by Tom Wolfe
Martin said, “I tell you what. Why don’t you take your jacket off. He’ll cuff you in front instead of in back, and you can hold the jacket over your wrists, and you won’t even be able to see the fucking cuffs.”
The way he said it, it was as if the four of them were friends, all pulling together against an unkind fate. For an instant, that made Sherman feel better. He struggled out of his tweed jacket. Then he leaned forward and put his hands through the gap between the two front seats.
They were crossing a bridge…perhaps the Willis Avenue Bridge…he didn’t really know what bridge it was. All he knew was that it was a bridge, and it went across the Harlem River, away from Manhattan. Goldberg snapped the cuffs onto his wrists. Sherman sank back into the seat and looked down, and there he was, in manacles.
The rain was coming down harder. They reached the other end of the bridge. Well, here it was, the Bronx. It was like an old and decrepit part of Providence, Rhode Island. There were some massive but low buildings, grimy and moldering, and broad weary black streets running up and down slopes. Martin drove down a ramp and onto another expressway.
Sherman reached around to his right to retrieve his jacket and put it over the handcuffs. When he realized that he had to move both hands in order to pick up the coat, and when the effort caused the manacles to cut into his wrists, a flood of humiliation…and shame!…swept over him. This was himself, the very self who existed in a unique and sacrosanct and impenetrable crucible at the center of his mind, who was now in manacles…in the Bronx…Surely this was a hallucination, a nightmare, a trick of the mind, and he would pull back a translucent layer…and…The rain came down harder, the windshield wipers were sweeping back and forth in front of the two policemen.
With the handcuffs on, he couldn’t drape the jacket over his wrists. It kept balling up. So Killian helped him. There were three or four Styrofoam peanuts on the jacket. There were two more on his pant leg. He couldn’t possibly get to them with his fingers. Perhaps Killian…But what did it matter?
Up ahead, to the right…Yankee Stadium!…An anchor! Something to hold on to! He had been to Yankee Stadium! For World Series games, nothing more…Nevertheless, he had been there! It was part of a sane and decent world! It was not this…Congo!
The car went down a ramp, leaving the expressway. The road went around the base of the huge bowl of the stadium. It wasn’t forty feet away. There was a fat man with white hair wearing a New York Yankees warm-up jacket standing outside what looked like a little office door. Sherman had been to the World Series with Gordon Schoenburg, whose company had box seats for the season, and Gordon had served a picnic supper between the fifth and sixth innings from one of those wicker picnic baskets with all the compartments and stainless-steel utensils, and he had served sourdough bread and pâté and caviar to everybody, which had infuriated some drunks, who saw it from the walkway behind and started saying some very abusive things and repeating a word they heard Gordon say. The word was really, which they repeated over and over as rilly. “Oh, rilly?” they said. “Oh, rilly?” It was the next thing to calling Gordon a faggot, and Sherman always remembered that, even though no one spoke about it afterward. The abuse! The pointless hostility! The resentment! Martin and Goldberg! They were all Martins and Goldbergs.
Then Martin turned onto a very wide street, and they went underneath some elevated subway tracks and headed up a hill. There were mostly dark faces on the sidewalk, hurrying along in the rain. They all looked so dark and sodden. A lot of gray decrepit little shops, like the decaying downtowns of cities all across America, like Chicago’s, Akron’s, Allentown’s…The Daffyteria, the Snooker deli, Korn Luggage, the B. & G. Davidoff Travel & Cruise…
The windshield wipers swept aside sheets of rain. At the top of the hill there was an imposing limestone building that appeared to take up an entire block, the sort of monumental pile you see in the District of Columbia. Across the way, on the side of a low office building, was a prodigious sign reading, ANGELO COLON, U.S. CONGRESS. They went over the crest of the hill. What he saw down the slope on the other side shocked him. It was not merely decrepit and sodden but ruined, as though in some catastrophe. To the right an entire block was nothing but a great hole in the ground with cyclone fencing around it and raggedy catalpa trees sticking up here and there. At first it appeared to be a junkyard. Then he could see it was a parking lot, a vast pit for cars and trucks, apparently unpaved. Over to the left was a new building, modern in the cheap sense of the word, quite dreary-looking in the rain.
