by Jason Starr
‘Sorry, that card didn’t go through,’ she said. ‘Got another one?’
‘What?’ I said, acting surprised to hide my shame, the way everyone did after a card was rejected. ‘That’s impossible. I just used that card.’
This wasn’t true, I quickly realized. I actually hadn’t used the card since yesterday.
‘It doesn’t work,’ the woman said. ‘Got another one or not?’
There was a long line, about twenty people, behind me.
From my wallet, I took out a Visa card and swiped it.
‘Nope,’ the woman said.
‘What the hell?’ I said. ‘You sure something isn’t wrong with your machine?’
‘The machine’s fine.’
I tried my AmEx and it got rejected as well.
‘This is ridiculous,’ I said.
‘People are waiting, sir.’
I got off the line and went outside. I could understand one card not working, but three? I already had an idea what was going on, but I didn’t want to believe it was true.
I called Chase, got through to the fraud department.
‘Hey,’ I said to the man who’d answered, ‘I think there may be a problem with my account.’
I gave him my information, and then he said, ‘You currently have a zero balance.’
My first thought: Detective Barasco behind this. But that didn’t make sense.
Then I thought: Maria.
That made more sense, but would she actually shut me out of the accounts?
When I approached my apartment and saw the news trucks and swarm of reporters, I knew ‘the best’ was still far, far away.
There were maybe ten reporters and when they saw me approaching they rushed toward me, shouting questions about Sophie. It was too overwhelming to process all of it, but I picked up words here and there – ’person of interest,’ ‘murder,’ ‘suspect.’
‘Excuse me, I have to get by,’ I said. ‘Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me.’
Finally, a made it into the lobby, but a couple of reporters were still trailing me.
One, a blond guy, said, ‘Mr Harper, when did you meet Sophie Ward?’
The other reporter, a dark-haired woman, said, ‘How long were you two shacking up?’
I turned and shouted at them. ‘I’m not answering any questions so just leave me the fuck alone, okay?!’
My voice had boomed, louder than I’d intended. I realized I sounded, well, crazy.
After a pause, the woman asked, ‘Do you have anger management issues, Mr Harper?’
Shaking my head, muttering to myself, I went toward the elevators when Robert, the doorman, cut me off. ‘Sorry, man,’ he said. ‘I’m not supposed to let you up there.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘What’re you talking about?’
‘The locksmith came by before, changed your locks.’
‘What?’ I waited a beat. ‘Are you serious?’
‘I thought it was weird, I mean, on a Sunday morning and all, so I checked with your wife. She said I can’t let you up there anymore.’
‘That’s crazy,’ I said. ‘It’s my apartment.’
‘She said the lease is in her name, which my boss said is true, so I don’t know what to tell you, man. Maybe you can call her, I dunno, try to work it out.’
‘You can’t stop me from going up there.’
‘Don’t make me call the cops, man,’ Robert said. ‘I’m just looking to have an easy, quiet Sunday morning. I don’t want trouble.’
The reporters had been eavesdropping and were busy scribbling notes.
‘Hey, both of you, go away,’ I said, as if directing a couple of overeager dogs. ‘I said, away!’
I went over toward the mailbox area for a little privacy and called the apartment. The call went right to voicemail. I tried Maria’s cell – also voicemail – but this time I left a message.
‘Look, I don’t know what’s going on here,’ I said, ‘but this isn’t the way to handle this. We have a kid, you have to be mature, and I didn’t do anything wrong. I don’t know what you think happened, but I didn’t fuck that woman –’ I saw the reporters eavesdropping again and I said, ‘Go away. Now.’ The reporters moved back into the main part of the lobby. Then back into the phone I said, ‘Call me back.’
I ended the call and texted her: Left you VM Please, we need to talk
I waited, staring at the phone, but she wasn’t texting back.
I texted: You can’t keep me away from Jonah This is wrong You can’t do this!
