Searches & Seizures (6 page)

One day they are saying you will not go far,

Next day on your dressing room they hang…you.
”

“Sheeeit.”

“You think so?” I hold my palms out and up to them. I turn them over. “You see that? Recognize that? Any you people remember what this stuff is? Sunshine. Look, watch this.” I breathe deep. “Fresh air. Smells good. I’ll tell you something else. I ever need to take a crap I get to lock the door. No lids. Sit on a toilet seat like a kid’s inner tube. I go out to lunch they hand me a menu. There’s a napkin on my lap so I shouldn’t get crumbs on my suit. After lunch, I feel like it I walk in the park, sit on a bench, look at the girls. If I wanted I could throw a ball over a wall and chase it. I could walk a mile for a Camel. I got a radio next to my bed pulls in
all
the stations and there’s never any interference on the TV from the electric chair.”

“Go peddle your papers, motherfucker.”

“He is.”

“I am.”

“Sheeeit.”

“There are seven million arrests in the United States annually—I’m giving you the latest year for which we have statistics—a hundred and sixty thousand people in the jails, prisons, pens and work farms at any given moment. I’m giving you the latest moment for which we have statistics.”

“Sheeeit.”

“Eighty thousand of you monkeys are in a pretrial or preconviction stage.
Eighty thousand.
Do you follow what I’m telling you? One out of every two could be out this afternoon if he went bail. I’m coming inside. I’ve arranged with the guards to see as many of you as I can. They’ll be no trouble. Just call the guard and tell him you want to see Mr. Main.” I have a sudden inspiration. “Tell the screw to take you to the visitors’ room. What the hell, I’ll do the lot of you. This town’s been kind of boring with you mothers off the streets.” There are catcalls but I shout above them. “I talk this way in the public streets because this ain’t privilege but constitutional rights we’re discussing. Don’t ask me how it happens, but you creeps have constitutional rights. God Bless America and I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

The screens in the visitors’ room give it the look of high summer. I wave to the guards, chipper Phoenician that I am. An act of the purest good will because it makes no difference to these sober, side-armed fellows. They have no more regard for me than for their charges. The public makes a mistake when it assumes that all its officials are on the take. Many of these men, low fellows bribed by their very jobs, don’t get a penny off me.

“Give us a fiver, Phoenician,” one hisses before the men arrive. “You’ll never miss it, sir.”

“I never heard that,” I tell him, waving the paper container of coffee at him that I got from the machine. “You never said it and I never heard it. Now, where are my boys and girls? Whatever can be keeping them? If there’s been any infringement of their constitutional rights—”

“Naw, naw,” Poslosky, the chief guard, says. “Nothing like that.”

They begin to file through a thick door on the other side of the screening. “Paul, they’re on the other side. I want to go in there with them.”

“Aw, Phoenician, you know the regulations. You shouldn’t be here at all. You’re supposed to see them in the interview rooms. I’d get in trouble.”

“All right, kid, you’re down for five percent of whatever I take in, but we got to go backstage.”

“Phoenician, I mean it, you could cost me my job one day.”

“Good. Terrific. Then you’ll come work for me. What do you say? You’ll be my field representative in the southwest in charge of wetbacks and Indians. I’ll turn you into a
real
policeman. A hundred fifty bucks for every jumper you kill. I’m getting old, Paulie, slowing down. You don’t know what all those Big-Boys and Burger-Chefs do to a man’s stomach when he’s out on the road looking for the bail jumpers. What’s going to happen to the business when I’m gone?” I put my arm around his shoulder and we go out of the room and into the corridor.

“I shouldn’t be taking you back there,” Poslosky tells me, “I mean it’s really off-limits.”

I steer him toward a barred gate. The guard there stands up when he sees me. “Hey, Phoenician, I got a message for you.”

“Not now, Lou.”

“I think it’s important, I kinda recognized the voice. A chief, I think. About some guy named Morgan.”

“Later, Lou, please. I’m running late. Open the gate.” He presses the button and the gate slides open. “Lou, I’ll get back to you.” We go through another gate and pause before a thick metal door. “Open it,” I tell Poslosky.

“No kidding, Phoenician, civilians strictly ain’t allowed back here.”

“
Civilians?
That’s the way you talk to a man who’s been in the war against crime all his life? Unlock the fucking door, I’m reviewing the troops.”

Inside, in addition to the guards, there are seven men and four women. I hadn’t expected a crowd, but it’s a poor showing. I rub my hands. “Most bondsmen wouldn’t take this trouble,” I tell them. “What can I say? It’s the way I’m built. Painstaking attention to detail. We try harder.” I recognize no one. Most of them have probably been refused bail already. Others couldn’t find anyone who would put it up for them. They mill about listlessly. Some have come just to get out of their cells. I go up to one. “How’s the grub?”

“I’ve tasted worse.”

“My compliments to the chef. Beat it, I wouldn’t touch you. All right, anybody else like the food here? No? Who’s been refused bail? Come on, come on, don’t waste my time.” I grab a nigger. “Hey, didn’t I already turn you down for bail?”

“No, sir, Cap’n, I never got no hearing.”

“No hearing, eh?”

“No, sir.”

“Must have been pretty bad, what you did, if you didn’t get a hearing. What’d you do, slice up on someone.”

“No, sir.”

“Shoot? Chain whip? Don’t stand there and tell me you used poison. Dropped a little something extra in the soul food?”

“I didn’t do none them things.”

