'm Frank's father and agree one hundred percent with what Gerard did. I wouldn't have wanted my son to end up in a crappy public madhouse."
"Mister Iero, I'd rather you answer when asked."
"I was gonna say the same, anyway. I thought that Frankie had suffered enough, that's why I brought him to live with me, he didn't deserve to be locked up again." I muttered.
"You know what you did is against the law, right? That's appropriation of a person." O'Hara denoted.
"I didn't kidnap him, it wasn't against his will and he's not a minor." I countered.
"Frank's mentally ill, he can't decide on his own."
"That's bullshit, I must say. Who named some people God and granted them the power to give and take rights?" Anthony spat infuriated. "But okay, if Frankie's not allowed to make his own decisions then that's my place, isn't it? I think he did well going with Gerard and Gerard did well taking him in so I don't want him accused of anything. I support all of his actions. I wouldn't be with my son now if it wasn't for this boy, how could I think anything bad of him?"
"Iero, you still have to prove that you're indeed Frank's father." O'Hara set Anthony's speech aside with that simple line.
"I already showed an officer the documentation. Good that I stole Frank's birth certificate from my ex's house one of the few times she let me in after he was born. I didn't trust her and I knew it might be of use in the future." Anthony retraced, revealing a part of the past that not even I knew.
"Well, I didn't see them." the man corrected. Tony passed him the improvised cardboard folder containing the documents, which the chief studied carefully. In the meantime, Anthony and I only exchanged some looks, but didn't dare voice any thought.
CHAPTER 64, part 2
"Ok, mister Iero, this proves that you're the father of an eighteen-year-old boy called Frank Anthony, however not that this is the same Frank that lives with Way." O'Hara finally concluded.
"Oh come on, I know the ID is half destroyed, but what about the name and date of birth?" Anthony pointed at it. "What about the picture?"
"It's not legally enough. There's no last name, place of birth or ID number. Even more important: the Frank Iero this birth certificate belongs to, died almost six months ago. How do you explain this, Iero?"
"That's..."
"I asked mister Iero. You, Way, better be quiet until addressed again." the cop cut me off.
"Sorry."
"Yes, I know Frank's 'legally' dead, he had his death faked twice. " Tony spoke.
"So you're telling me you have knowledge of this."
"Yes, sadly." Iero told O'Hara everything about Linda, her man, and how they apparently faked Frank's death to get their hands on the money the boy's grandmother had left him. The policeman's pen traveled fast over the notebook, registering everything that was being said. Couldn't he at least get an old recorder?
"How did you get to know about all this?" he released the next inquiry. I thought it was my turn.
"Excuse me for butting in again... I did. I might not have taken Frank to the police, but I did work on trying to find out if he had any more family apart from his mother. I started by calling all Ieros in the phone directory and talked to Anthony's mother. From then on I followed the hints and it all led me to what Anthony just told you."
"Ok, we might have to go deeper into that later." O'Hara said. "Iero, after you found out about this...why didn't you do anything to prove that you're Frank's father and that he's alive?"
"Because...before meeting me, Gerard had been threatened and even shot to stop him from investigating." he let out, and I nearly chocked. I'd been trying to keep that unsaid. The police chief eyed us weirdly while he checked some papers. When I suddenly read my name on one of them, I felt like all my blood abandoned my body.
"Here it says you were shot in a robbery a couple of months ago."
"Y-yeah..." I nervously replied. "I lied because as Anthony said, I was threatened."
"Are you sure the attack had to do with Frank?"
"Yes, I am. Right before shooting me, one of those guys told me to stop investigating and to not let anyone know where Frank was or the next time they'd kill him."
"Mister O'Hara, you must understand the reason why I chose not to do anything. It meant putting Frankie at risk when I had just found him!" Anthony contributed.
"You should have denounced them."
"We were scared! We are scared, what we're telling you now here can have serious consequences, you know? Didn't you hear when I said Linda's boyfriend -or husband, I'm not sure- works for the government? He fucking knows everything!" the conversation had Anthony on edge.
