Burning Garbo

by Robert Eversz

  Other deputies take control of you in the subbasement. If you’re one of the dangerous ones, they shackle you. I was one of the dangerous ones. The steps I took were short and careful. They measure the chains at your ankles by the height of the steps to the transportation van. You can take one step at a time. No more. They loaded me into the van first. I sat at the end of the bench running along the side of the van. Seven prisoners were loaded in after me. All were shackled. All were dangerous. The deputies slammed and bolted the rear doors. The prisoner compartment contained no windows. I felt the van lurch into gear and move forward. The trip offered no escape, no stimulus different from that of my cell. Nobody said anything. We had been there before. We knew there was nothing to say until the events of the day determined our fates.

  After uncounted minutes, a change in angle shifted us toward the front of the van, and by that I knew we ramped down the garage below the Los Angeles County Courthouse. I felt the centrifugal force of a sweeping turn, the change of gears to reverse, a pump of brake to freeze the wheels. The rear doors cracked open. A new set of deputies flanked the corridor, indistinguishable from the previous set. They loaded and unloaded prisoners eight hours a day. We looked indistinguishable to them, too. We shuffled down a concrete corridor to a holding tank in the courthouse basement. We waited. One by one, we were called from the tank. The deputies removed our shackles and we stepped out of our overalls. We rode a secure elevator from the basement, passed through a back corridor, and walked, upright and in our own clothes, into a courtroom. We could see friends and family then, watching us from the gallery. We might smile at each other, if feeling hopeful. It was as close to freedom as many of us would come for a long time.

  Belinsky stood and greeted me like a friend when the deputy escorted me into the courtroom. The gesture was a theatrical one, meant to humanize me in the eyes of the judge. More eloquently than words, the gesture said I was not a killer, a thief, or a thug. He led me to the table for defense counsel, arm wrapped protectively over my shoulder. “Somebody pulled the tablecloth from beneath the prosecutor’s neatly laid table,” he said. His chin pointed at a navy-blue-suited woman who stood at the back of the courtroom going face-to-face with a burly and balding sheriff deputy. “Right now I suspect she’s counting the china, trying to decide if she has enough dishes left to host the party.”

  He squeezed my hand. The prosecutor was striding down the aisle. When Belinsky greeted her by name she flashed her teeth in what looked to be a compromise between a smile and snarl. She wanted to talk to him for a moment, she said. Did he mind stepping over to the prosecutor’s table while she checked her case file? It looked like business as usual to me. Belinsky liked to hide his intentions behind the folksy manner of a cracker-barrel philosopher, one of those country-porch sitters who can talk anybody into thinking left is right and right is upside-down. It was an act. He had degrees from UC Berkeley and Bolt, the requisite Mercedes, and a mansion in Hancock Park. Juries adored him. Sometimes, he just plain confused me.

  I glanced at the gallery. The four rows behind the railing were packed shoulder to shoulder with friends and relatives of the inmates to be arraigned that morning. Arraignments do not run by precise schedule, and those attending in support of an inmate arrive early and stay until the case is called. The process is brisk, with no more than fifteen minutes spent on each case. None of the relatives or friends in the gallery was mine. I gave a nod to a reporter from the Times. A consummate professional, he stared through me. Frank sat in the second row with a green-haired man I recognized as a rival freelance photographer at Scandal Times. It had taken Frank less than twenty-four hours to replace me. They took alternate turns making notations on a sheet of paper between them. Frank noticed that I watched and hoisted the paper above his head. They were playing hangman, the word game where failed guesses draw gallows and victim. The victim was a stick figure with a camera around her neck. Frank smiled at me. She was fully hung.

