The Flaming Motel

by Fingers Murphy

  I had scooted my chair back and was sitting with my pants to my ankles when Brianna turned to the camera again and said, as if she were sitting right there in the room with me, “How did I do, Professor? Did I get an A?”

  I found that my hands were shaking so that I could barely type. “An A+,” I responded, and then added, “but you can earn extra credit.”

  “Oh!” she gasped, obviously pleased with me playing along. “I’d do anything for extra credit.” Then she added, in a hushed, little girl voice, “Anything at all, for the Professor.”

  It was crude. It was repugnant. I couldn’t believe I was going along. Why not log off? Just get up and go home. See Liz. Have dinner. Be normal. But I couldn’t. I had to see what she would do, what else she would say, where it was going to lead. I let go of myself long enough to type, “A smart girl like you knows what ‘A’ stand for.”

  “What a naughty Professor,” she said. But she knew what I meant and voiced no complaints.

  The others were chiming in, delirious with approval. Yeah! Take it! they said. BriASSna Jones, I love you!, another wrote. Still another simply said, Todd, you are one lucky sumbitch.

  Brianna looked back over her shoulder and said, “Get it wet first, Todd.”

  And he did. He fucked her for a few minutes while he plunged his thumb into her ass, loosening the muscles. A virtual frenzy continued on the chat board. The camera moved in for a close up of Todd’s huge prick stretching Brianna’s vagina. It was unbelievably large and several of the comments on the board wondered if there were any way it would really go into her other hole.

  But only moments later it did. The board fell silent as we all watched Todd work it into her. Brianna gave a guttural moan as he entered her. Her hand seemed to clench the fabric on the bed with genuine tension. But within moments her body eased, relaxed into it, and she moaned and screamed for him to fuck her hard while we all watched, gaping, slack jawed, as he slid in and out of her at a steady, pounding pace, building and building, faster and faster and faster.

  And that was all I could take. I clutched myself for an instant, nearly losing my breath, before my prostate contracted with an overwhelming, almost painful, explosion—and then again, and then a third time. Hot liquid seemed to be everywhere in the darkness as I closed my eyes and saw her there, across from me at the restaurant, facing me on the balcony, her hard nipples against my chest, begging me to release them from that thin black dress.

  And then I was alone in my office, my whole body pulsating to the rhythm of my own racing heartbeat. The room was dark. Brianna was still on the monitor, still moaning to Todd’s quick thrusts. The chat room was still erupting with delighted, orgasmic glee. But I felt a sickness now, deep in my stomach, deep in my groin. I was disgusted with myself and what I was watching. With more than that even.

  I closed my eyes again and saw the sickly green and black bruises on the Mexican girl’s body. The black, unnamable stain on the mattress. I could see her tied to it, gagged and wide-eyed with terror and pain. A nightstick up her ass. The cop beating her and jerking off all over her tits. Her face horrified and turned toward the wall as he spit on her and laughed. Blood and shit pouring or squirting from her body.

  Jesus Fucking Christ.

  I stood up, needing to do something, anything to stop the pictures in my head, to quell the sick feeling inside me. Then the phone rang. It startled me to a cold stillness. I watched it light up as it rang again. I checked my watch: 6:45. I answered it without thinking.

  “Hello?”

  “Ollie?” It was Liz.

  My heart seized as I glanced down at the computer to see Todd pulling out of Brianna as she turned quickly so he could ejaculate on her face. I covered the mouthpiece and clamored to turn down the sound on the computer.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to sound normal, casual.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You sound out of breath, like you’re in a hurry or something.”

  “Oh,” I laughed, forcing it out as I tried to think of something. “I was just moving some boxes in the storage room, looking for a file. I had to run in here to grab the phone. I thought it might be you.”

  “Well, you need to quit fucking around,” she said. Her voice was suddenly cold with fear.

  “Liz, what is it?”

