Bob Goes to Jail

by Rob Sedgwick

  Or not. You could talk about It and blame It and tell the other regulars who liked you so much how everything was Its fault and not yours, that It was the asshole, how they’re all assholes out there, everywhere except here, Brats, which was maybe six hundred square feet, where we could all dream that we were right about things, our opinions mattered, that we belonged somewhere and deserved to be heard and taken seriously.

  Jordan swooped in, ordered a double, and proceeded to tell us his thrilling tale of how he bilked the DEA.

  The DA told him he had to give up someone or go to jail for the next twenty years.

  “I had to cooperate, I had no choice.” He was shaking and looked greasily moist. Oily. He banged some of the whiskey and continued, “The only person I could lead them to was Seth, but he’s been fronting me anything I need, so how could I do that and live with myself, am I right?” He shot the rest and banged it on the bar for another.

  “So what happened?” Moss asked as he solemnly poured another double.

  “I told Seth to meet me on the Great Lawn. But what he didn’t know was that I was in the bathroom at Tavern on the Green, being wired by the DEA assholes so I could record the conversation, ask entrapment questions, turn over the tapes to the DEA, and, by doing that, fulfill my cooperation agreement with the district attorney so I could get the reduced sentence package that my good friend Rob over here has gotten, possibly two to three years, instead of five to forty. I felt so fucked, because in addition to being the only person who came through for me, Seth’s been the only person in this whole thing who’s been intelligent.”

  “I know,” I chimed in. “A phantom.”

  “Yeah. A regular Fernando Rey. They got nothing on him. And he’s so calm under all that pressure.”

  “Yeah, but the heroin probably helps that,” said Moss, grinning, the swizzle stick sticking out of his mouth triumphant.

  “You know you look like FDR and his cigarette holder with that swizzle stick sticking out of your mouth like that?”

  “Hey, pal, I’m standing pretty over here, unlike some people at this establishment.”

  Jordan tipped his hand in a gesture of touché and went on.

  “Anyway, I just started vomiting in the can, I couldn’t help it, but it was too late to back out; I’d made the deal. It was so wrong, so vile, but what choice did I have? If I didn’t go through with it, I’d go away the next twenty years easy.”

  “You must have felt terrible,” I said genuinely.

  “Rob, I felt so guilty I wanted to kill myself, but by then I was too weak to do anything except what I was told. I lifted my head from the can, sweat all over my forehead, my temples, my balls, my entire body drenched and all strapped in. But my mind went Marine and it was time. The DEA agents said good luck, and I felt this scalding branding iron curl through my intestines. I was about to be a rat. But then I put one leg in front of the other, then again and again and again, picking up speed, becoming this marching metronome. I pushed open the big wooden door of the restaurant, and on my way to the Great Lawn I gritted my teeth, flexed my asshole, and said to myself, ‘Don’t think, just go. Complete the task.’

  “Seth was in the middle of the lawn waiting for me, and suddenly I had to just shit myself or I was going to explode. I became this gusher of sweat. I saw a Port-o-San by this little construction site, clenched everything for all I was worth, motioned to Seth I was having an emergency, hobbled over to the shitter—disgusting—stuck my ass in the hole. It was bliss.

  “Then I had this minute or so of Buddha-esque solitude and contemplation before I had to do this horrible, ignoble thing. And I sat. I thought. I paused. I wiped. I thought some more. Wiped again. Then I realized for the first time how chilled I was, my sweat so clammy in this cold, damp November morning, like it was clammy in my soul, and if it’s clammy in your soul, how in the hell do you get un-clammy? Then I thought, No fucking way! I’m not doing it! I was resolute as hell. I became this Jewish Churchill. On the shitter. Fuck them. My fingers were trembling. I unbuttoned my shirt, it was soaked, and started to rip off hunks of duct tape. I might as well have been ripping off my skin. I was in this deep fever, but within that fever I was calm. I stripped off the rest of the duct tape, yanked the cassette deck and microphone from my body, then I pushed the Port-o-San door open several inches, stuck an arm out close to the ground, swiped the mic and tape deck back and forth along the soaking morning grass in tiny little strokes hoping not to be seen and please god, making the equipment useless. I reset myself. I strapped the duct tape and equipment back onto my body.

