The End of Marking Time

by CJ West

  There were two cars in the garage. Crusher would have given me five hundred for either of them, but with all the heat I brought down when I hit the district attorney, I decided to steer clear of Crusher until I cooled off. He was not a guy I wanted to disappoint. I didn’t find anything for Cortez either, but not because I was worried about him. He didn’t have guys like Double hanging over his shoulder ready to break my leg. Unfortunately for Cortez, the only plastic I scored was a single card sitting in the safe with the activation sticker still across the front. The card was mint. Never used. They must have taken all their regular cards with them. Not something I’d advise a family bring on vacation.

  Cortez called while I was driving home. I told him the card was no good, but he wouldn’t take my word for it. He practically begged me to meet him at the usual place. He said he needed a few bucks to get through the week. I’d just scored enough cash to hold me for months, so I didn’t see any harm in loaning Cortez a few hundred. I wish I’d thrown that card out, but I didn’t see the harm in giving it to him.

  The diner was quiet, but I was earlier than usual. I knew Cortez was desperate when I saw him in the first booth waiting for me. His breaks were short and he never beat me to the diner. He looked nervous, like a guy in deep with a bookie who was threatening to start breaking things. Looking back I should have known what was coming, but Cortez and I had done this hundreds of times.

  “Anything for me?” Cortez asked as soon as I sat down.

  “Nothing good. Why so nervous?”

  He sat stiffly like he was afraid to move. I checked the time and scanned the empty tables. This time of night, the diner was usually jumping, but tonight almost every table was empty. There were three guys at the counter to my left, but other than that, the place was deserted.

  “Couple things came up at home,” he said. “I’m a little short and if I don’t get something going, checks will start bouncing.”

  “This is all I got.” I slid the card across the table. It was still as shiny as when they printed it. I hadn’t peeled off the sticker. I wasn’t trying to sucker him. He should have agreed it was worthless. He should have asked to borrow some cash. But he didn’t. He picked it up and headed for the door.

  “Be right back with your cut.”

  “Forget it,” I said, getting up.

  I hadn’t ordered food. That almost saved me. Without breakfast holding me there and with so much cash in my pocket, I was glad to give him the card and be on my way. I told him so.

  His eyes pleaded with me to sit down and that’s when I knew I was in trouble. The three guys on the stools behind me swiveled their heads around and I saw their faces reflected in the glass door.

  “A few minutes won’t hurt,” I said real loud and started for the booth.

  When the three men turned their backs, I bolted past Cortez out the door. My Chevy Z24 was sitting at the curb ready to make a run, but there was no time to get in and get it started. A uniformed cop dodged around either bumper toward me on the sidewalk. I cut hard to my right and sprinted down the open concrete. There was too much light on the main drag. I needed to get into a neighborhood. That’s where I knew how to disappear. Fortunately, I’d been to this diner with Cortez so many times I’d thought plenty about where I’d go if things went bad.

  Another uniformed patrolman popped out at the corner with his gun drawn. Idiot. Like he’d shoot me for running. He held his ground until I almost reached him, then he threw out an arm to grab me. I swatted it away without breaking stride and kept on going, my sneakers slapping pavement, the gap between me and the cops widening.

  Things were looking a little better then. I was twenty and still dressed all in black from the hit I’d just pulled. I don’t work out, but most of the guys chasing me were in their thirties and forties. I had a lot more to lose than they did and my running showed it.

  I’ve been chased before, but usually it’s just two cops, and if I can’t outrun them it’s easy enough to hide and sneak away when they give me a little too much space. I’d already counted six guys and that wasn’t the end of it. Sirens wailed. Lights flashed. As I ran for the shadowy neighborhood another block away, three cruisers raced past. One went ahead to the next intersection and swerved sideways. The other two blocked off the side streets.

  Two guys stepped out of each car. Nightsticks came out immediately and I was surrounded by a dozen cops. There were a couple of cars for me to dodge around if I wanted to run, but not a crack between buildings for me to slip into.