  “Jendrek just called. He’s been arrested for drug possession. Heroin. He said some cops pulled him over and made him get out of the car. Said they were acting on an anonymous tip that Jendrek was dealing. They found something like a pound of the stuff in his glove compartment.”

  “Are you kidding?” I knew she wasn’t.

  “Do I sound like I’m kidding?” She waited for a second and added, “Ollie? I’m scared. What the hell is going on?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, staring at the computer screen, feeling the sticky moisture on my hands. “This is all crazy, and I don’t have a fucking clue.”

  XXIII

  Liz made me come get her. “What the hell do you know about arraignments?” she said. And she was right. I’d never done one before. Not that the arraignment would be immediate. Tomorrow morning at the earliest, I assumed. But in any event, I’d never even visited the downtown jail before. Liz had at least done that much.

  But before I left the parking garage, I checked the trunk and glove compartment. I ran my hands through the pockets in the doors and seats, everywhere something could have been planted. Under the seats. Under the floor mats. When I was done I walked around the outside of the car. I don’t know what I was looking for, I was just hesitant to climb in and drive away.

  I called Liz when I was nearly there and she met me on the street out front. She looked somber, wearing a coat the seemed too heavy for Los Angeles, even if the night air was getting cold. She climbed in and didn’t say anything for a few minutes. I was doing eighty down the freeway, toward downtown, when she said, “This is going to be tough to prove.”

  I didn’t have much to say to that. She was right. Despite the fact that the mere suggestion that Jendrek was dealing heroin was ludicrous, there was no good way to explain how a sack of it ended up in his car. Jendrek might have been the kind of guy to keep an ounce of weed stashed in his sock drawer, and that probably shouldn’t be a crime anyway, but heroin? No way.

  I tried to keep the conversation to a minimum all the way there. Liz didn’t seem that interested in talking anyway. I just wanted to focus on the hum of the tires on the asphalt, to tap into that droning frequency, as though its steady, mindless whine could calm my nerves and ease me back into some kind of normalcy. I was worried, sitting next to Liz in the confines of the car, that despite my frantic cleanup I smelled faintly of semen and that she would know it, instinctively, through some biological marker deep in her blood.

  And that thought took me back, in looping circles, to Brianna Jones; to the stained mattress; to the fact that David Daniels was Tiffany’s brother; to the cop’s gun in my face, the pebbly texture of the street against my cheek, and now the planted evidence in Jendrek’s car. Then there was Pete’s Stick’s death, the phone call from the gatehouse. Tiffany Vargas firing us, bright and early Monday morning. Her inheriting an estate worth tens of millions of dollars. David Daniels washing up on a Malibu beach. By the time I got off on the Third Street exit, I was as tense as ever. What the hell had we gotten ourselves into?

  “I don’t know,” Liz said from beside me. Apparently I’d been mumbling out loud.

  Police don’t respond well to threats. They’re all like schoolyard bullies. They can dish it but they can’t take it. The mere thought that their authority might be questioned sends them into an irrational panic that causes them to lash out at anything and overreact to everything. It’s even worse when the threat comes from a lawyer. That’s why you never scream and holler and pound your fist on the counter like they do in the movies—this is an outrage! I demand to see my client!—that’s all bullshit. It gets you no
where.

  You go in. You tell them who you are and who you’re there to see. The desk sergeant checks the file, looks on the computer, makes a phone call or two. You wait around for forty-five minutes or an hour. Then some fat bastard who hasn’t lifted anything but a Krispy Kreme in years opens a locked doorway to a long corridor and waves you through, giving you the stink-eye the whole time—so you’re the guy with the smart ass client, he seems to be saying.

  They put us in a windowless interview room. I immediately scanned the corners where the walls came together, the tiles in the ceiling, the surfaces of the drab metal table, for anything that looked like a microphone. I doubted they’d be that stupid, but at this point I was suspecting everything and everyone, everywhere I went. Liz watched me, grinning, not from humor but desperation and worry.

  “We’re deep in the enemy camp,” I said. “I’m not taking any chances.”