"Calm down, calm down! Do you know this man's name?"
"No..." Tony shook his head.
"No we don't, nor what his exact job is, but it must be a good position if he could have his way with feigning a person's death and even getting the director of a mental institution to support that." I opined.
"Do you know the name of that institution?" the chief continued.
"Yes..." I grabbed a piece of paper and wrote it down. I was going to look into my cellphone's memory for the number, but then remembered I only had Grace's there. No way I'd get her in trouble. "I don't have the number here."
"It's ok, this will work. Anything else that could help us with this case?"
"Yeah. Someone recommended me to talk to a judge, and he contacted the procurator that was in charge of Frank's money. That's how I knew of the inheritance, but the man seemed scared to go farther and refused to help me any more. I wouldn't have dared call him again after I was attacked, anyway."
"Well, if you both agree, we can take legal measures about this. I don't care who the guy works for."
"What do you mean?" Anthony asked the cop.
"You can set a denounce against this woman Linda, since we do know her whole name." he developed the idea.
Anthony and I discussed it for a while. We were terribly scared of what could happen, but we also wanted Linda and her partner to pay for what they had done. Although this officer wasn't exactly nice, he appeared to be decent -a quality that wasn't easy to find- and hadn't backed off at the government mention. We finally agreed, having in mind that we'd need to be more careful and keep our eyes open to anything suspicious.
"Alright. Now first, we'll check Frank's fingerprints to verify that he and the 'dead' Frank are the same person."
"What about me?" I chimed in.
"You'll have to wait. If mister Iero here is the boy's father, then he'll be able to decide what to do with your case and we might have this solved." O'Hara notified.
" Might?"
"Yes. Iero could choose to free you from any charges since he'd be responsible for the kid but...we still have to wait and see what the psychiatrist says."
"I don't get it."
"You'd be allowed to leave, but I'm not sure what the psychiatrist will consider best for Frank's mental health."
"What?!" I exploded. "You or that psychiatrist are no one to decide that!"
"Gerard, calm down." Tony pushed me back into my chair.
"But...Tony...you are Frank's father! If you're ok with our relationship that should be enough!"
"It depends on the case, you better wait. It'd be easier if we could contact the boy's psychiatrist..." the cop said.
"Good moment he chose to leave the country!" I thought aloud.
I didn't think Goldberg would have been too useful to be honest. As far as I knew, he was unaware of our relationship. In the beginning, I begged Frank not to tell his psychiatrist because I was afraid of his reaction. I eventually realised that what I'd asked him was too hard to carry out since he was supposed to tell the doctor everything he needed to know and answer all of his questions. I couldn't help it if Frankie felt like confessing, so I just tried not to think much about it. Nevertheless, every time I questioned him on the matter, he swore he hadn't told Goldberg. Time went by and Mark never mentioned anything, which took me to believe that Frank had actually kept the secret unsaid.
***************
"Wh-what are they g-gonna do to me, G-gee?" Frankie asked me scared. The medication had kicked in and he looked sleepy and as tired as we all were. Not giving a fuck about what the cops would say, I held him in my arms. I needed to feel his warmth, smell his strawberry scented hair. Its sweet smell lingered on even if we had been deprived of our daily bath that afternoon.
What was their point, anyway? Even a real pervert wouldn't be as stupid as to abuse the boy in front of a bunch of cops, would he?
"Don't be afraid, Frankie, it's nothing. It doesn't hurt, you'll only get your hands a little dirty 'cause they're gonna smear ink on them. See these circular marks on your fingertips?" I lifted his hand to his face and signaled to them.
"Uh...no?" he squinted. The glasses couldn't do miracles for his sight, evidently.
"Well...we all have them, they look kinda like spirals and are different in each person."
"Ahh."
"Once your fingers are coated with ink, they'll tell you to press them against a paper and those same marks will be left there. They're call fingerprints."
"Oh I...I th-think I did th-that once! Y-yes I did, I f-forgot." He obviously had, years ago when his ID was renewed.
"Yes, you did when you were younger. Now they'll compare the new fingerprints to the old ones and see that you're that same person. Do you understand?"
