Joe’s Black T-Shirt
Short Stories About St. Louis
by Joe Schwartz
Copyright © Joe Schwartz, 2009
Smashwords Edition
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be shared, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior permission by the author.
A Stabco Publication
Cover art by Chris Holden, 2009
All of the stories included in this manuscript are the work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the three women in my life in whose absence this book would fail to exist.
First and foremost, my mother, who taught me that the power in the creative art of storytelling is the suspension of disbelief.
Second, in order only, is my lovely wife, Rhonda. I will be forever indebted to her as she showed me that I was not the horrible son-of-a-bitch I thought.
Third, is my editor and friend, Julie Failla Earhart, my cheerleader and staunchest critic.
To each of you, I say thank-you. I love you, and God bless you for putting up with me.
Joe
Contents
Dear Reader:
If you are reading this I will presume you to have a disaffected spirit by the very definition that is the stylish, yet dissident black t-shirt. Be it for a band or a high-octane motorsport, it is not clothing as much as a statement of values. Whether it is brand new or thread bare, it represents your deepest, inner reflections. It should act as a warning to the happy, go-lucky set that you can be dangerous if provoked.
These stories are written especially for you. Each one is an effort to tap into that secret psyche that does not conform to society’s rules. Rules that don’t apply to an underclass struggling to survive in that gray area between indigence and working class poor, standards that have become corrupt and inconceivable as our technology begins to exceed our humanity. These stories are not about people with choices as much as they are about people learning to live with the consequences of actions. That’s not to say we move unconsciously, not understanding the eventual outcomes of our self-destructive behavior, it is more about the fact that we simply do not care.
My own life is a collection of black t-shirts. Occasionally, I must weed items that no longer suit my state of mind. Others though, I have had since I was a teen-ager and could shit-can only if it were about to disintegrate. They are the story of my life. The sense of empowerment I receive from one is equal to the disdain of another. They are all precious in my sight. The most significant are those given to me by close friends. I have never received any higher endowment of respect. Likewise, I offer this collection of short stories to you.
All these stories are set in St. Louis, a place that I have loved, hated, reviled, and embraced. In short, it is my home. I have been to many other cities that were flourishing megalopolises. The clean streets, friendly locals, their astonishing monuments and museums, and endless variety of amusements only made me homesick.
St. Louis is a natural landfill of acutely angry people. The town is still a war zone divided by race and money that has hardly changed since I was a boy. Oddly enough, I have grown comfortable within these dire conditions.
I hope that you will see a neighbor, a co-worker, or even yourself in these words. Most important, I hope you will realize that you are not alone. There are other ‘normal people’ with the same inconsolable thoughts of desperation and malice hidden behind the thin veil that is a black t-shirt.
Once you’ve read it, give it to somebody else as a gift validating the adage that it is the thought that counts.
Acrimoniously yours,
Joe
Joe’s Black T-Shirt
Short Stories About St. Louis
Slow Motion
I first decided to kill Edgar last summer.
He had come into all our lives three years ago. There wasn’t anything that odd or outstanding about him I could recall. He was a hard worker who didn’t need much instruction to get a job done. When the supervisor asked what we all thought of bringing him aboard full time, none of us had any reason to balk.
The kind of work I do is grunt labor. Digging holes, mowing grass, painting buildings inside and out. It’s good honest work that doesn’t require brains. It’s harder than hell to get on full time in a unit, and I spent two years in part-time limbo hoping to get my spot. Over the last ten years, I’ve learned the mechanics of small engine repair and mower-blade sharpening and mastered the skill of pulling trailers of any size. Even in my chosen profession they are all things unexpected of a woman. Most of the women hired know they don’t have to take this serious. We work for the city. The local government is as bound as the largest federal entity to ensure a fair and equal workplace. Every shop has a woman, a black, and, occasionally, a cripple. Generally speaking, we’re equally despised.
I refused to be quarantined in the shop while my coworkers, the men, went out to do the real work. Besides, they had to do something with me. After two weeks of leaving me behind, I had reorganized the shop twice and power scrubbed the maintenance yard, removing years of tractor grease and truck oil. That night over a thirty-pack of beer, they decided to give me a real job.
