Out of Orange: A Memoir

by Cleary Wolters

  “My name is Cleary.” I held up my pen and checkbook in response to his weapons quandary.

  He was not the least bit amused, but he was very polite when he asked me to step out of the car a second time. I couldn’t though. I was too close to the bank, and in all the excitement, the teller had left the drawer extended. I wasn’t able to open my car door. I put the car into drive, assuming what I was going to do next would be obvious to the man in front of me and the guy leaning in my open passenger door. I needed to pull the car forward a foot, in order to open my door.

  It was not obvious to them. Another cop jumped into the backseat of my car in a flash, and the other moved all the way into the passenger seat, grabbed my hand from the shift, but not before my foot left the clutch and engaged first gear. The car leapt forward an inch and choked. It moved far enough that it scared the crap out of the guy out who had been standing on the running board of the SUV blocking me in the front. The guy dove back into his big rude vehicle and closed his door, like he thought I was about to ram him.

  A moment later, he opened his door again and hopped down from his former perch on the SUV, looking oddly more officious and in charge than the guy in the seat next to me. I say oddly because in spite of his bravado, he had a youthful look, like some people who look the same at forty as they did when they were twelve, just bigger. My guess that he was the leader in this pack was confirmed when he came to my car and told the guy in my passenger seat to get out. Then he very calmly told me, “Catherine, don’t resist arrest. This is not going to help you. Step out of the car.”

  I demonstrated my inability to do as he asked by opening the door and letting it loudly clank against the bank teller’s drawer. “I was just trying to pull forward a little so I could get out.” He looked like an older Doogie Howser or an adult version of Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show. Opie had already turned my ignition off and taken my keys. I hadn’t even noticed that happening.

  “Come out this side.” Opie got out of his seat and stepped back from the door to give me room to crawl my way out from the driver’s seat. This was stupid—the gearshift was in my way—but it was easier to agree with him and get out the passenger door. When I stood up, I saw I had an audience forming and wanted to hide. Getting arrested is very embarrassing.

  Of all the things to be concerned with at the moment, I regretted that I had not showered and shaved my legs before coming to town. At least I could have put on some nicer clothes than my cutoff sweatpants and sweatshirt, maybe even a bra. But I hadn’t planned on getting arrested. I certainly hadn’t planned on getting out of my car in downtown Brattleboro dressed as I was. I had cut the legs off my favorite sweatpants because it was hot and they were comfy. But these were for bumming around at home, not for being arrested in front of a bunch of strangers in downtown Brattleboro. It’s astonishing the mundane thoughts that surfaced in the middle of this chaos. As if holding on to my composure might make it all go away.

  “I have to feed my cats.” Opie looked at me but didn’t respond when I muttered this on my way out of the car. I would have to call someone and ask them to go feed my cats if this was going to take long.

  “Can I have a cigarette?” Opie still ignored me. He had handcuffed me in one swift movement as I scooted out of the car. He still seemed to be under the impression that I might run off, and he was very focused on ensuring I did not.

  Opie loaded me into the backseat of one of their SUVs and he left me there, in the air-conditioned silence. I looked out the window and counted only four men. The other police cars had left the scene at some point while Opie had been talking to me. I couldn’t figure out why they had been there in the first place, other than to get front-row seats at the big arrest. Who were they expecting, Hannibal Lecter or something? The two SUVs and the men with marshals’ jackets on were still attracting the attention of every passerby as they argued about something.

  The leader of the bunch, Opie, came back to the SUV and opened the door. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say . . .” I couldn’t seem to focus on what was happening or what he was saying. “. . . a federal information warrant from . . . California.” I watched his lips move, though, and nodded as if I really comprehended what he was saying. “You know what this is about.”

  As soon as he’d said “California,” I knew, and the truly futile hope that this was about an unpaid parking ticket vanished. Then I noticed Opie’s badge said U.S. CUSTOMS and DEPARTMENT OF THE TREASURY while all the other guys were marshals. Alan Dressler, my federal lawyer in California, who I had been checking in with every thirty days for two years, had told me to put his business card between my teeth and not to say a word until he was by my side if I was ever arrested.

