The Lightning Rule

by Brett Ellen Block

  “Kid’s on the first tier. I’ll have somebody take you. Mind yourself, Detective. Most of the inmates know they’ll get hosed if they throw piss at ’cha, but they’ll spit if they think they’ll get away with it.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  Another guard came to escort Emmett from the reception area through a set of iron sliding doors into the jail. The pungent odor of four hundred sweaty men was a slap to the senses. A cacophony of shouting, talking, and off-key singing crowded Emmett’s ears. The cells were stacked three stories high, connected by narrow gangways and surrounded by warehouse-size windows embedded with chicken wire. Sunlight struggled to penetrate the dingy glass.

  “Best stick close,” warned the guard. “If they try an’ touch you, lemme handle it, okay?” He was skinny, his shoulders stooped, the opposite of intimidating.

  “Okay,” Emmett said.

  The guard led him up a metal staircase. Paint was molting off the railings and walls in scabby flakes. Since the gangway wouldn’t accommodate two astride, Emmett held a tight pace behind him. The noise level dropped at the sound of their footsteps. The men in the cells were waiting to see who would go by. Some lay on their bunks while others were right at the bars, arms hanging through. Many pulled their hands inside as the guard approached. One, however, timed it so he could snag Emmett’s sleeve. Emmett kept walking, yet the prisoner held on, reeling him backward. The instant the guard noticed, he spun on his heel and smashed his baton across the prisoner’s outstretched wrist. The man recoiled with a yelp.

  “See,” the guard said, holstering the baton. “They’re sneaky.”

  Afterward, the prisoners pushed to the rear of their cells when Emmett and the guard passed.

  “Your guy’s on the end. Can’t let you inside with him, but I’ll give you some privacy. Wave when you’re done.” The guard ambled to the other end of the gangway, lightly strumming his baton as he went.

  In the last cell on the tier sat a black boy. He was perched on the bottom bunk, his feet hanging over the edge of the bed, too short to reach the ground. He could have passed for twelve. The collar of his T-shirt was torn. Somebody had grabbed him and pulled too hard to make a point. Emmett could guess who.

  “Freddie Guthrie?”

  “Who’s askin’?”

  “Are you all right?”

  “What’s it to you?” Freddie fired back. His sarcasm and perfected scowl confirmed him to be a teenager. He had the come-out-swinging attitude of a kid who had been picked on because of his size, just as Mrs. Webster described.

  “You a cop. I can smell your kind comin’ a mile away.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t be in jail, would you?”

  “Whatever, man.”

  “Look, I’m not with those other detectives who arrested you, Freddie.”

  “You all the same to me.”

  “I’m here about your friend, Ambrose Webster.”

  Freddie’s eyes flashed, a moment of weakness, then his defenses rearmed. “What about him?”

  “When was the last time you saw Ambrose?”

  “Dunno.”

  “Was it last night?”

  “Can’t remember.”

  “Yesterday afternoon?”

  “Not sure.”

  “That morning?”

  “Maybe. My memory’s real fuzzy,” he said dryly, covering for Ambrose in case he was in trouble. “I ain’t talking to you, cop. So beat it.”

  “He’s dead, Freddie. Ambrose is dead.”

  Confusion softened Freddie’s face. He finally looked his age. “Nutuh. This is some kinda trick. You lyin’ to get me to say stuff.”

  “I’m not lying. And I’m not here about stolen cars. My name’s Martin Emmett. I’m a Homicide detective. I need you to tell me where Ambrose was from yesterday morning on.”

  The reality of his friend’s death descended on Freddie as a hammer would an anvil, stunning him into a daze. He pushed himself in the corner of the cell farthest from Emmett and began to cry.

  Emmett was at a loss. He had been unable to bestow any comfort on his own brother that day outside their mother’s hospital room, and he had nothing to offer the boy before him now. Emmett didn’t know how to console Freddie or his brother or even himself. That was one of his reasons for abandoning the priesthood, and it was why he stayed in Robbery and never sought out a slot in Homicide. People rarely shed tears over stolen property. Their possessions were inanimate, usually replaceable. Murder was all about the irreplaceable.