Next morning I sat between the shop steward and the plumber. With every turn the obese plumber’s girth shifted onto me. His smell covered me like a fine mist that I could not ignore or get used to.
It was a short ride, maybe five or six miles, to the job site. A bathroom had become ‘inoperable’ over the winter break.
I had two jobs. To go back and forth to the truck for everything and to shovel shit. The plumber took great delight in berating my inexperience. “Jesus wept,” he would say as if divine intervention could help me. “Why don’t ya go bake some cookies, Martha, and leave the real work to the men.” Then he would laugh and send me back to the truck on another fool’s errand. When the back-flow of human waste would inevitably rise, forming an ankle deep black pool of curd-like discharge, I would wade in with my coal shovel, scoop up the watery slop into my wheelbarrow, and dump it out in the woods, downhill behind the cinder-block building. By the end of the day, the problem was diagnosed as a dead possum in the main line. As we rode back to the shop in silence, the plumber’s odor no longer bothered me.
The smell of human waste dogged me for three days after. I lost twelve pounds that week, hardly able to swallow a bite of food. Even my menthol cigarettes did little to disguise the awful taste. The guys all made friendly jokes with me about it until eventually I could laugh too, as if it had happened to someone else.
Then little by little they began to show me different things. Simple things like how to mix oil and gas or how to sharpen the chain saw with a rattail file. Complicated things like making concrete from raw materials or felling a tree safely. It gave me confidence to do these things. It made me a better mother to my two sons and it proved to myself that I could do anything if given the opportunity.
It was all so good until Edgar came around. He was somebody’s brother-in-law, but we didn’t give that much consideration. If you couldn’t hack the work as a seasonal laborer, you were gone, regardless if you were first cousin to the Pope himself. After you went full time, it was damn near impossible to get fired. Until we offered him the full-timer’s position, he was a model employee.
***
The bing-bong of an electric door chime signaled my entry into the store. Walls of rifles and shotguns stood erect behind the counter with rows of handguns under the glass countertop. The clerk was of indeterminate age, slender with a thick beard. With his coke-bottle thick glasses, his appearance reminded me more of a librarian than an arms dealer.
“Might I help you ma’am,” he drawled in a thick southern accent.
“You might,” I said. “Are you Ricky Larry?”
“Sure ‘nuff,” he said. “’Course most folks don’t usually seem concerned wit’ such.”
“I’m John Roberts.” I said. The name was a code. It had cost me forty dollars in draft beer and a hand job inside the Tinker’s Dam men’s room handicapped stall to get it. Now that I was here, I could only hope my spit-shine hadn’t been in vain.
“Don’t say,” he said. “What can I do for ya’, John?”
He pushed a button under the counter and an electronic lock bolted the front door. Ricky Larry sat a square cardboard container on the counter with the words SMITH & WESSON printed boldly across. Inside was a used .38 caliber, with rust on the barrel and a thick wad of duct tape wrapped around the handle that looked like it would fall apart the first time the hammer dropped.
“What ya’ think?”
“I think,” I said, “that I’ll pass.”
“This here is a right good pistol. Despite the cosmetics.”
I stared at him, not buying his song and dance about how this gun was only used on Sundays by a little old lady to shoot gallery targets.
“You might as well unlock the door,” I said
“Hold your horses. I got another,” he said putting another identical box on the counter. When he lifted the lid, I knew it was exactly what I wanted. A flat black-on-black 9mm Beretta that was no doubt military issue with the markings on the slide and the butt obliterated.
I picked it up and pulled the slide back with ease. The hollow chamber was clean, and the smell of fresh gun oil was overpowering as a barfly’s cheap perfume. The weight was well balanced in my hand. I squeezed the trigger and the slide clamped shut with efficiency.
“How much?”
“That there is a good piece, a bona fide sidearm of the U.S. military. A rare item under such circumstances.”
“How much?” I asked again. If my experience buying used cars was anything akin to this, I knew the more he talked the more it would cost. The trick was getting him to shut up and pin him down to a firm price.
“Well,” he said pondering, trying to accurately gauge my breaking point, “you seem like a nice lady. What ya say, nine hundred?”
