Authors: Mark Wisniewski
JAN
PROBABLY, I TOLD MYSELF,
you’re thinking about marriage to him to avoid thoughts about his father and yours,
and then my mother nodded at the cross behind the altar and stood and sidestepped
toward Tug and me, appearing so childishly in need of the nod Tug gave her, I about
bawled. I mean, it hit me right then that her struggle to handle what horseracing
had done to her had led her to pray on her knees, and I hadn’t as much as sat beside
her, and my standing out there, in the aisle with Tug and Colleen, was killing her.
So right then and there, I actually tried. No, I didn’t use my actual voice, not even
a whisper, but I allowed myself to think thoughts that might have been prayers, asking
only one thing—that we would again see Tom Corcoran—but almost as soon I doubted this
prayer since, first of all, it was kind of selfish, and, two, the sight of Tom Corcoran
could never by itself guarantee
happiness. And then, whether praying or not, I thought hard about happiness, about
what it really was and how it truly felt, and I couldn’t stop remembering how it felt
to ride Equis Mini, that electric sense of joy and freedom he and I shared, and I
also remembered how, even after he’d crossed the finish line and we both had won,
he would have kept running if I’d let him.
And gratitude for that experience welled up in me in that church, and I wondered if
welling up meant I was indeed praying, but I also felt very alone right then, with
no sense inside of anything God-sent. All I felt was an accumulation of logical thoughts,
earthly, selfish thoughts that urged me to never let anyone know what I wanted—because
it was clear to me now that, in horseracing at least, there would always be people
who’d use their knowledge of what you wanted to take advantage of you. Why people
like Arnie DeShields enjoyed treating jockeys like meat was something I still didn’t
understand entirely, but what mattered right then and there, in that church aisle
near my mother, was that I finally accepted the truth about what had happened twenty-some
years ago in the Corcorans’ shallows: My father had committed suicide.
And the reason I could accept this was that, thanks to my stay in the Corcorans’ house,
I now knew how it felt to ride racehorses for money, and generally it was a feeling
of being used, a feeling you wanted but then also despised. In my case I’d wanted
Tom Corcoran to bet on me when I’d jocked Equis Mini in that secret sprint—but then
came Tom’s using me to get that tip from Arnie DeShields, and then came Arnie trying
to use me for sex, a sleazy intent on Arnie’s part that still appeared to have no
end to it. And, yes, it was probably true that women who jock feel used more than
men, but even if you
were
a man—even if you’d been my father, the
Great Jock Jamie Price—it was all still
use
—of your body but also your mind and the best of your spirit.
And, sure, winning felt good, very, very good, but a victory in a horse race takes
very little time, a very small fraction of your life. And then there ends up being
the whole rest of your life, where you feel caught in this tangle of beauty and ugliness.
DEESH
FROM THE GEORGE WASHINGTON BRIDGE
on in, my mind jumps as quickly as it did when I first saw Gabe’s house, this time
from thought to thought about Bark’s selfishness and the Belmont trifecta and James’s
wisdom in bailing on us in Queens, then about Gabe and Madalynn and Jasir. I try to
focus on Jasir, but now there’s Bark’s chat with Madalynn on that sidewalk in Brooklyn
where I faced Jasir, and then there’s me in those days when I made careless love with
Madalynn, then James telling me that Bark proposed to Madalynn but Madalynn said no,
and then there’s Gabe rowing that blue-floored boat and, now, there’s Gabe’s body
lying on that water, after his last attempt to connect and do good.
And then there’s Gabe’s ex-wife and her gutless love, and Gabe’s ex-boss The Man Hater,
and the mother and father who gave me a life but never quite got into it.
And under all these thoughts is the realization that, now that I’m back in the Bronx,
I’m also in the world of law, and law, I should have learned long ago, never lets
go of you.
And where law takes me now, in a motorcade led by NYPD, is to the precinct building
on 230th Street. I’ve walked past this building countless times, been inside it one
Halloween long ago, when word was cops gave candy bars to any kid who stepped inside,
and now, just outside it, well-dressed folks, not all white, wait with cameras and
mikes. As I’m taken inside I neither shy from these people nor face them, just pass
them with the pride I have left. Inside, all eyes welcome me in their casual but intense
way, and I keep silent. They want fingerprints, which they uncuff me to get. They
want name, address, and digits, and for these they make do with what’s in my wallet.
