Birth of a Monster (5 page)

“Which one do you want to see first?”
she asked nonchalantly.

“Oh, I like fresh meat best,” he said,
a gleam in his eye.

The secretary looked as interested as a
librarian near retirement directing yet another customer to a
requested book.

“What charges is the fresh meat being
held here for?” Willis asked.

“Well, he had a dagger and lots of cash
and is friends with the fella next cell over,” she answered,
stern-faced, and then inserted the key into Righty’s cell, turned
it, and then walked a respectful distance away so that she could
give them some privacy but also be ready to call for help if need
be and to be ready to lock up once their conference was
over.

Chapter 13

“Hi there, buddy,” Willis said to
Righty, as he walked in, Benjamin right behind him.

“Hey, get us some more light in here;
it’s too dark!” he barked at the secretary.

Indignantly submissive, she promptly
grabbed a burning candle from the wall and brought it to the
men.

“Now, that’s better,” Willis said.
“It’s hard for men to have a reasonable conversation when they
can’t see each other, now isn’t it?” Willis inquired of
Righty.

“Yes, sir,” he said. The usual gleam
that would have been in his eye was long gone. This had gone too
poorly—far worse than he thought the worst-case scenario could be.
He was sitting in his underwear in a dark cell at the mercy of the
criminal justice system, his two million-falon bribe rudely stolen,
and his beloved sword perhaps never to be seen again. In a word, he
was broken.

“Look, I want to help you, Mr. . . .
?”

“Higler,” Righty replied, almost having
said “Simmers,” but he had a shred of resistance left in
him.

“Higler,” Willis replied, trying out
the sound of the name the way a man might try on a pair of shoes
before buying them.

“Sounds like a good name,” Willis said,
his eyes devouring his quarry.

“Just what exactly are you in here
for?” Willis then asked. “That grumpy secretary didn’t want to tell
me much.”

“I haven’t been formally charged with
anything.”

“Now, don’t go getting cute, son,”
Benjamin said. “If you wanna play lawyer, I’ll take you from here
to federal prison in the capital on the count of one, two, three.
Because I know what you’re in here for, and it happens to fall
within my jurisdiction. Willis here just needs to know if you’ll
tell him.”

Willis shot a reproachful glance at
Benjamin that looked rehearsed, but Righty was barely paying
attention. “Benjamin is a bit rough around the edges, but he does
have a point. I’m trying to do you a favor here. But you’ve got to
shoot straight with me, tell me what you’re in here for, and never
mind the lawyer games. I happen to hate lawyers and anything that
reminds me of them.”

There was an awkward
silence.

“Look, friend,” Willis said, his voice
lowering. He then shot a glance over his shoulder outside, which
Benjamin—who was closer to the door—seconded, the two of them
looking like bank robbers checking to see if the coast was
clear.

“Look,” he said, his face now inches
from Righty, in a whisper. “They said you had cash.”

“Did,” Righty responded
laconically.

“Well . . . ,” Willis’s eyes danced
around as if he was trying to say something with them that he dared
not with his mouth.

“Look, if you’re asking for cash,
you’re late to the party,” Righty said irritated. “They already
confiscated it.”

“Well, supposing you could get it back,
do you think we could then talk like reasonable men?”

Righty surprised himself as he made his
next step, reaching inside his underwear to reveal a small stash
that had escaped the processing officer’s frisk. Though small in
size, it was large in its currency unit. Righty handed the agent
twenty individual thousand-falon bills.

“It’s all I have,” Righty
said.

“That’s enough to talk, all right,”
Willis said, pleased.

“Now, I just have to cuff you so that I
can get you out of here.”

Righty stood and turned away from the
men, hands behind his back.

“Now that’s nice and reasonable,”
Willis said, snapping the cuffs on. “And now, in addition to being
under arrest by the NDP for multiple violations of SISA and
operating a criminal enterprise, you are under arrest for
attempting to bribe a federal law enforcement agent,” Willis said,
laughing, while Benjamin snickered behind him.

Though Righty’s spirits dropped, they
were already near bottom, thus preventing any dramatic sigh or
other display of indignation. It was yet one more nail in the
coffin. He almost felt a perverse sense of peace, as he realized
there was probably nothing else that could happen that would ruin
this day, or his life, any more than it already way.

Righty marched in front of the smirking
agents down the hallway, each of whom gripped his unresisting
wrists firmly.

Chapter 14

As they left the corridor of jail cells
behind and entered the main lobby, Righty noticed the officers did
not seem to slow a lick as they marched him straight towards the
exit. He would be headed to the capital in a wagon towards a
federal prison, never to see the light of day again.

He began to wonder whether he should
shout out to Harold for help the second he tasted fresh air and
hope that Harold could swan dive and extricate him before he was
inside a locked wagon.

The door was just feet away.

“Not so fast, gentlemen!” an
authoritative voice cried out.

Instantly, a dozen or more officers
blocked the door.

A spectacled man with a studious look,
probably in his fifties, marched rapidly towards Righty and the
agents holding him. Righty also noticed that the processing
officers were standing next to the chief. And the two of them,
particularly the one who had punched him, looked sheepishly at
Righty and then the ground. Their demoralized faces suggesting they
had just received the tongue-lashing of the century.