“Four hundred,” I immediately countered.
“Now look here,” he said as his tone lost its friendly, country boy appeal, “this ain’t no durn flea market.”
“Seven-fifty,” I said putting my maximum offer on the table.
He combed his beard with his fingers. Eyes that looked too big for his face through the magnification of the lenses stared into mine, trying to determine if I was bluffing.
Through the cloak of thick facial hair, he smiled wide. His teeth were the shade of a Calico cat. “Gawd-dog! Ya drive a hard bargain, lady, but I do believe that’s a fair deal.”
I gave him the money, and he put the gun into a dark blue plastic bag. The weapon’s weight in my purse made me nervous and happy all at once. I held my purse on my lap all the way back home.
The boys were playing video games when I got home. The teenagers needed little from me in the way of survival. After I fixed hamburgers and skillet fries for supper I told them I had a bad headache and was going to bed early. I locked my bedroom door even though there wasn’t a chance I would be disturbed.
My ex loved guns, liquor, and kicking my ass. It was a blessing when the police picked him up driving drunk with a loaded shotgun in the passenger seat. He got five years, and I got a no-fault divorce by a sympathetic judge.
His brother came by and collected his few belongings. He left behind anything he knew he couldn’t sell for beer money or trade for truck parts. Had he bothered to open the ladies shoebox at the bottom of the closet he would’ve been happier than a sissy with a new dick.
I pulled out the pink and white box and set it on the bed next to me. Its lid off, I suddenly felt a bit perverse. Bright red shotgun shells and long silver rifle cartridges lay in a disorganized puzzle but among the chaos was a neat three-by-six rack of gold bullets ready for use. I took one out and examined it. The acronym ‘9MM’ was clearly stamped into the flat, circular base.
I discharged the empty magazine from the gun and re-loaded it full back into the gun’s handle. The change was significant. A surge of potency overcame me as I swung the loaded barrel towards the mirror and faced myself. I remembered why in the hell I was doing all this and the thrill evaporated. Edgar.
There was no doubt as to his stealing. The police found our chop saw at First Star Pawn with the ID tag still attached. Posthole diggers, the tamper, and a gas-powered hedge trimmer all suddenly disappeared in conjunction with Edgar getting keys to the shop.
One morning after all the trucks mysteriously wouldn’t start, it became clear all the gas had been siphoned. Edgar called in sick that morning and the following day. He had swallowed more than he had stole and had the balls to claim he had the flu although it was the middle of August. It wasn’t any skin off our noses though. We figured that given enough rope, it was only a matter of time before he hung himself.
With Edgar though, it was always something. Maybe half your lunch came up missing or your new work gloves that you bought last weekend were nowhere to be found. It made us mad as hell, but we let it go. Sometimes we would get even by deliberately putting him on the trash run in the rain or lending him out to other units in the area for general labor. More often than not, though, he couldn’t or wouldn’t apply but the most minimal effort. After six months, his reputation preceded him and no other unit except ours would tolerate him. Most days we left him on shop duty where he either watched TV or slept. As long as he didn’t bother us, didn’t interfere, we were willing to accept it.
That is until Big Mike, the finest heavy equipment operator I had ever known, accused him of stealing a bottle of cologne from his locker. We could all smell the expensive scent on Edgar, but he firmly wouldn’t give in. When Big Mike took hold of him by the collar and drug him like a dog outside, we silently followed. There on Edgar’s truck seat, you could plainly see the clear bottle we all recognized as Big Mike’s, yet he would not confess. First he said he found it. Then he said it was always there. Finally he told Big Mike he could kiss his ass. The accumulation of lie upon lies compounded into a boiling frustration with which we were all too familiar. Big Mike did what we all had wanted to do many times and punched the little weasel square in the nose. Blood gushed out and stained his shirt. Without a word, Edgar got in his truck and peeled rubber out of the lot.
Half an hour later, celebrating over beers, Edgar’s battered pick-up returned accompanied by a police cruiser. Big Mike was arrested, charged with assault and hauled off. A week later the charges were dropped on the stipulation Big Mike immediately resign his position. That’s when we quit talking to Edgar. You would think such a collective cold shoulder would shame a man into quitting but not him. He seemed even happier.