They say they’ll take me to be arraigned, ask if I know what an arraignment is, and,
for that, they get a nod. And then, after they cuff me again, this time with my hands
in front of me, one of them says, “Good luck, Deesh,” and they take me back outside,
where a livelier crowd gets as much of me as their cameras can. And then I’m in another
squad car, again NYPD, again alone in the back, cuffed hands on my lap, no escorting
vehicles in front or behind, though the two cops in the front seat obviously wish
they could kill me, and, shit, this squad car ain’t stopping. I have never fainted
in my life, but now, on and off without warning, comes this sense of sinking into
myself, as if, you know, my mind is sort of a black hole quickly devouring the rest
of me, maybe because I know, from my time in school and on the streets, that I’m up
against official City of New York rancor.
Will it
really
help Jasir to see you back here like this? I think.
Won’t it just make his matters worse?
And what about Madalynn?
Can any love, real or not, withstand arrest and incarceration and the lust of millions
for conviction?
Then we’re near 161st, approaching the beige, soot-tinged building etched with the
words
CRIMINAL COURT
and flanked by more media, and we turn twice and roll into an underground parking
garage full of cop cars and trucks. I remember Gabe and I watching the stream swirl
and glisten, but here, trapped as I am by concrete, Pennsylvania seems like it never
existed: no birdsong, no bass, certainly no friendship with a washed-up wannabe lit
professor.
And now we’ve stopped. I’m taken out and passed to four armed courthouse guards, who
take me up an elevator to a floor where people wearing dark blue uniforms take more
fingerprints, these digital and probably instantly online. And after a young white
woman brings me a worn chair, here, across this large but stuffy office, stand two
guards, brothers I’d bet were once Marines, taking turns glancing at me as one reads
a computer printout. And as they stroll back toward me, the other lifts his chin at
me and says, “Just so you know? You’re a forty-one.”
I play this off, and the other brother says, “He don’t know what that means.”
“Know what it means, being a forty-one?” the first asks.
And here my eyes answer:
Just tell me.
“Means you’re a badass.”
“Means you’ll need more than Legal Aid,” a sister behind me calls.
But I can’t afford more, we all know, and now three other guards, these white, take
me via elevator to a higher floor, which is simply an open area, no hallways or rows
of doors, just a worn-shiny concrete floor under four holding pens constructed of
gray bars, the largest pen with twice the floor space of the others, maybe
a third of a basketball court. In this large pen stand five cuffed-silent suspects
of maybe forever-untold crimes, one tall and Asian and the four others black, and
I’m being escorted toward them when a guard shouts to an old Hispanic guy at a desk
against a wall: “Should we put this forty-one alone?”—and the old guy nods.
So I’m walked and locked into the small pen farthest from the five suspects. The first
words I think inside are
This is it
, because avoiding the inside of a cell has motivated me for practically my whole
life, and I wonder if maybe avoidance of anything for so long somehow finally becomes
attraction.
The four brothers in the big cell are staring me down. Instinct says stare at the
wall opposite them, which I do, but that makes me remember Gabe gazing off into Pennsylvania’s
woods. Then I get why people behind bars off themselves: If I didn’t have Madalynn
and Jasir to pin my shoulders back for, what would be the point?
“You the
cop
shooter,” shouts someone.
I don’t answer, don’t even breathe. Then I inhale motionlessly.
And then all of us waste more of our lives in silence.
Then I hear, “Hello?”
A short white dude with cut-to-the-nubs gray hair stands just outside the bars, one
finger readied inside a closed manila file.
“Douglas Sharp?” he says. He wears a green suit, three piece but discount, the skin
on his face, just above and beneath his eyes, chapped to bright pink. “I’m Larry Gerelli,
your attorney.”
“How do I know that?” I say.
He looks me up and down and says, “You don’t.”
And he walks off, then out a side door.
And I feel like I did in that manhole years ago. Yes, smarter than some, but alone.
JAN
AS TUG AND I AND OUR MOTHERS
left the church, my mother asked me if I preferred to leave for Pine Bluff that week
or the next, as if our return to Arkansas were something we��d discussed of late,
and even though we hadn’t talked about going back there, I got all petty on Tug and
answered casually, as if I’d never cared about him in the first place, and what I
said was “As soon as you want.”
Then I glanced toward Tug, to see if I’d gotten his goat.
But all he did was glance away, with this put-off look on his face, and accelerate
on ahead. Like he was thinking,
This is what happens when you hang out with three women
,
like he was determined to never again step foot inside that church.
And I knew he knew what the popular songs said, that if you cared about someone,
really
cared, you’d fight against all odds to keep that person close. But I was also sure
he knew, from having
watched his parents try to coexist after their arguments, that if you pursued love
from your lover when pride was at stake, you could lose respect and maybe love itself.
So there I was, on that sidewalk between the church and the Galaxie, walking well
behind Tug even though I cared about his thoughts as much as I did mine, feeling abandoned
despite being squeezed in between our mothers, trusting the sudden headwind we faced
was full of my father’s spirit, then asking it:
Daddy, why did you let us live here?