Martin stopped and waited for the traffic coming the other way, so he could turn left.
“What’s that?” Sherman asked Killian, motioning toward the building with his head.
“The Criminal Courts Building.”
“That’s where we’re going?”
Killian nodded yes and then stared straight ahead. He looked tense. Sherman could feel his heart going to town. It palpitated every now and then.
Instead of pulling up in front of the building, Martin drove down an incline to one side. There, near a mean little metal door, was a line of men and, behind them, a promiscuous huddle of people, thirty or forty of them, most of them white, all hunched over in the rain wrapped in ponchos, thermal jackets, dirty raincoats. A welfare office, thought Sherman. No, a soup kitchen. They looked like the people he had seen lined up for the soup-kitchen lunches at the church, at Madison Avenue and Seventy-first Street. But then their desperate beaten eyes all turned, as if on a command, toward the car—toward him—and all at once he was aware of the cameras.
The mob seemed to shake itself, like a huge filthy sprawling dog, and came bounding toward the car. Some of them were running, and he could see television cameras jouncing up and down.
“Jesus Christ,” Martin said to Goldberg. “Get out and get that door open or we’ll never even get him out of the fucking car.”
Goldberg jumped out. Immediately the shaggy sodden people were everywhere. Sherman could no longer see the building. He could only see the mob closing in on the car.
Killian said to Sherman, “Now listen. You don’t say anything. You don’t show any expression whatsoever. You don’t cover your face, you don’t hang your head. You don’t even know they’re there. You can’t win with these assholes, so don’t even try. Let me get out first.”
Bango!—somehow Killian swung both feet over Sherman’s knees and rolled over him, all in one motion. His elbows hit Sherman’s crossed hands and drove the handcuffs into his lower abdomen. Sherman’s tweed jacket was bunched up over his hands. There were five or six Styrofoam peanuts on the jacket, but there was nothing he could do about it. The door was open, and Killian was out of the car. Goldberg and Killian had their hands out toward him. Sherman swung his feet out. Killian, Goldberg, and Martin had created a pocket around the door with their bodies. The mob of reporters, photographers, and cameramen was on top of them. People were shouting. At first he thought it was a melee. They were trying to get him! Killian reached in under Sherman’s coat and pulled him upright by the handcuffs. Someone stuck a camera over Killian’s shoulder and into Sherman’s face. He ducked. When he looked down, he could see that five, six, seven, Christ knew how many Styrofoam peanuts were stuck to his pants legs. They were all over his coat and his pants. The rain was streaming down his forehead and his cheeks. He started to wipe his face, but then he realized he would have to raise both hands and his jacket to do it, and he didn’t want them to see his handcuffs. So the water just rolled down. He could feel it rolling down his shirt collar. Because of the handcuffs, his shoulders were slumped forward. He tried to throw his shoulders back, but all at once Goldberg yanked him forward by one elbow. He was trying to get him through the mob.
“Sherman!”
“Over here, Sherman!”
“Hey, Sherman!”
They were all yelling Sherman! His first name! He was theirs, too! The looks on their faces! Such pitiless intensity! They jammed their microphones toward him. Someone came b
arreling into Goldberg, knocking him back against Sherman. A camera appeared over Goldberg’s shoulder. Goldberg swung his elbow and forearm forward with tremendous force, and there was a thumpf, and the camera fell to the ground. Goldberg still had his other arm hooked inside Sherman’s elbow. The force of Goldberg’s punch pulled Sherman off balance. Sherman stepped to the side, and his foot landed on the leg of a man who was writhing on the ground. He was a little man with dark curly hair. Goldberg stepped on his abdomen for good measure. The man went Ooooohahhh.
“Hey, Sherman! Hey, shitface!”
Startled, Sherman looked to the side. It was a photographer. His camera covered half his face. The other side had a piece of white paper stuck on it. Toilet paper. Sherman could see the man’s lips moving. “That’s it, shitface, look right here!”
Martin was a step in front of Sherman, trying to clear a path. “Coming through! Coming through! Get outta the way!”
Killian took Sherman’s other elbow and tried to shield him from that side. But now both of his elbows were being pulled forward, and he was conscious of shambling forward, drenched, with his shoulders stooped. He couldn’t keep his head up.