  “And then I had this funny thought before I walked out: I entered the shitter one kind of a guy and was about to walk out another.

  “I went out to meet Seth and I felt goofy. Like I won lotto. I suddenly had this light airy feeling, because for a couple of seconds I could look my life in the eye and say I did the right thing. But of course I couldn’t say anything to Seth about it.”

  “Jesus, that is so heavy! So Seth…”

  “Just walked away. He knew something was up. We bullshitted for a little bit and then he was gone.”

  “And the tapes?” asked Moss.

  “I went back to Tavern, the DEA played them, and there was nothing on them but garbled sound. Me being so sopping wet and with the tape deck strapped to my skin, they figured my sweat fucked up the machine. But the key here is I fulfilled my obligation to the government, am no longer subject to the mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, Seth’s off the hook, and I do believe in spooks—I do, I do, I do—but this round goes to me! Jordan!”

  Banging his drink, he hustled into the bathroom.

  “Robbie, you know this guy is shooting dope in there,” Moss said.

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Robbie, I gotta tell you, I love you, and if you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re gonna wind up like him, which is gonna be dead.”

  “I’m not shooting dope.”

  “You’re drinking enough to put Seagram’s at the top of NASDAQ. Look, take a load off and soil the chick at the soap if she likes you so much, but you’re not going away tomorrow—or for a while, even if you do go away—so why don’t you take it easy on the booze for a bit?”

  “You mean less?”

  “Or maybe not at all. Take a vacation from it. Might do you some good.”

  Jordan wafted out of the bathroom in a happy ether fog, smiling a lot.

  “That’s a hell of a story, champ. Want me to freshen that for ya gratis?”

  “Yaa thanks…hmmmm.”

  “Man, I cannot believe what you guys have been through, but honestly, that those bozos bought that it was just an apparatus malfunction and that you didn’t have anything to do with it? That has to be the dumbest stroke of luck I’ve ever heard in my life! Who’s in charge over there? Little Bo Peep?”

  “I know,” said Jordan, his eyes half closed, his head balancing as if on a swivel, “they’re pretty eshstupid.”

  Jordan was really weaving now, so I got him up to put him into a cab. We opened the door to fresh air.

  You couldn’t help but experience some degree of hope when you left that bar.

  We got to the corner. A minute or so later, an unmarked car with shitty suspension bounced up. Out popped our best friends, Andy Barton and Ralph Scott.

  “Hey, guys,” Ralph said, “What’s going on? Aren’t you two not supposed to be seeing each other for a while?”

  “No, sir. He just showed up,” I said. “He was in the neighborhood and not feeling too well, so I was gonna put him in a cab.”

  “Bull-fuckin-shit. What do you think, Sedgwick, I’m stupid?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Damn fucking right, ‘No sir.’ You having a couple of cocktails, Sedgwick?”

  “Yes, sir, just a couple, a friend of mine works here and I was just stopping by to say hi.�
�

  “Yeah. We know. Moss Porter.”

  How the fuck did they know that?

  “As long as it’s nothing illegal,” Andy said, “then we’re just checking up on you. How’s the dog?”

  “He’s great, Andy, thank you so much.”

  “Listen, fucko,” Ralph told Jordan, “I don’t give a fuck that you’re seeing your stupid-ass friend here, but don’t think for a fucking second I’m letting you off the hook. You got lucky today, real lucky. My eyes are on you, got that? All the time, my eyes watch and see you. I know…”

  Then they were gone.

  Jordan was shaking a lot. I poured him into a cab and got one for myself, my nerves frayed.

  —

  Neath looked fantastic today. She snarled, she bit, she hissed. She had a yen for the Bob and that suited me plenty. It sure beat do-si-do-ing with DEA agents at two in the morning outside Brats. We were in full makeup and costume but wouldn’t be taping for several hours—plenty of time to get in trouble. I knocked on her dressing room door to go over some lines.