The winter passed without many incidents. Occasionally he would come in reeking of the disputed cologne trying to taunt us somehow into another altercation. None of us dared. We all had families and there wasn’t a one of us who could replace this kind of money. We were trapped, waiting on the elusive golden rule of eighty. That was when your age plus the time on the job equaled eighty years. If you could make it, sixty percent of your paycheck was yours for the next twenty years, no questions asked. We were in effect marking time and trying to make it as pleasant as possible.
When spring came, we were all eager to escape the drudgery of the shop. With the April showers and the May flowers came the community service workers. Generally, college kids caught driving drunk or smoking pot or both. I was always glad to see them. Most were polite, called me ma’am until I told them otherwise, and were damn good workers. In my entire career, I never saw one two seasons in a row.
It was a rainy morning when Cindy showed up on our door, soaked to the bone, wearing a black tank top tucked into Daisy Duke shorts, and paper-thin thongs. She couldn’t have been less ready for a hard day’s work if she were nude. Our supervisor was a born-again believer who didn’t have a judgmental bone in his body. He decided that she could work until lunch with Edgar at the shop. Certainly she could sweep and mop. Edgar, in a rare display of conscientiousness, assured him ‘the young lady would not be shown any special privileges.’ The matter settled we walked single file out the door.
When we pulled back into the yard for lunch, the rain had turned into a mist that was cool to the skin but left you dry. Rainbows shimmered in the oil slicks and made the charcoal asphalt beautiful. Cindy looked like she had been crying. I sat down next to her with my paper sack lunch, asked her if she wanted half of my pb & j but she shook her head no. Edgar sat on a bucket in the corner with that smile of his on full blast, staring at her.
The next day, she came in wearing enough layers for snow removal. Call it woman’s intuition or simply the experience of living with bad men for far too long, but it was clear to me. Cindy’s eyes that had danced with the light of life were now nothing more than extinguished remains. When Edgar deliberately bumped into her, I thought she might scream.
Before the supervisor could speak, I insisted that I was in terrible need of a helper, probably for all week, and that Cindy suited my purposes. Edgar almost objected, then saw how serious I was.
I let Cindy sit in my truck all week, bringing extra cigarettes for her and in general letting her be. Sometimes I would look over and she would be crying or praying or screaming with the windows rolled up. Sometimes I think it was all three at once.
At the end of the week, her hours completed, she surprised me. Arms wide open, she covered me whole and hugged me with more compassion than I have ever felt. She whispered in my ear, “Thank you.” I cried all the way home thinking about it.
***
July Fourth was on a Monday that year. The supervisor had left the week prior for a mission trip, and the shop was ours to do with as we pleased. It was decided the Friday prior to the holiday that we needed a break. After the necessities of trash, bathrooms, and general appearances were performed, we would have an old-fashioned pig roast. We invited all the other area units and by lunch the maintenance yard looked like a convention.
I deliberately stayed sober, enjoying the company, listening to stories I had heard many times before, but mostly to keep a watch on Edgar. He had consumed most of the two thirty-packs of beer I had brought in before they had a chance to get cold in the ice chest. I waited with a cat’s dedication to catch a mouse for him.
Round about five o’clock, all that remained of the pig was gristle and bone. By tomorrow morning, even that would be lost to the raccoons. The men’s car keys jingled with drunken delight as they tried to unlock and start their personal and company vehicles alike. Some would stay on the back roads and hopefully get home without killing anybody. Most would crawl into the driver’s seat, turn on the radio, and sleep it off here. I had kept myself busy cleaning up paper plates and aluminum cans, waiting until I was certain everyone was either passed out or gone.
Edgar was comatose, sitting at a picnic table, beer still in hand, and with his head lolled back as if deeply interested in astronomy. I came over to him with a fresh beer, the top already open and woke him.
“Edgar!” I yelled and shook him until his eyes opened.
Disorientated he asked, “Wha’…what ja’ want?”
“The party ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” I said as I put his arm over my back and raised him upright. I set the new beer to his lips. It was like nursing a newborn calf. Nothing much required of me except to let nature take its course.
He belched in my face before he yelled, “Party!”
