2 Grand Delusion (6 page)

That video camera on the wall explained why I wasn't getting punched. At least, not here anyway. I could only hope the rest of the police station was videotaped, too.

"Take off your belt," Young Crewcut ordered me.

"Oh, come on—"

"Take it off."

Since I was cuffed to the wall, I only had one hand free. I used it to remove the belt from my robe. Then I looked down at myself.

I was wearing ancient blue and yellow striped pajamas that some barely remembered girlfriend had bought me half a lifetime ago. The middle button on my fly was missing, so with my beltless robe hanging open I had to adjust my pajama bottoms just right, or my johnson would come flopping out into full view.

If I'd known I was going to jail, I would have worn spiffier PJs.

Even worse, I was wearing slippers that my wife got me for a joke when I turned forty last year. They were purple fluffy jobs with the words "World's Greatest Lover" printed on them in bright orange.

Cole and Young Crewcut were eyeing my slippers, too. "You can keep your footwear if you want," Young Crewcut said, deadpan.

Cole busted out laughing for what felt like a full minute. The acne-scarred redhead, who'd been silently malevolent this whole time, laughed, too. Then he stepped in front of the videocamera and, hidden from the lens, spit at my face.

Maybe the fun would have lasted longer, but a door opened and the lieutenant in charge of the investigation stepped into the room. My heart sank. Lieutenant Foxwell was the same lantern-jawed lieutenant that the Ninja Turtles and I had fought with earlier that night.

He thrust that impressive jaw forward and gave me a hard stare. Then he unsnapped my cuffs, said, "This way," and pushed me through the door.

I was fingerprinted, not just once but three times—for the city, the state, and the FBI. Well, heck, I'd always wanted to be famous. Then Foxwell wiped the blood off my nose with a wet paper towel and took my mug shot with a Polaroid Mini-Portrait camera. I was prisoner number 274013. I vowed that if I ever got out of this mess, I'd play the lottery with those numbers.

I wanted to smile for my mug shot, just to be different. But Foxwell ordered me not to. I asked him why, without expecting an answer, but he gave me one. "Mug shots should look the way people usually look, and people don't usually smile. Especially douchebags who've been busted for killing cops."

I raised my eyebrows reproachfully. " 'Douchebags?' Isn't that rather a sexist term?"

This time Foxwell didn't bother to favor my remarks with a reply. He grabbed my arm and pushed me into the chief of police's office.

The chief was sitting behind his desk waiting for me. "Please sit down, sir," he said pleasantly.

They were the first pleasant words I'd heard since this whole ordeal began. I sat down. My chair was comfortable, and the old-fashioned, leather-covered desk gave off an earthy smell. Pictures of the chief and his family adorned the walls and bookcases. Like me, he had two sons, and several of the pictures showed them playing baseball. I tried to relax and pretend I was there on a social call. After all, this whole thing was just a silly little mix-up. It shouldn't be all that hard to clear up.

Chief Walsh was smiling at me. It was a warm smile. The chief had a thin white mustache and distinguished silver hair and he reminded me of someone; I wasn't sure who but it was someone good. I immediately wanted him to like me.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"Thank you, sir," I replied.

The chief nodded to Foxwell, then added, "Oh, and could you turn on the videocamera before you go?"

Foxwell pushed a button on the wall and left, and the chief turned back to me. "You've been treated well, I hope?" he asked.

I started to tell him about the spitting and eyeball-gouging, but then decided to let it go. Why make waves? "Yes, thank you," I said.

"Excellent." The chief beamed with satisfaction. "I'm glad to hear that. And I hope someone has adequately explained to you that anything you say may be used against you, and you're entitled—"

"Yes, sir. No need to do it again unless you feel it's important." Mr. Agreeable.

"Okay, good, I'm glad we got that all squared away. Now if you just want to sign this card for us . . ."

"No problem." I signed the Miranda card.

Foxwell returned with two cups of coffee, then left again as the chief reached into a mini-refrigerator behind his desk. "Cream or sugar?"

"No, thanks. Black is fine."

He nodded approvingly. "Cowboy style, huh? That's how I drink it myself. I grew up out in cowboy country."

"Oh, really?" I asked politely.

"Wallace, Idaho. Ever been there?"

"I drove through once. Big lead refinery."

He grinned knowingly. "Stunk pretty bad, didn't it?"

I grinned back. "I can still smell it."

He rolled his eyes. "Tell me about it." Then he leaned forward and gave me a solemn look. "Actually, what I'd
really
like you to tell me about, unless you feel more comfortable waiting for a lawyer, is what happened tonight."

