Authors: Sean Carswell
That first day was brutal. After all that drinking with Sal, you suddenly found yourself in a spot where the booze dried up. The hangover came on quickly and you found out that being hungover in jail is its own kind of hell.
Now, the days are all the same. You've settled into a routine. You go to the cafeteria for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. You shoot hoops in the yard for an hour each afternoon. The rest of the time, you sit in your cell and read paperbacks. Sal brings them for you. This was an agreement you worked out with him. You give him the Galaxie; he brings you books. You've read a dozen novels since you got locked up two weeks ago.
When you're not reading, you spend a lot of time staring at the ceiling of your cell, thinking things over. Lately, all you can think about is that little story Helen told you about her friends and their surf spot. The red bus right. If you ever get out of this cell, you'll take Helen and Taylor there. You'll surf that spot with your daughter and that crazy guy. Ghosts will fade away, monkeys will stop haunting you. The past and future will dissolve into one moment when it's just you and a Central American wave. That's the dream that keeps you going.
Today will be different. Today, you're going to meet with the district attorney. This will be your second meeting. The first one scared the shit out of you. It scared you that the district attorney himself was handling this case. You figured it would've been passed down to one of his assistants. Not so. Libra's parents have a lot of pull in this little town. The district attorney sat with you and explained this. He explained to you that you were being charged with manslaughter. If you plead guilty, though, he'll knock the charge down to mayhem. You didn't even know that mayhem was a charge. Part of you thinks it sounds kinda cool. Charged with mayhem. As in: “What are you in here for?” “Burglary. You?” “Fucking mayhem.” You asked what mayhem actually meant. The district attorney said, “Dismemberment, basically.” That doesn't sound quite as cool. This is what the D.A. promises you, though. Plead guilty, he'll knock the charge down to mayhem, you'll get sentenced to three years, up for parole in a year and a half. You think about it. How bad could it be? The guys in the yard have told you prison isn't as rough as it's made out to be. They say you just have to fight someone on the first day. If you hold your own, people will leave you alone. More or less. And you know how to fight. And a year and a half really isn't that long of a time.
But these two weeks already feel like a year and a half.
Besides, can you live with yourself if you stand up and admit to taking Libra's leg from her?
That's what breaks your heart the most. With everyone jockeying and fighting for vengeance or power or whatever, you keep asking yourself, what about Libra? She was such a sweet kid. You really did want the best for her. Things didn't work out well at all. They worked out miserably. But this is still no way to treat her memory. You wish more than anything that you could just hang on to that one memory of her and her pink parka and that snowball in her hand. You wish you could go back to that one second at the end of the millennium when you reached out for a lifeline and grabbed that wrong chick in the bar and got a black eye to ring in the New Year. You wish you could grab Libra instead. No fights. No breakups. Just you and Libra at the end of the countdown. You could go home happy. You could stay with Libra, stay in Flagstaff. Everyone could stay alive for a while longer. You could deal with the ghosts of the past the way normal people do. You could go to therapy, rather than setting up this whole tangled web of self-destruction. Rather than trapping everyone you love into this web.
Instead you have private investigators and mayhem charges and district attorneys. So you have to focus and decide if and how to fight.
You understand the district attorney's position. He's looking at you: a poor white trash guy. You don't have enough money to post bail. You haven't brought in an attorney yet. You're probably going to have to fight this with a public defender who doesn't give a shit about you, who will encourage you to take the plea. The district attorney doesn't need evidence. He doesn't need to have a case. He knows you don't have much of a chance of fighting. Still, you won't say a word to him without a lawyer present.
The guard comes by your cell. You stand and face the wall. He opens the door. You do exactly as he says. He cuffs your wrists. He puts ankle cuffs on you and runs a chain between your wrists and your ankles. He leads you out of your cell. You walk down the hallway with your mind lost in that dream of a Costa Rican wave.
The district attorney, the arresting officer, and your lawyer are in a conference room in the jailhouse. Your lawyer smiles to you as if he's just seen you across a barroom floor. “Danny McGregor,” he says.
Looking at him makes you smile, too. It's been too long. And he looks so spit-shined. He's wearing a tailored suit and leather shoes so soft you just want to touch them. He's even a little intimidating, but that's what you want. You say, “Hank.”
Hank comes over and give you a hug. You can't hug back because you're in chains. You do him the favor of lifting your hands, though, so that they don't rub against his package when he hugs you.
The district attorney clears his throat. “Uh, Hank?”
Hank glares at him. No smile. “Henry, please. Henry Dunn.”
This is something that always bugged Sophie: the only person in the world who could get away with calling her dad “Hank” was you. And you have no idea why the guy has always liked you, but he always has. That's why you called him after hearing Sal's story. You knew Hank would help you out. You knew you had Sal's experiments on your side and that there was no way anyone could push a body under a train and have it end up the way Libra's had ended up. You knew something beyond that, too. You knew that Hank's daughter had put a knife in your belly three times. And you hadn't pressed charges or sued or said a word to anyone but your brother. Hank knew this, too. He appreciated it. There's a currency in that.
So you had told Hank the whole story before leaving Cocoa Beach. He listened. When you were done, he said, “Go back to Flagstaff. If you get into trouble, call me. I'll get you out of it.” He even gave you a toll-free number that you could use from jail.
And you knew this: you knew from the minute you got arrested that Hank could get you out. You knew he was that good of a lawyer. You knew what he'd done in the past and who he'd defended and how guilty those people were and how much less guilty you were. If you had wanted it, Hank could've gotten you out of this jail a week and a half ago. This past two weeks had been your own self-imposed imprisonment. Your time to get things straight in your head. Your time to pay a debt to a dead girlfriend you would trade your life for.
You sit in a hard wooden chair. Hank sits next to you. The district attorney and arresting officer sit across the table. Hank says, “Let's get right down to business.” He introduces himself as the guy who got a Disney executive off the hook after the exec had been videotaped molesting a little girl. Hank's told you this story before. It's not as severe as it sounds. The “little girl” was actually eighteen at the time. She was just doing her best to look younger. But Hank had handled the case and kept everything under wraps and even got the solicitation charge dropped despite the fact that the “little girl” was clearly a hooker. The story didn't make the news. It did make it into court record, though.
Telling this story tells the D. A. two things. First, the D. A. now knows that Henry Dunn is the guy Disney calls when they get into trouble. Disney. Second, it gives the impression that Henry Dunn could get anyone off of any charge, no matter how guilty. And you, though you are guilty of many things, are not guilty of manslaughter or mayhem.
The district attorney says, “I never heard about this.”
“Exactly,” Hank says. He takes a manila folder out of his briefcase and slides it across the table.
The arresting officer has a look of total disgust on his face. He clearly hates lawyers for the defense. You don't care. You care more about the district attorney. You watch his eyes work through the paperwork of the Disney exec's case. You see that attorney's smugness fade away. This case feels five minutes away from being dismissed. Hank nudges you with his elbow. You lean back in your wooden chair. Your hands are folded across your stomach. The chains weigh down your orange prison jumpsuit. You take a deep breath and wander off into daydreams again. They have nothing on you now.