  She opened the door, all pouty and spoiled. “What do you want?”

  “It’s a long scene, and I thought we should go over it a couple of times.”

  Her arms wanted to hit me, but her face had this vampy look of wanton lust. Perfecto. She started to claw at my head.

  “I just want to hurt you.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I dooooo.”

  “You don’t want to hurt me.”

  “I want to scratch you and bite you.” She started to bite me.

  “You don’t want to bite me.”

  “Oh. Yes. I. Dooooo.”

  “No, you don’t. You don’t want to bite me or scratch me. You want to kiss me.”

  “No, I—yes. I dooooo.”

  Fucking dynamite. I felt like a porn star. She was ridiculously gorgeous, every guy’s dream. With the makeup and the clothes and the fact that we were at this dumb soap opera being naughty, the whole thing was so titillating I could have plowed my Doric column through a brick wall.

  She was kissing me and biting my neck like a vampire who’d been dry for months, pancake and hair product rubbing all over our faces, comingling in our mouths, her body as sleek and firm as a Preakness racehorse. Thank God we were away from the main hallway, because my crotch was now a pup tent. Taking her hand, I led her to our own private desert island, the boiler room, where I’d jacked off on more than one occasion.

  “Is this where you bring all your victims?” Vintage Fay Wray.

  Our passion for each other was ferocious, grabbing, pulling, drinking. I was thanking God that he put me on this dumbass show and made this encounter possible. She squatted down, unzipped, and proceeded to gobble and slobber, much like a St. Bernard. Such enthusiasm.

  After I exploded, I couldn’t help thinking, She’s ’Neath me.

  —

  “We want to eradicate marijuana from the fabric of American society,” declared Brad Fine.

  Seth sat with his arms crossed, a sphinx.

  “Oh c’mon, you have got to be kidding me,” said his attorney Barbara.

  Bristling, Fine began to issue threats.

  Seth watched the interplay between attorney and prosecutor with the detachment of a high-level Yogi:

  This siduation is ridiculous. Whad’s to be gained from the combativeness? I’ll just remain silent and, therefore, mysteerious. Like the Sphinx in ancient Egypt. Heh, heh, heh. There’s a wriddle for you. Jus’ remain silent and drive people crazy. Silence drives everybody crazy. This whole siduation iz so ridiculous, it’s almost like when Rob does that dumb Yul Brynuh impression ad the gym. An Egyptian jackass. Oh God. So many times id’s funny by now. That prosocuta must spend so much energy being contrary, it must really wear on his psyche. Id must cause cancer. In him and many othahs.

  This whole thing iz so weird, brother cooperating against brother, like the Civil War. Wholly uncivil. If this eva blows over, I should get out of heah for a while. Maybe Brazil? I need fresh air, a calmer, more relaxed environment. ‘Eradicate marijuana?’ The federal government iz so dumb. The right hand doesn’t know whad the left hand iz doing. Spit is flying out of the prosocuta’s mouth he’s so mad. Whad a sad silly little man. People’s tensions are remarkable to me.

  “So you’re not going to assist your government?” Fine squeaked, surreptitiously wiping the spittle off his face.

  “You’ve got nothing on him,” Barbara argued. “He’s off the hook and we are done, and you can—”

  “—but Jordan Bellick is doing things as we speak that will further enhance his cooperation agreement. Wouldn’t you want to follow suit? Because—”

  “Don’t answer that,” Barbara told Seth.

  “It’s arrite.”

  “Because you do surmise that if you don’t cooperate with us and we find incriminating evidence after the fact, things could break very badly for you?” Fine said this blandly, but his subtext was lethal.

  “Yes…I sirmize.”

  —

  “Oh, Rob, I’m so sorry, but you’re such a Turk, man. I mean what were you thinking, for God’s sake? Didn’t Hank tell you it was foolish and stupid? I mean, my goodness—and pot of all things, for God’s sake, oh, deary me.”