  That had been a great plan when we made it. Not so good now. He was on the other side of the continent and I couldn’t be further away from having the money I needed to pay him. I had paid his retainer, after Bradley was busted in 1994 at the San Francisco International Airport. But paying Alan’s fees had been the least of my worries back then and I had never tried to connect with Alajeh to gather lawyer money for myself.

  One of the marshals drove my car out of the bank’s drive-thru and pulled up alongside the vehicle I was sitting in. The other SUV pulled up behind my car, and the marshal directing traffic hopped into the passenger seat of the vehicle I was in and barked “Go!” into his walkie-talkie. They were so serious, so military, like they had just captured O. J. Simpson. I looked down at my Birkenstocks and hairy knees, then imagined my cattywampus sunglasses and my hair sticking straight up from my head, looking like it was scared. I certainly didn’t look my part in this drama, not like the notorious and dangerous criminal they were congratulating themselves for capturing. I felt as though I looked more like a harmless mental patient who had wandered off sleepwalking in her pj’s.

  I felt obliged to at least right my sunglasses on my nose, but I couldn’t, not with my hands cuffed behind my back, so I just shook them off my face instead. They fell quietly to the floor next to a children’s book covered in a child’s crayon additions. Was this the work of the driver, my captor? I laughed, imagining that Opie was the one who had drawn the barely discernible tiara on the cartoon girl’s head and was the one who had placed the magic wand or unicorn’s horn atop the little pony’s crown. I noticed a few other telltale signs of the car’s other identity: dog hairs and crumbs. It struck me as odd that the vehicle I was being carted away in was a family car. “I have to feed my cats,” I told Opie again.

  “Your neighbors will take care of them.” Opie clearly had a pet too and he said this with enough confidence that I believed it. But I wanted to be sure he wasn’t just talking out of the side of his head. Larry and Melony were out of town and would not be home until late that night or the next day. I also had neighbors to the east and neighbors to the west of my house. The ones to the west were too far away and strangers who were never home.

  “Which neighbors?”

  He grabbed the lip of a file and pulled back the cover. Inside was a stack of official-looking paperwork. He read from one of the enclosed forms. “Larry. He’ll be back tonight. Does that work?” He closed the folder and his comrade in the passenger seat pulled the file back into a whole stack of these folders in his lap. Opie put the vehicle into drive and we bolted from the parking lot. A policeman was holding traffic so all three vehicles could leave the lot together.

  “Hold on!” the comrade warned me too late. I was instantly rolling around like a ball in the backseat. I wasn’t playing though. I was sitting forward in my seat when he took off. If you are sitting forward in your seat and handcuffed when the car makes a sudden turn, you can’t hold on, so over you go. I stayed down when my face hit the seat. It wasn’t the most ideal position to be in, but it worked. I suddenly wanted to close my eyes and wake up from this dream.

  The car stopped almost as soon as we had left the parking lot, and it turned. I could feel the bump of another curb. I struggled to get m
yself up and back into the seated position to see where we were. I knew we hadn’t gone far, but I couldn’t think of a police station near the bank. I was surprised to see we had pulled into the reserved spaces outside the U.S. Post Office, practically across the street from the bank.

  The marshal driving my car parked it next to us, locked it, and handed my keys to Opie. He jumped into the other SUV with marshal number three and they took off. Opie was left with just the one marshal and me. They got out of the car, opened my door, and beckoned me back out of the vehicle. Then they walked me around to the front of the building to the main entrance. I saw the Subway shop across the street with a poster picturing the very sandwich I had intended to be eating at that moment. Had it not been for this little interruption, I would probably be leaving there already, maybe even back in my car, opening a brand-new pack of cigarettes and heading home.

  We walked into the post office’s main lobby. They walked me right past the front of the small line of people waiting their turn to step up to the counter. Opie had his hand hooked around my right arm and his comrade held my left. I didn’t know anybody there, but the odd looks they gave me still hit like stones.