  “Tell me how,” Freddie said, regaining his composure. Emmett hesitated, but the kid was persistent, playing brave. “Tell me.”

  “His throat was cut. His body was found in the Warren Street subway tunnel this morning.”

  The facts dissolved Freddie’s courage. He wiped new tears from his cheeks. “’Brose wasn’t smart like regular folks. I had to protect him. He woulda protected me too, if he knew how.” Freddie had succumbed to the sadness. He sounded grown up beyond his years.

  “You can help him, Freddie, by helping me.”

  “No, I can’t, Mister. I can’t help nobody. Your cop friends, they said that when I get back from court I won’t be in this cell alone, not no more.”

  Freddie was smart enough to comprehend the implication. By rights, he should have been in Juvenile Hall, not jail. Emmett couldn’t get him transferred without tipping his hand, but the kid wouldn’t stand a chance fending off another prisoner.

  “You’re what? Sixteen? What could you have done that has two police detectives breathing down your neck?”

  All the fight had washed out of Freddie. Resigned, he told his story as if he was giving away his own ransom. “I was ditchin’ summer school, hanging around this junkyard on South Orange Avenue. I’d bring ’Brose with me sometimes. Show him the cars. He liked that. Some’d be smashed up, missing windshields and wheels and crap. But some still had good parts, so I took ’em and sold ’em to this guy who’s got a body shop on Springfield.”

  The location rang an alarm to Emmett. “This guy wouldn’t happen to be Luther Reed, would it?”

  Freddie nodded regretfully that it was. “You know him?”

  Every cop at the Fourth Precinct did. Luther Reed was to the Central Ward what Ruggiero Caligrassi was to the Mafia’s crime syndicate. Reed ran his entire operation out of a body shop in the heart of the ward, however, he didn’t deal in hubcaps and dented fenders. He was the first to bring raw heroin in from New York City. Once he got it to Newark, he would cut it with quinine and sell it in glassine packets called “decks” for five dollars a pop. Reed was careful to steer clear of the mob’s numbers traffic and pimped solely black prostitutes. There was no love lost between his crew and Caligrassi’s, but they got along by sidestepping each other’s turf.

  “Freddie, Luther Reed would knock your teeth out as soon as talk to you. Why on earth would you go to him?”

  “The parts were stolen. I couldn’t sell ’em to just anybody. Luther started giving me lists. I’d bring him what he asked for, and he’d pay me. After a while, I got this idea about switchin’ the deeds from the wrecked cars for ones he boosted. Luther told me where all the identification numbers were on the locks and chassis, and I’d file them off. He’d buy the junkers, get the pink slips, and sell ’em so the stolen cars looked legit, then we’d split the money.”

  “Luther Reed gave you half?” Emmett didn’t believe that for a second.

  “Didn’t say it was a fifty-fifty split. More like a hundred bucks for every car.”

  “That’s far from half. But it’s a hell of a lot of money and a pretty impressive scam. I bet Luther loved it.”

  “Your cop pals did too. The day they came to the body shop to shake Luther down I was in the garage sanding a serial number off the door to a Plymouth. They dragged me out. Luther said I was nobody, that I swept up the place, and they was gonna let me go, but….” Embarrassment sapped Freddie’s momentum.

  “But?”

&nb
sp; “Those cops were saying how smart Luther was to think up the scheme with the cars, givin’ him compliments. I spoke up, said it was my idea. I wasn’t gonna let him take the credit. Not for my idea.” As clever as Freddie was, he was only a kid. His mistake had adult consequences.

  “The cops said me and Luther’d go to jail if we didn’t give them some of the money we was making. Every two weeks, the one named Vass would come and collect, act nice, talk about which model cars we was pickin’, how we did it. That made me get another idea. I took my mama’s boyfriend’s tape recorder and put it under a car in the body shop. When that guy came back, makin’ like he was our friend, I hit record.”

  Suddenly Emmett understood why Freddie was incarcerated. “You told the detectives you had them on tape.”