"Y-yeah...think s-so..." he yawned.
"And you know it's harmless..."
"Y-yep."
"That's my Frankie." I gave him a last quick hug. "Then go with your dad, everything will be fine."
"K-kay." he kissed my nose and took the hand Tony offered, both disappearing towards the back of the place.
I was left there waiting with Ray and Greg. The wait seemed eternal. Soon we ran out of conversation subjects and were too nervous to come up with new ones. Or at least I was. I couldn't even sit still for long, having to stand up and pace along the room every now and then so I wouldn't go crazy.
"I'm gonna go buy something to eat." Ray stood. "I'm starving."
"Don't buy anything for me, my stomach is knotted."
"Gerard, you haven't eaten for hours..." he rolled his eyes.
"I had chocolate with Frankie in the afternoon and I'm not hungry." I insisted. "Just buy me cigarettes."
"Again with that? You don't need to smoke. Besides, I don't even know if you're allowed to here." Ray said.
"Yes, I do need it now and I don't give a damn if I'm allowed or not. They having me here is unfair enough."
"Ok, ok, suit yourself!" he turned his back on me and strode out of the building.
How could everybody expect me to stay calm? Why should I stay calm while strangers conferred about my love life and whether is correct for me to love who I loved? Why, when they were treating Frankie like he was totally incapacitated?
"Everything's gonna be alright, Gerard." I felt Greg's strong, large hand on my shoulder. "It shows in your eyes that you're a good guy, and in the way Frankie speaks of you...no one can think you're bad for him."
"Everybody's telling me that and I swear I'm trying to believe it." I forced a smile, giving myself some courage. "It has to be alright...it will."
"Food is here!" Ray announced, a plastic disposable tray with five huge bacon and cheese sandwiches in his hands and a transparent bag with soda cans hanging from one of his arms.
"I said I was not hungry." I declined when he put a sandwich in front of my face. "Just gimme my smokes."
"You're insufferable, have a Coke at least." he shoved the can in my hand together with the pack of cigarettes.
"F-FOOD!" we heard Frank's scream before we even saw him. He snatched the sandwich off Ray's hand with his stained ones and by the time I set my eyes on him he was already chomping it desperately.
"I...I w-was dying! M-my tummy was t-talking all the time in th-there. D-dad heard it!" he spoke with a full mouth.
"I did!" Anthony laughed.
"Have your Sprite." Ray gave the hungry boy a can already open and with a straw in.
"Th-thanks!"
"I missed you, little baby." I took the chance to coddle Frank while no cop was in sight. He was busy eating, but the same he stayed very close to me, his head on my chest as my hand rested on his waist. "Oh, and you can have my sandwich too."
"Yay! I l-love you so m-much!" he celebrated. Even if tired, Frankie was taking things better than me. Considering that he was usually really intuitive, his good mood may be a positive sign.
"What's the next step?" I asked Tony.
"We have to wait even longer. They don't have the...technology to compare fingerprints here, so they must communicate with another police station. Luckily they do have a scanner in this hellhole so they can send Frank's prints. Those idiots had implied that we'd have to wait until tomorrow, but I demanded that they did it right now."
"What the fuck? I'm not gonna sleep here!" I screamed.
"Shh, you won't, I said that I told them to do it now."
"End of chat!" a new officer came to separate us.
While everybody ate, I just sipped at my Coke and smoked like crazy. Every time someone told me to put the cig down, I would only do so until I was left alone and could light it up anew.
One more hour we waited, incertitude corroding my brain and Frank's absence turning into unbearable as I tried to not look at him all the time. Sixty fucking long minutes until O'Hara made his non-unenthusiastic entrance with a simple paper between two fingers. The five of us jumped out of our seats and surrounded him. What he'd say was obvious to us, yet that didn't make the expectation any lower.
"The fingertips matched, this boy here is Anthony Iero's son indeed. Well...who he accepted as his son at the moment of Frank's birth at least, since this is not an DNA test." the cop's attempt at being funny failed. "Anyway Iero, I honestly don't think you'd need one, just seeing your faces is enough to know you're related."