DEESH
WHEN I’M FINALLY LET OUT,
I’m taken by three guards down an elevator and through narrow white hallways, then
out through a blue metal door to a courtroom, where the blond-wood onlookers’ benches,
set in rows like church pews, are about full, most everyone seated on them dark haired
and dark skinned and dressed in dark clothes, the few whites there restless—reporters,
I figure. Front and center, up behind the judge’s bench, waits a robed white guy not
much older than I, the guard beside him a freckled brother in a white long-sleeved
shirt who calls, “Douglas Sharp, docket number ending 6374—charge number 125.00.”
Guards’ hands urge me toward a chipped Formica defendant’s table, where, to make matters
worse, I’m forced to stand beside the short guy with the cut-to-the-nubs gray hair.
Damn, I think. Then a sister in nice clothes, standing at the
worn table to our left—for the prosecution—all but shouts facts from a manila file
folder of her own. Facts like the name of the shot cop, the time he was pronounced
dead, and the address on 216th where the shooting of him happened. Facts like the
willingness of Bark to come forward as an eyewitness, like the cop’s and Gabe’s names
as well as their mailing addresses, so now there’s no question that, yes, there are
two homicide charges against me, one for Gabe’s death, the other for the most recent
shooting of a member of the NYPD.
And now the judge says, “Mr. Sharp, I understand you had concerns about whether Mr.
Gerelli is the attorney appointed to you. And I want to commend your caution in that
regard. But foremost I want to assure you that he, the man just to your left, is indeed
Mr. Gerelli and your appointed and astute legal counsel, one and the same.”
Great, I think.
“Do you understand me, Mr. Sharp?” the judge asks. Behind him, dusty windows reveal
branches of a tree reaching between buildings across the street.
“Yes, Your Honor,” I say, and a twitch attacks one of Gerelli’s thumbs.
“Would you like to speak privately with counsel before you plead?” the judge asks.
“No, sir,” I say to the judge.
“Then how do you plead?”
“Innocent,” I say.
“In my court, it’s either guilty or not guilty, Mr. Sharp.”
“Then with apologies for that mistake, sir,” I say, “it’s not guilty.”
And I expect a buzz of whispers from the onlookers behind me,
but then I get it that no one who stands accused where I do is guilty—unless guilt
can be traded for freedom.
“Well,” the judge says. “Mr. Sharp is indeed a flight risk. There can be no arguing
that. So he gets a remand to Correction in lieu of bail. In a few minutes we’ll tell
Mr. Gerelli the date of your pretrial conference, okay, Mr. Sharp?”
I nod, and the judge nods back, but more as a signal, it seems, to the guards behind
me, who guide me by my elbows back to the navy blue door, which, on this side, says,
CORRECTION FACILITY
—
DISPLAY SHIELD AT ALL TI
MES
. Another guard throws a dead bolt and opens the door, and I’m headed back through
the bright hallways, then up the elevator to the holding-cell floor, where, now, at
least ten guys stand in the large pen.
And when I’m entering my smaller pen, someone behind me shouts, “I need privacy with
Sharp,” and a guard yanks me to a halt, then into a small, mostly yellow room, where
I stand alone until Gerelli walks in and closes the door.
“Why the
hell
did you say that,” he says.
“What,” I say.
“‘
Mistake’!
It’s on the
record
, man! You admitted to making a
mistake
! You—”
“I was just referring—”
“No, you did
not
refer! You merely said, without an explicit referent, the phrase ‘that
mistake
’! Which could therefore be argued, down the line by
prosecutors
, to refer to one of the murder charges! And you might also care to know, Mr. Sharp,
that you are up against
life
, and as such my
client
, so therefore, all of my boundless respect for your natural intelligence and homespun
ambition notwithstanding, I am, for your own legal and personal darned good,
asking that you and I, right now, stipulate that I, your attorney, know what the
fuck
I’m doing!”
Wow, I think.
“Fine,” I say.
And we stand in what’s now relative peace.
“You need me, man,” Gerelli finally says, as if using this peace to persuade me.
“Fine,” I say.
“So I have two questions for you,” he says, and he gestures to have us sit, which
we do. “One is what happened? Two is what do you want besides freedom?”
He opens his briefcase, takes out a pen and a legal pad, aims the pen down to write.
He says, “I trust you understand that your friend Bark has signed an affidavit saying
you shot the cop.”
“And his bullshit is still on the news?”
Gerelli leans across the table. “At the top of every hour.”
I swallow hard, imagining Jasir watching Bark’s televised lies.
“To answer your second question first?” I say. “I want to see three people. My son,
his mother, and a buddy of mine named James.”
“Full names and addresses?” Gerelli asks.
