The Scarred Man (5 page)

    I felt a tingling sensation on the back of my neck as I studied the picture.

    There was a rapping on the hatchway, and I slid it back to find Sergeant Bertram.

    "Busy, Mr. Shaw?"

    "No."

    "Just thought I'd stop by to see how you were making out."

    "I'm all right."

    "I sure was sorry about your wife."

    "Yes."

    He looked at the paper I was holding and said, "I see you've heard about that little episode down in Islamorada."

    "Yes."

    "I guess you were thinking the same thing, that it might be some kind of a break for us."

    "In what way?"

    He shrugged. "You never know. I mean it's a little too much to expect that these might be the same guys, but then on the other hand they might just know something about it."

    "And if they did you think they'd talk?"

    "With this kind of heat on them, maybe. There are some pretty tough citizens down there in the Keys, and I think about now they're ready to start hanging these punks from the nearest tree."

    "And if they don't talk?"

    "Then we haven't lost a thing."

    But it seemed to me we would have lost a great deal, principally the opportunity I had been waiting for. That was when I told him what I had in mind. Or part of it anyway.

    "I'm thinking of going down there myself," I said.

    He shook his head. "I don't know what good that would do. They're going to lock those boys up and throw away the key. I doubt if you could even get in to see them."

    "As a private citizen, no," I agreed. "But as an attorney for the defense they can't very well keep me out."

    "Attorney for the defense?"

    "Yes."

    "You're thinking of going down there to defend those bums?"

    "Exactly."

    "I'll be goddamed," said Sergeant Bertram.

    

    

    Islamorada sizzles in the sun. Heat devils dance above the road. Tempers fry. Clusters of angry men hang around outside the jail. Deputies, wearing their guns low and slouching as ominously as if they were straight out of "Gunsmoke," slide up to the jailhouse in their black Fords and tilt their broad-rimmed hats to a more rakish angle for the benefit of the news photographers.

    BONEFISH CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, the signs proclaim. GENUINE KEY LIME PIE. CLAMSHELL MOTEL. BAREFOOT TAVERN. Beer. Wine. Boats. Guides. Bait. Spinning tackle.

    It is all a stage set except that it is for real. There is murder in the air.

    The jailhouse was not very big. It had ten cells and they were all full of-motorcyclists, a gang called the Beaks.

    I talked to Bubba the Gut.

    Bubba was the one who had hit the kid. He stank like a lathered horse. If his mentality was better than that of the average ten-year-old, it would have been impossible to say why. And he was stoned on something too. How he had got hold of it there in the jail was anybody's guess.

    Bubba the Gut looked like Man Mountain Dean. He weighed close to 300 pounds. His real name was Bubba Gutweiler. He was twenty years old and had been born in Atlanta.

    My conversation with him was largely unintelligible. He might as well have been talking Urdu or Tagalog. Like, I mean, Mothers, Mothering, Fuck. Fucking, Speed, Grass, Hogs, Mammas. What I was able to get out of him was that he denied his guilt. "Like, I mean, man, the kid run across the mothering road."

    "Were you exceeding the speed limit, Bubba?"

    He scratched his groin. The question bothered him. But he was shrewd enough to wonder what I was doing there. Why would I want to defend him? I was all too obviously a straight. And anyway he had no money for no fucking lawyer. When he did work, which was not often, he put everything he had into his hog.

    I assured him my defense would be free of charge. I felt that his case presupposed bias on the part of the townspeople, the arresting officers, and the reporters and photographers who were making a circus out of the case.

    Bubba nodded wisely. "You mean, man, it's like justice you're after?"

    "In a way."

    "I'll be goddamed."

    "Then you're prepared to accept me as your attorney?"

    "What if I don't?"

    "The court will appoint an attorney for you."

    "Some jerk who don't give a damn?"

    "Probably."

    He was still suspicious. "You better talk it over with Stud."

    "Who is Stud?"

    "Superstud, man. Our leader."

    

    

    "Zonked, man. Out of their everloving gourds. A bummer."

    "What is?"

    "The whole trip, man," Stud said.

    He was a knife-blade of a man, lean, filthy, pockmarked. He lay on the floor of his cell with six others. He wore beautiful boots, hand-tooled Mexican leather.

    "What's in it for you?" he asked.

    I told him the same thing I had told Bubba.

    "Bullshit," said Stud.

    I stood up. "If you don't want me, say so."

    He gave me a sly glance. "You're not doin' it for nothin'. Nobody does nothin' for nothin'."

    "Have it your way."

    He grinned, a cut-your-mother's-heart-out grin. "What'd you say your name was?"

    "William Shaw."

    "Are you good people, Billyboy?"

    "The best," I assured him.

    "It's like there ain't so many good people left, man."

    "You're so right."

    "Can you get us out of this mollyfocking joint?"

    "I can try."

    He spat on the floor and put his hand between his legs. "I want to get back to my mamma," he said.

    

    

    I got him out. I got them all out but Bubba, and he only had to do thirty days for reckless driving. It wasn't easy. I had to use every trick I knew, even to humiliating, confusing, and terrifying witnesses on the stand. As the days went by, I came to be the most thoroughly hated man in Islamorada.

    It was easy to prove bias; the air reeked with it. For their courtroom appearance I had to change the Beaks into clean-cut American youths, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. I ordered them to cut their hair and shave their beards. They greeted this announcement with jeers and obscenities, calling me, among other things, a zonked-out, mothering, mollyfocking freak.

