Primary Justice

by Dave Conifer

  “We’ll talk later,” Bismarck said to Fargo.

  “Maybe that’s not such a good idea,” Hibbing interjected, this time looking directly at Fargo. “You got him so riled up he nearly choked.”

  Bismarck waved her off. “He had nothing to do with it and you know it. I’m fine.” He took a deep breath and pulled himself to his feet. “I need to go lay down.” Before making his exit he snagged the unopened beer from the end table and disappeared.

  “I want you out of here,” she demanded when they were alone. “He’s in bad enough shape already.” She studied his face, trying to make sense of the changes since she’d seen him last. “Why’d you show up after all these years?”

  “You may as well know. I just got out of prison last night and I need a place to stay for a while. Your uncle offered.”

  “Absolutely not,” she told him. “You’re not staying here.”

  “It ain’t up to you. He invited me and I took him up on it. There’s nothing you can do about it. Except maybe you can kiss my ass.”

  “Cut it out. I’m okay,” Bismarck yelled from wherever he’d gone.

  “Do you want to kill him?” she whispered. “He’s too old to put up with your bullshit.”

  “Joanie, I’m not that douche-bag husband of yours,” Fargo said. “Get that through your head.”

  The sting of her open palm on his face stopped him from saying any more. “How dare you!” she roared. “That’s none of your goddamned business! Now get out of here before I call the police, you fucking jailbird! I know what you are and I’ll tell them all about you when they get here!”

  “Okay, okay,” he said, holding his hands up to ward her off. “I’ll go. I don’t need no trouble.”

  “You will?”

  “Look, I love your uncle, I really do. This was the only place I could go. He’s the only person on earth who’d take me in. The last thing I want to do is hurt him. Hate on me all you want, but you know that, right?”

  Instead of answering, she pulled off her wool coat and draped it over the back of her uncle’s chair. “Whatever.”

  He tried not to stare at her blouse, especially the top button, which was straining to stay closed where it rested below the first cleavage he’d seen in over a decade. “See ya’ around,” he grunted when she caught him looking. He spun on his heel and left the place before she said anything more.

  ~~~

  If he had any idea where Cresskill Street was, he’d have headed there to find the Burger King, where he could feed both his stomach and his internet habit. Not knowing where it was and not having any idea of what else to do, he trudged back to the car and started the engine. For the first time in at least eleven years, night was coming and he had no place to go. He locked the doors, closed his eyes and prayed that it wouldn’t be long before heat was blasting from the ducts on the dashboard. The last thing he thought about before falling asleep was the top button on that blouse.

  ~~~

  Kevin Morris wanted to tell his wife about it earlier, but everything was about the kids that night. It wasn’t until nine-thirty, after everybody was fed, bathed and put to bed, that he tracked her down in the dining room, where she had settled in with the latest Sybil Nelson paperback and a glass of merlot.

  “I saw somebody for the first time in years today,” he told Arria, his partner in marriage for six years. “It was really weird. He just showed up at the store. I don’t even know how he found me.”

  She looked up from her book after finishing a paragraph. “Anybody I know?”

  He pulled out a chair and sat across from her. “No, it was from before college.”

  “Oh lord,” she said. “The dark years.”

  “You remember the girl, the woman, I guess, whose kids got killed in the house fire?” he began. “Somebody shot it up and it exploded?”

  “Your old girlfriend, you mean,” she said, laying the book face down on the table. “I remember. The single mother. She was barely twenty and already had two daughters.”

  “Yeah. Except she was twenty-three. And she was married to the father until he died.”

  “And she got hurt in the fire, right?”

  “Burned bad, from head to toe.”

  “And that’s who showed up at the store?”

  He shook his head. “It was the guy they think blew the house up. He just got out of jail and he came straight to me.” He grimaced. “I’m having a problem with that. Why would he come to me? He says he didn’t do it and he needs my help to prove it. Why?”

