by Joe Schwartz
***
Above the visitors entrance should have hung a sign reading ‘abandon all dignity here.’ Men, women, and children were randomly grabbed and prodded by the overtly diligent guards searching for contraband. Christ, with the consistency of these searches, my third thus far, I couldn’t imagine the ingenuity by which all the reported drugs were getting in the place.
Like a dumb ass, I had forgotten to leave my Montclair pen back at the hotel. It was gift from a friend whom I had successfully defended against charges of unlawful carnal knowledge. The pen had become a part of my apparel, but I should have thought about it.
I argued to no avail with a guard who practically proved Darwinisim. The huge moron kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. “You may file an incident report for improper seizure with the Warden’s office, sir.” I figured I would shut-up while I was ahead. If you didn’t treat these people with kid gloves, you would be bent over holding your ankles. A BCS (body cavity search) was a thrill I was not hoping to experience any time soon.
The visitor’s area; a collection of perfectly spaced round stainless steel tables set permanent into the concrete below them. I looked for Marvin. A sea of orange jump suited men sat one per table as a bullpen of candidates waited and smoked behind what I presumed to be soundproof glass. White men, black men, brown men, and yellow men with less freedom than a damn dog tied to a stake and almost utterly forgotten by the society that placed them here. I still believed that in a truly democratic society of justice, those given life sentences should be allowed the bullet option. That is placed alone in a room with a gun, loaded and cocked, they could make one final free decision. Screw the Eighth Amendment. Until you spend a year in a hellhole like this, stripped of your pride, your culture, your identity as an individual, you have no idea how rational an idea it is.
Among the safety orange prison jumpsuits, Marvin in his lime green stood out. The idea was to easily tell special protection cases from the general population. In essence, make it easier for the testosterone-driven gorillas that ran the place not to accidentally throw him in with the animals. Despite their own atrocities, they would tear him limb from limb.
Escorted to his table, I sat with my legal pad and no pen. I was obliged the loan of what was once a pencil by the humorless guard.
Marvin’s salt and pepper hair had gone shock white. He had lost weight and his eyes had taken on perpetual glaze. Older by ten years, he looked more like my father now than my sibling.
“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.
Inside this place it was implausible to discern it as a holiday. It was probably the first we had spent together sitting at the same table since our mother passed away. I dismissed the melancholy moment for substance and got down to business.
“Name of the client?” I asked.
“Prisoner 664568G, Vasquez, Ricky. Alleged sodomy of a minor.”
“At this point that would be convicted,” I reminded him.
“True enough,” he said, ”but innocent.”
I almost started to argue with him then remembered the exercise in futility we were both carrying out.
“He was a cop, highly decorated. This is all a setup, like me, the conspirators that run this world have prevailed upon another good man. This time, buddy boy, we got them on improper search.”
“A technicality?” I moaned. Once convicted, screaming technical foul was no more effective than shooting bottle rockets at a nuclear warhead. An impropriety such as that would have been raised long ago at an indictment hearing.
“It’s true, Warren,” he said. “A prima facia fact. Their discovery was because the building manager, a so called friend, opened his locker without Mr. Vasquez’s express consent, supposedly looking for cigarettes, which by the way he did not find.”
I dreaded the answer before I asked. “What was found?”
“Irrelevant. Next question.”
“Damn it, Marvin. You aren’t a judge, much less a paralegal. Now answer the question.”
“A picture.”
“Oh, for the love of Pete!”
“Its circumstantial. But for the Polaroid in Mr. Vasquez’s locker, there was no proof to the commission of a crime.”
“A goddamn Polaroid! They might have well found him in bed with someone. The Supreme Court has upheld the validity of instant photography under the best documents rule, especially in cases of sexual exploitation of a minor. You of all people should know this.”
The guard was closely watching us. A visitor did not normally berate the visited. The scrutiny would be laughable under other circumstances.
“Is that all you have?” I said.
“Res Ispa Loquitor.”
