Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery (23 page)

"Oh," said one cop, a young guy with rosy cheeks. "The handcuffs."

Was this jail? A large open room with a battleship-gray floor, three sets of cages? They re-handcuffed me in front. A black man in the blue uniform of the New York Department of Corrections, COs in jail-house parlance, led me to a lectern-like stand where he rolled my fingers and thumbs on an ink pad, then rolled each on a card. Fingerprinted. I always assumed I'd get through life without ever being fingerprinted for murder and arson. The finger printer handed me a paper towel, which did not remove the ink.

There were not three cages as I thought but one large L-shaped cage. The finger printer unlocked the door. I walked in. What choice had I? He slammed it shut behind me. The COs, I came to notice, never merely closed a door. They always slammed it. The slammer. About fifteen fellow arrestees sat on
the floor or stood around, a nearly even mix of blacks, whites, and Hispanics. Everyone was handcuffed in front, and I was glad to see that. I had heard stories about jailhouse gang-bangs. Easy, I counseled myself, this was not prison. This was part of a process, a
legal
process, the end of which was a court appearance as stipulated by the Constitution. Besides, we were all handcuffed.

Cobb knew I didn't kill anyone; he knew I didn't torch the Antiques. This was all to intimidate me. Wasn't it? No D.A. would dare press those charges. They had no merit at all. But it was working. I was intimidated. It wouldn't take much of this to make me tell them who
did
burn down the building and who riddled Ricardo. What else did I know that Cobb didn't? The photographs and the note from Billie? And who were the Four Freshmen? What did they want from me?

I glanced up at my fellow arrestees, hard-looking fuckers who seemed right at home. They had segregated themselves into three racial islands. That troubled me. I segregated myself into a gene pool of one, leaned against the grimy bars, and stared at my hands chained together in my lap. I was
in the system
. I have a phobia of bureaucrats. I feel like Joseph K., even going to the Motor Vehicles Department.

A lanky white guy with a roving right eye and tattoos of naked women on his twitching biceps sat down beside me. I ignored him. A black guy paced back and forth in front of us, jerking at his handcuffs. A hyperactive or a speed freak, he chanted, droned, "FuckingBobbyfuckingBobbyfuckingBobby—" Then he arrived at the white guy's outstretched legs and stopped as if before the Continental Divide. He stared at the legs, but the white guy would not move them.

"I'm walkin' here, motherfucker."

"No, you ain't."

"I'm walkin' here, motherfucker."

"No, you ain't."

The breakdown of rational discourse, another of my phobias. When that happens, violence floods in to fill the vacuum. Fifteen minutes in the joint and I get killed in a racially motivated incident over some legs. I scurried away in search of a neutral corner and settled in midway between black and Hispanic headquarters. Both eyed me with cold indifference. Great. Indifference, that's all I could ask for.

"FuckingBobbyfuckingBobbyfucking—"

Then a tall, handsome black guy with a close-cropped beard approached. "Greetings," he said.

That sounded friendly enough, and I certainly wanted to avoid discourtesy. "Greetings."

"So you're some kind of white-collar felon? You in for Xeroxing?"

"No."

"Botherin' the little white girls?"

"No."

"What, then? I mean, yer the only wet fucker in here wearin' Topsiders. You steal somebody's yacht boat and fall overboard?"

"Murder," I muttered.

"Murder?" he said loudly, and the jailhouse fell ominously silent. "One?"

"Three. No, four."

"Four?"

"And a building. Arson."

"Them four, they just happen to be in the buildin' when you took it out?"

"No, they were separate."

He nodded, watched me. The black guy returned to his several colleagues to report. They glanced over their shoulders at me as he did so. Word spread to the Hispanic delegation, thence to the white one. I tried for a psychopathic glint in my eye. Don't fuck with that dude, he'll dismember your sister and torch her joint.

"Arthur Deemer."

"Here
, right here!" I leaped to the door. Was this it? Was I out?

"Lawyer's here," said the obese CO, who with a key from a twenty-pound ring unlocked the door. What lawyer? I'd called no lawyer. The CO led me into an alcove off the holding pen. It was lined with tiny dark cages. He locked me in one and left. When he returned, my attorney was with him. My attorney wore a Zig-Zag Rolling Papers T-shirt, black high tops with no socks, and he carried his cue case under his arm. It wasn't too late to pretend I'd never seen him before.

