Re: Brian and Mike
"That...sucks." Brian didn't have a better answer for that. In order to understand what it felt like to be a kid dealing with that sort of thing, he would have had to have had a father around to tell him what he was doing wrong in the first place. He still worried if he would be able to be a father to Jack or if his own lack of experiences with real fathers would translate into him fucking up his son. But, that was definitely not a question that could be answered from untold dimensions away. So, he focused on the cars. And the fact Mike didn't even own. "There is so much wrong with that on so many levels. Clearly this was all Fate bringing you to someone who could educate you on the fine art of the greasemonkey," he said with a laugh.
"Well, I'm just a fascinating sort of guy all around. Must be your lucky day."
Shrugging, he considered the question. "There wasn't a lot of brotherhood in LAPD in the mid-90s. All the shit in Rampart Division was happening in '97 and that got the major news coverage. But, it wasn't an isolated thing. The Rodney King incident had only been a few years earlier in '91. The populace didn't trust the cops, the cops were on the defensive all the time because they had to be. But, it was more likely that they looked on each other with suspicion than banded together because just a few corrupt assholes can undermine the trust of everyone. There wasn't much improvement a few years later when that joint-op with the Bureau came up and I went under. And the Bureau was running that op ass-backwards out of the gate. They had nothing on Dom except a hunch. At most, until everything went down -- and by then it was too late -- all I could get them was circumstantial, nothing that would stick for a conviction. It should have been a long-term assignment, I should have been under for at least two or three months. But, they wanted the notch on the belt and they weren't too inclined to wait for a clean arrest. I can admit that being pushed so hard was probably at least partially responsible for me being more open to Dom's point of view. It was a pre-9/11 world where cops were the enemy, even if you were a cop. So, if they were pushing so hard to get it done, I was asking myself why and what they weren't telling me.
"But, really, unless you meet Dom, there's no way to explain why. He's like gravity and I didn't even realize I wanted that family until he just opened the door to his and invited me in, no questions asked." Brian's smirk was a little less wholesome, a little more indicative of the evil-doer he was probably painted as on Most Wanted lists around the country. "Part of it might have also had to do with the fact the feds pissed me off when they started disrespecting Mia, whose only crime at the time was being Dom's sister and falling for me."