  “You’re mailing me to California?” Opie and the marshal didn’t respond to my feeble attempt at humor. I wasn’t being a smart-ass, but when I am about to have a breakdown, I turn into a comedian. Unfortunately, this defense mechanism doesn’t serve me very well, but I can’t help it.

  We walked around the corner where post office boxes lined the walls on either side, and at the end of the hall was an elevator. I had never noticed it before. It had the look of a freight elevator or some such beast. It had a cage, serving as a portal that we needed to enter before you could reach the elevator door. This is what gave it the look that had prompted me to ignore it all the times I had been here. To my surprise, the cage was locked, and this little detail gave the elevator new meaning.

  As we waited for the elevator to arrive, I asked, “How long do you think we’ll be?”

  As we got onto the elevator, Opie told me, “Play your cards right, and this will be over sooner.” “Sooner” didn’t sound good. I wished he had said “soon” instead of “sooner.”

  We took the elevator to the third floor. I thought how odd it was that I had never considered this building in its entirety before. To me, the interior of our post office was made up of the two people behind the counter and the lobby where people waited in line or checked their mailboxes. Nothing beyond that even existed as far as I was concerned.

  It was a big old building, perhaps from the turn of the century or earlier. It was made of the same old red brick from which all of the oldest buildings in Brattleboro were made. It was the largest, several stories tall, and yet it had never occurred to me to wonder about the rest of its interior. Who would have guessed, though, that the set from Andy Griffith’s jail in Mayberry was hidden in here?

  We walked into what looked like a conference room that had been abandoned after the Cold War. I frantically scanned each passing object as if I might find my fate etched into a desk pad. How much do they know? Had someone given me up? What is an information warrant? I felt light-headed, hungry, thirsty, and nauseous, but I had to just keep my head on straight until I knew what the hell was happening to me.

  The room was big and filled with filing cabinets and a couple of steel desks with big clunky desk lamps and old heavy black telephones with rotary dials. Opie sat down and dialed somebody’s number and the sound of the number dial spinning amused me. I went with the other guy down a short dark hall. He opened the door to a room that seemed to be full of sunlight.

  Inside the brightly lit room there were two jail cells, side by side. The bars were painted the same creamy white as the walls, and the fixtures inside the cells were made of orange and yellow plastic. There was a toilet and a sink in each of the cells. I felt my stomach turn to the sound of metal scraping metal as the door opened and they released my elbows. I stepped forward hesitantly, knowing the next sound I heard was the fate I had not been able to grasp. The metal clanged as he pushed the cell door shut, and then the grind of the key and lock echoed in my ears. Opie said something, I don’t know what, and he and his comrade left the room, closing the other door behind them.

  I stepped forward, eyes closed, and turned to sit down on the plastic bench. I opened my eyes and stared blankly forward. For a few moments my mind was absolutely empty, my ears were ringing, and the only thing I could see in front of me were the white bars and the lockwork of the door that held me.

  Then as suddenly as a shot fires and horses race, my senses came rushing in. I got up, paced, sat down, got up, repeat. There was nothing to focus on in the room and I couldn’t control the barrage of horrid thoughts ripping though my soul: Edith, Dum Dum, the Subway sandwich, the bank teller counting out twenties, the sunbathers decorating the rocks on the drive into town, a lit cigarette, the back door of my house open, the feds watching me from my woods, Alajeh’s face, the goat in his backyard with its throat cut. My heart was racing and I felt cold and hot all at once. I closed my eyes again and took slow, deliberate breaths, but I kept seeing an image of Hester jump from the fracas in my head.

  I couldn’t get my mind to slow down, not long enough to have a cohesive thought about my predicament. I was hungry, having a nicotine fit, thirsty, and on top of everything else, I had to use the toilet, and not to pee. There was no clock and I did not have my watch on. Why hadn’t I put my watch on? An hour might have passed before I finally decided to get someone’s attention. It might also have been only five minutes. I couldn’t tell. “Hello!” I had to tell them what I needed to do, so no one would walk in on me. “Anyone out there?” I kept calling like this, wondering where they had gone, until I finally heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door.