Without any resistance I led him to my car, taking particular care to fasten his seat belt.
“Safety first,” I said to him as he looked questioningly about my concerned actions. It was our company motto. A mantra that we said aloud to each other anytime we had to follow an asinine rule in flagrant disregard for common sense.
Drunkenly, he repeated after me. “Safety first,” and promptly fell asleep.
I drove slow and cautious to the rat hole trailer park where he lived. It was common knowledge among the meth set that this place was paradise.
As I unloaded him from the car into the trailer, he popped in and out of consciousness. Finally able to deposit him on to the couch, I went back to get my purse from the trunk. When I came back in, I was shocked to see him sitting up, fully awake, and holding a fresh beer. The kind that was triple the size of a normal can, what my ex called the breakfast of champions.
The can fell to the floor with a thunk, spraying the beer across the arm of the couch. He laughed, giving a half-hearted salute to his fallen comrade. When he looked up at me clutching my purse, his laughter stopped, and that damned smile grew on his face like mold. Edgar loosened the top of his blue jeans and unzipped his fly, exposing himself to me.
“C’mon baby,” he said. “If ya didn’t want this, ya wouldn’t be here.”
“Is that what you told Cindy.”
I reached in my purse and pulled out the gun.
In a moment he was up. He lunged for me, but his open pants considerably slowed his attack. On his knees, he looked up at me, laughing again as he looked straight into the Beretta’s barrel.
“Stupid cunt,” he cursed me as I pulled the trigger over and over again.
***
I stared into the twelve pairs of eyes as I finished my story. I couldn’t read them. Some were emotionless, some full of empathy, but most were in shock.
I saw Cindy sitting in the gallery, crying quietly into a tissue. Next to her my two boys with my ex. He had been awarded temporary custody pending the outcome of this trial.
Now that I had said everything I could remember, his honor excused me from the stand. I watched the seven women and five men leave to deliberate my judgment, to decide, as I had, on the merit of another human being’s intentions. Regardless their decision, I had no regrets.
###
I push my way through the double glass doors of Bailey, Taylor, Shipman, Shipman, and Davis. The sign is erroneous, and I make a mental note, as I have every morning for the last nine months, to have the first Shipman removed.
Marvin is currently in the federal slam serving an eight-year sentence. Due to the nature of his crime, he spends twenty-three hours of every day in ‘protective custody.’ That’s code for solitary confinement with television. His amazing mind for jurisprudence trapped, useless and dormant, by the futility that is prison life.
I remember when the feds broke into our offices like boot-heel Nazi thugs. Their automatic weapons drawn as they generally terrorized the shit out of middle-aged secretaries whom hadn’t so much as jaywalked in their whole lives.
The leader, a guy dressed in a pin-stripped Brooks Brothers’ suit that fit him well fifty pounds ago, handed out the search warrants. He had the foresight to make sure there were enough copies for each of the partners, the associates, and even interns. The warrant was more seizure more than search. They wanted computers, every one Marvin was known to have used at any time, whether at work, home, or otherwise. By the time they left, the only computer that remained belonged to the file clerk.
Marvin was a pedophile. Not the kind grabbing kids from school bus stops, but without guys like him, shit like this would cease to exist. He was charged with the purchase, possession, and distribution of pornographic images of a minor under the age of ten years. To be more succinct: kiddie porn.
His wife of twenty years divorced him before he was sentenced. She took her fifty percent, as prescribed by law, and the court took the remainder to be held in a slush fund called the ‘victims reimbursement program.’ I suspected it was the cost of doing business. A tax levied upon the offender, guaranteeing his life outside of bars to be so miserable that if he didn’t kill himself, he certainly wouldn’t be of any significant trouble in the future.
I loved my brother, in spite of what he had done, and faithfully represented him. I was able to get him a plea-bargain, that saved him fifteen years, with the usual caveats. He could never practice law again. He would have to register as a sex offender. He would have to surrender his passport. He couldn’t be stopped, standing, or otherwise, within fifteen hundred feet of any school. All standard and reasonable clauses, that was always demanded and completely pointless toward rehabilitation. I wished we could have opted for castration. That, at least, would have been a reasonable solution for everyone involved.