How original, I thought, quoting law school idioms to me.
“That’s the first thing you’ve said since I’ve sat down that has made sense. The thing certainly does speak for itself.”
I raised my hand to signal the conclusion of my visit to the correctional officer. As I stood, Marvin remained seated. He refused to shake my outstretched hand good-bye, mad as hell with me I presumed for pissing on his so-called case.
***
Safe behind the motel’s door, I listened to the news. Before coming back here, I had bought a fifth of Southern and a twelve pack of Bud. The hard alcohol sizzled in my throat in compliment to the ice-cold beer. I wanted to erase my mind, to completely forget the day, yet seemed to dwell even further about it.
It was only a matter of time before he would send me letters explaining everything from who shot JFK to secret messages only he could decipher in dog food commercials. He had been a brilliant man. That was the problem. People like him didn’t easily shut down. The mind, desperate for its former activity, created scenarios to fill the void. I felt ashamed. Empathetic. Absolutely hopeless. My personal open bar was the perfect salve.
The instructions next to the phone were blurry, but discernible. In two more beers they wouldn’t be. Slow and exact, I followed the simple directions and dialed the number out that I knew as well as my own.
Ready to hang up on the third unanswered ring, a voice, foreign at first, came through the extension.
“Hello? Hello?”
It was like a button had been pushed somewhere inside my brain. I had made this call, obviously I must have wanted to talk, but now the simple words to express myself had become complicated. I regretted the idea the moment my mother-in-law answered instead of Mary.
“Karen,” I said knowing damn well it was she, “I need to speak to my wife.”
“You’re drunk,” she said.
I bit my tongue. To call her a bitch, even rightfully so, and demand to speak with Mary would get me nothing but the dial tone. However, she was right about my being drunk, so I was willing to kiss her ass.
“Please, Karen. It has been one hell of a rough day.”
The old woman said nothing, allowing me to hang in the breeze. She was thinking it over.
“Happy Thanksgiving, Warren,” she said. The phone pounded down on the countertop below where the phone had been installed thirty years ago. I couldn’t help but hear her mother yell her daughter’s name. Through the receiver I could hear Mary’s hurried steps long before she picked up the phone.
“Hello,” she said a bit out of breath.
“I’m sorry. Is this a bad time?” I asked not caring.
“No, I heard mother yelling and…quite frankly Warren mother isn’t doing so good these days. Thank God it was only the phone.”
“Good thing you’re there now.” I paused trying in vain to put a positive spin on the situation. “I would even venture to say it quite fortuitous you---”
“Warren,” she interrupted, “what is it you actually want?”
“Come again?”
“You always do this. Let’s skip the foolishness for once.”
“I’m in Sikeston.” I took a shot down and a quick sip of beer letting the idea sink in for her. The whiskey stung as it slid through my chest. “I miss you
,” I said.
This kind of drinking was as dangerous as diving head first off a hundred-foot cliff. You could easily remember everything up until the point of the jump. Maybe one, or two things briefly on the way down, then nothing once you hit the water: the welcome, sweet oblivion that was an alcohol blackout.
“You don’t miss me,” she said, “you miss the idea of me.”
“I don’t understand,” I said slurring my words. Shit, I silently cursed myself. I had hoped not to seem so pathetic. The sincerity by which I placed this call might be dismissed as nothing more than drunk dialing.
“You miss me laying out your clothes and fixing your breakfast. You miss having me to go out to dinner with or attend parties with you, somebody to talk with and sleep next to. I know because I miss those things, too. Your brother was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
“What do you want me to do about it?” I asked, my toes gripping the edge of the cliff.
“There’s nothing to do but go on.”
Ready to defy gravity, I asked, “Do you still love me, Mary?”
“Happy Thanksgiving, Warren,” she said as I dove headfirst toward the black water.
