“Why don’t you just beat the hell out of me, okay, meathead?”
“I’d love to.”
“Yeah, but you can’t, right? Because I’m just a little kid, and you’re a big stupid cop and if you touch me you’ll get fired and sued and all that. You knocked my mother down, meathead, and you haven’t heard the last of it.”
“Your mother slapped me,” Nassar said.
“Good for her. You clowns have no idea what she’s been through. You show up to get me and act like it’s no big deal, like just because you’re cops and you’ve got this piece of paper then my mother is supposed to get happy and send me off with a kiss. A couple of morons. Just big, dumb, meatheaded cops.”
The elevator stopped, opened, and two doctors entered. They stopped talking and looked at Mark. The door closed behind them, and they continued down. “Can you believe these clowns are arresting me?” he asked the doctors.
They frowned at Nassar and Klickman.
“Juvenile Court offender,” Nassar explained. Why couldn’t the little punk just shut up?
Mark nodded at Klickman. “This one here with the cute shoes knocked my mother down about five minutes ago. Can you believe it?”
Both doctors looked at the shoes.
“Just shut up, Mark,” Klickman said.
“Is your mother okay?” one of the doctors asked.
“Oh she’s great. My little brother’s in the psychiatric ward. Our trailer burned to the ground a few hours ago. And then these thugs show up and arrest me right in front of my mother. Bigfoot here knocks her to the floor. She’s doing great.”
The doctors stared at the cops. Nassar watched his feet and Klickman closed his eyes. The elevator stopped and a small crowd boarded. Klickman stayed close to Mark.
When all was quiet and they were moving again, Mark said loudly, “My lawyer’ll sue you jerks, you know that, don’t you? You’ll be unemployed this time tomorrow.” Eight sets of eyes looked down in the corner, then up at the pained face of Detective Klickman. Silence.
“Just shut up, Mark.”
“And what if I don’t? You gonna rough me up like you did my mother. Throw me down, kick me a few times. You’re just another meathead cop, you know that, Klickman? Just another fat cop with a gun. Why don’t you lose a few pounds?”
Neat rows of sweat broke out across Klickman’s forehead. He caught the eyes darting at him from the crowd. The elevator was barely moving. He could have strangled Mark.
Nassar was pressed into the other rear corner, and his ears were now ringing from the slap to the head. He couldn’t see Mark Sway, but he could certainly hear him.
“Is your mother all right?” a nurse asked. She was standing next to Mark, looking down and very concerned.
“Yeah, she’s having a great day. She’d be a lot better, of course, if these cops would leave her alone. They’re taking me to jail, you know that?”
“What for?”
“I don’t know. They won’t tell me. I was just minding my own business, trying to console my mother because our trailer burned to the ground this morning and we lost everything we own, when they showed up with no warning, and here I am on the way to jail.”
“How old are you?”
“Only eleven. But that’s not important to these guys. They’d arrest a four-year-old.”
Nassar groaned softly. Klickman kept his eyes closed.
“This is awful,” the nurse said.
“You should’ve seen it when they had me and my mother on the floor. Happened just a few minutes ago on the Psychiatric Wing. It’ll be on the news tonight. Watch the papers. These clowns will be fired tomorrow. Then the lawsuit.”
They stopped on the ground floor, and the elevator emptied.
HE INSISTED ON RIDING IN THE REAR SEAT, LIKE A REAL CRIMINAL. The car was an unmarked Chrysler but he
spotted it a hundred yards away in the parking lot. Nassar and Klickman were afraid to speak to him. They rode in the front seat in complete silence, hoping he might do the same. They were not so lucky.
“You forgot to read me my rights,” he said as Nassar drove as fast as possible.
No response from the front seat.
“Hey, you clowns up there. You forgot to read me my rights.”
No response. Nassar drove faster.
“Do you know
how
to read me my rights?”
No response.
“Hey, meathead. Yeah, you with the shoes. Do you know how to read me my rights?”
Klickman’s breathing was labored, but he was determined to ignore him. Oddly, Nassar had a crooked smile barely noticeable under the mustache. He stopped at a red light, looked both ways, then gunned the engine.