“Well, my bad man, you must have done something pretty awful if you never got a hearing.”

“They say I slep’ with my child.”

“Who says that?”

“My wife. She swore the complaint.”

“And you want to get out of here.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bad?”

“I can taste it.”

“Yeah, taste it, I know what you mean. How old’s your daughter? This
is
a daughter we’re talking about? They don’t say you buggered your boy?”

“No, sir, my daughter.”

“Well, you look to me to be a young man. What are you—twenty-six, twenty-seven?”

“I be twenty-eight the Fourth of July.”

“Yankee Doodle Dandy. How old’s the kid?”

“She nine, sir.”

“Now you told me you were married. This isn’t some woman you’re living with. You two are legally married?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Ever been divorced? I check all this stuff out. It won’t help you to lie.”

“No, never. My wife and me been married since we both seventeen.”

“So this little girl—what’s the little girl’s name?”

“Ruth.”

“So Ruth is your and your wife’s blood daughter?”

“That’s right.”

“She go to school?”

“
’Course
she go to school. What the hell you talking about?”

“Take it easy, Romeo. What school does she go to, what grade’s she in?”

“O’Keefe School, she in the fourth grade.”

“O’Keefe’s a white school.”

“They buses her.”

“What are her marks?”

“She smart, she get
good
scores.”

“Ever been to a P.T.A. meeting?”

“Sure I been. Ruth the president of her class.”

“The president of her class, eh? Tell me, what school did she go to before they started busing her to O’Keefe?”

“Lamont School.”

“She do pretty well over there?”

“She on the honor roll.”

“Your wife work?”

“She cleans.”

“What do you do?”

“I work in my cousin’s car wash.”

“This cousin—he your cousin or your wife’s cousin?”

“He
my
cousin. My wife’s people don’t amount to much.”

“Okay. Give me the name of your lawyer. I’ll see to it you get bail.”

“Hey. You means I gets out of here?”

“Sure.”

“What it cost me?”

“That bother you?”

“I just works in a car wash.”

“Well, it’s a pretty serious charge. I’d say they’ll set your bail at two thousand. It costs you ten percent of that, two hundred. You got two hundred dollars?”

“In the bank.”

“You give me a signed note saying I can draw two hundred dollars out of your account.”

“I gives you that you gets me out of here?”

“All there is to it. There’s just some papers you have to sign.”

“Papers.”

“You people shit your pants when you hear papers. Don’t worry. I ain’t selling livingroom bedroom suites or color TV’s. I’m Alexander Main, the freedom man. The Great Emancipator. No. These papers have nothing to do with money. They simply state that you waive extradition proceedings and consent to the application of such force as may be necessary to effect your return should you make an effort to jump bail.”

“What’s all that?”

“That if you try to get away I can kill you.”

“I ain’t gonna try to get away.”

“Of course not. You’re a
good
risk. That’s why I’m going your bond.”

“Gimme that paper. Where do I sign?” He fixes his signature laboriously, as if he were pinning it there.

“Fine. You’re as good as out.”

“I wants to thank you.”

“Sure. I understand. It’s true love, the real thing. You miss that kid.” I turn to the others. “Next. Who’s next? Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, it’s A. Main, the freedom man, selling you respite for ten percent down. Tired of the same old routine? Ass got cornhole blisters? Long to get back in the blue suede shoes? Bailbonds, bailbonds here. Bailbond, mister?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you in for?”

“He’s on remand for murder, Phoenician,” Poslosky says.

“Murder? Who says murder? Is that true, son?” The kid, a dark, sullen-looking mug just out of his teens, stares back at me. You could skate on his eyes. “Come on, boy, think of me as you would a doctor. If I’m going to help you, you’ve got to put your balls in my hand and cough.”

“He killed a fourteen-year-old for winking at his girl.”

“He killed an enemy, an affair of honor. Since when is it murder to kill an enemy in an affair of honor? Not guilty. It’s the unwritten law.”

“They weren’t even engaged, Phoenician, they didn’t even go steady. It was their first date,” Poslosky says. “All the kid did was wink.”

“It’s the unwritten law. This is America. Since when is there one unwritten law for the married and another unwritten law for the single?”

“He set the boy on fire,” Poslosky whispers.

“Arson is a bailable offense. I see no reason why this man should be held without bond. It was an enemy he set fire to in an affair of honor. The word gets about in these things. What are the chances of someone else winking at his date? The risk’s negligible. Are you highly connected, son?”

“Highly connected?”

“Are your people rich?”

“Nah.”

“Not so fast, son. Hold on there. You’d be surprised what constitutes an estate. Is Father living?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s a start, that’s a
good
start. Does he own his home?”

“He’s paying it off.”

“Where is this house?”

“Brackman Street.”

“Above or below the fourteen hundred block?”

“Below. Six Brackman Street.”

“Six, you say? River property? Six is river property.”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t say ‘yeah’ as if this were some vacant lot we’re talking about. This is bona fide river property.”

“It’s an old house.”

“On an older river. What size lot?”

“I never measured.”

“When you cut Dad’s grass—just give me an estimate on this—how long does it take you to go from the front to the back, from one side to the other? Do you use a power mower or a manual? Just give me a rough estimate.”

“I never cut no grass.”

“Too big a job? That could be in your favor if it was too big a job.”

“Yeah, it was too big a job.”

I whistle. “How many bedrooms?”

“Two.”

“Two? Only two on an enormous estate like that?…Are you an only child? This could be important.”