  The bailiff called out the case number above the background clatter of shifting chairs and conversation, and the judge whacked her gavel, once, not bothering to lift her eyes from the surface of the bench, where she marked something with flicks of a gold-plated pen. Belinsky slid behind the table for defense counsel and shook his head, annoyed by something. The judge lifted her gaze from the notes on her desk and asked the prosecutor to proceed. She didn’t look at me. I was one of fifteen inmates to be marched before her bench that morning. She needed to glance through the evidence documenting the charge against me, ask how I planned to plead, and listen to the prosecutor and defense counsel bicker the question of bail. As bail was out of the question in my case, her job was straightforward. She didn’t need to look at me. She asked the attorney for the prosecution to begin.

  The prosecutor asked to approach the bench. Belinsky made a big show of tightening his bolo tie and slicking down his hair as he skirted the defense table to join her before the bench. The prosecutor straightened the back of her skirt with a practiced hand, the type of person concerned that her panty line might show from behind as she spoke to the judge. Belinsky listened, delivered a succinctly angry point, listened again, then said something that made the judge laugh. Even the prosecutor smiled a little. In the gallery behind me, other inmates’ relatives and friends whispered among themselves and shuffled back and forth from the bathrooms. Unless you’re directly concerned with the outcome, arraignments are a bore.

  The prosecutor stuffed a file into an accordion briefcase and announced, “The state of California declines to bring charges against the defendant based on the evidence presented.”

  The judge whacked her gavel and ordered that the defendant be released. The defendant. Me. I grabbed Belinsky’s arm, asked, “What’s going on here?”

  “That’s the last magic trick your Detective Claymore will try for some time to come. The rabbit he pulled out of the hat turned into a skunk.”

  “The witness?”

  “He’s done what skunks do when pulled out of a hat.”

  “What happened?”

  “Three months ago your fitness-enthusiast witness was busted for selling ecstasy at a rave in Calabasas, that’s what happened.”

  “Criminals give eyewitness testimony all the time,” I said. “That’s never stopped the prosecution before.”

  “It’s difficult to build a case around the eyewitness testimony of someone who sells mind-altering drugs for a living, but something else stayed the prosecution’s hand, something related to your Detective Claymore.”

  “He was the arresting officer,” I guessed.

  He shook his head, eyebrows furrowed in a look of comic disappointment. “Someone at the rave thought it would be fun to turn a parked convertible into a bonfire. The explosion sent three kids to the emergency room.”

  “Claymore took the arson call.”

  “Not only took the call, interrogated the kid about the fire. The kid was carrying his stash, stoned out of his mind. You know the type, buys ten hits of this, ten hits of that, sells enough to make his money back, swallows the rest. He wasn’t a bad kid. A nineteen-year-old philosophy student at CSU Northridge. The kid’s lawyer got him a suspended sentence.”

  “Meaning if he got busted again he’d catch not only the new charge but the full weight of the suspended sentence.”

  “And the courts are much tougher on repeat offenders, don’t forget. You can fill in the dots from here, can’t you?”

  “Claymore rousts the kid. The kid is carrying again, and if he’s not, a bag of something mysteriously finds its way into his pocket. Claymore gives him a choice. Two pops on possession with intent to sell, that’s a ten-year fall. Or say you were hiking up Encinal Canyon last Thursday, saw a woman who matched my description carrying a gas can away from a Cadillac convertible.”

  “Is that really the way you think it happened?”

  I said I did.

  “All you ex-cons are the same. Cynical. No faith in the law.”

  “Why sho
uld we have faith in the law? Everybody I knew in prison was innocent, and yet every single one of us had been convicted.”

  I have no doubt that more than half of Belinsky’s clients were guilty not only as charged but of a hundred other crimes at which they hadn’t been caught. He appreciated the humor. I said, “What I don’t understand is why he thought he could get away with it.”

  “Nine times out of ten he would have. If you’ll pardon me for pointing this out, you look like the kind of person who might need a court-appointed lawyer. Detective Claymore had every expectation that you would be represented by an overworked, underresourced, and underpaid public defender who would plea-bargain you back to prison or sleep through half the proceedings. The system runs on money, pure and simple. You can’t necessarily buy yourself a verdict of not guilty, but without dedicated legal representation, you’re standing in the way of a steamroller with nothing more formidable in your hands than your own sweet ass, which you can kiss good-bye.”