“Listen to me, meathead, okay. I’ll do it to myself, okay. I have the right to remain silent. Did you catch that? And, if I say anything, you clowns can use it against me in court. Get that, meathead? Of course, if I said anything you dumbasses would forget it. Then there’s something about the right to a lawyer. Can you help with this one, meathead? Yo!, meathead. What’s the bit about the lawyer? I’ve seen it on television a million times.”
Meathead Klickman cracked his window so he could breathe. Nassar glanced at the shoes and almost laughed. The criminal sat low in the rear seat with his legs crossed.
“Poor meathead. Can’t even read me my rights.
This car stinks, meathead. Why don’t you clean this car? It smells like cigarette smoke.”
“I hear you like cigarette smoke,” Klickman said, and felt much better about himself. Nassar giggled to help his friend. They’d taken enough crap off this brat.
Mark saw a crowded parking lot next to a tall building. Patrol cars were parked in rows next to the building. Nassar turned into the lot and parked in the driveway.
They rushed him through the entrance doors and down a long hallway. He had finally stopped talking. He was on their turf. Cops were everywhere. Signs directed traffic to the DUI holding tank, the jail, the visitors’ room, the receiving room. Plenty of signs and rooms. They stopped at a desk with a row of closed-circuit monitors behind it, and Nassar signed some papers. Mark studied the surroundings. Klickman almost felt sorry for him. He looked even smaller.
They were off again. The elevator took them to the fourth floor, and again they stopped at a desk. A sign on the wall pointed to the juvenile wing, and Mark figured he was getting close.
A uniformed lady with a clipboard and a plastic tag declaring her to be Doreen stopped them. She looked at some papers, then at the clipboard. “Says here Judge Roosevelt wants Mark Sway in a private room,” she said.
“I don’t care where you put him,” Nassar said. “Just take him.”
She was frowning and looking at her clipboard. “Of course, Roosevelt wants all juveniles in private rooms. Thinks this is the Hilton.”
“It’s not?”
She ignored this, and pointed at a piece of paper
for Nassar to sign. He scribbled his name hurriedly, and said, “He’s all yours. God help you.”
Klickman and Nassar left without a word.
“Empty your pockets, Mark,” the lady said as she handed him a large metal container. He pulled out a dollar bill, some change, and a pack of gum. She counted it and wrote something on a card, which she then inserted on the end of the metal box. In a corner above the desk, two cameras captured Mark, and he could see himself on one of the dozen screens on the wall. Another lady in a uniform was stamping papers.
“Is this the jail?” Mark asked, cutting his eyes in all directions.
“We call it a detention center,” she said.
“What’s the difference?”
This seemed to irritate her. “Listen, Mark, we get all kinds of smart mouths up here, okay. You’ll get along much better if you keep your mouth shut.” She leaned into his face with these words of warning, and her breath was stale cigarettes and black coffee.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and his eyes watered. It suddenly hit him. He was about to be locked in a room far away from his mother, far away from Reggie.
“Follow me,” Doreen said, proud of herself for restoring a little authority to the relationship. She whisked away with a ring of keys dangling and rattling from her waist. They opened a heavy wooden door and started through a hallway with gray metal doors spaced evenly apart on both sides of the corridor. Each little room had a number beside it. Doreen stopped at Number 16, and unlocked it with one of her keys. “In here,” she said.
Mark walked in slowly. The room was about twelve feet wide and twenty feet long. The lights were
bright and the carpet was clean. Two bunk beds were to his right. Doreen patted the top bunk. “You can have either bed,” she said, ever the hostess. “Walls are cinder block and windows are nonbreakable, so don’t try anything.” There were two windows—one in the door and one above the lavatory, and neither was big enough to stick his head through. “Toilet’s over there, stainless steel. Can’t use ceramic anymore. Had a kid break one and slice his wrists with a piece of it. But that was in the old building. This place is much nicer, don’t you think?”
It’s gorgeous, Mark almost said. But he was sinking fast. He sat on the bottom bunk and rested his elbows on his knees. The carpet was pale green, the same type of commercial blend he’d been studying at the hospital.
“You okay, Mark?” Doreen asked without the slightest trace of sympathy. This was her job.
“Can I call my mother?”
“Not yet. You can make a few calls in about an hour.”
“Well, can you call her and just tell her I’m okay? She’s worried sick.”