I had nothing to hide—well,
almost
nothing—so what the heck, I told him. About the car door (doors?) slamming, and the shrieks, and the gunshot. About Pop's arm jerking at my face, and his dying words. I told the chief everything.

Almost.

Desperate though I was, I still kept little Tony out of the story.

When I finished, Chief Walsh tented his fingers thoughtfully. "You know," he said, "I believe you."

I had to fight to keep from crying. I would have kissed his feet, except they were under the desk. "Thank you, sir," I breathed.
"Thank you."

"The only thing that screws it up a little," he said unhappily, "is this whole crazy business that happened in the hall upstairs, where you and Pop were really going at each other."

"Oh,
that,"
I said hurriedly, waving my arm. "That really wasn't such a big deal." And this time I
did
tell him everything: about the late-night noise, the drug dealing, the zoning hearing, the North Korean pressure-point torture . . .

Chief Walsh nodded sympathetically. Finally, someone who
got
it. "I totally understand," he said. "Listen, I'm aware that Pop was not always a . . . shall we say, model policeman. So here you were, already feeling upset because of the neighbors, and not being able to sleep for a couple of weeks—"

"More like two months. It's been a nightmare."

"I'm sure it has been. And then to add insult to injury, this guy pinches you in a sneaky, vicious way, so you were quite legitimately angry at him."

"Yeah, I was furious." I shrugged self-deprecatingly. "I guess I kind of lost it there. I went a little wild."

"Uh huh," the chief said, and looked at me over those tented fingers. Then he gave one of his little smiles.

But this time I didn't smile back. Instead I looked at him in horror.

Because it finally hit me—too late—what had just happened. I had just handed Chief Walsh a murder motive, all neatly gift-wrapped for his convenience.

The cops had the what, where, and how . . . and now, thanks to me, they had the why.

I stared at Chief Walsh, and realized at last who he reminded me of, with his thin mustache and distinguished silver hair. It was my father. No wonder I'd been so desperate for the chief to believe me. God knows I'd spent large portions of my life desperate for my father's approval.

As I sat there, horrified, I suddenly also realized why I had overreacted so fiercely to Pop's pinch. It wasn't just the pain. My big brother used to pinch me when I was a kid, and my parents never believed me. Drove me nuts.

I felt all of about four years old. First Pop's pinches, and now the chief's smiles, had snuck past my adult defenses.

"I want to make a phone call," I said through clenched teeth.

"By all means. Would you like to use my phone?" the chief asked pleasantly.

The bastard could afford to be pleasant.

He had everything he needed.

7

Andrea answered in the middle of the first ring. "Hello?" she said breathlessly. She'd been crying.

"Honey, I'm okay, but I need a lawyer."

"Where are you? I called the police but they wouldn't tell me!"

"They're a bunch of peabrains. Right now I'm in the office of the chief peabrain of them all." The chief gave me a fake hurt look. How had I ever let this jerk sucker me into liking him?

"Jacob, what in God's name happened tonight?"

"I can't talk right now. I need a lawyer."

Andrea gave a sharp intake of breath, and there was a moment's silence before she asked, "Who should we get?"

"I have no idea. Do we know any lawyers?"

"How about my Uncle Harold?"

"Your Uncle
Harold?
In
Buffalo?
Come on, his specialty is parking garage law."

"Yes, but he might know what to do."

"Only if Pop was killed in a parking garage!" I yelled.

"You don't have to be sarcastic!" she yelled back, then started to cry. "I'm sorry, I'm just so—"

I was in no mood to be a sensitive modern guy. I interrupted her. "Come on, we must know a good lawyer. We're Jewish, for God's sake."

"How about the fat guy who runs that chess club?"

Malcolm Dove.
What kind of law did he practice? And was he any good?

I didn't have a clue.

On the other hand, anyone who played chess as well as Malcolm had to be at least a half-decent lawyer. I'd been trying to beat his Muzio Gambit for over a year now. "Okay," I said, "give Malcolm a call."

"Where will you be tonight?"

I turned to Chief Walsh. "Where will I be tonight?"

"City jail," he replied. "Right down the hall. You'll love it."

And then he smirked at me.

I found out the reason for that smirk several minutes later, when I was escorted to the jail. The maximum security prisons I'd taught in were veritable Club Meds compared to this hellhole. I couldn't believe a jail this barbaric existed in the same building as that venerable meeting room where I'd been earlier tonight—though it now felt like eons ago.

The jail consisted of six identical cages, jammed together against one wall. They were built back when people were shorter, so I couldn't stand up straight in my cage; I had to stoop. The cage was four by six feet, barely big enough to do pushups in. My bed was nothing but a narrow wooden shelf, without blankets or sheets.

