Hard Rain Falling

by Don Carpenter

Forbes went on: “I’ll give it to you straight. This girl’s father swings some weight around here; he’s been in this office four times already, fartin fire and telling me he’s going to have my ass if you aren’t sent to the gas chamber on the Little Lindbergh Law. I know the girl. She stinks. Just another two-bit chick, stupid enough to go tough. I know both the girls. Sue Franconi is all right, but don’t think she won’t get up on the witness stand with Mona and lie you right into San Quentin or worse. She’d do it to save her ass, and to tell the truth, I don’t blame either of them. You shouldn’t, either. You’ve been in juvenile, you know what it’s like.

  “Now, these other charges are still open in San Francisco. I told them I wanted to try the kidnap charge here, and if you get convicted of anything at all, they’ll probably drop. I’m going to ask the grand jury to indict you for kidnaping, and that’ll get Mona’s old man off my neck; and by the time trial rolls around, he’ll be up to his ears in some other wild-ass scrape of hers, and we can accept a lesser plea of contributing or something from you, hear it before a judge, and you’ll be doing your little bit in county jail before he knows what happened. Anyway, by that time I’ll be renominated and he can’t touch me for another four years.”

  He looked at Jack intently. “I’ll lay the whole thing out for you. If you don’t cop the plea, if you want to fight it out, you’ll probably win your case. I can get you a damned good lawyer, and he’ll beat it. You can probably find somebody who saw the girls leave town, maybe the bus driver. You can get the clerks from that fleabag hotel down in the city, and they’ll probably testify in your behalf. You’d have no trouble beating it, and you know it. It’s as phony a charge as I ever saw. It’s got vice squad bull written all over it. I’m just telling you so there’ll be no mistake. I ain’t trying to trap you. You can beat it, and I’ll have a big defeat on my record in an election year, and Mona’s daddy will raise all sorts of hell, and I’ll look stupid. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do if you try that: I’ll drop the case and take my medicine, and you’ll go back to San Francisco and face the statutory rape charge. That one you can’t beat, and you know it. I won’t lift a finger to get that charge dropped if I have to drop mine. It’s out of my hands anyway. You’ll do time on that one, plenty of time. Do you see what I’m getting at? I’m telling you I can fix the rape charge and the rest of it, if you’ll cooperate with me. If you won’t, tough tiddy.”

  Jack saw. If he pled guilty to the charge he was innocent on, he would not be tried on the charge he was guilty on. It was even kind of funny. As to the rape charge, he realized now that he had always known the girls were underage, but had never given it a second thought. If he hadn’t known, or suspected, it would not make any difference anyway. It was still a felony. It was a joke. Nobody ever went to jail for screwing. Except that they did, all the time. But none of that made any difference. You didn’t go to jail for what you did; you went because they caught hold of you and didn’t know what else to do, and so they put you in jail. They. Yes, they. The filing cabinets in the orphanage. The city hall. The parking meter. The hotel-room door. Batman. Never anybody real sending you to jail. The cops didn’t do it. The District Attorney didn’t do it. His chair is doing it. Sending my meat and bones to jail, and I got to go along. That’s all. Nothing personal.

  “Fuck you,” Jack said to the District Attorney’s chair. He felt enraged, seduced, raped. He felt hate, but he couldn’t do anything about it. He wanted to scream. He began saying, “Fuck you,” over and over again, sitting erect in the chair, his hands at his sides, his face empurpling with frustrated rage, tears coming out of his eyes.

  “This won’t do,” the District Attorney said. Jack stopped, and stared at him through the film on his eyes. “Think about it. No hurry. I’ll send your lawyer down right after the son of a bitch gets back from his goddam fishing trip.”

