by Don Passman
“This morning, you harassed her father. He also told us he’d seen you before.” Morton shook his head. “You sure keep turning up like a bad penny.”
I took a step toward him. “Her father said he recognized me from the photo you showed him. Look, I’ve been cooperating fully with you. Aren’t you investigating the father of her child?”
“Abner moved to Florida and kept up his hobby of banging vulnerable young women. The last one was underage, so he’s now cooling off in one of their state facilities. That’s where he was when Sherry was strangled.”
I felt my chest tighten.
My eyes stung. Don’t cry.
I said, “I didn’t do it. I never met this girl.”
I looked over at Carly. She crossed her arms over her chest and fidgeted her fingers against her biceps. Her eyes were asking if I wanted her to come to me. I looked back at Morton.
Morton said, “Mr. Kendall, you’re under arrest for the murder of Sherry Allen. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used—”
My hands began to shake. “You’re arresting me? Now?”
“—against you in a court of law.”
“My lawyer wrote a letter offering to surrender so this wouldn’t happen.”
“She did indeed. Then we found out you’re being evicted. Today you left your apartment with several large trunks.”
I forced a laugh. “Those were my stage props. They’re right there.” I pointed at the road cases.
Morton said, “You have the right to an attorney. If you can’t afford one…” He finished reading my rights.
I said, “Fine. Let me finish packing up my tricks.”
“You’ll have to get someone else to do that.”
“There is no one else.”
“We’ll give you a few minutes to find someone.”
“These tricks are my profession. I can’t earn a living without them. Besides, I have to get my bird home.”
“Unless you find someone else to take care of the bird, we’ll have to call animal control.”
“Animal Control? No way. You’ll really upset her. She’s highly trained. She’s part of my act. My livelihood.”
“Then I suggest you make some calls.”
I clenched my teeth, took out my cell phone, and keyed in Marty’s number. Why is it so hard to hit the right numbers?
Carly looked at me, her expression hovering between worry and panic. I turned away from her.
When Marty answered, I said, “Where are you?”
“Negotiating your deal with Bernie.”
“Where?”
“Outside the back door. Why?”
“Thank God.” I let out a breath. “I need you to pack up my tricks and take my bird home.”
“What?”
“Marty, please.”
“Why?”
“I’ll explain when you get here. Come back inside.”
“Okay. I’m coming.” I heard a metallic rattle. “Shit. The door’s locked. Let me in.”
“Stay there.” I hung up and said to Morton, “I have to open the back door for him.”
“You can do it on the way out.” Morton took a pair of handcuffs from a leather pouch on his belt.
The sonofabitch is going to walk me out in handcuffs? Did Carly see that? I didn’t want to look at her.
I said, “You don’t need those.”
“Then you need to walk out very nicely.” Morton kept cuffs in his hand as he and his partner got on either side of me. They took hold of my arms.
I pulled free and said, “I’ll walk out by myself.”
Morton grabbed my elbow with a grip that shot an electric pain through my arm. I winced. Don’t yelp.
Carly hurried over. “Harvey, what’s going on?”
Morton forced me to start walking.
I said, “It’s just a mistake.”
She hurried alongside of us. “What kind of mistake?”
“I’m being … arrested.”
She sucked in a mouthful of air.
I said to her, “Do me a favor? Call the attorney I work for? Tell her what’s happened.”
As we walked, I gave her all of Hannah’s phone numbers. Carly punched them into her phone.
Morton said to Carly, “Tell the lawyer we’re taking him to L.A. County jail, downtown.”
We got to the back door. Morton pushed the bar and the door sprang open. Marty was standing on the concrete landing with Bernie, who was reading something on his Android.
As the cops walked me past them, Bernie looked up. He noticed Morton’s grip on me, then looked at Marty with a “What the hell?” expression.
Marty hustled to catch up with us. He said, “What’s going on?”
I whispered, “I’m being arrested.”
“Arrested?!”
Bernie’s head shot up from his Android.