Not that I could have slept anyway. The bright fluorescent lights stayed on all night, and the other five cages were full of loud, angry men who'd been busted for "drunk and disorderly" and other lifestyle crimes.

My toilet had no seat, and no flush handle either, so there was nothing that even the most dedicated inmate might be able to break. Instead there was a flush button that you had to kick real hard before it would work, and then it flushed so loud that any drunks who had thankfully fallen asleep would wake up again, yelling about bugs or dental work or whatever else was on their minds. One of them howled incoherently all night long about the Dalai Lama.

A couple of sad sack derelicts were brought in after me, and since the six cages were already full, they spent the night handcuffed to the outside of the cages and crapping in their pants. For entertainment I tried to determine which crap smell came from which derelict.

There wasn't much other entertainment to be had. It was hard to write graffiti, because all of our pens and pencils had been confiscated, I guess so we wouldn't stick them into our foreheads. One guy did manage to scratch "Habib was here" on the wall of his cage with a shirt button, talking to himself in Arabic the whole time; but it took him several hours. I didn't have his stamina.

A couple of my comrades spent the night drunkenly tossing toilet paper through their bars, aiming for the video cameras that pointed toward each cage. They were trying to cover up the lenses. Personally I was grateful to have a lens pointed at me, protecting me from police abuse. But maybe some of the other guys wanted privacy to jack off or something. Anything to pass the time.

Every half hour a cop would come through to make sure no one was slitting his wrist with a pants zipper. The cop and the inmates would trade a few "motherfuckers" back and forth, which was fun for a while, but by around four in the morning it got kind of old.

At 5:30, though, we had fresh excitement. Some cop with bad breath came in, stopped at my cage, and sneered, "So you're the big, tough cop killer, huh? Not feeling so big and tough now, are you?"

Immediately the rest of the guys wanted to know all about it. I wasn't really in the mood for sharing, but one of the drunks who came in after me had heard some talk, so he filled everyone in. Suddenly they all brightened up. Habib called out in an Arabic accent, "Two points for our side, my brothers, we
nailed
one of them motherfuckers," and the guys all burst out laughing and cheering.

Somehow they got the idea it was my birthday, so they all sang "Happy Birthday" to me, which segued into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," followed by "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." Then the Dalai Lama guy started chanting "Hare Krishna," and we all joined in.

Their happy mood was infectious, and by eight a.m. or so, I was feeling pretty darn good for a guy whose whole world had just fallen apart. Our jailers brought us breakfast, and I never knew that greasy eggs, Wonder bread with margarine, and cold instant coffee could taste so delicious.

An hour later the cops let us out of our cages and marched us up to the courtroom on the first floor to be arraigned. I looked around at Habib and the rest of the fellas. I'd been listening to them ranting, raving, and laughing all night long, but except for the two drunks cuffed outside the cages, I hadn't seen their faces. I was amazed by how young most of them looked. They couldn't have been a day older than twenty-two. Their voices at night were hard and angry; but their faces in the morning light were soft and scared. I tried to guess who had been calling out to the Dalai Lama for help, but it could have been any of them. They all looked like they needed help, and they all looked like the Dalai Lama was as likely as anyone else to help them in this sorry-ass world.

I'd never been to an arraignment before, and I didn't know what to expect. They herded us upstairs through an empty stairway, then opened the back door to the courtroom. I stopped in my tracks and blinked. After a night spent in a tiny cage, this huge, spacious courtroom was a shock. Not only that, there were a hundred or more people sitting in the pews. Who were all these people? What were they doing here?

And where was my wife? Where was my lawyer?

Just then I saw Andrea peeling herself out of a pew and running toward the front railing. My heart filled, and I came forward to embrace her. But the bad-breath cop got in my way.
"Back,"
he barked, and Andrea and I gazed at each other longingly as he corralled me into the jury box with my fellow crimies. I sat down on the hard wooden bench and looked around. Some of my new pals were cracking their knuckles, others were scratching their crotch hairs, and others were giggling insanely. All of us were scared out of our wits.

Meanwhile everyone in the pews stared at us like we were animals in the zoo. I heard a buzz going through the audience, and a bunch of index fingers started pointing in my direction. I guess the word was out on the street, and I was a celebrity now: rich writer turned cop killer. Who knows—maybe I'd get lucky and everyone would break into "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow," then carry me out of the courtroom on their shoulders.

Or maybe not. The front pew was occupied by seven cops with seven identical stone faces and seven identical pairs of well muscled arms folded over seven identical uniformed chests. They were there in force to make sure I got my butt kicked—legally or otherwise.
Where was my lawyer, already?
If someone didn't show up soon, I'd have to represent myself. A frightening prospect.