  “I wish I’d been there,” she said. “I would have told this fool to get lost. Somehow I know you didn’t.”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “It’s like some of the people I deal with at church. If I get the feeling they’re running from something, I know they’re guilty. But Billy, see, he wasn’t running from it. He was running to it. That tells me something. And it was the first thing he did. He drove all night after getting out. He’s been thinking about this for eleven years.”

  “Kev, you cleaned yourself up and put yourself through college to get away from these kinds of people,” she lectured. “Don’t let this guy pull you back down because he feels guilty about what he did.”

  “But what if he didn’t do it?”

  “Who cares? He’s a bum. If he wasn’t guilty of that, I’m sure he was guilty of something else. At least he was off the streets all these years. God knows what else he might have done.”

  “I have a feeling I haven’t heard the last of him,” he worried aloud. “If he knows where I work, I’m sure he knows where I live.”

  “I almost hope he shows his face here,” she said with a glower. “I guarantee he’ll only do it once after I’m done with him. What I want to know is how a guy kills two children and is back in the world after only eleven years?”

  “He didn’t go to jail for that. Nobody proved he started that fire. They never got the chance, because he got busted for rape. And the weird part is that they both happened the very same night. I probably never told you that.”

  She laid her hand on top of his. “He’s a convicted rapist and a probable murderer. Are we really having this conversation, Kevin? Really?” She picked up the glass with her other hand and finished her wine. “Next time he shows up in the store you should call the police. And God help his sorry ass if he ever comes to where I live.”

  -- Chapter 3 --

  He wasn’t sure if it was the light of dawn or the knuckles rapping on the window that woke him up. When he saw a uniformed man shouting at him through the glass, he panicked. What had gone wrong, and where was he? Then he remembered he wasn’t inside anymore, and the man at the window wasn’t a prison guard with license to do whatever he fucking felt like. He glanced at the gas gauge, cut the engine, and rolled down the window.

  “You all right there, buddy?” the officer asked. According to his badge he was a Philadelphia cop.

  “Uh, sure, yeah, I’m good.”

  The officer wasn’t convinced. He stepped back far enough to inspect the backseat of the car and looked it over. “How long have you been here?”

  Fargo focused on the nametag pinned to the officer’s uniform while he thought about how to answer. Gladstone. There didn’t seem to be any reason to lie, and he couldn’t think of one anyway. “I’m staying with a friend down the block,” he explained. “I came out to my car and got locked out. I went back and banged on the door, but I guess he fell asleep. The man’s no spring chicken. So I thought I’d just wait a few minutes and go back to see if he was awake. Looks like I conked out all night.” Don’t ask for ID. Don’t ask for ID.

  “What’s your friend’s name? Where’s he live?”

  Fargo tried to relax. Maybe that would be enough. “Russ Bismarck. He lives at 263A Gillespie Street.”

  “Is this your car?”

  Fargo could feel himself starting to sweat even as he reminded himself that he’d done nothing wrong. “It belongs to Russ. Same guy.”

  “You
got any identification on you?”

  “Man,” Fargo said, his head slumping onto the steering wheel. I barely lasted a day. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Step out of the car, sir,” the officer said, his voice becoming suddenly stern. After Fargo was out the officer ordered him to place his hands on the roof, and then frisked him for weapons. “Show me your driver’s license,” he ordered.

  “Everything I have is in that envelope on the floor,” Fargo told him. “Can I grab it?” After the officer nodded he crawled in far enough to pull it out, wishing he’d poked through it when he’d had the chance. He had no idea what was in there. “Officer, I just got out of prison two days ago.” Instead of picking through the envelope he handed the entire thing over, fully expecting to be cuffed and booked.

  The policeman walked through the envelope with his fingers, settled on a pink carbon, and yanked it out. “So you did, William Fargo, so you did.” He slipped the paper back in and tossed the envelope onto the front seat. “Look, I’m not going to run you,” he said.

