“Is he going to come around?”
“Oh, sure. I didn’t hit him
that
hard.”
“Why did you…ah, why did this guy get hit?”
“He was messing with my old lady, you know?”
Wolf didn’t know. What kind of idiot would mess with
this
guy’s girlfriend? “Oh.”
“Can’t let a guy get away with that, can you?”
“Let me give you some advice, Spider. Never tell anybody in jail what you’ve done.”
Spider looked hard at Wolf. “You some kind of fink?”
“If I was, I wouldn’t be giving you that kind of advice, would I?”
Spider nodded. “That makes sense, I guess. You’d be
amazed how guys talk to each other in the slammer.”
“You mean they confess to each other?”
“All the time, man. I guess they just need somebody to talk to. I’m glad you’re here; I haven’t had nobody to talk to for three days.”
“You live in Santa Fe?” Wolf asked.
“At the moment. I’m a free man, you know? I go where the bike takes me.”
“What kind of bike?”
“You kidding? A Hog—a Harley, you know?—that’s all there is.”
“Somebody taking care of the bike for you?”
“The old lady. She can’t pick it up if it falls over, and she can’t kick-start it, but she can ride the motherfucker!”
Wolf laughed at the thought. “She sounds like she’s okay.”
“Fuckin’ A, man.” Spider paused. “Tell me something, man, what’d those dudes say they got on you? I’d like to know.”
“Oh, they said they’ve got a witness who saw me having lunch with somebody I never heard of; they said they’ve got another guy who saw me in the room where three people were killed.”
“That sounds familiar,” Spider mused.
“What?”
“That second witness. There’s a guy in here told me he saw something like that. Said it was going to get him on the street.”
“In jail? Here?”
“Yeah. I was out in the yard this morning; there’s this guy, oh, one of them spic names, you know? Makes out to be some kind of cat burglar. I bet he’d stumble over his own feet. Anyway, he was telling me this shit, says he’s
going to beat a burglary rap with what he saw.”
“That’s very interesting. I think my lawyer would like to know about that.”
“Who you got for a mouthpiece?”
“A guy named Ed Eagle.”
“That Indian dude? I hear he’s hot shit. How’d you get him?”
“Friend of a friend.”
“Well, Wolf, you got some kind of friends out there. What line are you in?”
“I make movies.”
“No shit! Anything I might have seen?”
Wolf rattled off half a dozen titles.
Spider looked puzzled. “I don’t know any of them ones. You made any movies with Arnold Schwarzenegger?”
“Nope.”
“I like that dude! He knows how to kick ass!”
“Yeah, I guess he does, at that. He kicks some ass at the studios, too.”
“Yeah, I heard he’s got ’em by the balls out there in Hollywood. They have to pay him whatever he wants.”
“That just about sums it up,” Wolf agreed.
“Do you know any movie stars?”
“A few, I guess,” Wolf replied. “Nobody as big as Schwarzenegger, though.”
“You know Madonna?”
“I met her once at a party after an opening—didn’t really talk to her, just shook her hand.”
“No shit? You know Madonna?”
“Not really, Spider. I just shook her hand.”
“I’ll be fucked; my cellmate shook Madonna’s hand. Christ, I’d like to stick it in her!”
“A lot of guys would, I guess.”
Spider laughed. “Crystal would cut my pecker off, though, if I did that. She wouldn’t care if it was Madonna or not.”
“Your old lady sounds like a tough cookie.”
“You better believe it! She don’t take no shit from nobody, not even me! You know, when I hit that guy, I was sort of protecting him; Crystal would have cut his fucking heart out, if I’d let her at him. Oh, forget I said that.”
“It’s forgotten.”
“Well, I’m going to get some shut-eye, I guess,” Spider said, swinging his boots back onto the bunk.
“Good idea. I think I’ll try it, too.”
“You need any help gettin up top, Wolf?”
“I can manage, Spider. Thanks anyway.”
“Sure.”
Wolf spread the sheet and blanket, then hoisted himself up on the bunk. He didn’t bother undressing; he was exhausted. Wolf wondered where the hell Ed Eagle was, and what he was going to do about this. But right now he didn’t care; he just wanted to sleep. He was almost out when Spider spoke up again.
“Hey, Wolf?”
“Yeah, Spider?”
“You’re an okay guy, for an educated dude, and all that.”