I gazed at the audience, restraining an impulse to shout, "Is there a lawyer in the house?" None of them looked like lawyers anyway. There were lone men with impossibly greasy hair, burnt-out moms with crying kids, teenage boys wearing earrings and eyebrow rings . . .

And Tony. Little Tony, wiping his nose on his shirt in the far corner of the very last pew. I stared at him.

He stared back briefly—
very
briefly—and then turned away from me. What was going on here?

"All rise!"

We all rose. The judge came in and sat down, and we did, too. His Honor was a bald little man; even in his gorgeous to-die-for black robe, he was still a bald little man. But he had a deep bass voice. "The City Court of Saratoga Springs, New York, is now in session. The date is . . ." He squinted at a calendar on the wall, which had "America, Land of the Free" written on it in big letters.
America, Land of the Free.
I had nothing to worry about, did I? I'd get a fair trial, wouldn't I? From the front row, I got seven identical glares. ". . . Friday, October second, and the time is . . ."

The judge kept talking, but I quit listening. October. I gazed out the window at the orange and yellow maple leaves fluttering in the distance. I vowed that if I ever made it out of here alive, I'd take time to smell the trees. Or the flowers; whatever I was supposed to smell, I'd smell it.

And I'd make sure to watch
Law & Order
religiously, so if I ever got arraigned again, I'd know what the heck I was supposed to do.

"The People versus Ray Adamson," the judge called out in a stentorian tone. One of the greasy-haired loners slithered out of the audience and stepped nervously in front of the judge, head down, hands folded meekly behind his back. Someone I hadn't noticed before, a tired man in a tired suit, stepped up beside him.

The judge nodded to the tired man, then turned back to the defendant. "Mr. Adamson, I take it you're represented by the public defender's office?"

Adamson shrugged in response. The tired man, evidently the public defender, shrugged too.

"Sir, you're charged with driving while intoxicated, failure to stop at a red light, and driving without a seatbelt. How do you plead?"

Adamson shrugged again. So did his defender.

"Guilty," Adamson mumbled.

"Bail is twenty-five dollars. Pay the city clerk on your way out."

Adamson and the public defender both shrugged yet a third time, then Adamson shuffled out of the courtroom.

"The People versus William Bell," the judge announced. Alphabetical order. That meant I'd be soon. A teenage boy with black, pink, and green striped hair stepped up to the judge and assumed the meek head-down, arms-folded-behind-the-back position. I studied it, to make sure I got it right when it was my turn.

"Mr. Bell," the judge declared, after the public defender stood up too, "you're charged with . . ."—he checked a piece of paper on his desk, then rolled his eyes—". . . rollerblading where you're not supposed to."

A titter went through the audience. Even us hard cases in the jury box smiled.

"How do you plead, Mr. Bell?"

"Guilty."

"Bail is one dollar. Pay the city clerk on your way out. And Mr. Bell, please . . . next time commit a more interesting crime."

The audience tittered louder. "Yes, Your Honor," Bell said, then gave a couple of other teenage boys sitting by the aisle a high five as he highstepped out of the courtroom.

Hey, I thought, this wasn't so bad. I could handle it. Even if they set my bail higher than a buck, it was no sweat, that's what being rich was for. I'd be smelling those trees in no time.

"The People versus Mr. Burns," the judge then announced.

I stood up.

Instantly the courtroom went silent. No more tittering, no more knuckle-cracking. Even the babies stopped crying.

I can handle it.

I stepped up to the judge, trying so hard to feel confident that I forgot to put my head down and act meek. Instead I gave the judge a friendly smile. He frowned at me. "Do you have a lawyer?" he asked.

"I'm not really sure, Your Honor," I replied, smiling even wider, as if it was the funniest thing in the world.

From the pews, Andrea called out, "Your Honor—"

"Silence, please!" the judge's voice boomed angrily.

"But, Your Honor—"

"Silence! Or I'll have you thrown out!"

My wife sat back down in her seat, stunned. Hey, whatever had happened to the wry funny judge who'd kidded the teenage rollerblader? Without even meaning to, my hands went meekly behind my back and my head went down.

As it went down, I saw those ridiculous slippers. I put one foot on top of the other, trying to hide the bright orange "World's Greatest Lover."

But then my penis came flopping out of my pajamas.

Oh, Lord.
I quickly hitched up my pajamas to get myself back in there. Had the judge seen it? The last thing I needed was for my shlong to be held in contempt of court.

Fortunately, though, the judge's attention was elsewhere. "Mr. Frick?" he said, and the public defender stepped up.
Frick
. The name fit him like a glove. He gave me a shrug. He was good at that.