Doreen smiled and the makeup cracked around her eyes. She patted his head. “Can’t do it, Mark. Regulations. But she knows you’re fine. My goodness, you’ll be in court in a couple of hours.”
“How long do kids stay in here?”
“Not long. A few weeks occasionally, but this is sort of a holding area until the kids are processed and either sent back home or to a training school.” She was rattling her keys. “Listen, I have to go now. The door locks automatically when it’s closed, and if it opens without my little key here, then an alarm goes off and
there’s big trouble. So don’t get any ideas, okay, Mark?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Can I get you anything?”
“A telephone.”
“In just a little while, okay.”
Doreen closed the door behind her. There was a loud click, then silence.
He stared at the doorknob for a long time. This didn’t seem like jail. There were no bars on the windows. The beds and floor were clean. The cinder block walls were painted a pleasant shade of yellow. He’d seen worse, in the movies.
There was so much to worry about. Ricky groaning like that again, the fire, Dianne slowly unraveling, cops and reporters glued to him. He didn’t know where to start.
He stretched on the top bunk and studied the ceiling. Where in the world was Reggie?
22
THE CHAPEL WAS COLD AND DAMP. IT WAS A ROUND building stuck to the side of a mausoleum like a cancerous growth. It was raining outside, and two television crews from New Orleans huddled beside their vans and hid under umbrellas.
The crowd was respectable, especially for a man with no family. His remains were packaged tastefully in a porcelain urn sitting on a mahogany table. Hidden speakers from above brought forth one dreary dirge after another as the lawyers and judges and a few clients ventured in and sat near the rear. Barry the Blade strutted down the aisle with two thugs in tow. He was properly dressed in a black double-breasted suit with a black shirt and a black tie. Black lizard shoes. His ponytail was immaculate. He arrived late, and enjoyed the stares from the mourners. After all, he’d known Jerome Clifford for a long time.
Four rows back, the Right Reverend Roy Foltrigg sat with Wally Boxx and scowled at the ponytail. The lawyers and judges looked at Muldanno, then at Foltrigg,
then back at Muldanno. Strange, seeing them in the same room.
The music stopped, and a minister of some generic faith appeared in the small pulpit behind the urn. He started with a lengthy obituary of Walter Jerome Clifford, and threw in everything but the names of his childhood pets. This was not unexpected because when the obituary was over there would be little to say.
It was a brief service, just as Romey had asked for in his note. The lawyers and judges glanced at their watches. Another mournful lamentation started from above, and the minister excused everyone.
Romey’s last hurrah was over in fifteen minutes. There were no tears. Even his secretary kept her composure. His daughter was not present. Very sad. He lived forty-four years and no one cried at his funeral.
Foltrigg kept his seat and scowled at Muldanno as he strutted down the aisle and out the door. Foltrigg waited until the chapel was empty, then made an exit with Wally behind him. The cameras were there, and that’s exactly what he wanted. Earlier, Wally had leaked a juicy tidbit about the great Roy Foltrigg attending the service, and also that there was a chance Barry the Blade Muldanno would be present. Neither Wally nor Roy had any idea whether Muldanno would attend, but it was only a leak so who cared if it was accurate. It was working.
A reporter asked for a couple of minutes, and Foltrigg did what he always did. He glanced at his watch, looked terribly frustrated by this intrusion, and sent Wally after the van. Then he said what he always said, “Okay, but make it quick. I’m due in court in fifteen minutes.” He hadn’t been to court in three weeks. He usually went about once a month, but to hear him talk
he lived in courtrooms, battling the bad guys, protecting the interests of the American taxpayers. A hard-charging crimebuster.
He squeezed under an umbrella and looked at the mini-cam. The reporter waved a microphone in his face. “Jerome Clifford was a rival. Why did you attend his memorial service?”
He was suddenly sad. “Jerome was a fine lawyer, and a friend of mine. We faced each other many times, but always respected each other.” What a guy. Gracious even in death. He hated Jerome Clifford and Jerome Clifford hated him, but the camera saw only the heartbreak of a grieving pal.
“Mr. Muldanno has hired a new lawyer and filed a motion for a continuance. What is your response to this?”
“As you know, Judge Lamond has scheduled a hearing on the continuance request for tomorrow morning at 10 A.M. The decision will be his. The United States will be ready for trial whenever he sets it.”