“Thanks, Spider.”
“You know that spic? The cat burglar?”
“Hmmm, yeah.” Wolf was nearly gone.
“I think I’ll have a word with him in the yard tomorrow morning.”
Wolf didn’t reply. He was out.
W
olf came awake with something heavy on his chest. He opened his eyes and saw his cellmate staring at him; Spider’s huge hand was shaking him.
“Breakfast, Wolf,” Spider said. “I would have woke you up earlier, but you looked like you needed the sleep.”
There was an amazing amount of noise in the jail: People were yelling at each other in English and Spanish, somebody was singing, there were half a dozen radios tuned to different stations. He was surprised he’d slept through it all.
The cell door slid noisily open.
“Let’s go, buddy,” Spider said. “They don’t let you sleep through breakfast here.”
Wolf followed Spider out of the cell, and they joined a long line of prisoners shuffling down the hallway. They emerged into a large room that wasn’t very different from the school cafeteria at Wolf’s high school; he wasn’t sure exactly on which facility that was a comment. He picked up
a steel tray and followed Spider through the line, watching, appalled, as white-suited servers covered his tray with dollops of polenta, beans, a slice of half-cooked, streaky bacon, and a serving of green Jell-O. At the end of the line he was handed a paper cup of coffee and a packet of cream and two sugar cubes.
Spider picked a table, and a couple of men got up to give him room. Indicating that Wolf should sit beside him, Spider sat down and immediately began to stare fixedly toward the food line.
Wolf followed his gaze to a stocky Latino who was just picking up a tray when he realized Spider was looking at him. The man stood frozen for a moment, like a deer caught in headlights, then dropped his tray and left the room.
“What was that all about?” Wolf whispered.
“That’s the dude going to testify against you at your arraignment this morning,” Spider replied. “I just give ’im the look.”
“Arraignment?”
“Yeah, sure; that’s what they do when they charge you with murder. You gotta be arraigned.”
Wolf’s practice of law had not included arraignments, but he realized that Spider was right.
“You didn’t know that?” Spider asked.
“I should have, but I didn’t,” Wolf admitted.
“You’ll be okay with that Indian dude. Just keep your mouth shut and let him do the talking.”
“Right. What was that about a ’look’?”
“That’s the
look
. You gotta have a
look
to keep these spics in line, you know?”
“Oh.” Wolf looked around the dining hall and realized that eighty or ninety percent of those present were Hispanics.
“Otherwise, a white guy has got no chance in a place like
this. You gotta give ’em the look, and you better be able to back it up, too. ’Course, with me, the look is just about always enough. Cons are scared shitless of bikers; they know we don’t give a shit. I don’t have to do much fighting.”
“I’m not surprised,” Wolf said. He was thinking about the arraignment now, and what the hell he would do if Ed Eagle didn’t show.
“Spider, my lawyer may not know I’m in here. What should I do if he isn’t at the arraignment?”
“Well, you got three choices,” Spider said, slurping up his beans. “You can ask for a postponement of the arraignment, but then they put you back in here. You can ask for a P.D.—that’s a public defender—but you’ll either get some kid still wet behind the ears, or some old rummy can’t make a living anyways else. Or you can represent yourself.”
“What do you do in those circumstances?”
“Oh, I always take the P.D. See, I know what’s going on in there, and if he drops the ball, I pick it up.”
Wolf picked at his food and tried to remember what went on at an arraignment. He hadn’t thought about that since the second year of law school, and he was embarrassed to ask Spider.
“Ain’t you hungry?” Spider asked, eyeing Wolf’s tray.
“No, I’m not,” Wolf said. “Do I have to eat it?”
“I’ll do it for you,” Spider said, stacking Wolf’s tray on top of his empty one.
“Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Spider replied, tucking into the polenta.
After breakfast, they were taken back to their cell.
“Hop up on your bunk a minute, will you, Wolf?” Spider asked.
Wolf got out of his cellmate’s way.
Spider spread his blanket on the floor and started doing push-ups, counting aloud.
Wolf watched, fascinated, as Spider did fifty push-ups, then as many sit-ups. He did a hundred deep knee-bends, then ran in place for ten minutes. When he finished, he was drenched in sweat.
“It’s shower day for me,” Spider said, “so it’s okay to break a sweat.”