I said, “Shhh. Take my keys.” I looked at Morton. “Okay if I go into my pocket?”
Morton said, “Which pocket?”
“Front left.”
He stuck his hand in my pocket, pulled out my key ring, and gave it to Marty. Marty took it, staring at me with his mouth slightly open.
I said, “Put Lisa in her cage. There’s birdseed in the kitchen, and she needs water. The U-Haul goes back to a place on Sepulveda. The car—”
One of the conventioneers, a big man with a thick black beard, lumbered up. He said to me, “Great show, man.”
“Um, thanks.”
“You do birthday parties?”
Morton tightened his grip on my elbow, forcing me forward.
I motioned my head toward Marty and told Black Beard, “Talk to my agent here.”
Morton said, “Let’s go, Mr. Kendall.” He forced me to walk faster.
I turned my head and called back, “Marty. Be careful with the bird.”
Carly, falling behind, said, “What can I do?”
“Call Hannah. Right away.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
At the downtown jail, Morton and Dupont walked me through a thick metal door, into a small area with a locked door in front of us. To the side, a uniformed woman stared at us through glass thick enough for a whale aquarium. She sat behind a console of TV monitors that showed different parts of the facility.
The door behind us clanked shut. The small space went dead quiet.
The door in front buzzed. Morton shoved it open and I heard a babbling crowd. He led me into a large, brightly lit room that was jammed with people. Off to the side, an officer wearing latex gloves was patting down a man in greasy clothes. Another cop steered a handcuffed kid with hollow red eyes. A smiling woman, missing patches of bleached hair, was chatting with a policeman like they were pals. No one even glanced at my sequined jacket.
Morton said, “Hands behind your neck. Feet apart.”
I spread my legs and clasped my hands behind my neck. Dupont walked away while Morton squatted down and grabbled my ankle hard enough to make me take a step. He ran his hands up and down my legs.
Did Carly reach Hannah? Is Lisa okay? What’s Hannah going to tell Carly about the murder charges?
While Morton groped my torso, Dupont came back, holding a clipboard. The printed form clamped to it read Booking Sheet.
Dupont clicked his ballpoint pen. “Full name.”
“Harvey Allen Kendall.” My voice cracked.
“Emergency contact?”
We went through my date of birth, citizenship, and similar crap. When we finished, he kept writing on his own. I looked at the sheet. Under the section titled “Charge Number 1,” he’d written “Murder.”
Holy shit.
Murder.
These guys really think I did it.
Well, obviously they think you did it, dumb-ass, or you wouldn’t be down here at the jail. I bit my cuticle, drawing blood.
This will be on my record for the rest of my life? Anytime I try to get a job? Anytime someone Googles me?
My shirt was wet. It su
ddenly felt like there was no oxygen. The room was getting tighter and I had an almost overwhelming urge to run. Where the hell am I going to run in a locked room with fourteen thousand cops?
Holy fucking shit.
I felt something jab hard into my ribs. I yelped and grabbed Morton to keep from falling. He pushed me away. I turned and saw I’d been hit by a grizzled man who was weaving to keep his balance. The smell of alcohol seeped from his body. A cop pulled the drunk away from me. He stumbled a few steps, then collapsed.
I touched my ribs where he’d hit me. Ow. It felt bruised and was already throbbing.
Morton said, “This way.”
I rubbed my ribs as I followed him to a wall phone. He gestured for me to make a call.
I dialed Hannah’s cell.
C’mon.
Answer, damn it.
Shit. Voice mail.
I said, “I hope you got the message. I’m in L.A. County jail. Please. Get me out of here.”
I tried her apartment. Left the same message.
Should I call my mother? No. She’ll come down here and sit all night. Then I’ll have that on my head in addition to the other heaps of shit.
Hannah, where the fuck are you?
Morton led me to another large room, where a cluster of people were pressing against a long counter with a black metal grate along the front edge. Behind the counter, two harried men were dealing with the masses.