"Oh my God..." Tony began to cry and hugged Frankie so desperately that he practically crushed the oblivious boy. It's not that he had any doubt, but knowing that he would now be Frank's father officially moved him too much. That and the fact that his son wouldn't be dead to the world anymore. He'd get his identity back, which was surely important. So important that when I thought of it, I couldn't help crying too. Frankie had no idea of what was happening or why we were crying, that man hadn't said anything new to him; so when we told him we were happy he just frowned and declared us weird.
"We'll modify the information in the databases and you'll have to come back soon with the boy to get a new ID done, ok?" the chief informed Anthony.
"It's ok. Now, what do I have to do to free Gerard from charges?"
"Follow me."
"I don't think I've ever walked so much inside a same building as today." Tony giggled. "Hold on, Gerard! This might be the last one!"
Not much time went by before they were back, which surprised me; everything took ages there.
"Done! I know you won't, but you could go home if you wanted." Anthony confirmed.
"There's more, right?" I read the concern in his face.
"He said the psychiatrist is undecided about Frank's condition because he's too ambiguous."
"What? No! They...they can't decide for him, they just...can't!" I shouted, terrified about losing Frank. What would they do if they thought it wasn't good for Frankie to be with me? Ban me from seeing him? Allow me to do it only under supervision? It didn't make sense, I didn't think any law should support that. We weren't talking about a child, but a young man.
"Lower your voice now. " an officer demanded.
"Frankie's not a minor, Gerard. In my opinion, the most they can do is tell me what they think would be the best for him, but I'd still have the last word about it." Tony exposed.
"It's exactly as he says." the officer, who had heard us, told us. "I guess the boss wanted to scare you a little. If we were talking about a minor then it'd be different, they'd even have a judge intervene. But in these situations it's actually the parents who decide what to do. As much, they might suggest that the boy be checked by our psychiatrist in the near future."
"Good to know, and you should tell your boss that you just don't play with these kind of things." I complained, the urge to punch them all growing on me.
I was struggling with my feelings, ordering my head to stop worrying, screaming to my heart to be quiet. I got up, ready to go into each damn room until I found someone who could tell me what the fuck we were waiting for. Just then, the person who entered the station kept me in my place; or not exactly, since I ran to him.
"Mark! You can't even imagine how happy I am to see you!"
"Hello, Gerard. I just got back and my colleague told me everything..." he explained.
"Oh, I..."
"Don't say anything, just trust me." Goldberg raised a hand to stop me and then rushed to the chief's office.
The next time we saw him, close to midnight, he was in O'Hara's company and had a smile on his face. It was the cop who talked, though, with the help of some annotations.
"Well Gerard, we have nothing more to object and you should thank this man for it." he didn't sound pleased. "Doctor Goldberg guaranteed -and even signed a responsibility document that could make him lose his title if his diagnosis was wrong- that Frank is mature enough on the sexual and emotional level to maintain a relationship of this kind. The psychiatrist also ensured that Frank has considerably improved since he met you and the bond has only affected him positively. He certificates that Frank Iero has never been forced to anything while living with you and that you have handled all situations correctly."
"Does all that mean that I can hug and kiss my boyfriend now?" I questioned childishly.
"What is this, a wedding? Uh, yes...you can, whatever." the cop sighed disgusted and walked away.
"Frankie! Baby...everything's fine, you can come over here!" I shouted, gaining a dozen of killer stares. Frank was sleeping with his head on Tony's lap, but it only took him three seconds to wake up and cross the gap. He jumped unto me and initiated the kiss, arms around my neck and somnolent eyes full of love. The police station, the cold, the tiredness, the people around us all erased for as long as our magical moment lasted.
"Mark...I have a doubt." I was more than confused after hearing what he had told the chief. "You knew Frankie and I are boyfriends?"
"Gerard...you really thought Frankie would be able to leave something as important as that unsaid? Your relationship is like the center of the universe to him, of course he'd tell me! He didn't want you to know that he'd confessed it, he said it was supposed to be a secret. I respected that, though after some time I asked him to comment it with you. He told me he had." he divulged. I looked at Frankie who appeared to be deliberately glancing at anything but me.