The cell door suddenly opened, and a guard appeared. “Willett, you’re up for arraignment. Let’s go.”
Spider offered him a hand down and a firm handshake. “Good luck, Wolf. You ever need any help, just phone me up at a bar called the Gun Club and leave a message. I’ll get back to you.”
“Thanks, Spider.” He thought of giving the biker his own number, but shuddered at the thought of Spider coming to call. He began to regret that one of his phone numbers was in the Santa Fe directory.
“Let’s
go
, Willett,” the guard said, dangling a pair of handcuffs.
Wolf got into his coat and allowed himself to be cuffed with his hands behind him, then followed the guard. In a vestibule before the last barred door, he was handcuffed in tandem with seven other men, and they were marched outside and into a van. The cold air bit hard, and since both his hands were handcuffed to others, Wolf was unable to button his coat. The van pulled out onto Airport Road, then turned left on Cerrillos and headed into town. All the men were quiet. Nobody met anybody else’s eye. The only view out of the van was to the rear, through a heavy steel screen. Santa Fe was going to work.
Twenty minutes later the van halted, and a police officer
opened the rear doors. The eight men were hustled out and into a rear door of the Santa Fe County Courthouse. They entered a room furnished with benches, and one by one their handcuffs were unlocked, then refastened with their hands in front of them. Wolf remembered that he hadn’t used the toilet that morning.
Wolf sat in the room for nearly two hours. He was taken to a men’s room and allowed to urinate once, but not to linger for other business. He was hungry now.
A guard came into the room, looked at a clipboard, and shouted, “Willett!”
Wolf stood up, and his handcuffs were removed. Massaging his wrists, he followed the guard to the door and found himself in a large courtroom. He looked around for Ed Eagle, who was nowhere to be seen.
“People versus Willett, arraignment,” the bailiff called. Wolf looked around and saw District Attorney Bob Martinez at a table in the well of the court.
“Is the defendant represented?” the judge asked.
“His attorney of record is not present,” Martinez replied.
“Bring up Willett,” the judge called.
A guard led Wolf into the well of the court, before the bench.
“Mr. Willett, you are represented by…” the judge consulted a paper on his desk, “ah, Ed Eagle,” he said. “Where is Mr. Eagle?”
“Your honor, I was arrested last night without warning, and I have been unable to reach Mr. Eagle,” Wolf said.
“Well, Mr. Martinez, you and I both know what kind of hell Ed Eagle will raise if we arraign his client in his absence. Do you have a suggestion?”
“I suggest we return Willett to the city jail, Your Honor,” Martinez replied. “I tried to reach Mr. Eagle last evening and failed.”
“I see,” the judge said. “Well, Mr. Willett, it looks like you’re going to have to be the guest of the county until Mr. Eagle turns up. Unless you’d like a public defender?”
Wolf wanted desperately not to return to that cell, but he hung on. “I’d like to wait for Mr. Eagle, Your Honor,” he said.
“Very well—”
“Your honor, Mr. Willett’s counsel is present!” The voice came from the rear of the courtroom.
Wolf turned to see Ed Eagle striding down the aisle and into the well of the court.
He came and stood next to Wolf. “Your Honor, I apologize for my tardiness, but I was in Los Angeles when I received both Mr. Martinez’s and Mr. Willett’s messages late last night. I have only just returned. May I have a moment to consult with my client?”
“Of course, Mr. Eagle, and welcome back. Mr. Martinez, let’s continue with the next case while Mr. Eagle and Mr. Willett consult.”
Eagle took Wolf by the arm and led him out of the courtroom and into a small anteroom. “I am terribly sorry about this, Wolf,” he said. “It was midnight when I got Ms. Deering’s message and returned her call, and there was no way to get word to you.”
“I’m just glad you’re here, Ed,” Wolf replied.
“Martinez did call, but he didn’t say what it was about—just said to call him. I think he’s playing games with us; he waited until he knew I was away before arresting you. Did the police pump you last night?”
“Yes.” Wolf gave Eagle a complete account of his interview with the two detectives.
Eagle laughed aloud. “That’s very good,” he said. “I’ll have to remember that one.”
“It didn’t seem very good at the time. I’ll admit, their offer sounded pretty good for a minute or two.”
“You’re not going to need any deals,” Eagle said. “You’re in the very best of hands, believe me.”