  “I’m just waiting to discover this is really a cell and they’ve just gone ahead and arrested us too. Terrorism charges or something worse.” Liz sat in one of the stiff wood chairs and let out a long, slow breath.

  I sat beside her and we waited for five minutes. Then another five. There was an old clock on the wall with a mesh grate over it to keep someone from breaking it. It was one of those cheap government clocks, about a foot across with a white face, black numbers, black hands, and a thin red second hand that roamed steadily around the circle, marking off the inexorable pace of our existence. The wire cover seemed an elaborate and expensive method of protecting a very inexpensive clock. And who would want to break it anyway? It wasn’t like smashing it would stop time. And even if it did, who would want to be frozen in a moment where they were trapped in a police interrogation room?

  In the stillness, Liz said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you this afternoon.”

  It caught me off guard. “Don’t worry about it,” I said. Then I realized I had a litany of things to apologize to her for, but I kept them to myself. We just glanced at each other a few times, like there was something else in the room with us that we didn’t want to look up to see.

  Then the lock in the door turned and we could hear movement outside. When the door opened, Jendrek came in wearing one of those bright orange jump suits with his gray hair tousled and his eyes and face looking tired, angry, and terrified all at the same time.

  I said, “Nice threads.”

  He said, “I’m going to kill one of these assholes before this is over.” Then he nodded at Liz. “Hey Liz, great to see you.” He spoke like they’d run into each other at the beach.

  Jendrek sat in one of the chairs opposite Liz and me and folded his hands together on the table. His thumbs and fingers fidgeted and he rested his weight on his elbows, hunching toward us like someone was trying to listen in. He seemed to be thinking about where to start. He had the look of a man who always suspected life would screw him and screw him good, and he’d finally been proven right.

  “So I’m leaving the office, right?” he began. “It’s five o’clock or so. Everything’s normal. I come out of the garage, I start driving my regular route home. I’m damned near there when all of the sudden this unmarked police car pulls me over. I’m thinking that’s kind of weird, I mean, these aren’t the kind of guys who make traffic stops. But I was probably speeding. I don’t know. I wasn’t paying attention. But I figure that’s what it must be.”

  He gave his head a quick shake, as if confronting the unbelievable. “But I knew something was wrong right away. These two get out of the car, both dressed in bad suits, your basic plainclothes guys. I can see the one on the passenger side reaching inside his coat for something. He stays at the back of the car while the other guy comes up to my window. He’s got a gun in his hand. I’m reaching for my license and insurance card when the cops yells for me to keep my hands on the steering wheel. Right away, I know this is going to go bad, real fast.”

  Jendrek let a short, defeated laugh go and shook his head some more, slower this time. “Thing is, when I first got in the car in the garage, I noticed something was wrong. The shit in the console between the seats. It wasn’t right. It all seemed to be a little off, like it had been moved around. It was only slight, not like someone had rummaged through the car or anything, it was just like things weren’t exactly where they normally were. I didn’t really think anything of it. But now I know. Someone got into my car when it was parked in the garage.

  “This crosses my mind as this cop is pointing a gun in my face and telling me to keep my hands up. Then the cop asks me if I’ve got a weapon in the car. I tell him he’s fucking up, that he better be damned sure he’s right before he does anything else. He just tells me to shut up and get my ass out of the car. I do and he pats me down. He asks me if I’ve got any drugs in the car. I tell him to fuck off. And he asks if it’s alright if they search it. I tell him to fuck off again. He finds some business cards in my pocket and sees I’m a lawyer.”

  Jendrek’s hands were in fists now and he was tapping them up and down on the table, lightly but firmly. “Those two assholes start joking with each other about, ‘Oh, got ourselves a lawyer here. Guess he knows his rights.’ Shit like that. And now I’m getting pissed. So I tell the guy he damned well better have probable cause and he tells me not to worry about it. He says they got an anonymous tip that described me, the car, and the route I’d be driving. All of which checked out. Then this son of a bitch says the tip also said that I deal to high-end clients, using my law practice as a front, and that there’d be a sack of heroin in the glove box. This asshole leans right in my face and asks me, ‘What do you think? You wanna bet that’s going to check out too?’”