After she hung up I remembered holding the phone to my ear dumbly listening to the dial tone. Desperate for attention and more alcohol I drove blind drunk to where I don’t know. Then, in fragmented bits and pieces, I could recount loud music and people dancing. Then came the cold, as if I had fallen asleep inside a deep freezer. Finally nothing.
***
I woke back up with the startled fright of a nightmare I couldn’t remember or explain. Through the bars I could see a Stetson-wearing sheriff. The dated copy of Maxim held between his hands was well worn and familiar. If he were more than twenty, I would have been surprised. Still, I respected the office he held and recognized the position I was in.
“Excuse me, Sheriff,” I called out to him.
He came to at the sound of my voice and shoved the magazine into a drawer. A slight tinge of red colored his cheeks, embarrassed to be caught by a prisoner deficient in his duty. It was an old habit of mine to read the tags of civil servants and always act dumber-than-shit in their presence.
His read, ‘D. Boyd’. Above that, in all caps, the inscription ‘TRAINEE.’ Of course they would put a rookie to watch over the holiday drunk tank. In a town this size, they had maybe four full-time guys and a dispatcher who doubled as janitor.
“Might I trouble you for a cup of coffee?”
The young sheriff stood, squared his shoulders, and adjusted his Wal-mart special belt about his waist. As he sauntered over to the pot, I immediately noticed he did not have a gun.
Through the bars he passed me a Styrofoam cup. I greedily sipped at the hot, black nourishment. It instantly gave me heartburn as it mixed with the acids in my stomach.
He sat back down, not sure what to do with himself. I did my best to ignore him as he aimlessly shuffled papers about the desk to look busy.
I presumed it was five in the morning by the clock hung high enough you would need a stepladder to change the time. In another hour, a regular sheriff would relieve the rookie, and I would be given a full account of the charges against me. I would pay my fine, be released upon my own recognizance, and go home.
Until then, I could think about what I had done.
###
Humidity
Uncle Casey lost his leg in a motorcycle accident but told everyone he lost it in the first Gulf War. It didn’t matter to me, however, it did strike me as unethical for a former policeman to tell such a blatant lie.
I had aspirations of becoming a cop. I thought by working with him that the experience would prove invaluable. It certainly couldn’t look bad on my police academy application that I was an assistant private investigator.
So far I had learned PI was synonymous with amateur pornography. My uncle’s favorite proverb was “If their pants are down, they’re gonna be found.” I thought it was stupid, if not inconsiderate, seeing as our specific job was to destroy somebody’s life. Curiosity, though, is a dangerous thing. One moment, a person is happy as hell with two cars, a home in the suburbs, and kids who say sir and ma’am. The next, they were sitting in a booth at the Waffle House, crying their eyes out. Uncle Casey with digital pictures by the dozens of the unfaithful spouse playing ‘does it fit’ with some stranger. Secretly, I believed he took pleasure in watching the whole damned thing unfold.
The pay, though, was terrific. I had friends with degrees busting their chops at jobs, working forty hours or more a week, who struggled to survive. In the year since I dropped out of college and started PI’ing, money became a non-issue. People paid you whatever you said it would take, and Uncle Casey taught me to always get the money in advance. Once you showed the pictures it was game over. If you didn’t have the money by then, it wasn’t coming.
The hours were an insomniac’s dream. On a typical night, we would start to shadow a cheater no earlier than nine and if we were lucky, we were on our way home with the goods by two a.m. Most nights, however, I didn’t hit the sack until sunrise.
It could go on as long as three or four days with some of these people. Out of the house to meet their dirty little secret at some secluded destination, to make out like curious teenagers in the back of the family car, then back home to pretend nothing happened. It amazed me we were ever hired. How in the hell could these people not know? Then again, I guess you see what you want to see.