  I thought about starting one of the cars on the sidewalk. I was fast, but not that fast. My record had been clean for years and I didn’t want to screw it up by adding grand theft. Resisting arrest was bad enough. I was going down. Had I known how hard, I might have smashed a window and taken my chances in a car chase.

  The ring closed in and I started thinking about what they really had on me. Cortez had sold me out, for sure. Why? For one damn card? Not likely. They’d gotten him on the DA hit. He was the weak link. Somehow they’d traced the cards back to him and he’d pointed the finger at me to save his sorry ass. I should have stuck to what I knew, jewelry and cash, but the cards had been easy money until then.

  Probation was about the best I could hope for. Maybe if I was lucky I’d get a lawyer who knew something about entrapment, because this whole night felt like a setup.

  They made me put my hands on my head. They cuffed me. They frisked me. They cheered when they found the fifteen thousand and the necklace in my pockets. Otherwise I’d have walked. It was a supremely unlucky day in an otherwise charmed five years.

  CHAPTER SIX

  They fingerprinted me, photographed me, took everything valuable or dangerous I had on me, and they stuck me in a cell for two hours. A few years earlier I’d had an idea to disappear out of their systems. I considered tearing up my license and social security card, so if they ever caught me, they’d have no way to prosecute because they wouldn’t know who I was. In the end I thought better of it. I needed the license to drive, but I had a bigger problem. Nothing was safe in a neighborhood like mine unless it was inside a vault. I couldn’t have a regular bank account because they’d report my deposits. I used a safe deposit box and I needed identification to get into the deposit vault. I didn’t earn interest on the cash I had in there, but I didn’t need to be greedy. I was doing fine. The cops had me and my license. I might do a little time, but it wouldn’t be long. Not with a case like they had.

  When they finally got organized, the first guy came into my cell. I knew my rights and I also knew how not to help their case. They wanted to connect me to the DA and the only way to do that was for me to slip up. Otherwise it was my word against Cortez’s. He had a lot to gain by cooperating. If my public defender had a clue, he’d expose their case for what it was. I wasn’t in denial. I knew I was guilty. I just didn’t believe they could prove it.

  He walked me down to a room with a single table and no windows. I figured him for forty-four, not too overweight for a desk jockey. He introduced himself as Detective Rosenthal. He asked me what I knew about District Attorney Jeremy Whitehouse. I almost started to tell him what I’d heard on the news but stopped myself. I was being recorded and I knew if I added even the smallest detail that wasn’t in the newscast, they’d crucify me with it. I smiled to acknowledge how smooth he’d been, then I stared deeply into the second button on his blue shirt and didn’t move.

  That really pissed him off.

  He tried to keep cool by asking me questions about where I was and how I’d gotten inside. He needed to place me at the scene. I knew the only thing I’d left behind was the can of peaches. If they could have gotten any DNA off the fork, they would have done it by now and Detective Rosenthal wouldn’t be wasting his time asking me how I’d gotten inside. Didn’t the district attorney tell them he left his garage door open until he went to bed? All I did was walk in, hide in the garage, and wait for the house to get quiet. They would never prove I’d been there.

/>   The detective kept on with questions and I tried to count the number of threads that went from buttonhole to buttonhole. I figured it was six or seven, but it was hard to tell because they twisted and overlapped.

  The detective banged my cell phone in front of me.

  “If you break that, you’re going to have to buy me a new one,” I said evenly without a hint of anger. The money would come from Rosenthal’s pay and that made him even angrier than before.

  “Why don’t you have your friends’ numbers programmed?”

  I dialed all my numbers from memory, but I didn’t tell him that. I wasn’t a techie guy. I wasn’t big on the Internet and gadgets. Truth was, I could barely read. I probably could have programmed the numbers in, but it was just as easy to remember them.

  “I can get the records from your carrier,” he said as if the phone company was scared of him. We both knew he was just a bureaucrat.