  Jack lived in the Balboa County jail for 66 days, awaiting trial. It was not his first county jail. The jail was on the top floor of the courthouse building and took up the whole left side of the floor. There was a long corridor with a concrete wall on one side and bars on the other, and in the corridor was a desk, manned by a county deputy during the day and unmanned at night. At the left end of the corridor was a concrete-reinforced steel door, and to one side of it was a steel judas window six inches square. Outside this door was another short corridor which ended in a barred gate, and beyond that the elevator foyer and the doors leading to the visitor’s room, the lawyer’s consulting rooms and the women’s and juvenile divisions of the county jail. When the prisoners were being taken to the visitor’s room or to see their lawyer, they were led past the elevators, but that was all right, because the elevator doors were enclosed in a tiny barred cell of their own; persons emerging from the elevators found themselves in a small cell that could be opened only by the man sitting at a desk just out of long hand-reach from the cell. There was a deputy at this desk day and night.

  The felony tank itself was behind the bars that made up one side of the long corridor. It was an open room, surrounded on three sides by cells that were never locked except for special prisoners. The men slept in the cells and spent their days in the big bullpen, where there were some tables and chairs and a couple of long benches. No matter where the prisoners were, in the cells or out in the bullpen, the deputy sitting at the desk in the corridor could see them, and if there was any trouble, a riot or anything of the sort, the deputy could quell it by using the fire hose curled against the wall beside the desk. There was no place in the tank the deputy could not reach with his fire hose. The lights in the tank were controlled from the desk, but there was one, in the ceiling of the bullpen, that never went out. At nine o’clock a deputy came in from the elevator foyer and flipped the switch, extinguishing the lights in the corridor and two of the lights in the tank, but the one in the middle always stayed on. All the light bulbs in the tank were covered with heavy wire cages, but the one in the middle had been worked loose, and after the deputy left the men often climbed up on a table and unscrewed the bulb so they could sleep in the dark. The place smelled of damp concrete, creosote, and sweat.

  When a prisoner or suspect first arrived he was wearing the clothes he was arrested in, minus any belts, suspenders, neckties, or shoelaces with which he could hang himself in a fit of depression. If the prisoner or suspect was indicted by the grand jury, held over, or convicted by the municipal or superior courts, his personal clothing was taken from him and he was issued a light blue work shirt and darker blue dungarees. Every Friday these were exchanged for clean ones, and the dirty ones sent to a Laundromat owned by one of the deputies. This cleaning cost was deducted from the prisoner’s pay or from his fund of money down in the property room, and was one dollar per cleaning.

  The prisoners were divided into three groups. The first group consisted of trusties, who did not live in the felony tank but at a farm outside the city limits, where they slept in barracks and grew some of the food consumed by the other prisoners and by persons in the county hospital. In order to be a trusty you had to have been convicted of a misdemeanor and doing more than thirty days’ time, and to exhibit a spirit of willingness to reform. The trusties were mostly farmworkers who had been caught drunk driving or gambling; some of them were just ordinary citizens who had been found guilty of one thing or another and could not get probation. Several were in for failure to provide child support.

  The second class of prisoners included those who were not admitted to trusty status but who had money downstairs in the property room. They lived in the felony tank and spent their time playing cards, talking, reading, or just sitting around in the bullpen. No one was allowed on a bunk during daylight hours.

  The third class of prisoners had neither trusty status nor money. They had to do all the work in the tank and were paid a dollar a day for their efforts. This money was placed in their accounts each Friday, minus one dollar for cleaning. These men made the beds, cleaned out the cells, mopped down, washed the walls, d
isinfected, carried out the graniteware pails that were used for toilets, and acted as intermediaries between the tank and the outside.

  The prisoners in the tank were fed three times a day and exercised twice a day. In the morning, after lights-on at six-thirty, the working prisoners cleaned up, took out the slop pails, and then brought in a big aluminum kettle full of black coffee and two trays of mugs; and, following this, brought in two trays of bowls and spoons and a kettle of oatmeal mush. Some of this breakfast was actually eaten by prisoners who had no money, always with expressions of rage and disgust, because the unsweetened coffee always tasted like chlorine, and the oatmeal, without sweetening and only thinly mixed with powdered milk, tasted like nothing at all.