After a couple of minutes, she still didn’t respond, and I said, ‘Fuck this,’ and I got on an elevator.
Robert, who was with the reporters by his desk, saw me and rushed over and said, ‘Hey, yo, you can’t do that,’ as the doors shut.
On the twelfth floor, I went to our apartment, saw a new lock so didn’t even bother with my key. I pushed the bell a few times and banged on the door a couple of times.
‘Come on, Maria, open up! Can you just open up?’ I banged again. ‘Please, I just want to talk to you, okay? I’m not mad. I just want to have a mature conversation okay?’
I heard Jonah: ‘Why won’t you let Daddy in?’
I couldn’t make out Maria’s response.
‘Maria, dammit,’ I said. ‘Open the door – open the fucking door right now.’
I knew I was losing control. Not being allowed to talk to my son, hearing how frightened he was, had pushed me too far.
Leading with my shoulder, I rammed the door. In the movies it looked so easy to break down a door; in real life, it seemed impossible. The door was fine, but my shoulder was bruised. This didn’t stop me from trying again, though… and again. I don’t know how many times I tried, or what exactly I was screaming, or how much time went by. At some point neighbors came out of their apartments, including Linda, an older woman who lived next door. She was trying to calm me down, get me to stop, but when I get focused on something, I get carried away, and nothing can make me stop.
‘Hey calm, down! I said calm down!’
Well, nothing except maybe an NYPD cop. There were two cops actually – the bigger one cuffed me.
Only when the cops were pushing me along the hallway and I saw Linda’s cowering expression, and noticed how she was backing away into her apartment as I approached, did reality kick back in and I knew what a huge mistake I’d just made.
13
I’m riding in the back of a squad car.
I repeated this statement to myself in my head, trying to process it, but the repetition didn’t make it feel any more real. What was I doing here? How did I get here? The sequence of events that had gotten me here, to maybe the lowest point of my life, unspooled in my brain, like a movie on super fast-forward, but this made everything seem more confusing, not less. I felt sorry for myself, yeah; mainly, I felt bad for Jonah. He’d always been much closer to me than to Maria; he was probably so frightened and confused right now. I was his dad, but I was also his confidant, his hero, his best friend. I needed to talk to him, assure him that I was fine and that everything was going to be okay.
‘I didn’t do anything wrong,’ I said. ‘I was just trying to get into my apartment. How’s that a crime?’
I’d made similar pleas to the cops in the elevator and as they led me out of the building, but they were still pretending not to hear me.
‘I need to talk to my son,’ I said. ‘I’m allowed one call, right? I’ll make the call on my own cell, just let me make the call. Come on. Please.’
‘You can make a couple of calls when you get to the station,’ the burly, Hispanic officer who was sitting shotgun said.
‘Do you guys have kids?’ I asked. ‘If you do, put yourself in my place, have some empathy, for fuck’s sake. My son’s home right now, he’s scared. I was just trying to see my son, to let him know I’m okay.’
Nothing.
‘Hey!’ I shouted, wondering if maybe the problem was they couldn’t hear me through the glass. ‘I’m talking to you! Hello?’
The Hispanic cop said, ‘Hey, asshole, shut the fuck up back there.’
I knew blowing up again wouldn’t get me anywhere. I reminded myself that I hadn’t done anything wrong – nothing major anyway. This was New York City, not Thailand; there was a limit to how long they could hold me. In a couple of hours, tops, I’d be released. By then, hopefully, Maria would be more reasonable. Right now she was upset, felt betrayed, but when she found out that I hadn’t actually done anything, she wouldn’t lock me out forever.
They took me to the 19th Precinct on 67th Street. I’d been there once before, years ago, after Maria and I were robbed and had to file a report.
This time was a little different.
The cops led me to the back of the precinct. I asked again if I could make my call now, but the cops ignored me.
Whatever, I figured.