I answer this as best I can—James, I figure, is still at his grandma’s in Queens,
and I don’t know Madalynn and Jasir’s address in Bed-Stuy—and I watch Gerelli write,
and he asks, “Why this James guy?”
“Been tight with me and Bark since high school.”
“So we need his testimony.” He underlines James’s name twice. “And, of course, I’ll
try to contact your wife—”
“She’s not my wife.”
“What, divorced?”
“No. Just . . . you know, never married.”
“But this Jasir is your son.”
“Yes.”
“And you’ve supported him over the years.”
“Not exactly.”
“Not always?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“Not ever.”
And here my face radiates. And Gerelli leans back and slaps his thighs with both hands,
then inhales and holds his breath.
“Well, this is all a
problem
,” he finally says. “Because—Mr. Sharp—not being your spouse, this Madalynn could
be asked to testify
against
you. So I would need to watch what you say to her, and—”
“I don’t care,” I say.
“But Mr. Sharp—”
“She loves me, man.”
Gerelli frowns cynically. “And let me guess. You also love her.”
I nod, and he snares me with a pout that commands:
Don’t be a goddamned fool.
“I know what you’re thinking,” I tell Gerelli. “But I don’t care. You asked what I
wanted, and I told you. And you gave me your best advice, which I took. And now I’m
asking you again: I want to see Madalynn and Jasir.”
“Mr. Sharp, the existence of Jasir, a son unsupported by you, will
not
win over a jury.”
“You don’t get it,” I say. “Jasir is why I’m back here.”
Gerelli’s adoration of law, I sense, tries to grasp this love I’ve
finally found for Jasir. In the margin beside Jasir’s name, he jots a question mark.
“Okay then,” he says. “Tell me what happened.”
I just did,
I want to say.
Madalynn and Jasir happened.
But instead I talk about the phone call Bark got from the woman up near Poughkeepsie,
and I make it clear that Bark got this call only two days ago, and that I’d never
met this woman before that call and haven’t seen her or contacted her since. Gerelli
writes in a scrawl I doubt he’ll be able to read, and I tell about how, two mornings
ago, Bark drove James and me upstate, how we three teamed up to take the drum. How
I helped carry it but barely. How we left it on that straightaway upstate, then how
we went to Belmont Park and won the trifecta. How then Bark wanted his gun and James
said no and I stuck with Bark out of friendship. How the gun always scared me and
Bark double-parked to get beer and I got in the driver’s seat. How the cop baited
Bark and Bark fired.
“And that’s the truth?” Gerelli says.
I nod and say, “I wish it weren’t.”
“And then what?” Gerelli asks, and I tell about how I drove to Passaic and agreed
to ditch Bark’s gun someplace remote. How Bark and I agreed to park his truck and
take separate buses, how I saw the breaking news in the minimart and abandoned the
westbound bus for the woods. How I then hoped to find someplace where no human being
lived—but then met Gabe and couldn’t stop thinking about Madalynn and Jasir.
“So you headed back for love,” Gerelli says with a straight face.
“Yes,” I say, and I inhale until my throat catches. Am I nervous about Madalynn and
Jasir, or is Gabe’s death finally really hitting me? I vow not to break down—not around
Gerelli.
Gerelli stands and grabs his pen and legal pad and says, “So I’ll
get right to contacting these people.” He packs his briefcase and his cell phone rings.
He cusses but answers, says “Right”
distinctly, folds the phone closed, pockets it, holds his briefcase at his side, turns
to face me.
“Is that it?” he asks.
“You tell me.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” he says, and all I can do is picture Gabe last I saw him, watching
me, with Bark’s gun just beside me, as I fought the bass in that sparkling stream.
And not long after Gerelli leaves, I’m walked back by guards to my holding cell. The
big pen now holds close to twenty. And it holds more still as evening gives way to
night, brothers always the majority. At some point, a guard brings me a bologna and
cheese sandwich, which I eat while wishing I’d tried that liverwurst. I’m given a
pint carton of milk I sip slowly. My answer to catcalls at me from the large pen is
to remain seated on the concrete floor faced away from them. I sit like this for hours,
shoulder blades numb against the gray bars, trying to think good thoughts, like about
the years I taught myself basketball, but any good thought ends quickly.
Then I hear, “Douglas.” A guard has opened the pen, and he and three others, without
another word, take me out and past the big pen, which is now packed, then down flights
of stairs and outdoors.
We cross a sidewalk crammed with media. I wonder if Gerelli knew I’d be relocated
this soon, and if so, why he didn’t mention it. I still keep emotion from my face,
or think I do until I’m headed toward a white van whose windows are caged over with
painted-white steel grids, ten huge Carolina blue letters on the side facing me that
together spell one word:
CORRECTION