“Morning, Warren,” my secretary chimed.
My voice percolated inside my throat. The normal grunt sounds I used to communicate my thoughts when words seemed too troublesome.
She handed me a stack of pink notes, mostly missed calls from clients. One in particular though struck me odd enough to find my voice.
“What in the hell does he want?” I asked myself.
“The call was collect,” she said. “I couldn’t accept.”
Before I could look up from the handwritten script, her fingers were a blur. The plastic keys beneath her glossy red fingernails clacked away at the body of a letter. The small black letters formed on the monitor like stitches in a blanket. I wondered if she even read what she was given to type any longer?
I sat down at my desk and put the note to the side. It could wait. I concentrated on the first rule of law: deal with the paying customers before even thinking about a pro bono client’s problems.
After a busy morning of answering client’s stupid questions, or as it is sometimes called ‘practicing psychiatry without a license,’ I finally had time to return my attention to the odd note.
I dialed the number. A ring-tone buzzed through my end of the extension, as if I were making an overseas call and not simple long distance to an isolated, if not forgotten, patch of Missouri farmland called Sikeston.
It took fifteen minutes before I could be connected to the highly controlled extension. I could almost see the plain, beige phone, reminiscent of a rotary, sans the dial. When the automated message played to remind me all conversations would be recorded and reviewed for content, is when I quit daydreaming.
“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t call me back,” Marvin said cheerfully through the static. You would think I was calling him at his summer place in the Ozarks.
“I’m your attorney,” I remind us both. “It’s my duty.”
“How’s Mary?” he asked disregarding my official tone.
“She’s fine,” I say not willing to engage in small talk at three dollars a minute.
I wait for him to speak. In the background I can clearly hear the sounds of dozen thirteen-inch televisions. It sounds weird, the mixture of news, cartoons, and talk shows. The humdrumity of passing time without hope it would go any faster.
After a full minute, Marvin spoke. “I’ve got a good one here.”
My shock is impossible to disguise. “What the hell are you talking about?”
A ‘good one’ is an unofficial term for a case not listed in any legal text. It means you’ve found a case that is winnable and consequently a decent payday. The idea that my brother was still hound dogging for clients gave me a momentary elation. It quickly dissipated when I rationalized he was probably losing his mind.
Without my responding, he elaborated. “ A young guy, lives across the hall from me. I’ve thoroughly interviewed him,” he said like he was talking to me from the extension in his old office and not from cell block fourteen. “I am completely convinced he is innocent. Unfortunately, my current situation offers certain restrictions.”
“No shit,” I blurted. “Jesus, Marvin, everyone there is innocent, ask them.” My frustration was diluted by my compassion. To keep from losing his sanity he set up shop in a four by eight foot room of concrete and metal bars. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had somehow had a sign made by the convicts pronouncing him:
Marvin Shipman
Convicted Pervert, Former Attorney at Law
“This boy is different. He doesn’t belong here, Warren.”
“What’s your proof?”
“I can’t talk about that on the phone.”
“You have got to be…” I dropped off in mid-sentence when something occurred to me. “You don’t expect me to come all the way down there, to talk to him myself?”
“Of course I do,” he said. “How else will you be able to sign him up?”
The idea of the three and a half-hour drive did not thrill me. To see my brother, I had no problem. I had made it a point to see his time served in the state. His rotting away in some cell a thousand miles from home was not an idea I found comfortable. With the Thanksgiving holiday rolling around things would be slow. It would be a perfect time to make the trek.
“All right,” I said, “I’ll come take your client’s statement.”
Marvin was nobody’s fool. He was locked up because he had grown sloppy in his habit, like all junkies eventually do, not because he was stupid.
“Look asshole,” he attacked me, “I can remember plenty of times I pulled your ass out of the fire. No questions asked. You needed help and I delivered. Should I go into the details of four August, nineteen eighty-eight.”
The son of a bitch, I thought, he was prepared to trump my ass with the blackmail card from the beginning.
“Marvin---”
“I would hate to bring to light how on that night, a certain attorney and an underage drinking partner---”
“Enough!” I shouted. I’m sure whoever was listening to this conversation was having a good laugh. It’s not often a con has this much control over his lawyer. “I can be there Thursday morning. Is that good enough?”