  I said, “Jesus Christ.”

  Liz said, “That’s Illinois v. Gates. It’s right out of the textbook.”

  Jendrek nodded his red face and slammed his fist on the table. “You’re goddamned right it is.” Then he leaned back and shrugged. “I’m fucking standing there on the side of the road and I can see it plain as day. I know it’s a setup. I know what they’re going to find when they open that glove box. So I say to the cop, ‘If there’s anything in there, I didn’t put it there.’ The whole time, all I can think about is that case. Illinois verses fucking Gates. It was bullshit when it was decided, and it’s bullshit now, for this very reason. It makes a setup and an anonymous tip a piece of fucking cake.”

  I said, “So they open the glove box.”

  “Right. The cop says to me, ‘Why don’t you lean over and look in the window so you can observe.’ So I do. And the other cop comes from the back of the car, opens the passenger side door and flops the glove box open. Sure as shit, there’s a bag full of white powder.”

  We all sat there for a minute. No one said anything. There wasn’t much we could say. It was the perfect setup. I drummed my fingers on the table for a second and glanced back and forth between Liz and Jendrek. Finally, Liz erupted.

  “William fucking Rehnquist. That ignorant son of a bitch.” She practically screamed it. “When exactly did the courts decide that cops never lie and that everything they say should be believed? Does anyone know when that happened? This is fucking outrageous.”

  “Totality of the circumstances,” I said. “Reasonable basis for knowledge,” I added. “It sounds just like what it is. Bullshit.”

  “I said that when the goddamned decision came out,” Jendrek said. “It was like no one was listening. No one wants to believe that anyone would ever abuse their power. It’s fucking crazy.”

  “So,” I said, trying to quell the ranting. It was already nine thirty at night and we would have to figure out what we were going to say at the arraignment the next morning. “In Illinois v. Gates, the cops get an anonymous letter that says this couple is dealing drugs and that they periodically fly down to Florida and then drive back with a trunk load of pot. The cops observe them getting on a plane. Observe them driving back into town rather than returning on an airplane. They pull the car over and find the drugs in the trunk. The Court ho
lds that that’s sufficient probable cause to search the trunk, despite the fact that the letter itself was anonymous and there was no way to determine that the information in it was credible.”

  “Right, but the Court lets it slide because the totality of the circumstances provide a reasonable basis for the knowledge that the drugs are in the car.” Jendrek leaned forward against the table again, speaking like a law professor now.

  “I’ve seen it before,” he said. “The Court held that the letter itself, on its face, was insufficient. However, the subsequent corroboration of some of the anonymous information provided a reasonable basis to conclude that the rest of the information—the drugs in the trunk—was correct.”

  “It’s such fucking bullshit,” Liz said. “So, what then, as long as an anonymous tip contains some information that can be independently corroborated the tip is good? What the fuck is that? So if I want to frame someone, all I have to do is know a few of their routine patterns, plant the drugs in their car, and then include the routine information in my anonymous tip? I just call up and say, ‘Yeah, Oliver Olson drives a black BMW. He usually leaves work about 5:30 and drives east on Santa Monica Boulevard, takes a right on fourteenth and heads north toward Montana Avenue. He generally carries a key of marijuana in his trunk.’ So I put the weed in his trunk, they watch him drive home and pull him over and now they have probable cause simply because they’ve watched him drive home—which is perfectly legal and which he does every fucking day. It’s fucking insane.”

  Jendrek ran his fingers along the sleeves of his orange jumpsuit, like he was displaying merchandise on a game show, and said, “Tell me about it. Unfortunately, it’s also the law.”

  “What’d these cops look like?” I asked, hoping to hit the jackpot.