  Linus’s beautiful tiny cottage on his grandparents’ estate overlooked the tranquil, flowing Hudson. We were having drinks and extraordinary appetizers of Linus’s own concoction. A perch in paradise, worn summer linens decorating the table. We were shaded by towering pines and cedars. He looked unwell, but in keeping with secrets past, we’ve mastered the art of not addressing what’s in front of us.

  “Linus, what are these? They’re amazing!”

  “Just some puff pastry with a little melted brie and fresh herbs from the garden. Easy. So how much time are you looking at here?”

  “Could be about a year.”

  He coughed horribly. It was extended and violent. After composing himself he said, “Oh, Rob. Well, Hank should be coming in a couple of minutes, and he can tell you all about prison. Ha hee. But your muscles look pretty big, and goodness knows you’re going to need ’em in there. When’s the trial?”

  “I’m being sentenced in a couple of months.”

  “No trial? Don’t you have to—?”

  “I cooperated with the government.”

  “Oh dear. You mean you snitched?” More coughing.

  “Yes.”

  “Oh, Rob. Oh, my dear boy, do you know what they do to snitches in prison? Oh my goodness. Your poor mother must be having hysterics.”

  “She’s none too pleased, I’ll tell you that.”

  “Rob, dear boy, let me make you another drink. I find that when I have a problem, I have a drink, and soon that problem goes away.”

  Linus walked unsteadily toward the cottage in bare feet.

  As I sat looking at the river and wondering about Linus, Hank walked up to the house. “Hey. Heard you got popped. Sorry. How you doing?”

  “Okay. It’s so beautiful out here.”

  “Yeah, buggy. Linus told me a little about what happened. Must have really sucked. Whaddaya lookin’ at?”

  “I think about a year.”

  “That’s it?”

  “I kind of had to cut a deal.”

  “You flipped?”

  “I kinda had to, otherwise it could’ve been a while, and I figured I wasn’t huge in this—”

  “So you’re goin’ ta Fed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Don’t squirm so much. You’re lucky. Doin’ state ain’t no cakewalk. War every day.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Fuck, yeah. And I gotta tell ya, honestly, guys don’t take lightly ta, excuse me for sayin’, snitches inside. Sometimes when you’re sleeping, they take a shit bucket a
nd dump it on ya.”

  “No shit? I mean, you’re fucking kidding me!”

  “And that’s just for starters. But where you’re goin’, it’s a minimum-security situation, so everyone wants ta mind their p’s and q’s. But don’t be surprised if ya end up eatin’ a shit sandwich, so ta speak.”

  This was not the easy, fun interplay I was seeking when I came to this exclusive enclave for respite. I moved in close to Hank and asked quietly, even though we were outside and completely alone. “Is Linus okay? Is he sick?”

  Hank’s face went from tough hombre to somber marble. He watched the flow of the mighty Hudson for what seemed like minutes. The day was hazy, tropical. Bugs buzzing. He sat back in the heavy metal porch chair. The high-pitched frequency of the mosquitoes buzzing around us would normally be a nuisance, but given Hank’s mood I hardly noticed them. When he looked at me, there was this deep familial tug between us, a powerful undertow. Then he said,

  “He’s gonna die. Soon. It’s esophageal cancer, it’s stage four, and that’s all she wrote. He don’t want no one ta’ know. He puts on a good front, but he’s just getting worse and worse. He drinks alla time. He’s got no boyfriend; he’s not real close to a lot of people. In our family, he’s a very weird duck. I love him like crazy, but he’s very alone and lonely all the time. He hates himself.”

  I instantly experienced this falling sensation, tipping over backward through several decades of time with Linus phantoms in different incarnations, suddenly whirling around my psyche like a blizzard of cocktails: drinking Becks beer from a half-yard goblet; snorting coke from a small mirror with a country-themed picture on it; Linus strutting around, martini in hand with pinky sticking out, in a violently deep purple velvet shirt with silver buttons that Hank made for him while he was in prison and which Linus ended up giving to me; showing off his alabaster-white skin with its royal blue veins that he always insisted marked him as highest of aristocracy. All this accompanied by the imaginary soundtrack of Lee Dorsey singing “Candy Yam.”