Morton took me to the back of the crowd and said, “Wait your turn.” He walked off to the side and took out his cell phone.
I looked at the swarm of people in front of me. My cuticle was still bleeding, so I stuck it in my mouth. It tasted like salty blood.
Why are the men behind the counter so slow? Is this line even moving? A mass of people pushed in behind me. It felt like I was getting digested inside the belly of some foul-smelling creature.
Someone shoved my back, throwing me into the man in front of me. The guy in front elbowed me. I started to shove him. Maybe not a good idea. I stuck my hands in my pockets. My breathing got so heavy that I was close to whooping.
It took almost an hour to get to the front. A man behind the counter, with a shaved head and thick black eyebrows, looked at me with tired eyes. “Where’s your arresting officer?”
Morton elbowed his way in and handed the man my booking sheet. The bald guy started reading. Without looking up, he said, “Put everything but your clothes on the counter. Take out any body piercings.”
Beside me, an African-American man started sobbing. I turned to see a cop twist the man’s arm behind his back and lead him away.
The man behind the counter said, “You got hearing problems?”
“No.”
“Dump your things on the counter.”
I took off my watch, then emptied my pockets. Keys, cell phone, wallet, coins. I held on to the four Walking Liberty fifty-cent pieces I always carry. The guy behind the counter said, “Everything.”
I looked at the coins in my palm. It had taken me almost a year to collect them. They were all dated 1945 and had the same patina. That way, the audience couldn’t tell them apart.
He said, “C’mon, kid.”
I slowly laid the coins on the counter.
The bald guy wrote an inventory, handed me the paper to sign, then shoveled all my stuff into a yellow vinyl pouch. I watched to make sure the vintage coins went in. He sealed the pouch with a numbered metal tab and wrote the numbers on my booking sheet.
The man said, “Let’s have your shoes.”
It was hard to bend down in the press of people. My knee hit some woman, who yelled, “Watch it, asshole.” I lifted one foot, seesawed off a black leather shoe, then did the other. I handed them over the counter. Through my socks, I could feel the cold of the concrete floor. Are people going to step on my feet?
The bald man put my shoes in a brown paper bag, reached under the counter, and handed me a pair of red rubber sandals. I dropped them on the floor and stepped into them. Morton grabbed my arm and steered me back through the noisy crowd. My ribs throbbed. My elbow stung from his grip. My feet sloshed around in the oversize sandals. Where the hell is Hannah? She must have my message by now. I felt like I was going to start crying.
Morton took me down a long cinder-block hall, which had blue, red, and yellow stripes painted on the floor. The air smelled like antiseptic. It got quieter as we moved farther from the big room. Am I hearing echos of the yelling, or is that just in my ears?
Morton led me into a windowless room with floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves along two walls. Most of the shelves were stacked with folded orange jumpsuits. The rest had stacks of gray blankets. The only thing on the bare concrete floor was a locker-room bench.
A short man with the wiry build of a jockey looked me up and down with steel gray eyes. He pulled a jumpsuit from the pile marked “L” and said, “Strip down nekkid, then put this on.” He held out the jumpsuit.
I looked around. The door was wide open. I’m supposed to strip right here? There’re people walking by in the hall. The man circled his hand in the air, meaning, Hurry up.
I slowly took off my sequined jacket.
He handed me a large brown paper bag and said, “Put your clothes in this.”
I took off my shirt, then my undershirt. My skin bristled with goose bumps. I undid my belt, unzipped my pants, and stepped out of them. I looked over at the door, shivering. I could hear Morton outside, talking on his cell phone. He said something I couldn’t understand, then laughed.
I folded my clothes and put them in the paper bag. Where the hell are you, Hannah?
The man said, “Ain’t got all night, kid.”
I started to get into the jumpsuit. He said, “Drop your panties first.”
“I don’t keep my underwear on?”
“What was the first thing I said to you?”
Yeah, yeah. Strip nekkid.