  I just kept staring. The numbers would lead to Double and the Mercedes underneath the junkyard. The place had been searched before and they’d never found the underground garage. No reason to expect they’d find it this time. The numbers would also lead to my friend in San Francisco and if Detective Rosenthal really did his investigating, that would connect me to the couple I just hit. I tried not to show it, but the detective had the leverage he needed right in his hands. I hoped he’d miss it or maybe a jury wouldn’t believe the bellman had sold me the numbers.

  He slapped down the cash next and asked me what I was doing carrying that much around. I had every right to carry as much cash as I wanted, but unlike Cortez, I didn’t have a legitimate means to earn it. In the detective’s eyes I had no right having that money. He knew I’d stolen it. He was right, but my expression never changed. I moved over to his pocket, admired the stitching, and wondered what caused it to bulge the way it did.

  I smiled when he reached into that pocket and pulled out a plastic bag with the diamond necklace. He asked about my love life. Like I’d stolen the necklace for some girl. Did he know about Melanie? He couldn’t yet. If he did, he’d know a girl like her couldn’t pull off a twenty-thousand-dollar necklace. As I stared back blankly, I knew Detective Rosenthal was going after this one all the way. He wouldn’t disappoint the district attorney even if this case was outside the DA’s jurisdiction.

  The card came on the table next. The worthless card was my undoing. I didn’t need it for anything. Normally I would have left it in the safe, but I felt bad for Cortez. I was trying to help him out by sliding it his way. I didn’t even want anything for it. The name on that card linked me back to the house with a hole in the glass door and a recently emptied safe in the master bedroom. Those people might not have been back for weeks. They might not have reported anything missing. Who knew, maybe they’d stolen the money in the first place. But when the cops called and told them they’d found it, they had no choice but to claim it.

  Being a good guy got me busted for the first time in five years.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  In the old days, courtroom trials had lots of things, but common sense wasn’t one of them. The rules were designed to protect the guy the police were trying to put away. I guess this kept the cops from ganging up on people they didn’t like and sticking them in jail, but what most citizens didn’t realize is that a savvy judge could read my record, discuss the evidence with both attorneys, and figure out a case like mine in about thirty minutes. What most people also didn’t realize is that it takes some real effort to get into the defendant’s chair. This wasn’t my first breaking and entering offense. I had robbed two or three houses a week for five years. Conservatively, I’d hit five hundred houses by the time they caught me. Sure, I’d been caught plenty when I was a kid, and yes, I was something of a perfectionist so I’m not typical. But whatever time they gave me, it wasn’t bad for five hundred house breaks and whatever cars I’d taken in that time. If it wasn’t the DA’s house I’d hit, we would have pled out for probation and I would have been home planning my next job.

  A mountain of paperwork wouldn’t discourage the lawyers lined up behind the prosecution table from pursuing my case. The court had even gotten me a pretty good public defender so I couldn’t appeal for ineffective counsel. They made it harder on themselves, but in their own perverted logic it twisted around and made sense.

  We exercised my right to a jury trial. Judges in Massachusetts were notoriously liberal. They gave light sentences most of the time, but given who I was up against, my lawyer thought it best to play the entrapment card for all it was worth. That would sway a jury a lot more than a judge.

  I’d let my hair grow out to a normal length while I was locked up and my lawyer got me a nice-looking suit. My job was to sit at the defense table, smile for the jury members, and act innocent. I tried not to bristle the hair on my head, but there was a lot of time to kill in my cell and the habit transferred to the courtroom. I wasn’t required to say anything in my defense. Our strategy was to give them nothing and hope their pitiful evidence withered in front of a jury.

  The first charge they tried to get me on was the DA’s housebreak. They brought Cortez out onto the witness stand and he told them he bought the district attorney’s credit and debit cards from me. He also told them about the credit card I took from the couple vacationing in San Francisco.