"Well, it seems we have a little liar here..." I quipped.
"Oops!" Frankie giggled, his head still down, eyes spying us from over his glasses. I chuckled and just pecked his lips.
"Why didn't you ever tell me anything, then?" I still found it incomprehensible that Goldberg hadn't talked to me about it.
"Professional discreetness, it was Frank's petition. And as I said before, I thought you knew already so I was waiting for you to bring up the subject first. I didn't have an utter necessity of doing it myself because Frankie never showed any negative consequences. In these cases if something is wrong, we learn it right away from the patient."
"Oh, ok. Anyway, I'd feel more comfortable if we had a talk about it soon."
"I think it's a good idea." he accorded. "Well, I have to leave now so I'll see you both next week."
"Good night, doctor. And thank you very much for coming right away to help me."
"You're welcome. I did because I know you, you didn't deserve to spend one more minute here."
"B-bye, Mark! S-sorry for not t-telling Gee. I...f-forgot?" Frank grinned.
"Bye Frankie, of course you're forgiven."
Goldberg left and I took in my surroundings. I realised that Anthony, Greg and Ray had been near us all the time as soundless onlookers; leaving me to solve my qualms and present my gratefulness to the psychiatrist on my own.
"Is everything okay, Gerard?" Ray asked.
"Yeah, I guess it is now." I smiled wearily.
"G-gee...Gee, I c-can be Frankie for ev-everybody now?" my boyfriend said, confounding me. It was late and I was too exhausted to interpret him.
"What do you mean, sweety? You are Frankie..."
"N-no but...you t-told me to play to be a b-big boy for t-today, remember? I t-tried but makes me t-tired to be F-frank and...and I think I d-don't do it too w-well. C-can I be F-frankie, now?" he waited for my answer with earnest projected on his pale semblance. I couldn't help laughing.
"Yes, you can be Frankie again. It's not even Friday anymore, see?" I showed him my watch. "It's more than 12. And I think you did great, I'm very very proud of you, we all are."
"Ah." he replied indifferently. "C-can we leave th-this place full of as-assholes and go home p-pretty please?"
CHAPTER 65, Part 1
We live our life in our own way,
never really listened to what they say,
the kind of faith that doesn't fade away.
We are the true believers.
We are the true believers.
We weren't able to leave the police station right away. There were still papers to sign and rants to hear. As one of the officers had predicted, we were told to bring Frankie back for a talk with their psychiatrist in no more than a month. He'd luckily liked the woman, which would be an asset when the time came to convince him to step into that place again.
O'Hara emphasized the importance of calling them if we happened to know anything about Linda's whereabouts. The same if we noticed any strange movement near our houses, thought we were being followed, or got any suspicious phone call. About that last point, he not only recommended me to change my phone number, but also assured me that they'd contact the phone company about it with no delay so I'd get that done quicker. I didn't know if I should take him seriously, still couldn't believe that the chief was being so considerate after thinking me a pervert. He most likely just wanted to escape responsibility in case we were attacked for denouncing Linda; but since that was an actual probability, a little help was welcomed.
Frankie was rather happy and communicative during the last half an hour we spent there, feeling liberated from having to pretend. That worried me, though. When I told him he could be himself again, I did because I'd thought we were already leaving. Now I was afraid that the cops would notice him acting like a kid and change their minds. It relieved me to see that he had chosen to just pester Taylor around the station, assaulting him with tons of questions and getting his hands on anything the officer was working on. Walsh had been right about his mate, the guy was a real gentleman with all of us. I trusted him.
Once we were out and in Ray's car, Frankie's attitude changed completely. I first supposed he was just sleepy. When time went by and he was still staring out of the window wide awake, I knew there was something else. Up until then the situation hadn't seemed to affect him much, and I feared he could have been hiding more than I had asked him to. Anthony and I tried to make him talk, but Frank was lost in thought, completely absent.
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