“Mr. Higler is our prisoner and will
not leave this station without a court order. You know—protocol,”
the man said, almost apologetically.

“He’s a kingpin and tried to bribe us.
He goes with us!” Benjamin snapped back.

“Now, good sirs, let us reason with one
another,” the chief said. “There are plenty of fish for all, so to
speak. Let’s not start acting like two opposing armies,” he then
added with a congenial tone.

“It’s federal jurisdiction!!” Willis
snapped back, sounding a bit like a child outraged at an unforeseen
obstacle.

“Sirs.
Sirs!
” the chief replied, as if
beseeching them. “Just two days ago the city council passed a
measure with identical language to that of SISA. So, you see, it’s
really a matter of overlapping jurisdiction. And we all know
Haldensen v. Selegania
,”
the chief said with the tone of a professor instructing a
first-year law student. “When a city criminalizes the same conduct
as federal law, jurisdiction lies . . . with . . . the . . .
arresting . . . entity,” he finished, unable to hide his
contemptuous glee.

“Only if the city law has penalties as
severe as, or more severe than, the corollary . . . federal . . .
statute,” Willis shot back.

“Sirs,” the chief replied in
a condescendingly soft voice, “the city council’s only regret was
that SISA’s sentencing is not
more
severe, as they would have gladly issued harsher
sentencing parameters if they could have said they were just
copying the federal statute.” He paused. “The criminal penalties
are the same.”

Silence reigned.

A tattoo-covered arrestee, who perfumed
the room with whiskey with every breath, looked at the dueling
titans with a mixture of awe and bewilderment. He had no idea what
they were talking about, but seeing policemen of any stripe fight
with one another brought him a pleasure second only to
drinking.

“He’s also under arrest for attempted
bribery,” Willis said in a softer, but more chilling,
tone.

The chief sucked in air as he prepared
to deliver another devastating riposte, suggesting he felt sympathy
for his outmatched opponent. “That’s a Class D felony. We’ve got
him here, with priority jurisdiction for having first arrested him,
on a Class B felony.”

He gave Willis a look which
seemed to say,
Please don’t make me keep
embarrassing you
, but when Willis refused
to cede, the chief said softly, “You can’t transfer an arrestee
from city to federal custody on a separate federal charge until the
city has fully investigated and prosecuted, or formally declined to
prosecute, the arrestee for all crimes upon which the original
arrest was based, unless the separate federal charge is more
serious than the offense for which the city first arrested him.
Alas, attempted bribery is not.”

The chief paused.
“
Haldensen v. Selegania
,” he repeated, with a tone of reverence and
finality.

“We don’t leave here until WE process
him!! That means a sketch, questioning, and a full copy of ALL
processing notes surrounding his SISA crimes!!” Willis shouted, a
vein bulging in his neck.

Shrugging his shoulders amiably, the
chief said, “But of course.” He then gave an aggressive slap on the
back to the two original processing officers, snapped his fingers,
and said, “Get to it!”

To Righty’s relief, Benjamin and Willis
didn’t seem to vent any of their frustrations on him. In fact, now
that their fish had inadvertently eluded their trap, at least for
the moment, they felt a bit embarrassed remaining in the presence
of a man who—intentionally or not—had witnessed their thorough
humiliation.

Willis barked for a copy to be made of
the sketch, and an artist quickly began moving his pencil, creating
a quality copy within about ten minutes. Meanwhile, Benjamin and
Willis had little difficulty copying the processing notes, as they
said little besides the fact a dagger and large sums of cash had
been confiscated pending investigation of SISA
violations.

Once Benjamin and Willis had what they
wanted, they stormed out of the station.

Senator Hutherton was going to hear
about this.

Chapter 15

As Righty was led to the
chief of police’s office by two now very deferential processing
officers—including the one who had roughed him up earlier—confusion
had taken over what had just moments earlier been a bleak terrain
of doom. He felt he
should
feel some sense of relief over the chief’s show of
force against the two federal agents who had tricked him into
committing yet another crime, but he couldn’t be entirely sure he
had not simply leapt from the fire into the frying pan.

He knew nothing of the chief, and while
he suspected hypocrisy was on full display with the chief’s zealous
statements in favor of fighting drug distribution, he had no reason
to feel certain the chief would not seek to have him prosecuted to
the fullest extent of the law. Perhaps he might do so for corrupt
reasons—e.g., because of a previous bribe made by an up-and-coming
drug rival—but that would be of little relief to Righty. But if
Righty failed to fully appreciate the implications of the now
deferential attitude of his erstwhile tormenting captors, his
pessimism may perhaps have been justified in light of the way his
day had gone thus far.

Before he had time to further analyze
the issue, there he was—once again fully clothed—in front of the
chief of police.

“Un-cuff him!” barked the
chief.

“Yes, sir,” the processing officers
replied. “Careful there, Mr. Higler. That’s it, easy now,” Mr.
Uppercut said, as he treated Righty’s wrists like fragile
chinaware.

“Get out of my sight!” the chief said
to the two officers, almost belching fire.

While for Righty this was but a
temporary respite—similar to a man at sea who has been dunked
mercilessly by one wave, has come up for air, and is given a few
seconds of relief while waiting for the next tower of water to
crash upon him, daring him to return to the surface for more
breath—in a day full of misery, for the chief this was almost a
magical moment.