Somewhere about one in the morning, I was on fumes. Uncle Casey and I sat in his van behind the silver reflective glass that was good for seeing out but not vice versa. Three cameras (one digital, one still, and one streaming video) watched tonight’s alleged cheat. He was a middle-aged guy, too fat and too old for the clothes he wore. The woman was half his age, probably somebody he worked with, genuinely smitten with his worldly expertise. A total Daddy fetish if I ever saw one. Sick to death of the whole cat-and-mouse game and tired as hell, I asked Uncle Casey if he wanted some coffee.
The Coffee Cartel was a few blocks over. It was a gourmet coffee shop modeled off the Seattle wunderkind but without any of the pretension. It was also open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. A bastion for students cramming for exams with bottomless refills of dark roast Colombian and free wi-fi. The great thing about coming in at this time of night was no line. Come in here during the morning rush and you were twenty people deep, about to stroke out from a lack of caffeine, and the pressure of being late for work. Lunch was the middle-class housewife hour. Women in their mid-thirties drank coffee for three hours with more sugar than Cap-n-Crunch while they ate diet biscotti. Every night an open mic was available. Bad poetry, odes to angst that made Nirvana lyrics seem happy, pleased the disaffected set. Despite all that, I liked it. The coffee was good and it was always ready.
This job had been a record six-day crawl. It seemed chicken shit had a complex about an extra-marital exchange of fluids and couldn’t pull the trigger. Fine by me. The longer hesitant-Harry wrestled with his conscious, the more money I made.
***
Tommy was a born rat snitch. If you wanted everyone to know something, all you had to do was tell him. It was no wonder why he wanted to be a cop.
I took him on as a favor to my brother. Him being a one-year community college wash out, working thirds at a local stop-and-rob wasn’t a big resume builder. Besides, I could use the company.
I hadn’t had a partner since the force. It was a deliberate decision on my part. Partners were a pain in the ass. Before long you were knee deep in their life, whether you wanted to be or not. Generally you only had the job in common, but that didn’t stop the chatter. I never married or had kids, but every one of my partners did. The torture of feigning interest in little Johnny’s school play or little Susie’s dance recital was enough to drive me to drink. Their lives were a scheduled list of things to do. I was overjoyed when I got reassigned to the motorcycle division.
I was more embarrassed than c
rippled when I dumped my police-issued Harley-Davidson. My leg was no big deal, hell I had two, but the idea that I wasn’t in pursuit of some wanted felon is what killed me. That I overcorrected to miss a fucking alley cat totally pissed me off.
After I got out of the hospital, I planted my prosthetic foot in front of the other and decided to hang out my shingle. Money wasn’t much motivation. I had plenty with my disability and partial pension. It was the job, the thrill of adult hide-and-seek that motivated me.
I rented an office in Soulard smaller than my bathroom. The rent was triple what it should have been, but I liked the location. A short limp away stood several good taverns that catered to the bored and thirsty at ten in the morning.
I charged clients on a sliding scale. The more I thought they had, the more I charged. Nobody came to me who couldn’t afford it. Blue-collar folks didn’t have affairs. They fucked around and came home or didn’t. Either way, no mystery there.
White collars were an entirely different story. Those people were clueless. With all their money and education you would think they would know better. I heard the same thing so many times it blended into one standard story.
My husband (or wife) recently got that big promotion or some mega-client. I knew the change would be difficult, certainly more hours at the office, but lately things are different. He always seems so preoccupied when he’s home. Constantly making phone calls with the bedroom door shut and when I ask, “Who was that dear?” he practically tears my head off. Then there are the meetings in the middle of the night. If I call, I can never reach him. When he comes home, he stinks of cigarettes and liquor. In the morning, before I can ask how things went, he is already telling me that things are going terrible with this new client, and he will probably be stuck in a meeting until late tonight. “Don’t wait up,” he yells from the driveway without a kiss on the cheek or hug goodbye. Then he is suddenly called out of town. “Unavoidable. I’m the only one who can go, dear. Do you want me to stay home and lose my job?” No, of course not, but why the sudden urgency? I’m not the suspicious type, and I know this will be money wasted, but I HAVE TO KNOW.
