“Tooth …”
“What tooth? The fuck.”
“No, no. Look. It’s out.” Owney kept his tongue away from the gap in his teeth so they could see it.
Owney put both hands to his throat and made one long choking sound.
“Jesus!” Viglietta had his eyes wide with fear. He put a hand on Owney’s shoulder. “Easy, kid.” Then he said to the other two cops, “What should I do?”
“Put your hand down his throat.”
“No. I’ll get a doctor.”
The sergeant shrieked. “No doctor. Get him something.”
Owney made a gagging sound. He felt the Italian cop leave. The fat patrolman leaned over Owney and said, “Put your head down. You’ll be all right.”
Owney made a better choking sound.
“Hurry the fuck up!” the sergeant yelled.
There was the sound of running feet and now Viglietta dropped to the floor and held out a piece of white bread covered with thick peanut butter.
“It’s good, it’s good. Coats the throat. Push the tooth right down. It won’t be blockin’. Here, here. Eat it.”
Viglietta’s eyes were excited and pleading as he held out the bread. Owney gasped. Olive drained out of the cop’s face. Owney took his right hand from his throat—the left was at his side, the bridge clenched in the fist—and grabbed the peanut butter sandwich.
The three cops, heads bunched together in fear, watched as Owney put the peanut butter to his mouth. Then took it out and slapped it, peanut butter first, into the fat cop’s face.
Outside at the big high desk, the lieutenant heard all the screaming as he was pushing Owney’s belongings, the cigarette lighter and house keys, into a manila envelope. Then the lieutenant started to close the wallet so he could shove this in, too. The lieutenant’s face became rigid as he saw the card in the wallet with the picture of the medal on it.
Right away, when the door to the courtroom was pushed open, Owney saw his wife sitting in the bright light with a blue bankbook in her hands.
He ducked back into the space between the detention pens and the door. “I’m not going out there,” he said.
“It’ll only take a couple of seconds,” said the lieutenant from the police station of the night before. “It’s a shame somebody didn’t tell her that she didn’t have to bring anything. There’s no bail needed for this thing.”
“Whoever got her here can send her back,” Owney said. He sat on a wooden chair and folded his arms. The lieutenant walked to the back of the detention pens and went through a door.
Outside in the courtroom, Dolores sat with the bankbook in her hands and her eyes nervously following the courtroom workers, who kept walking about with stacks of papers. A judge walked to the bench for a moment, but then turned around and went back through a door.
“These places take time,” a woman with red hair, thirty maybe, said to Dolores. The woman’s eyes were tired from a sleepless night. It was nine A.M.
“How do you know when your case gets called?” Dolores asked.
“You don’t,” the woman said. “You just wait.”
“You been here before?” Dolores asked.
The red-haired woman nodded. “Too many times.”
“Who for?”
“Husband. That’s what you call him when he’s home, anyway, a husband.” She spread her hands. “What can you do?”
“Get out,” Dolores said.
The woman laughed. “With two kids? Can’t go nowhere with two kids. You’re stuck till they grow up. I’m stuck in Broad Channel until my kids grow up. I guess everybody is.”
“I don’t think so,” Dolores said.
“Who are you here for?” the woman asked.
“Right now, I’m not sure,” Dolores said.
Inside, there were ten people in the detention pen, eight of them black. The lieutenant brightened when a door at the end of the pen opened and somebody called to him. The lieutenant made a motion and Owney followed him down to the door, out into a hallway, and into a small office.
“Have a seat, boys, I’ll be right with you,” the judge said. His hand trembled and his neck bobbed as he swallowed water. He shook his head and ran more water. “Oh, boy.” He came over from the sink and sat at the desk in his small, bare office. He had steel-gray hair that was slicked straight back, and a square, blue jaw. His eyes brimmed with morning tears. Painful sunlight came through dusty Venetian blinds. “Do me a favor, fella, close those blinds, will you like a good fella?” He nodded at the lieutenant, who got up and closed the blinds.
“A little more. Yeah. Now we’re all right.” The judge looked at Owney. “How’s the eye?”
Owney took the towel from it. The ice cubes had melted and he had been holding the towel against the eye out of habit. When they had taken him to the hospital on Queens Boulevard, St. John’s Hospital, the night nurse in the emergency room had given them a couple of towels filled with ice, which for the next three hours the lieutenant kept getting refilled at the diner across the street from the courthouse. They sat there waiting for the morning, and the court to open.
“It’s all right, eh?” the judge said.
When Owney remained silent, the judge cleared his throat and spread the court papers in front of him.
“Now you understand how this came about,” the judge said.
“No,” Owney said. “Maybe this fuck can tell you.” He nodded at the lieutenant.
“No, I mean why we’re here in this room. You call this a robing room. Now we want to do something for you. You’re just back from a war, you’ve been honored by the President of the United States. But we can’t just ignore the matter. We’re stuck. You see, once it’s entered in the book.”
“This fuck told me that twenty times last night.” He glared at the lieutenant, who accepted the language as part of his overhead.
The judge ignored Owney’s anger. “Let me tell you why you’re here, son. We don’t want anybody out there gawking at you. You know, the press. And, Lord, in Queens the word of mouth alone could kill you. Guy sees you in here today, he goes over to the Pastrami King and he tells a waiter who he saw and then he goes home to a gin mill in Rego Park and he says, ‘Geez, who do you think I saw in court today?’ You know how it is. So what we’re going to do is dispose of this case perfectly legal. Right now, we’re waiting for the assistant district attorney and your lawyer. Well, here’s one of them, anyway. Hello, fella. Sit down, fella.”