"How did you know I was here?"

"It was in
Variety."

"Calabash called you."

"Right."

"Can you get me out of here?"

"Looks doubtful for tonight."

"Tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow looks good. They want to check your priors on the computer in Albany, but Albany's closed now. You have any priors?"

"Of course not."

"That's in your favor. What's this about all the slayings?"

"I think they're trying to scare me into talking."

"About what?"

"The slayings."

"Don't tell these people anything without me present. These people are Nazis, Artie. They got places in this building that aren't even America anymore. As your attorney, I advise you to eschew those places." I looked into my attorney's eyes; they were abnormal.

"How the hell would you suggest I do that, Bruce? Straighten
up!"

"It's crucial they understand you are not without legal representation. These people are brutes, Artie. They respond only to
naked power. Suspecting weakness, they'll rip your pancreas out." Then suddenly he shouted, "Guard! Guard!"

"Bruce—"

Two fat COs with angry bloated faces appeared in the alcove.

"Bruce, don't—"

"Perhaps you tubs don't know who you have here. This is Artie Deemer! This man has a world-famous dog."

"Shut up, asshole," said the fatter of the two COs.

"If you don't release my client with all possible dispatch, I'll call in the heavies of
advertising!"
He turned to me. "I'll handle this, Artie. We'll discuss the fee later." Then, back to the COs, he said, "You—with the Uniroyal—release my client."

"That's all, asshole," said the CO, who put a whistle to his fleshy lips. The shrill blast blew me back against the rear wall of my cell and summoned a half-dozen other COs like guard dogs. They were clearly itching for action, flexing rubber cudgels.

I remained encaged as they bodily ejected my representation.

"There isn't a nine-ball player for shit in the whole penal system," I heard him bellow from beneath an igloo of blue uniforms.

A hostile CO grabbed my upper arm and ran me back to the holding pen.

The black guy slid down the wall and sat beside me. "Let me give you some free advice, sailor. Get yourself some different representation or you're gonna
fry
."

"Arthur Deemer."

"Here, right here, sir."

Still another fat CO unlocked the door and led me down a hall and stood me before a wooden desk. There were four other arrestees in line ahead of me. By the time my turn came around, I had the idea. The guy behind the desk gave you a manila envelope into which you emptied your pockets; then you removed your shoelaces and put them into the envelope with your pathetic belongings. But my shoelaces were not removable. I worried about that as my turn approached. Could unremovable shoelaces land
me in one of those rooms not in America anymore? I figured I was on thin ice with my COs, since they didn't get to cudgel my attorney senseless. Or did they? After you had filled your envelope, you signed it.

"Those permanent shoelaces?"

"Yes, sir."

"Okay, put him in seven."

Seven was a tiny cage with an unpadded bench bolted to the steel wall and a seatless toilet. I was alone. You can't get gang-banged alone. Was this where I was to spend the night? Could I sleep? I longed to be unconscious while time passed. I sat in that dim cell and for the first time noticed the unrelenting din of the place, steel slamming steel, shouts, curses, nameless clanks, clatters, and crashes, and from somewhere close by an unintelligible rap song from a cheap radio. Maybe later they'd tune in WKCR for the celebration of Duke Ellington's birthday. "Mood Indigo." Sleep would not be possible.

They brought in a young white boy I had not seen before, about twenty-one, his face covered with volcanic acne and fresh tears. They slammed the door behind him. The boy didn't register my presence but stood near the door, put his ravaged face in his hands, and sobbed. Even the back of his neck was aboil with pimples. "I ain't goin' back there! I
ain't!"

"Where?" I asked.

"Home!"

"Take it easy...Maybe they won't make you," I said, the Birdman of Alcatraz. I felt like holding the poor bastard, but I did nothing. I let him stand there in his laceless Nikes and weep. Suddenly he took two deep breaths like a swimmer about to plunge into cold water. He bent at the waist and ran into the steel wall. The top of his head bore the brunt of impact, and a new sound was swallowed up in the din, that of someone slapping a honeydew melon with his open hand. I couldn't believe what I'd just witnessed, but there he was, with his ruined complexion and ruined
spirit, staggering around as if one leg were six inches shorter than the other. I reached out to grab him, but he batted my hands away, and I saw that his pupils were rolled back, only the whites visible. Then he did it again. Bent and rammed the steel plate with the top of his head. This time he dropped flat and did not move.

