by Jason Starr
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
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 voice mail. I tried Maria’s cell and the call also went to voice mail, 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 voice mail.
Going for the calmest, most re
laxed 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.”
As I told him what happened at my building, he took notes. Or at least I thought he was taking notes. For all I knew he was tweeting.
But he must’ve been paying attention because when I finished explaining, he said, “I understand police officers weren’t injured and no one else was injured. Is that correct?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Well, it sounds like the resisting arrest charge is just some trumped-up bullshit,” he said. “Since you have no priors, I’m confident I can get the charge dropped.”
He must’ve seen my concerned expression.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I think you need to know something.”
“Not the words I like to hear, but I’d rather hear it from you than them.”
I paused, trying to figure out how I wanted to explain this.
Went with: “It has to do with my arrest record.”
“So you have an arrest record.”
“Technically … yes.”
“Technically yes sounds like yes.”
“It wasn’t a major thing,” I said. “I used to drink and there was an incident … a long time ago.”
“How long?”
“Eight years ago. Seven actually. I was at a club downtown and I got into a fight. Well, not a fight—an altercation. I didn’t start the fight, I was just there and I had to defend myself.”
“You hit somebody?”
“Pushed—the manager of the club. Well, that’s what they told me anyway. I blacked out and didn’t even remember everything that happened. There were, well, conflicting accounts. Most people said it was total self-defense. He fell, but he was okay. Minor concussion, few stitches. Anyway, I was arrested.”
“Charged with …”
“Assault. But my lawyer at the time got the charge reduced, and I didn’t have to do any time. Like I said, I was drunk. Not that that’s an excuse but … Look, what happened yesterday is ridiculous. I wasn’t resisting arrest, I was trying to go home.”
“I hear you, I’m just saying the prior complicates things. I’m sure they know about it, or will know about it. On the plus side, seven or eight years is a long time ago. Assuming what you told me is true and the previous charge was reduced, I don’t think they’ll hold you for resisting arrest, especially when it sounds like it’s a trumped-up charge. But you’ll get a court date, and it’ll be hard to get them to drop the charge unless they want to drop it. There’s a chance we’ll have to fight it.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I’ll do whatever you say. I just want to get out of here and see my son.”
He was tapping on the iPad, probably taking notes. Then he said, “You mentioned you used to drink.”
“That’s correct.”
“Are you—”
“In A.A., yes.”
“Whatever you do, do not mention that under any circumstances. It can only work against you.”
I knew exactly where he was coming from. A friend in A.A. had once told me that if you’re an alcoholic and you get pulled over for speeding the worst thing you could do is mention you’re in the program, as it only makes the cops assume you’ve been drinking again or at least are some kind of degenerate.
“My lips are sealed,” I said.
After Freemont told me to “let me do the talking,” he called the guard over, and then the guard led us into a plain room with a desk and a few chairs, similar to the one I’d been in the other night at the downtown precinct.
“The detective’s a prick,” I said.
“Barasco?” Freemont said. “Never met him before.”
“You’ll see,” I said. “First, he’ll make us wait here. Power trip.”
As if on cue, Barasco entered, smiling.
Freemont gave me a look: Guess not.
“Talking about me?” Barasco asked.
I was about to say something, but Freemont put his hand on my arm to shut me up.
“I’m Mr. Harper’s attorney.”
“I know who you are,” Barasco said, smiling.
Barasco remained standing, as there were no more chairs. He was holding a folder.
“If something funny’s going on, please fill me in,” Freemont said. “I could use a laugh.”
“Well, just yesterday your client told me that only guilty people need lawyers, and today, lo and behold, he gets one.” Then he said to me with a smirk, “By the way, you look a little scruffy. What, forgot to shave this morning?”
&nb
sp; Again, Freemont’s hand had to silence me.
“My client is simply exercising his right to counsel.”
“Yeah, exercising his right and getting into more trouble on a daily basis.”
“I didn’t—” This time I cut myself off.
“Given that my client has never served time for any prior crime, and that no one was injured today, in particular no police officer, we request that the current charge be dropped immediately.”
With the smirk that I was officially sick of, Barasco said, “Look what I just got my hands on.”
He plopped the folder onto the table.
“What is it?” I asked.
“Read for yourself.”
I opened the folder. There was a stack of maybe twenty pages. I glanced at the first one:
FUGITIVE_RED: Hey Rock God! Do you like music? I’m lonely tonight Wanna chat?
NYCRockGod2: Hey, sorry had to register Yes, love music
FUGITIVE_RED: Hiii
FUGITIVE_RED: nice to hear from you :) :)
NYCRockGod2 : Hey! I know you probably get this a lot, but this is my first time doing this :) :)
Furious, I said to Barasco, “Where did this come from?”
“What is it?” Freemont was confused.
“Your client’s cheating records,” Barasco said smugly.
“I never cheated,” I said.
“You can’t deny it,” Barasco said. “You’re holding the evidence.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Where did you get this?”
“From Discreet Hookups,” Barasco said. “What you have there is a complete record of every interaction you had with, what was her online name? Oh, yeah, Fugitive Red.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said, leafing through the pages. Yeah, it was all there.
“Part I found most interesting and, let’s face it, most relevant, is when you talk about how you wanted to tie her up and hit her.”
“You’re taking that out of context,” I said.
“The vic in this case was beaten and tied up,” Barasco said. “I think that’s as much in context as you can get.”
“We need a chance to review this before we can discuss it any further,” Freemont said.