  “You bet your ass I did. I said I was gonna get them fired. I thought that’d make them leave me and Luther alone.”

  “Cops can’t get fired, Freddie. It’s more complicated than that. The detectives would have to be brought up on formal charges, and there would have to be a hearing to determine if they should be relieved of duty.”

  “Hold up. You’re saying that if a waitress spits in your food, she gets canned, but a cop is allowed to do all kinda bad stuff and he won’t lose his job?”

  “To put a fine point on it, yes. Except the tape you recorded could be used as evidence at trial.”

  “Then I got ’um, right?”

  Emmett gestured to the cell bars. “No, they’ve got you.”

  “Man, I wasn’t doin’ nothing. I was mindin’ my business, walkin’ out my house, and they roll up in a cop car, tell me I’m loitering, and throw me in the backseat. They took me to the station, then to court, and when the judge guy asked me if I was guilty, I said, ‘Hell no.’ I been here since.”

  “They want the tape.”

  “Well, they ain’t getting’ it. It’s hidden. Somewhere safe.”

  “Tell me you didn’t give it to Luther.”

  “I said it was somewhere safe. I mighta run my mouth, but I ain’t that stupid.”

  “Listen to me, Freddie. You and I can make a deal. An even split. Fifty-fifty. You help me. I help you.”

  “You mean I help you, I help Ambrose.”

  “Exactly. Now tell me where he was yesterday morning.”

  “No way. Not until you get me outta here.”

  “You don’t understand. I won’t be able to protect you until you’ve been released.”

  “Then get me released.”

  “If you haven’t noticed, you’re in jail. I can’t just open the door and let you go.”

  “Yes, you can. You’re the police. You can do anything.”

  To Freddie, that must have seemed true. Ionello and Vass had unfairly locked him up for a bogus arrest, a flagrant abuse of power. In his eyes, the police could do anything, right or wrong, and they could get away with it.

  “Your mother can’t cover your bail?”

  “It’s not that she can’t. Her boyfriend won’t let her ’cause he’s mad at me for takin’ his tape player.”

  “I met him. He’s a real charmer.”

  “If that’s cop lingo for he’s an asshole, then yeah, he’s a real charmer. He beats on her, and me, and I’m the one who goes in front of a judge.”

  The comment tripped a wire in Emmett’s memory. “When you went before the magistrate, that was your preliminary hearing. You should have another court date set. Did anybody tell you when?”

  “Nope.” Freddie shook his head as though it was a lost cause.

  “I think I know how I can get you out of here. Don’t talk to anyone. Not the prisoners or the guards. Not until you see me again.”

  “When’ll that be?”

  Emmett glanced at his watch. “In the courtroom in an hour.”

  Freddie mimed zipping his mouth shut, and Emmett saw the child in him, a child alone in a men’s prison. Emmett signaled for the guard. Arms darted inside the cells domino-style as they went back down to reception.

  “When is Guthrie’s hearing scheduled?”

  The guard in the mesh cage was rocking in his chair, tottering on its hind legs. “I’d have to check.”

  “Do that.”

  The chair legs fell to the floor with a thud, giving voice to the guard’s aggravation. He grudgingly flicked through the pages of a clipboard. “Little prick’s on the list for today’s two-o’clock bus. But your buddies told me to lose the paperwork and put him on tomorrow’s bus instead.”

  “Change of plans. I need Guthrie in court this afternoon.”

  “Suit yourself. I was just tryin’ to give you guys a hand.” He scratched out the correction on the clipboard. “You’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t,” the guard grumbled.

  That was precisely what Emmett was thinking. He had twenty-four hours until Ionello and Vass would come looking for Freddie and for him.

  FIFTEEN

  In Newark, justice had a face and a name—it was Abraham Lincoln. A bronze statue of the former president was mounted outside the county courthouse, seated on a bench in an informal pose, like an innocent man awaiting an innocent verdict. Few who would pass him on their way up the cascade of limestone steps and through the chamfered columns into court wore expressions as placid or confident as Lincoln’s, including Emmett.