  “Thanks,” Fargo answered, not completely sure what he was thanking him for, since he didn’t think he’d committed a crime.

  “Let me give you some advice. A lot of cops would give you a hard time here,” he warned. “Don’t make it so easy for them. Get your documentation back in order. Start today. The paper in that envelope doesn’t tell me anything except that you’re an ex-con. You don’t want to be handing that out as your ID.”

  “Yes, sir,” Fargo said, relieved. “I will. I just got out,” he said again.

  The officer thought it over. “I guess you’re okay,” he finally conceded. “Just so you know, you’re not allowed to camp out on the streets overnight. You got two strikes on you for the rest of your life. Never forget that. As soon as anything goes wrong, they’ll look at you first. Don’t make it so easy.” He turned and headed back up Gillespie. Fargo wondered if he’d knock on the door at 263A to check out the story. “Get your driver’s license straightened out,” Gladstone called over his shoulder without looking back. “First thing you need to do.”

  ~~~

  So, how early does Russ Bismarck get out of bed on a Friday morning? He didn’t even know what time it was, but he knew it was too early to try finding out. Spooked by the cop, he slipped back into the car and turned the key so he could check the digital clock on the dashboard. Not even six o’clock. Damn. But there was simply no place to go, at least for a few more hours. He locked the doors and stretched out across the back seat. The nice old cop probably hadn’t even reached the end of Gillespie yet. Sleep came in seconds.

  ~~~

  The street noise that reached his ears when his eyes finally opened told him that the day had begun without him. I better get a watch. He started the car again, mostly to check the time. In the moments before he dropped off to sleep he’d decided that instead of running back to hide at Bismarck’s place, he would take Officer Gladstone’s advice and get busy becoming a person again. He was under orders to report to his parole case officer within five days after release anyway. That was in Trenton. He could get everything else done there, too.

  It was no accident that he drove north on Route 1 on the Pennsylvania side of the river. There was something he wanted to see. The skyline of the city came into view when he reached Morrisville, on the shore of the Delaware opposite Trenton. Up the river he could see the golden dome of the state capitol building, but that wasn’t what he was looking for. One more bend and there it was. “Trenton Makes, The World Takes.” Fargo knew all about that. Everybody who grew up in central Jersey did. That slogan had been clamped onto the bridge about seventy years earlier, when the city was home to tons of factories that made all kinds of stuff. Just about everything. Hard to believe, he thought. Nobody makes shit here anymore. One of the few things he could remember about his father was his anger about taxes. It ought to say “Jersey Makes, Trenton Takes,” he always said.

  The steel green skeleton bridge with the oversized electric letters on the side was the place where all his troubles had begun. Trouble which had cost him eleven years. This was the first time he’d laid eyes on it since. He craned back to see the Pennsylvania end of the bridge. That’s where the body was. That’s why he did his time in the Keystone State instead of in Jersey. Somehow he was disappointed at his lack of emotion. After all that had happened, it was still just a bridge.

  He took the first exit and parked at the Amtrak station so he could pull out a map and plan the day. The first thing he’d do would be to blow by the State Parole Board offices in the Judicial Complex on Jersey Street and drop in on Elizabeth Faribault, his new keeper. After that would be the Department of Motor Vehicles to renew his driver’s license. Later, if there was time, maybe he’d stop in and pick up a new Social Security card.