“That’s Thanksgiving.”
“It’ll give your client a reason to be thankful.”
“What about Mary?” he asked.
“Let it go, Marvin,” I said hanging up the phone.
***
I left the office early Wednesday afternoon and wished my secretary a happy holiday. In kind she did the same. We exchanged a platonic hug, then I went home to pack.
The house was quiet. I still wasn’t accustomed to living alone. Mary had left a year ago last week. My advocacy for Marvin in court, fighting the good fight, pissed her off to the core.
“How can you do this?” she would morosely ask.
Every night of the trial, it was the same thing.
“He’s my brother.”
“He’s a monster and a purveyor of filth. The lowest kind of human being imaginable. Why do you have to do it? There must be somebody else.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Do you realize all the neighbors know? The things they say. Your name, our name, on the front page everyday, airing our dirty laundry.”
“I don’t give a damn, Mary. He’s always been there for me and now it’s my turn.”
That usually shut her up.
Her arguments with me eventually became unilateral warfare with a bottle of Absolute. Before the trial was over, she had quit talking to me.
The night she wrapped her BMW around a light pole downtown, I had to pull an all nighter. Like a coward, I sent my senior associate to post her bond. At the time it made sense. She knew work always came first. By the time I came home to shave and change into my power suit, a blue Italian job that had cost me more than my first new car, she was gone.
The emptiness of our home didn’t affect me until after Marvin’s trial. The crystal was still in the cabinet, and the maid service took care of housework. Her scent, though, was gone.
My overnight bag packed, I stopped and stared into the walk-in closet. The room built to hold our clothes was hardly smaller than our first apartment in college. With her half empty, it looked much bigger.
As I prepared to leave, certain the coffeepot timer was off and windows were locked, I noticed the answering machine. The number one flashed, warning me, a message waited to be heard. I pushed the play button. Instantly I recognized Mary’s voice.
“Warren, are you home? Please pick up if you’re there.” Pausing momentarily, she continued as if I was listening. “Mother wanted me to call and wish you a happy Thanksgiving. She insists on your coming up for dinner Thursday. I’ve tried to explain how busy you are, that it is hard for you to get away. Still…” She stopped again. I could tell she was trying to choose her words. “Look, I don’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other. Come if you want or don’t, but do, please call Mother. This is all very confusing for her, and believe it or not Warren, she loves you and I…” catching herself in mid-sentence, she edited her usual farewell salutation to me, “hope you are doing well.”
“I hope you are doing well too,” I said aloud, trying the words out for myself. Nothing could ever replace ‘I love you,’ but it was nice. I played the message again, then erased it.
***
I drove eighty miles an hour on cruise control as soon as I passed the county limits. The straight road offered no challenges and the passing farmland no distraction. By the time I made it to Sikeston, it was dark. From the highway you could see the Wal-Mart sign and the faint square shape of the prison.
The motel was the best the town had to offer. Better than a commercial chain, but by no means a real hotel. I was fairly sure the middle-aged woman who checked me in, swiped my Visa card, and explained to me how to make long-distance calls would be the same person in the morning making my bed, cleaning my toilet, and inspecting my room for its’ overall tidiness.
She was nice enough, saying the prison would have amended hours for the holiday. An hour earlier than normal, friends and family would be let in to see the incarcerated.
“What about attorneys?” I asked trying to make a joke.
“A visitor is a visitor, I guess.” she said.
I found my room easily enough and slid my key into the gold-plated lock. The solid thump of the dead bolt retreated inside the steel door. What they lacked in amenities they certainly made up for in security. Possibly it was the idea that less than two miles away rapists, murderers, and pedophiles were kept behind bars. Maybe the doors, the locks, and the better-than-average security cameras in the manager’s office and on the parking lot gave visitors peace of mind. I thought it all was smoke and mirrors. What better deterrent is there to crime than having a federal penal institution in your backyard?
After I unpacked, I undressed and lay down nude under the clean sheet. The last thing I thought before falling asleep, regardless the bullshit reason my brother had called me down here was that it would be nice to see him.
***
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.
###
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 crippled 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.
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