  The pomp of the post and lintel stonework on the courthouse facade faded as soon as he stepped inside. The building’s interior had the ambiance of a run-down music hall. Mold had enveloped the hand-painted wall murals, and grime blotted the color from the trio of Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass ceiling domes, the consequence of years of delayed and shoddy repairs as well as neglect. Plasterwork rotted by rain damage blistered the walls while naked cords for electrical wiring snaked along carved moldings and over swooping archways, nesting in the decorative filigree. The sixty-year-old courthouse, which served as the model for the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, had resoundingly lost its trial against the ages.

  Misdemeanors and disorderly conduct cases, such as Freddie’s trumped-up charge for loitering, fell under Part I of the municipal court system, and those hearings were held on the second floor. Court was in session when Emmett arrived. A handful of family members were in attendance. Otherwise, the benches were empty. Freddie and a string of defendants were biding time on the front row until it was their turn. Freddie was a head shorter than the rest, all of whom were black but two. There were no lawyers, only the magistrate and the court clerk, and they were whipping through the proceedings at a breakneck speed, clocking five minutes per case. In assembly-line fashion, one man after another rose to listen to the clerk read the charges against him.

  Emmett slid in behind Freddie and put a hand on his shoulder. The kid flinched.

  “Oh, it’s you.” He tried not to act too relieved. “What now?” he whispered. “I already told this guy I wasn’t guilty.”

  “If you’d said you were, you might be free.”

  “Huh?”

  “When you plead ‘not guilty’ they remand you to jail until your case comes up again. A plea of ‘guilty’ can get your case disposed on the spot.”

  “How was I supposed to know that?”

  “You weren’t. That’s what Ionello and Vass were counting on.”

  “I shoulda stuck to lyin’. I’m better at it.”

  The clerk called the name of the guy sitting beside Freddie, who stood to hear his charges. He wore a red T-shirt with a picture of a Coca-Cola bottle on it and was visibly battling a hangover. He had been arrested for urinating by a tree in Military Park.

  “Do you have counsel present?” the magistrate asked. Framed by a hefty desk and pitted wood paneling as dark as his robes, the judge looked pale and diminutive and indifferent.

  “Do I what?”

  The magistrate may as well have been speaking a foreign language.

  “Do you have an attorney, a lawyer?”

  “No.” The guy’s response fell somewhere between a statement and an
apology.

  “If you wish to proceed without counsel you must sign a formal waiver indicating that you, the defendant, have been informed of your right to counsel and that you, the defendant, have declined.”

  The clerk thrust the papers at the guy in the T-shirt before he had a chance to make sense of what the magistrate had spouted at him. The guy signed the documents without reading them.

  “Freddie, when the judge asks if you have an attorney, say yes.”

  “But I don’t. Unless you is one of them too on top ’a being a cop.”

  “You won’t really need a lawyer. We’re just getting your bail back on the table. If the judge asks you anything else, say that your attorney was called into another trial and that he advised you of your right to remain silent. Tell the judge you are exercising that right. And don’t forget to call him ‘sir.’”

  “He’s gonna believe all that?”

  “You said you were good at lying.”

  Three minutes had ticked by and the clerk was wrapping up the hearing. In a monotone, he pronounced, “The defendant is released on his own recognizance and scheduled to appear for trial on the date set forthwith.”

  The guy in the T-shirt simply stood there, not knowing what to do, as if he had accidentally bid at an auction.

  “You’re free to go,” the clerk explained. Pleasantly surprised, the guy hot-footed it out of the courtroom, afraid the judge would change his mind.

  “How’d that guy get outta here?” Freddie demanded. “I coulda got drunk off his breath and he’s free to go. He didn’t even say nothin’.”

  “People released without bail have a higher rate of showing up for their trials.”

  “Take my word for it, that guy won’t.”

  “Maybe not, but he definitely wouldn’t if he had to pay bail through a bondsman. The bond fee is nonrefundable regardless of whether the guy goes to court, so there’s no incentive.”