  The prisoners who had money, working through an established route of intermediaries, ate whatever they wanted, having it sent up from the restaurant in the basement. The cost of these meals was twenty-five cents above the listed price, and the extra money went to the deputy who carried up the food. Other articles could be had from the deputies: books, magazines, newspapers, etc., for which the carrying charge was also twenty-five cents above purchase price, except for cigarettes, which were a set thirty-five cents a pack. The prisoners were not allowed to have cartons of cigarettes.

  The noon meal for the prisoners without money was the big meal of the day, and was usually a bowl of vegetable stew with meat flavoring, or macaroni and cheese, tea, and two slices of bread. For dessert, there were prunes. The evening meal was bread and jam and tea. Everybody, even the prisoners with money, ate the bread and jam, because the jam was made and sold to the county by the wife of one of the deputies, and was considered excellent. Even the deputies on duty would have some.

  For exercise, at ten in the morning and three in the afternoon, all the prisoners lined up two or three deep in the middle of the bullpen, the tables and chairs all pushed aside to make room, and did calisthenics under the personal direction of the sheriff of the county, who stood in the corridor and did all the exercises himself, bellowing out the count in his deep manly voice. He was a very popular sheriff, and was justly famous for his belief that county prisoners were more than a mere administrative and economic problem, that they were men, too, and needed to keep their strength up if they were to lead useful lives on the outside. When, due to the pressures of outside business, the sheriff could not make it for the exercise periods, a deputy would read the exercises from a mimeographed sheet in a bored voice, sitting at the desk in the corridor. Each exercise period lasted fifteen minutes, and no one was excused except violent prisoners, who were locked in their cells. Even the prisoners with money had to exercise.

  Jack Levitt was brought in on a Thursday, late, and all the other prisoners seemed to know he was being held on a capital crime, and they let him alone. The deputy led Jack to an empty cell and Jack got onto the bunk and fell asleep in only a few minutes. The next day he was taken right out to wait for his interview with District Attorney Forbes, and that night, after he was brought back, he was taken with the others down the corridor to the shower room; but he was not yet given a set of dungarees. After his shower he was conscious of the musty odor of his clothes, and it bothered him a little. Nobody talked to him except to tell him where to go and what to do. None of the prisoners spoke to him at all, although one very young Mexican grinned at him once.

  On Saturday he had a visitor, and was taken with the others who had visitors down the corridor, past the elevator cage, and into the long visitor’s room. The prisoners went locked together by wrist chains, led and followed by deputies carrying billy clubs, and as they passed the elevator cage, one of the prisoners moaned. The elevator cage was full of civilians, mostly women, with a sprinkling of children and men. The man probably saw his relatives, saw a look of embarrassment on their faces, and moaned out of humiliation.

  The visitor’s room wasn’t really a room, but a series of cubicles. Each prisoner selected a cubicle and stood in it. There was a thick glass, and a telephone. On the other side of the glass was exactly the same thing, and the visitor walked along, looking for the familiar face. They talked over the telephones. It was always very noisy and confusing. Long-time prisoners who were already convicted of a misdemeanor went to a different place, where they could actually sit with their families or friends, under the eyes of two deputies. This room had easy chairs and couches, and a nice view of the distant vineyards and the mountains beyond, through the meshed windows.

  Jack wondered who his visitor could possibly be, knowing it was not his lawyer, because they had small private rooms for legal conferences. He was surprised, then, to see Mona on the other side of the glass, making a girlish face at the arrangement. When she saw Jack she smiled and picked up her telephone.

  “Are you mad at me?” she asked him. She cupped the phone against her cheek and shoulder and held her hands out in a gesture of helplessness, as if to suggest that destiny was being unkind to both of them. She was wearing a man’s Pendleton shirt and Levis cut off above the knees. Her hair was combed out straight and there was a bright yellow bandeau holding it back rather primly. She looked about thirteen, Jack thought, without all her makeup. It made him feel better, not worse, to see her looking so young and almost innocent. Not really innocent; there was still that expression of rapacious stupidity around her eyes, makeup or not. Jack felt an uncontrollable desire to act as if he didn’t mind being in jail, and he grinned and stuck out his tongue at her. “I aint mad,” he said. “Just horny.”