  Opie’s comrade, the young, handsome marshal, stuck his head in. “Keep it down! We’re on the phone out here.” He started to close the door, then popped his head back in. “You okay?” He asked in an impatient way that suggested he had no intention of helping me, even before he heard my problem.

  I told him, “I’m fine. But I need to use the ladies’ room.” He looked at the toilet I was sitting next to, then at me, then back at the toilet.

  “It works.” He rolled his eyes and pointed at the all too obvious solution to my problem. “Shouldn’t be too much longer. We’re just waiting to hear back about the rest of your friends. You’re all being arrested.” He said this as though he was thrilled to be giving me this news. Up to that point, he had not impressed me as being mean, but his snarky comments made him seem less than friendly. I don’t know why I would have expected otherwise.

  The door shut and I looked at the toilet. I was getting pretty uncomfortable but decided to wait. I didn’t want to get caught on the toilet and the marshal had said they would be back soon. The one and only time I had ever pooped in front of another human being was at Alajeh’s compound. Hester, Henry, Bradley, and I had shared the same bathroom. When we were all sick at the same time, there had been no room for privacy.

  Instead of having a complete meltdown the minute the marshal told me they were busy picking all my friends up, I did nothing. I had no reaction whatsoever. Instead, the gravity of his words slowly sank in and much bigger trouble than I had even considered started to materialize. My pulse quickened. He said we are all being arrested. Who does he think we all are?

  If they were really arresting everyone, no one would be free to collect money for the lawyers’ fees. Oh my God! Who would assure Alajeh that no one is talking? Fear washed over me like ice water and I dry-heaved a couple of times, but my stomach was empty, so this just made me dizzy. My thoughts turned to garbage in a blender. You get used to that feeling if it’s an everyday thing, you can even function, but it had been too long and I was out of practice. I collapsed onto the plastic bench, doubled over, and started rocking back and forth, rhythmically pushing the balls of my feet into the cement floor.

  I co
uld imagine Hester, Phillip, Piper, Molly, Craig, Garrett, Edwin, Donald, and Henry out there somewhere, being watched by the police, or on their way to or already sitting in a cell like mine. I optimistically thought that if Alajeh knew what was happening, maybe he had already dispatched his people to get us the lawyers we would need, post our bail, get us out, and assess the damage. Maybe. But if they really had us all, that would be an awful lot of money and lawyers to come up with. I did the math. They had needed twenty-five thousand for Garrett’s friend’s bond and twenty-five thousand for his lawyer in Chicago when he was arrested in January of 1994. Bradley had needed the same amount later that year in July, in San Francisco. Wait! Who had pointed them to me?

  If it was the same guy who had fingered Bradley or if it was Bradley himself who was talking now, they wouldn’t know Piper, Garrett, or anyone who came after Molly and Craig. That might make a difference as to who and how many they had arrested. Ten of us would require at least half a million dollars. Alajeh would have to do something with that many potential leaks. Would he just kill us all or get us all lawyers and bail? I thought maybe it would depend on which would be harder to get done fast, and that depended on who and how many of us they really had. It was clear someone was doing an awful lot of talking, even if these officers were wrong and thought they had everyone but didn’t really. Alajeh would know our arrests, whoever we were, meant that there were beans spilling.

  Whoever they had, there were places we would not be safe, places where Alajeh could get to people quickly. I knew Alajeh had friends in Cook County Jail in Chicago, someplace in New York, and Los Angeles. He used to brag about these things. Would he trust this many people to be quiet? He wouldn’t even know who most of them were. He would know Hester, but she was in Austin, Texas. It might take a minute longer to get to her and me—me in Brattleboro and wherever they may have taken her in Texas—but if he thought any of us might spill the beans, he would be expected to make sure we didn’t. Everyone else I knew would be taken right to the places where Alajeh had friends and he could easily act quickly. He would know me, Phillip, Hester, Henry, and . . . Had Garrett ever been introduced to him?