“Sherman!” A woman’s voice. A microphone was in his face. “Have you ever been arrested before?”
“Hey, Sherman! How you gonna plead?”
“Sherman! Who’s the brunette?”
“Sherman! Did you mean to hit him?”
They were sticking the microphones between Killian and Martin and between Martin and Goldberg. Sherman tried to keep his head up, but one of the microphones hit him in the chin. He kept flinching. Every time he looked down, he could see the white Styrofoam peanuts on his jacket and his pants.
“Hey, Sherman! Fuckhead! How you like this cocktail party!”
Such abuse! It was coming from photographers. Anything to try to make him look their way, but—such abuse! such filth! There was nothing too vile to abuse him with! He was now…theirs! Their creature! He had been thrown to them! They could do what they wanted! He hated them—but he felt so ashamed. The rain was running into his eyes. He couldn’t do anything about it. His shirt was soaked. They were no longer moving forward as before. The little metal door was no more than twenty-five feet away. A line of men was jammed up in front of them. They weren’t reporters or photographers or cameramen. Some of them were uniformed policemen. Some of them seemed to be Latins, young men mostly. Then there were some white…derelicts…winos…but, no, they wore badges. They were policemen. They were all standing in the rain. They were soaking wet. Martin and Goldberg were now pressing up against the Latinos and the policemen, with Killian and Sherman in close behind them. Goldberg and Killian still had Sherman’s elbows. The reporters and cameramen were still coming at him from the sides and from behind.
“Sherman! Hey! Give us a statement!”
“Just one shot!”
“Hey, Sherman! Why’dja hit him?”
“…Park Avenue!…”
“…intentionally!…”
Martin turned and said to Goldberg, “Jesus Christ, they just busted that social club up on 167th. There’s twelve fucking spaced-out carambas in line waiting to get into Central Booking!”
“Beautiful,” said Goldberg.
“Look,” said Killian, “you gotta get him inside a there. Talk to Crowther, if you have to, but get him in there.”
Martin shoved his way out of the mob, and in no time he was back.
“No go,” said Martin, with an apologetic shake of the head. “He says this one’s gotta be by the book. He’s gotta wait on line.”
“This is very wrong,” said Killian.
Martin arched his eyebrows. (I know, I know, but what can I do?)
“Sherman! How about a statement!”
“Sherman! Hey, cuntface!”
“All right!” It was Killian, yelling. “You want a statement? Mr. McCoy’s not gonna make a statement. I’m his attorney, and I’m gonna make a statement.”
More pushing and jostling. The microphones and cameras now converged on Killian.
Sherman stood just behind him. Killian let go of Sherman’s elbow, but Goldberg still had the other one.
Somebody yelled, “What’s your name?”
“Thomas Killian.”
“Howdaya spell it?”
“K-I-L-L-I-A-N. Okay? This is a circus arrest! My client has been ready at all times to appear before a grand jury to confront the charges brought against him. Instead, this circus arrest has been staged in complete violation of an agreement between the district attorney and my client.”
“What was he doing in the Bronx?”
“That’s the statement, and that’s the whole statement.”
“Are you saying he’s innocent?”
“Mr. McCoy denies these charges completely, and this outrageous circus arrest shoulda never been allowed.”
The shoulders of Killian’s suit were drenched. The rain had gone through Sherman’s shirt, and he could feel the water on his skin.
“¡Mira! ¡Mira!” One of the Latins kept saying this word ¡Mira!
Sherman stood there with his shoulders drenched and bowed. He could feel the sopping jacket weighing down on his wrists. Over Killian’s shoulder he could see a thicket of microphones. He could hear the cameras whining away. The horrible fire in their faces! He wanted to die. He had never really wanted to die before, although, like many other souls, he had toyed with the feeling. Now he truly wanted God or Death to deliver him. That was how dreadful the feeling was, and that feeling was, in fact, a scalding shame.
“Sherman!”
“Fuckface!”
“¡Mira! ¡Mira!”
And then he was dead, so dead he couldn’t even die. He didn’t even possess the willpower to fall down. The reporters and cameramen and photographers—such vile abuse!—still here, not three feet away!—they were the maggots and the flies, and he was the dead beast they had found to crawl over and root into.