This was probably routine. They’d hold me for a while, then let me go. Hopefully, by then Maria would be more reasonable, let me into the apartment to see Jonah, and we could either work on repairing our marriage, or agree to split amicably.
Then an officer led me to a room marked: Booking. A female officer, a muscular blond, sat at a desk.
‘Whoa, what’s going on?’ I asked the officer who’d led me to the room.
He didn’t answer.
I asked the same question to the blond cop.
‘You’re being booked,’ she said.
‘For what?’ I said. ‘I didn’t do anything.’
‘Resisting arrest.’
‘Oh, come on, that’s ridiculous. I was just trying to go home and see my son. How is that a crime?’
The woman nodded in faux sympathy, as if she’d heard similar protests from every person she booked and that there was nothing I could do to sway her or to change the situation. Still, driven by nervous energy and, well, terror, I continued to beg her to ‘just listen,’ and to please let me go home to my son.
Didn’t work, of course.
I had to check all of my personal items – including my wallet, cell phone, and useless apartment keys.
They gave me a receipt.
After I was fingerprinted, the officer who’d led me into the booking room led me out.
‘What happens now?’ I asked.
He didn’t answer, just led me toward a holding cell where another detainee – a scruffy guy – was seated, hunched over, with his head hanging down over his spread apart legs.
Then, to my right toward the main part of the precinct, I saw a familiar face: Detective Barasco.
He was looking at me with his usual smirk. I didn’t know what the smirk meant, if it was just his natural expression or if he reserved it just for me, but one thing was very clear:
I needed to lawyer up.
* * *
Barasco tried to question me, but I refused to answer any of his questions without an attorney present. Just making the demand boosted my morale, gave me the illusion at least that I was taking control of this situation, that I wasn’t a victim.
‘Fine,’ Barasco said, ‘you can hire a lawyer. We’ll just detain you until he gets here.’
I knew the threat of detainment was to try to coerce me to talk without a lawyer, but I was more concerned about the word ‘hire.’ I couldn’t afford a lawyer – at least one that cost a lot of money.
‘I’m not sure which lawyer I’m going to use,’ I said.
‘Oh, you have a stable of lawyers, huh, O.J.?’ That sarcastic smirk again.
‘Seriously,’ I said. ‘Do you have a list or something?’
‘It’s not like choosing a doctor out of a benefits book,’ Barasco said. ‘If you don’t know a lawyer already, you can get a friend or family member to recommend one. Or, of course, there’s the Legal Aid option.’
I knew that Legal Aid was free. With no access to my bank account or credit cards, ‘free’ sounded like the right price.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll use Legal Aid.’
‘As you wish,’ Barasco said, seeming almost gleeful about it. ‘But it’s Sunday, so you’re not gonna reach anybody till tomorrow.’
‘So you’ll release me till then?’
‘You wish,’ Barasco said.
‘Okay, so what happens to me then?’
‘You wait for your lawyer,’ he said.
‘Here?’
‘No, they’re not set up for that here. They’ll process you into the system at Central Booking.’
‘Come on, that’s crazy,’ I said. ‘I’m not a criminal.’
‘You wanted a lawyer,’ he said. ‘Sounds like you think you’re a criminal to me.’
I felt he was manipulating me, maybe because he was manipulating me. He was trying to get me to talk without a lawyer, forgoing my right, figuring I’d rather do anything, even incriminate myself for murder, than spend a night in prison.
‘No worries,’ I said. ‘Take me wherever you want to take me.’
* * *
They took me downtown to Central Booking in Chinatown.
After a brief medical exam, I was taken to a large holding cell to wait with about ten other prisoners. Despite the humiliation, it wouldn’t have been so bad if this one scruffy addict-looking guy didn’t smell like feces. I tried to stay as far away from him as possible, which in an approximately two hundred square foot cell wasn’t easy. At some point, a man brought me lunch – well, an American cheese sandwich on semi-stale white bread. Even if I had an appetite I wouldn’t have eaten it.