    Without Stud I could not' have done it. His word was law. Groaning, the Beaks went to the showers. They came out shorn, looking curiously diminished in size and ferocity as if half of their truly terrifying appearance had been a coating of dirt and hair. Except Stud; he somehow managed to look more venomous than ever.

    I had clean white shirts and new jeans for them. When they were dressed they looked as though they might have belonged to a third-rate professional football team. Stud grimaced at himself in the mirror.

    "The straights will grok over this," he said.

    

    

    The straights did grok, much as they might have if I had brought ten gorillas into court dressed in clean white shirts and new blue pants. Bubba the Gut and Superstud and Buzzard and the Hairy Angel and the others. Clean as choir boys. Yes, sir. No, sir. We never saw no kid in the road, sir. We like kids. We got kids and kid brothers of our own, sir. And mammas.

    The court did not understand about mammas. A mamma is a girl who lives with the gang. She is usually in her teens but sometimes in her twenties. The main thing is she belongs to nobody and everybody. She must be prepared to contribute her sexual services on demand to every member of the gang. Her initiation consists of taking on all of these easy riders in one night, sometimes thirty or forty, often three or four at a time. If she survives, she is accepted and becomes an official mamma.

    Stud could hardly contain himself. It was enough to make you grok.

    My cross-examination of the prosecution's principal witness was a joy to the Beaks.

    "Would you state your full name, please?"

    "Christine Cummings."

    "Cummings is your married name, is it not?"

    "Yes."

    "And you reside at 24 Biscayne Lane?"

    "Yes."

    "With Mr. Cummings?"

    "No."

    "Oh? Where does Mr. Cummings live?"

    "I don't rightly know."

    "You don't know?"

    "No."

    "Are you divorced?"

    She shook her head.

    "Speak up, please."

    "Not exactly."

    "Separated?"

    "I guess you could say that."

    "What I say has nothing to do with it, Mrs. Cummings. What do you say?"

    "He run off."

    The prosecutor rose to the occasion. "Objection, Your Honor. The marital status of the witness has nothing to do with the case."

    "It is essential to the defense to establish the reliability of this witness, Your Honor. The questions I am putting to her are simply designed toward that end."

    "Mmm, well, all right, objection overruled. Proceed, Mr. Shaw."

    "When did your husband leave you, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "I don't rightly know."

    "Don't know?"

    "I cain't remember."

    "You can't remember when your husband left? Does that mean he made so little impression on you?"

    "Well, he was somethin' I sure wanted to forget."

    Laughter from the spectators.

    "Does he contribute to your support, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "That bum?"

    "Then what do you live on, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "Welfare."

    "And were you on your way to pick up your welfare check at the time of this accident?"

    "Not exactly."

    "But you see we have to be exact, Mrs. Cummings. Criminal charges have been brought against these young men. To obtain justice we must obtain exact answers. Precisely where were you at the time of the accident, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "In town."

    "I know you were in town, Mrs. Cummings. In fact I know more than that. You were having a beer at the bar of the Happy Hour Tavern, is that not so?"

    "What if it is?"

    "And you looked through the window and saw Mr. Gutweiler and his friends proceeding south on Route One on their motorcycles, isn't that so?"

    "Yes."

    "At what speed?"

    "I don't know. Pretty fast."

    "Let us try to be exact again, Mrs. Cummings. How fast is pretty fast? Thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy miles an hour?"

    "Around fifty, I guess."

    "Do you own a car, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "No."

    "Why not?"

    "That skunk took it with him, is why not."

    I waited until the laughter had subsided.

    "Do you possess a driver's license, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "It's around somewhere."

    The prosecutor rose again. "Objection, Your Honor. The witness's driving capabilities are not in question.
She
didn't run down any children."

    "With Your Honor's permission, I would like to establish the importance of this line of questioning."

    "Well, all right, but try to stick to the point, Mr. Shaw."

    "I believe these questions are very much to the point, Your Honor. Now then, Mrs. Cummings, is it not true that your driver's license expired some years ago and has not been renewed?" I was taking a chance on that one but it was a reasonably safe guess.

    "Maybe. I haven't looked at it in a long time."

    "Could you produce it for this court if you were so requested?"

    "I'd have to look around for it. I don't remember offhand what become of it."

    "Do you remember how many beers you consumed on the day in question, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "Objection!"

    The judge gave me a hard look. He was beginning to dislike me intensely. It was perfectly apparent where my line of questioning was leading, but there was not much he could do about it.

    "Overruled."

    "Please answer the question, Mrs. Cummings."

    Baffled, bewildered by the fact that she, the witness, had somehow been placed on trial, she lashed out at me. "I wasn't drunk, if that's what you mean."

    "Did I say you were drunk, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "No, but you…"

    "Perhaps someone else said you were drunk that afternoon, Mrs. Cummings. Perhaps, since you have raised the point yourself, you were indeed drunk…"

    The Beaks were breaking up, digging each other in the ribs with their elbows. But I was not quite finished.

    "Mrs. Cummings, how do you feel about motorcycle clubs?"

    "Clubs?"

    "Exactly."

    "You mean like this bunch here?" she said, turning the angry glare of her faded blue eyes against the Beaks.

    "Yes."

    "They're bums."

    "How do you know that, Mrs. Cummings?"

    "Everybody knows it."

    "Have you ever belonged to a motorcycle club yourself, Mrs. Cummings?"

    That one brought down the house. Her stringy frame was quivering with indignation. The poor woman had done no more than her duty as an honest citizen, and now she was being coupled with these outlaws.

    "Certainly not," she answered.

    "Have you ever known anyone who belonged to a motorcycle club?"