  “I had to,” she said. “They would have put me in reform school for just years.” She told him her version of what had happened, and he listened quietly. He wondered why she had bothered to come and tell him. She said, “I can’t understand why that man made me say you had a gun. Mister Forbes says the gun part could get you into terrible trouble. He wanted me to change my story, but Daddy says if I don’t stick to it he’ll make me go to boarding school.” She made a face. “Wouldn’t that be awful?” She put a hand over her eyes in dismay. “I mean, not as bad as this place. But still, who wants to go to boarding school with a bunch of little lesbians?” She shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Is it shitty in there?”

  “I’ve been in worse places,” Jack admitted.

  “This town’s a real drag. After the trial’s over, I’m going to take off for LA or Las Vegas or someplace. San Francisco’s a real drag, too. Nothing to do at all.”

  “Why don’t you take off right now, if you’re gonna take off?” Jack wanted to know. “Then there won’t be any trial.”

  “Daddy says if I take off again he’ll find me and then they’ll put me in reform school. I just can’t.” Her face looked sincerely upset for a moment. “Don’t think I don’t want to. Me and Sue both. Sue hates me. But she signed one, too. She copied hers from mine. Goddam it, I didn’t want to!”

  “Forget it,” Jack said, not because he didn’t wish she would run away, but because he knew she would not, and he sensed that the guiltier she felt, the worse it would be for him; she would reach out for something outside herself to blame, and there he would be, an easy and helpless target. He wanted her to feel nice toward him, not guilty. “Listen,” he said. “It’s not your fault at all. You couldn’t help it. Don’t blame yourself.” He smiled stiffly, hoping she would see that he didn’t mind being in jail at all.

  “I have to go,” she said. “My boy friend, this boy, anyway, is out in the parking lot waiting for me. We have to go to this dance and picnic thing.”

  So that had been it. She had wanted to show off to her new boy friend. Or maybe old boy friend. Look at me, I got friends in jail. God damn women!

  On the following Monday he met his lawyer in one of the little conference rooms.

  The lawyer’s name was Costigan and he was a short trim man with snapping eyes and a sharp, very intelligent face. He got right down to business. “I understand you have well over two hundred dollars down in the property room. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Jack said.<
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  “That’s not enough to pay my fee,” Costigan said.

  “Then you’re shit out of luck, aren’t you,” Jack said.

  “I’m entitled to something for my services, don’t you agree?”

  “Sure. But I thought the District Attorney assigned you to me.”

  “District attorneys don’t assign. They’re just lawyers. Stanley merely asked me as a favor to take your case. Judges do the assigning when assigning is done. The point is this: when you go down to muni this afternoon you’re going to be bound over for the grand jury and the judge is going to assign you an attorney. He’ll pick me. We worked it out. But the point is, I think I’m entitled to some money for my work. You have two hundred; do you know where you can get more money?”

  “No.”

  “Then, don’t you think you at least ought to give me a hundred? I know how it is in that tank, but I ought to get something.”

  “No. You don’t get any of it. I’m gonna need it all.”

  “Then,” the lawyer insisted, “I’m not to be paid anything?”

  “I guess not.”

  Costigan shrugged quickly and said, “All right. I just thought I’d ask. How do you want me to handle the case? Do you want me to plead you guilty or not guilty?”

  “To what charge?”

  “Why, kidnaping.”

  “Hell no. I thought—”

  “Never mind what you thought. If you plead guilty at muni the judge will hold you for superior court, and then you can change your plea to not guilty and skip over the grand jury. I’ll ask for a continuance to work up my case until the heat blows over and the nominations are all made, and you can change your plea to guilty of contributing, and we can hear it before a judge and pass up the jury trial. It’s all very simple. All you have to do is cooperate. We handle San Francisco from here, tell em you pleaded guilty to kidnaping, they might as well bury their charges, and then when nobody’s looking, switch to contributing.”