I expected to get harassed, like what happened on movies and TV shows. But everyone was exhausted and left me alone. Like we were all on a long overnight bus ride.
I couldn’t sleep, though.
Another thing Hollywood gets wrong – you get three calls, not one.
In the morning, I called home and got our voicemail. I tried Maria’s cell and the call also went to voicemail, but this time I didn’t hang up. I knew she had to be home, getting Jonah ready for school, and was screening my calls.
I said, ‘Hey, it’s me. Just want to let you both know how much I love you. Maria, this is silly. I’m sorry for all the pain I’ve put you through. We have to talk and work this out. It just requires a conversation – a calm conversation.’
With my third call, I contacted work and, as I expected, got Andrew Wolf’s voicemail.
Going for the calmest, most relaxed voice I could muster, I said, ‘Hey Andrew, it’s Jack. I have a, um, personal issue I have to deal with today. Family-related. Anyway, the open houses Sunday went great, some hot prospects for sure, and I’ll see you bright and early tomorrow. Okey-dokey, talk to you soon. Bye-bye.’
Bye-bye? Okay, maybe I’d overdone it a bit, but I was glad I’d taken care of that. Now I just had to get the hell out of here.
* * *
At noon, my lawyer still hadn’t arrived. I was exhausted and starving – the ‘food’ was as inedible as you can imagine – and I was ready to agree to talk to Barasco without an attorney if it meant getting out of here soon.
Then, finally, at around three o’clock, a young, slim black guy in a suit approached the guard. The guy looked like he was twenty-five, tops.
As the guy spoke to the guard, I thought, This can’t possibly be my lawyer. Then the guard opened the cell to let him in and said to the guy, ‘Here he is.’
‘Marcus Freemont, Legal Aid, how you doing?’
He extended his hand and we shook.
The guard escorted Freemont and me to a private room where we could talk. The room had a desk and two chairs, nothing else.
‘Are you sure you’re here to see me?’ I asked.
‘You’re Jack Harper, right?’
‘Right.’
‘Then I’m not here to see you, I’m here to represent you. Sorry, man, I had a shit load of cases downtown… would you like to sit?’
I sat on a chair and he sat across from me, in the chair behind the desk.
Opening his briefcase and taking out an iPad, he said, ‘Sorry I was a little late. Got caught up in court downtown and got up here as fast as I could.’
‘When can I get out of here?’ I asked.
‘Soon as possible,’ he said. ‘How’s that for a lawyerly answer?’
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘I think you just did.’
He smiled; I didn’t.
‘How old are you?’ I asked.
He looked up from the iPad. ‘Thirty-three, why?’
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You look younger.’
‘I get that a lot,’ he said. ‘Good genes. My mother’s Jamaican. She looks like she could be my sister.’
Nice guy, but I wasn’t exactly in the mood to chat.
‘Have you handled similar cases?’
‘Depends which case you’re talking about.’
‘What I’m in here for,’ I said, ‘resisting arrest.’
‘Yeah, I can help you with that,’ he said. ‘I don’t think they’ll hold you too long. The murder case is a whole other thing.’
‘I didn’t kill her, I just discovered the body.’
‘As I was saying. If you get arrested for murder, or need a lawyer to rep you during questioning, I highly suggest you don’t use me for that. I’m just being up front with you. I have too many cases on my desk to put in that kind of work, and I don’t think you need a half-assed lawyer, do you? If you need names, I can email you a list of lawyers in New York. They’re not cheap, but they’re good at what they do. In the meantime, if I were you I’d keep my mouth shut. Have you been interrogated?’
‘The other night, yes, and a little today.’
He shook his head. ‘That was probably a mistake.’
‘I thought I was a witness, not a suspect,’ I said.
‘I hear you,’ Freemont said, ‘just don’t make the same mistake twice.’ He looked down again at his iPad. ‘Let’s talk about what happened yesterday.’