  My lawyer destroyed him during cross examination. Cortez admitted he’d sold the district attorney’s credit cards sixty-five times. He’d also personally taken a thousand dollars from the debit card. I watched the jury when Cortez said he’d called me and asked me to get him some more cards. I thought we had beat it then. Cortez was their only real witness, and the jury was a lot madder at him than they were at me. They whispered to each other when they heard Cortez was getting probation for cooperating. That was the high point of my trial.

  They didn’t have any physical evidence that tied me to the district attorney’s house. It was just my word against Cortez’s. The jury liked me and it was easy to believe Cortez was pointing the finger at me to get himself off. I thought we’d done it, but it was pretty clear that I’d hit the Westwood house while the owners were in San Francisco. People liked things to make sense. My jury was no exception. When the prosecutors put the two charges together like they did, they made it harder for them to let me go. If I’d hit the couple in Westwood, it made sense that I’d hit the DA’s house, too.

  The prosecutor had all the cops from my arrest there in the courtroom. He filed them up on the stand and each said they saw me with the money and the jewelry. If we’d been thinking faster, we could have put Cortez back up there and said I was buying the necklace from him. It could have worked, but having both items from the safe in my pockets torpedoed me. We didn’t even try blaming Cortez.

  What happened next surprised me and my lawyer.

  They trotted in my landlord and made him testify to how much I paid in rent. Later I’d learn that they threatened him with tax evasion because he wasn’t reporting what I was paying him. He told them everything about me. Where I liked to eat. When I came and went. He told the jury everything he knew. When he was done, they brought out some accountant to add up what I was spending. They spent two hours creating a little budget for me right there in court. When it hit me, the surprise must have shown on my face. I wasn’t collecting welfare or unemployment. I hadn’t filed taxes in my life. I didn’t hold a job. So, they asked, where was the money coming from?

  That was the moment the jury turned.

  They scowled. They gawked.

  They were angry that they were going to work every day and I was making an easy living breaking into people’s houses and taking stuff. They probably knew someone who had been robbed and they knew how awful they felt afterward. What I did wasn’t easy, but I couldn’t tell them that. They wouldn’t understand how hard I worked to be good at what I did.

  The prosecutors celebrated behind their long wooden table. They knew they’d won retribution. They wanted the car back and they wanted th
e money. Fortunately, everything I owned was tucked in that safe deposit box and no one was going to find it. They could fine me all they wanted, but I’d never have to pay. Their smugness convinced me to start collecting welfare when I got out, so they couldn’t use that trick on me again.

  Their anger went beyond what I’d done to the DA or those people visiting San Francisco. To them I was evil. Career criminals were a cancer to those men in suits. The cops would be all over me when I got out, ready to throw me back inside the moment I crossed the line. I was an easy target now, a convicted felon. They couldn’t know it, but something extraordinary was about to happen. Something that would foul their plans forever.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Have you ever been to prison? Did you know that if you get arrested for a felony you go from a lock-up at the local police station to the house of correction? I was there for months while my trial dragged on.

  After my trial was over, my lawyer filled me in on another interesting piece of information. In Massachusetts if you enter someone’s house at night and try to rob them, you can be sentenced to up to twenty years. They figured people are home at night and if you break in you’re likely to run into them and then things could turn violent. That made sense most of the time, but I knew that couple was in San Francisco. That’s why I was in their house so long. And the DA, I was only six feet from him. I could have stuck my fork in his throat while he was sleeping, but I’m not that kind of guy. I was just trying to make a living like everyone else.

  I knew a dozen guys who had been arrested for breaking and entering and gotten off with probation. I must have gotten the one conservative judge in the whole state, because he wasn’t so accommodating. He even gave me a lecture before he sentenced me. He was really upset that I’d never had a job and that I hadn’t graduated high school. Heck, I’d never made it to high school, but I didn’t tell him that. He said I was unable to contribute to society without making major changes in my life. The first change he made sure of—a change of address. He sentenced me to five years.