  I began to thank him. He told me I wasn’t as quick as he’d given me credit for, I’d missed the point. “I’m answering your question regarding why Detective Claymore thought he could get away with it, not why, in fact, he did not. Those are two entirely different things. I didn’t do a doggone thing to help you this morning except show up for work. Sure, I bent the ear of the prosecutor and gave the judge a giggle, but I’m not the one who tracked down the witness’s arrest record. I’m not the one you should thank.”

  “Then who?”

  “Your friend Frank Adams. As a tabloid journalist he may be lower than the teats on a snake but when he puts his mind to it he’s one hell of an investigative reporter.”

  You don’t go home after court, no matter what the verdict. Guilty, innocent, or uncharged, you’re returned to the courthouse holding pen. You step back into the overalls. You wait until the morning session is finished. The deputies come for you after the last case has been heard. They don’t come to release you. If you were transported to the courthouse in shackles, you leave in shackles. The deputies treat you no differently than when you arrived, even if the judge has thrown all charges out of court, even if you’re innocent. You’re meat on the hoof, to be moved from one point to another. The inmates who came with you follow you into the van. Some have been arraigned and others tried and sentenced. The return trip to the Twin Towers is not silent. “Fifteen years!” An inmate shouts. “Can you fucking believe that? Fifteen fucking years!” The caged dome light in the prisoner compartment flickers. You can’t see anybody’s face. “That fucking bastard,” another moans again and again. She never says who.

  No link exists between the computer systems in the Los Angeles County Courthouse and the Twin Towers. The process depends on slips of paper carried by transportation deputies. The slips of paper document which prisoners have been released from the jurisdiction of the court and which have been ordered to serve time in the penitentiary, the only two ways out of the Twin Towers, other than escape and death. When the transportation van returns you to the Twin Towers, the deputies log you back into the system by scanning your identity bracelet. A deputy escorts you to your cell. You wait. If you’re lucky record of the verdict will be entered into the central database of the L.A. County Jail, and within twenty-four hours a deputy will bolt back the cell door and escort you to the Inmate Reception Center, where your keys, purse, wallet, clothes, and all other personal possessions will be returned to you, and you will be processed out. If not, the slip of paper recording your release from the jurisdiction of the courts will be misplaced or lost, and days later, sometimes weeks, the administrative error will be corrected, and they’ll release you then. Nothing you say will make a difference. It is given that every prisoner is a liar. Only time, patience, and a good lawyer can help you. I was one of the lucky ones. I had a good lawyer.

  The plastic bracelet that identified me as an inmate of the Twin Towers was clipped from my wrist eight hours after all charges were dropped. One final security door bolted open and I walked free into the night. The citizens loitering on the sidewalk beyond the release point didn’t look much different from the inmates I’d just left. That they looked alike made sense. Some were family. Others were friends into the same things that got those inside arrested. Some were predators: pimps and dealers ready to welcome the released back onto the ride to nowhere. Some had been inside minutes before, newly released inmates with no one to greet them and nowhere to go. These stood uncertainly by the curb, afraid that the entire course of their lives hinged on whether they veered left or right and knowing that choice was most likely between a bad end and a worse one. One of those waiting by the curb was big and black. His happiness distinguished him from the others. He pranced on the sidewalk, tongue rolling from a broad, toothless smile. I called to him and he charged forward, standing on his hind legs at the last to see me better. I let the Rott lick my face and though I haven’t shed tears in sorrow for five long years I nearly cried then for joy.

  Ben nodded once, his sunglassed expression inscrutable. I said, “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

  “I’m retired. Got nothing else to do. They feed you well enough in there?”

  “They fed me. If I didn’t eat, it’s my own fault.”

  “Get in the car, you’ll find a little something.”

  I opened the sack on the front seat to a hamburger from In-N-Out. The Rott nestled against my legs, eyes expectant.