I turned my back to the little man, slipped off my boxers, and quickly stepped into the jumpsuit. I missed a leg and had to jump a couple of steps to keep my balance. I banged my shin on the bench. Shit. Is the jockey laughing at me? I tried again. Finally got my legs in the damn thing. I pulled the top over my shoulders. The nylon was already chafing my bare crotch. I pulled the open sides of the zipper away from my body, then carefully zipped up.
The little man wrote my name and a number on the paper bag that held my clothes, folded the top over, then sealed it with plastic tape. He grabbed a gray blanket off one of the shelves and shoved it at me. I draped the scratchy fabric over my arm.
The jockey pointed at the open door. “On your way.”
When I walked into the hall, Morton told his cell phone, “Gotta go.” He stuck it in his pocket.
We followed a blue stripe on the floor to a small cinder-block room. Morton sat me in an old barber’s chair whose red Naugahyde was patched with duct tape. A man whose face I couldn’t see took mug shots of me, using a camera that was bolted inside a wire cage. Morton then led me to the next room, where he took my fingerprints with an electronic scanner.
We left the room and followed the blue floor stripe to a long hall with riveted metal walls that looked like the inside of a battleship. The blanket draped over my arm was starting to itch. I moved it to the other arm.
A guard in a short-sleeved uniform, sitting behind a small desk, stood up as we got there. He had wisps of a blond mustache and hairless arms.
Morton said, “Good night, Mr. Kendall. See you in court.”
He pulled out his cell phone and walked away.
The guard opened a narrow metal door in the wall, reached inside, and pulled a lever that looked like a railroad switch. I heard a metallic clunk. A few feet down the hall, a barred door swung open.
He said, “This way.” I followed the guard through the barred door into a wide hallway that was lined with rows of solid metal doors. Each one had a small square opening about five feet from the ground, with a black letter and a number stenciled above it. We stop
ped in front of the door marked C3.
The guard unclipped a large key ring from his belt. The keys were flat metal, about six inches long, cut with rectangular teeth. In all my years of locksmithing, I’d never seen keys like this. Must be custom-made for jails. How would the lock work?
The guard stuck a key in the cell’s lock and turned it with a thunk. He grabbed the pull handle and leaned back as he jerked open the heavy door.
“Here you go.” He gestured for me to go in.
I looked at him, then looked back up the hall. “Will my lawyer be able to see me as soon as she gets here?”
“We’ll let you know.”
“You’ll let me know right away?”
He blew out a sarcastic breath. “Oh, sure. We got nothing to do besides get messages to the prisoners.”
Prisoners?
Holy shit.
The guard said, “Inside.”
I took a small step, just inside the door, then turned back to him so quickly that my foot came out of the sandal. I said, “How fast can I get bailed out?”
“There’s no bail for murder.”
I froze. “What?”
“You want that in sign language?”
I tried to get my foot back in the sandal. “No bail for murder? What’s that mean?”
“It means you’re gonna be here awhile.”
He shoved the door shut.
CHAPTER THIRTY
I stood inside the cell, staring at the locked door, holding the scratchy blanket. The tiny room smelled like bleach, which didn’t completely cover the smell of piss.
No bail for murder? How’s that possible? I felt my chest tighten. Is he just razzing me?
I turned around, without going farther in. There were upper and lower metal bunks bolted to the gray concrete wall. On top of each bed was a thin blue vinyl mattress and a blue vinyl pillow. The only other thing in the cell was a stainless-steel pedestal sink, which had a seatless steel toilet jutting out from its base. The damn toilet was only about three feet from the bed. You’re supposed to take a crap with some other guy watching you? You’re supposed to sleep while some guy pisses right next to your head?
I realized I was gripping the blanket so hard that my fingers were shaking. I took a few steps, threw the blanket on the lower bunk, then sat down. I could feel the cold metal through the thin vinyl mattress. I looked up. The ceiling was a dusty metal grate with fluorescent lights buzzing above it.