  Before getting back on the road he glanced up at a billboard that towered over the parking lot. A smiling man identified as Deron Sartell was shaking the hand of a hardhat-topped, flannel-wearing solid citizen who was carrying a lunch bucket. It looked local. We have black Republicans now, he thought as he checked out the gaudy lettering that was tough to read thanks to a healthy splash of stars, all red, white and blue, of course. Things really have changed. Next to Deron, greeting another legion of blue-collar worker bees, was a tall man with graying hair that peeked neatly out from under a hardhat of his own. According to the bottom of the ad, one of them was running for mayor and the other for President of the United States. Fargo had never seen or heard of either. Both men appeared to be urging the throng to hit the polls and vote in the primary election, “now only two weeks away!” Well, damn me to hell, Fargo thought. I’ll have to sit that one out. And all the rest of them, too. Maybe it’s just on TV but I’m pretty sure ex-cons ain’t allowed to vote.

  ~~~

  Finding the Judicial Building was easier than he expected. After parking the car he found himself explaining to a surly gentleman at the reception desk why he was there. Once that was done he sat on his ass for two hours before Liz Faribault plucked him from the orange plastic chair in the lobby and walked him back to her seventies-era earth tone metal desk, in the middle of an open floor jammed with bureaucracy. He didn’t expect her to be a looker, and his expectations had dwindled fast while he waited, so he was surprised that she looked damn good, especially to somebody who’d been locked up for over a decade. He took stock of her from head to toe as he trailed her through the maze. His red-headed, blue-eyed parole officer wasn’t hard on the eyes at all. She looked a lot like Reba McIntyre. She didn’t look the part of a parole officer, but he knew they wouldn’t have put her behind that desk if she hadn’t shown the toughness needed to deal with creeps. Like me.

  She gave him what sounded like the standard pep talk, full of hints, warnings and advice that he knew he wasn’t going to follow. Despite her repeated warnings that he not leave New Jersey without special permission, he’d already decided that Bismarck’s place in Philly would still be his home base, at least temporarily. She was pleased that he was planning to take care of business at DMV, but didn’t see any reason for him to go to the trouble of picking up a new social security card. “All you need is the number,” she explained. “The card is just a piece of paper, really.”

  An idea occurred to him while she was away making copies for him, and he brought it up as soon as she returned. “You probably don’t know this,” he began, “but I almost got busted for murder right when I went in for rape.”

  “I read about that in your file,” she answered.

  Annoyed that she wasn’t writing anything down, he tried to explain. “I know there are records out there for every crime. I got a shitload of them about my case when I was in jail. Do you think I could see the files from this murder case?”

  “What would you do with it?”

  “Read it. What else?”

  “But why? You weren’t even charged. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “Then why’s it in my file?”

&n
bsp; “I’m not sure I like the sound of this,” she said slowly. “And there’s not much about it in the file.”

  “Can I get it?”

  “I don’t think so. It has nothing to do with you.”

  “It’s in my file,” he repeated. “Can I see my file?”

  “I can’t show you that,” she said. “And I don’t understand why you want it. You weren’t charged.”

  “Nope, but I woulda’ been. Wasn’t no need, seeing that I was going to jail anyway. For a long time. But there’s still records of it, right?”

  She frowned in thought. “I don’t know much about how that works. I just take what they give me. Who investigated? Can you remember?”

  “It happened in Ewing, but it looked like the state police handled it. At least that’s who showed up at my door the next morning. Too bad the other cops were already there busting me for rape.”

  “The state police usually don’t handle a case like that.” She twisted to square her shoulders with him, facing him fully for the first time. “Really, Mr. Fargo, why would you want this, even if you could get it? You should be looking forward, not backwards. This is a crucial time for you.”

  “Crucial my ass,” he said. Heads turned to see who it was that was raising his voice. “They can still hit me up for murder. A murder I didn’t have nothin’ to do with. I already did time once for something I didn’t do. This time I’d like to be ready for them.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. “I’ll find somebody to talk to. Honestly, though, I just don’t think they’ll have anything for you.”

  “Thanks. It’s important,” Fargo said.

  “But the best thing you can do,” she continued, “is to start a new life. I can assure you, the state thinks you’ve paid for what you did and nobody’s looking to prosecute you for anything else.”

  “I already told you I didn’t do it.”

  “I’m leveling with you here when I tell you it’s not going to matter anymore. But I give you my word that I’ll talk to somebody. I’m actually kind of curious about what they keep around. It’s not exactly a cold case, but everybody’s way too busy to go after somebody who already served eleven years.”