"Guard!" I screamed. "Guard!" I went to the boy, but the CO at the door told me to get away from him. This was not real. I did not see this thing. Other COs arrived and looked at me with a mix of hostility and suspicion.

"No!" I squeaked. "He hit the wall with his head!"

Four of them picked up the boy lengthwise like a railroad tie and carried him away, his sad laceless shoes bouncing behind.

"Everybody up. Yer movin' out!" One by one, the cells were emptied, and we were herded into another holding pen, about twenty of us. "Greetings," said the black guy. They prodded and shoved us into groups of four, and another CO produced chains about six feet long, each with four wrist cuffs implacably attached. They locked us to the chains and left us that way. The slightest movement jerked at one's neighbor. Given my neighbors, I squatted, unmoving, until they herded us by quartets onto a loading dock and into the back of a big van. All aboard, they slammed and locked the van doors. Everyone braced for movement, but none came. We waited. I stood at the rear of the dark, crowded van where the double doors met and tried to breathe fresh air through the crack. I couldn't shake the sight of all that blood shining on my street.

Finally the engine started and we lurched away. Unable to see the turns from our windowless cage, we bounced around helplessly inside. A skinny Hispanic guy at the front of my chain (I was number three) began to twitch and tremble.

"He a junkie," said the man behind me. "Soon it get bad for heem."

"Chill out," a black man advised the junkie helpfully, and the junkie nodded about ten times and made to grasp the black man's hand, but it remained out of reach.

We arrived somewhere and stopped. We shuffled into position to alight, the grimmest cell being much preferable to this stifling van. But nothing happened. We waited, chains tinkling. Panic began to spread as the air thinned. I could hear us breathing. I sucked air through the tiny crack and feared someone would notice my access and take it away. Normal breaths no longer sufficed in the wet heat. The young junkie began to whimper, then to chatter in Spanish. I caught the word
muerto
. Two inmates at the front end of the van began to beat on the driver's steel partition. "Hey, we got a sick man here!" We fell silent awaiting help or at least an answer. None came. The junkie shook himself like a wet dog until they opened the doors.

"Arthur Deemer."

"Here!"

They unlocked the junkie's wrist and my wrist. Mine got cuffed behind my back. We were on a loading dock identical to the last one. They led the inmates in one door, the junkie in another, and me in through a third, down a hall, and into an elevator. I was helpless, but still two COs, one black, one white, both fat, gripped my arms on either side. Was I leaving America, no passport necessary? They planted me in a room very different from those in which I'd languished thus far. There were no bars. Only the cyclone fence bolted over the window spoke of jail. I looked out on a sooty brick wall ten feet away, but I saw daylight. The night had ended. The room was gray and bare except for a metal table with four chairs. My shin throbbed. I pulled out one of the chairs and sat sideways on it to accommodate my handcuffs. More comfortable physically than I'd been since my arrest, I waited.

I recognized them immediately. The Four Freshmen, minus two. The spokesman was there. He looked like an investment banker arriving with an attache full of insider information. He sat opposite me, opened the case, fastidiously arranged its contents, then got around to addressing me.

"We've been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Deemer. I'm Agent Watson and this is Agent Hargrove. You've been a very busy young man," said the condescending little prick as he removed Billie's photographs from his case and spread them out before me on the tabletop. Jones and Ricardo, Leon and his late brother, Harry Pine and Harvey Keene, the usual. I waited for the rest of them, for the Family Snaps, but he didn't produce them. I could see into his attache. It was empty. When I fetched a set of photos for Chucky, I had removed the Family Snaps and hid them in a Thelonious Monk album on a shelf full of albums.

"Do you recognize these?" Watson asked.

"Of course. You got them from my apartment?"

"Hidden beneath your refrigerator." He was giving me the tough-guy glare, but I'd been glared at lately by far tougher.