Killian’s so-called statement had distracted them only for a moment. Killian!—who supposedly had his connections and was going to make sure it was not an ordinary arrest! It was not an ordinary arrest. It was death. Every bit of honor, respect, dignity, that he, a creature named Sherman McCoy, might ever have possessed had been removed, just like that, and it was his dead soul that now stood here in the rain, in handcuffs, in the Bronx, outside a mean little metal door, at the end of a line of a dozen other prisoners. The maggots called him Sherman. They were right on top of him.
“Hey, Sherman!”
“How you gonna plead, Sherman!”
Sherman looked straight ahead. Killian and the two detectives, Martin and Goldberg, continued to try to shield Sherman from the maggots. A television cameraman closed in, a fat one. The camera came over his shoulder like a grenade launcher.
Goldberg wheeled toward the man and yelled, “Get that fucking thing outta my face!”
The cameraman retreated. How odd! How completely hopeless! Goldberg was now his protector. He was Goldberg’s creature, his animal. Goldberg and Martin had brought their animal in, and now they were determined to see that it was delivered.
Killian said to Martin, “This is not right. You guys gotta do something.”
Martin shrugged. Then Killian said in all seriousness, “My shoes are getting fucking ruined.”
“Mr. McCoy.”
Mr. McCoy. Sherman turned his head. A tall pale man with long blond hair was at the forefront of a pack of reporters and cameramen.
“Peter Fallow of The City Light,” said the man. He had an English accent, an accent so blimpish it was like a parody of an English accent. Was he taunting him? “I’ve rung you up several times. I’d very much like to get your side of all this.”
Sherman turned away…Fallow, his obsessive tormentor in The City Light…No compunctions at all about walking up and introducing himself…of course not…his quarry was dead…He should have hated him, and yet he couldn’t, because he loathed himself so much more. He w
as dead even to himself.
Finally, all the prisoners arrested in the raid on the social club were inside the door, and Sherman, Killian, Martin, and Goldberg were just outside. “Okay, Counselor,” Martin said to Killian, “we’ll take it from here.”
Sherman looked beseechingly at Killian. (Surely you’re coming inside with me!) Killian said, “I’ll be upstairs when they bring you up for arraignment. Don’t worry about anything. Just remember, don’t make any statements, don’t talk about the case, not even to anybody in the pens, especially not to anybody in the pens.”
In the pens! More shouting from beyond the door.
“How long will it take?” asked Sherman.
“I don’t know exactly. They got these guys ahead a you.” Then he said to Martin, “Look. Do the right thing. See if you can’t get him through fingerprinting ahead a that bunch. I mean, f’r Chrissake.”
“I’ll try,” said Martin, “but I already told you. For some reason they want this one step by step.”
“Yeah, but you owe us,” said Killian. “You owe us a lot—” He stopped. “Just do the right thing.”
All at once Goldberg was pulling Sherman in by the elbow. Martin was right behind him. Sherman turned to keep Killian in sight. Killian’s hat was so wet it looked black. His necktie and the shoulders of his suit were soaked.
“Don’t worry,” said Killian. “It’s gonna be all right.”
The way Killian said it, Sherman knew his own face must be a picture of pure despair. Then the door closed; no more Killian. Sherman was cut off from the world. He had thought he had no fear left, only despair. But he was afraid all over again. His heart began to pound. The door had closed, and he had disappeared into the world of Martin and Goldberg in the Bronx.
He was in a large low room broken up by cubicles, some of which had plate-glass windows, like the interior windows of a broadcast studio. There were no outside windows. A bright electric haze filled the room. People in uniform were moving about, but they were not all wearing the same sort of uniform. Two men with their hands manacled behind their backs stood in front of a high desk. Two young men in rags were standing beside them. One of the prisoners looked over his shoulder and saw Sherman and nudged the other, and he turned around and looked at Sherman, and they both laughed. Off to the side, Sherman could hear the cry he had heard outside, a man screaming, “¡Mira! ¡Mira!” There were some cackles and then the loud flatulent sound of someone having a bowel movement. A deep voice said, “Yaggh. Filthy.”