  “Don’t give him much. He already ate plenty.” Ben cased his sunglasses and started the car. Wearing sunglasses on the street at night was one thing, while driving another. “Arlanda flew back to Arizona late this afternoon. Otherwise, she’d have been here.”

  “Time to get back to her kids?” I bit into the hamburger to conceal my disappointment. I’d wanted to see her. The Rott nudged my arm. I tore off a chunk of meat and fed it to him.

  “Angela’s funeral is tomorrow afternoon. Sorry. Didn’t get that right. Her memorial service. People don’t have funerals these days. Arlanda wants you to come.”

  “I’m not sure I belong there.”

  “Arlanda is. She offered to pay your ticket, you want to fly.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think she wouldn’t offer if she didn’t mean it. I don’t think she understands how complicated it is for you to travel, though.”

  “I wouldn’t want to go without the dog. Maybe I can drive out. But I need to talk to my parole officer first, get permission. It’s one of the conditions of my parole. I can’t cross the state line.”

  “I know where she is right now, you want to drop by.”

  “You mean Terry Graves?”

  “That’s the name, all right.”

  “How come you know where my parole officer is?”

  “I know how the system works.”

  I guessed that meant he wanted me to go to the funeral. His opinion shouldn’t have meant anything. He was an ex-cop. I was an ex-con. Cats and dogs. But it did.

  A mid-rise around the corner from Inglewood City Hall housed the Region III parole office. It was an ugly building, smoked-glass windows winking from a concrete-and-stucco facade, but it didn’t stick out because the neighboring buildings were just as ugly. The intersection of two avenues a few numbers down hummed with the last of rush-hour traffic. I stepped out of the Blazer and looked up. A passenger jet sliced across the sky ahead of the sound of its engines, descending to Los Angeles International Airport five miles to the west. The parole office had been the first stop after my release from prison. That’s one of the conditions of parole. You have to see your parole officer within three days of release. After the first visit, she comes to your place of residence or work. I hadn’t been back since my first visit. The building hadn’t looked so ugly to me then; but on that first day an abandoned lot festooned with bits of torn paper and plastic had looked like a field of wildflowers.

  Terry Graves appeared behind the swinging glass at the entrance. She carried a leather satchel the size of
a Pony Express bag strapped over her shoulder. Ben had called from his mobile phone to warn her we were coming.

  “You’re working late. I hope it’s not just because of me,” I said.

  She let the door swing shut behind her and stepped toward the street, heels clicking on concrete. “I work late every night.” She flapped an envelope between thumb and forefinger, stopped at the curb, and pivoted. “Every time one of my charges gets punched back to prison they send me two more in her place.”

  I took the envelope, peeked at the seal of the state of California on the release form inside, said, “You don’t like your job, get a different one.”

  “Tough to go back to a regular job after the excitement of working with junkies, whores, and killers.”

  “Hey, I represent that remark.”

  She smiled. “That’s an old joke.”

  “Sure, but you laughed anyway.”

  “My job, it’s a little short on humor. I’m a cheap laugh.”

  “Did you think I did it?”

  “You mean set the fire?”

  I nodded.

  Her eyes flitted away. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”

  “It does to me.”

  “No, I didn’t thjnk you did it. Claymore was an incompetent investigator. The charge was bullshit.” Her eyes turned on me, hard and unforgiving. “But do I think you’re capable of violating the terms of your parole? Yes. Are you still capable of committing a criminal act as bad or worse than the ones that got you imprisoned in the first place? In my judgment, yes. Yes and yes. Most of my charges, they’re whores and drug addicts. They’re victims. Some people call prostitution and drug abuse victimless crimes. Bullshit. The victims of prostitution are the whores themselves, just as junkies are the true victims of drug abuse. But not you. You’re not a victim. Maybe once you were. But not now. Most of my charges, they’re not violent to anyone except themselves. Give them a gun, they’ll blow their own brains out. But not you. Put you in the wrong situation and give you a gun, you’ll shoot somebody.”