Miami Vice- The Grief that Prevails When one of Our Own Has Fallen

Larry Zito is Dead

Music to listen to while you read this: 

What could be done to remedy the stinging slap of grief as it rattled through the very core of one's heart? Nothing. Three simple words and it seemed the entire world could come crashing down upon one's shoulders.

Lar is dead.

She could still hear the way the words rolled off of Stan's rattled tongue accompanied by the most ragged and pained of breaths. Tubbs could feel the gap of eternity suddenly spreading between that moment and the years to come without the warm presence of Officer Zito. Death had no easy fix when the person you were mourning happened to be more like family and a constant companion. There were a million things that had gone through her mind. None of them, were much welcome. 

A week later............

The windows of the funeral parlor were covered in soft pigments of forrest-green and ash-grey grime from years of neglect. The sun-light, what little there seemed to be, struggled to filter into the gloomy and grey room. The coffin lay open in the middle of the expanse. All Ricki could do was watch the scene with a stoney and icy gaze. A spectator at a sporting event might feel a more emotional connection to a game than Ricki wanted to let herself feel here. Her jaw muscles twitch, from how tightly she had clenched her teeth. Grief was no friend to Tubbs. She had grown to know it well and to despise its caress as much as the vibrant green grass from summer and fall seems to be repulsed by the murderous touch of a New York City winter. Even in Miami the sun seemed to duck behind the clouds.

Sunglasses, were her only relief from the onslaught of expectant gazes; most of them from strangers, who believed they knew Lar. But the real Lar, his outside life, had been just as much a lie as the rest of the Vice Departments lives. What was there to say on behalf of a brother fallen in the line of duty, a comrade, and a friend? He shouldn't have died. This was supposed to be one of those simple in and out drug sweeps. It had gone horribly awry and blown up in everyone's faces, especially poor Stan. 

She tilted her head upwards as if, none of this bothered her but nothing could be further from the truth. Ricki, refusing to let the tidal-wave of emotions fully engulf her, tried so desperately to keep herself occupied. Ricki swallowed harshly, her one balled up fist pounding again and again into her other open palm. The motion, nothing but a sorry attempt to keep her mind off of the misery and the due-justice that was owed to poor Lar. She forced her feet to remain still, though Ricki would have loved to have been running- somewhere a thousand miles from this dreadful place. Out moving this needle like pain that haunted the soul the very way light frosts seem to ghost upon the windshields of cars.

Lar didn't deserve this. Hell, no one did. But what burned her up the most, was the fact that the sleaze, her friend had been investigating, made it look like he was a regular drug addict. An addict who, simply overdosed. There wasn't a darn thing they could do about it until they had proof contrary. Ricki wanted to bust free of this painful wake, so that she could clear Lar's muddied name at that very second. Every grueling moment of knowing he'd be denied a proper and fitting funeral, sickened her. She may not have known Lar as long as the others, but it didn't mean that she didn't care just as deeply for him. He had been a friend.

Feeling a strange weight in her pocket, Tubbs slipped a hand into its confines and pulled out a clump of hideous fake bugs. The black plastic critters were part of Lar and Stan's ultimate practical jokes. They both knew that Tubbs loathed and feared bugs and so they would endlessly stuff these plastic monstrosities in different places. If only, just to watch Ricki climb up onto a chair, start squealing, and demanding that Crockett "kill it." It was then that she finally broke down in half-heart-crushing-sobs and half-stunned laughter. If she wasn't grieving, Ricki might have shrieked in disgust. No, this time.

 She cradled the plastic bugs in her hand as if it were not something Lar and Stan had pulled out of some cheap prank shop, but rather the greatest of all treasures. She clung to the tiny cluster as if, somehow they would bring Lar back and they could make things okay again. She crossed the room slowly, making her way to the casket.

Standing beside his peaceful looking corpse she leaned in, and chokingly whispered, "now ....Lar.....wh...why did you have to check out on me so soon? I didn't even get to return the present. Hmmm?" She pulled apart the cluster of fake bugs and she tucked one in his dress-shirt, right above his heart. "Don't you forget to tell the Big Man upstairs that I want my mansion to be near yours and Raphs. Say, hi to my brother for me, Lar. As much as I loathe to say it, you're in better hands now...." She choked letting the tears run freely down her face.

Slipping the other bugs into her pocket, Ricki dotingly and slowly brushed her finger-tips over his smooth forehead. In a solemn tone she added, "I promise..... I'll put those guys in jail for you, pal. If...If I have to do it myself..." Her lips quavered heavily. There were so many other things she wanted to say but couldn't. Her vigilante impulse wanted to kick into overdrive. Had she not been a cop, she would have marched down to the place where Lar had been found dead. She wouldn't have stopped till the guilty party was slaughtered. Carrying the badge meant that she could only fetch the suspects and gather evidence. It would be up to the courts and the judge to determine the guilty party's punishment.

One look at Stan, and she could no longer feel her heart. It had sunk so low into the depths of shadowy despair, that it's hollow cavity was left with nothing but an overwhelming sense of numbness. The tears slowly slipped beneath the lower rims of her dark-sunglasses. A stubborn and trembling hand wipes away the swollen silvery orbs that threaten to proclaim her brokenness to the world. Raquel Tubbs, the tough cop from the streets of New York City and now from Miami didn't like to be seen when her world was fracturing around her, like a fresh meringue about to be consumed sometimes dissolves into a slightly sticky dust like substance. Ricki quickly removed herself from the immediate vicinity of the main grieving crowd before someone could call her out on a display of weakness.

Ricki needed to turn to someone or something before she'd crumple to the ground under the unbearable weight of of this fresh and unbearable burden. But who could she turn to? Her eyes studied the room. Stan, oh how miserable he looked. There'd be no words to describe the personal hell he must be going through. The days to come were going to be just as torturous, if not more so. Try as she might, to conjure up something to say, she was still at a loss. Oh she wanted to hold Stan tight and close, to protect him from every ounce of pain that the world might thrust in his direction.  However at the moment, he was getting swarmed by Lar's family. So Ricki decisively hung back. Trudy and Gina were hugging guests and sobbing amongst themselves.... and Castillo, his usually stoney and unreadable face held some semblance of great emotion. Something that seemed so uncommon for him and yet so perfectly in place with the setting and the mood of the room.

Ricki could only stand aloof, unable to communicate and express everything she felt. A war seemed to have ignited within her. Unresolved emotion regarding her brother, lover, and son's deaths started to rise back to the surface, demanding to be recognized.  Tiredly, she found a sturdy wall to sink back against. Her gaze driven continually downwards to the grungy looking funeral parlor carpet, which happened to be the same disgusting shade of green as the Bug-van that Lar and Stan always drove around town. Her heel scuffed at the thick clotted fabric, wanting nothing more than to rip it up off of the cold cement base below. 

The music flooding the place succeeded in driving the sharpest nails into her sorrow racked chest and she struggled to bite back heavy and breath-snatching sobs. Every melancholy note seemed capable of robbing every ounce of energy and joy from a person, leaving them in this lethargic and disgusting state. A state of comfort in the middle of a whirlwind of destress. 

When a pair of shoes came to rest in front of Tubbs, her shade-covered gaze hesitantly lifted to the other. She wished for nothing more than to be invisible. Or even, to be caught up in a tight embrace, so that all the fragments of her miserable emotional being would be held together by something other than rubber-bands and paper-clips that could readily be found in the department's desk drawers. 

((this will be edited. Right now its really in kind of rough shape))