A young man with dark eyebrows bunched over dull eyes sat down.
“This is the assistant district attorney. Now we’re waiting for your lawyer. Where the hell is he, anyway? I called him twice.”
“I don’t want a lawyer,” Owney said.
The judge smiled. “If there is one thing you should carry away from this disheartening experience, it is the one great rule of law: a person who acts as his own lawyer has a fool for a client. You ever hear of that?”
“Yes. But this fool isn’t going to go for five hundred dollars for a lawyer.”
“Listen to what I’m telling you,” the judge said. “Forget the money.”
The judge went back to his desk and the room fell silent. A few minutes later, an immense belly came into the room. On top of the belly was a nose the size of a trombone. Large brown eyes rolled around. The man wore a raincoat that was buttoned to the collar. Owney could see pajama sleeves inside the raincoat. Brown leather slippers on bare feet made a flopping sound. The hair was uncombed. Black sleep shades were pushed up onto the hair.
“Hello, hello, good morning,” the man said in a voice twice as loud as needed. “I was asleep, I was asleep. You woke me, I was asleep.”
“At least you could have dressed yourself,” the judge said.
“You told me it was going to be in your robing room so I came here disrobed. I came here disrobed.”
The judge said to Owney, “Before you get worried, just trust in me that this man will protect your interest. This is Philip McNiff and he’
s one of the best lawyers we have on Queens Boulevard.”
The belly put his hand out. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Philip McNiff and I’m really a very good lawyer, but I usually don’t get up in the daytime. I’ve gotten very lazy lately.” The outsized brown eyes stopped rolling and now they were fixed intently on Owney. “I like to sleep all day. I’m so overweight that I need a lot of sleep. I’m overweight because, you see, my wife left me. She walked right out on me. My wife. She left me! And it’s horrible. I live right across the street. I eat ice cream all night long. I wouldn’t eat so much ice cream if I could get any sex. So anyway, I’m terribly pleased to meet you. You’re a hero. A great hero. A hero! I’d like to be your lawyer for two reasons. One, because the judge asked me. And two, because you deserve a good lawyer for nothing. You’re a hero. After that, all I can tell you is that I need to get laid. Nobody will have me. And I don’t get any vegetables now that my wife doesn’t cook for me anymore. You know what I need? I need broccoli and a blow job.”
“Phil.”
“Excuse me. Yes, judge.”
“Maybe if you won’t talk for a moment, we can get your client out of here. It’s nine-fifteen and I have to start court at nine-thirty. You wouldn’t know about that, I realize, but others are here today,” the judge said. “All right. We’ll make this an ACD. For your information,” he said, turning to Owney, “that’s an adjournment in contemplation of dismissal.”
“Fine, your honor,” the assistant district attorney said.
“Dismissal right now. We might want to sue for false arrest,” McNiff said.
The judge smiled. “Phil …”
“Your honor, I am his lawyer!” McNiff looked at Owney. “I’m your lawyer, am I not? I realize we never even asked you. Would you care to have me keep acting on your behalf?”
“Yes,” Owney said.
“Fine, fine, I’m his lawyer, I’m his lawyer,” McNiff said. “And I want a dismissal.”
The judge shook his head. McNiff pointed at the lieutenant. “These people made such a big deal out of two lousy bags of pot that they are in here with this other charge. Resisting arrest. I mean, really. Two crummy bags of pot.”
“Wait a minute,” the judge said. “Let’s not start with this two lousy bags.” He pointed at Owney. “You’re still getting your legs back around here, son, but I sit here every day and see marijuana leading kids on to other things. Heroin, cocaine, pills. Christ, everything. Breaks your heart having to sit here and see these kids, nice kids, come from goddamn respectable homes, Christ, come in here on the worst charges of possession. These aren’t niggers I’m talking about. These are the neighbors’ children. So you know, as unpleasant as this is for you, and I imagine it’s as unpleasant a thing as ever happened to you in your life, it might save you from getting in trouble in the future with something stronger.”
“You’d be surprised,” the assistant district attorney said. “We see it. We know. These drugs are insidious.”
“Who says he had anything to do with drugs?” McNiff said.
“Didn’t he have the drugs in his possession? Didn’t he hand them to a police officer?”
“Who says they were his?” McNiff said. “This man, a bona fide national hero, saw drugs and picked them up and was trying to hand them to a policeman, who then arrested him and had him beaten up. I’d like to let a jury consider this.”
“Go home and get dressed,” the judge said. “This case is over. Morrison, we have some obligations to you. But you have some obligations to the people. You have to set an example for them. You can’t be going around like the rest of these creeps using drugs. Come on. Jesus, you’re Irish. Do what you’re supposed to do. Get up to the bar like a man and take a drink.”
“They use a lot of pot in Vietnam,” Owney said.
“Come on! Don’t tell me our kids are over there fighting for their lives, fighting for our liberty—hell!—fighting for the right to use this very courtroom every day! Don’t tell me they’re on marijuana. Keerist! That’s all the Communists want. Having our GIs on dope.”
McNiff touched Owney’s arm. “We’re holding everything up now. Thanks, judge.”
“Am I going to see you for lunch?” the judge said.
“I guess so,” McNiff said.
“Are you going to be with us?” he said to Owney.
“I don’t think so.”
“Just as well. McNiff and I get together. What am I talking about? I get in enough trouble on my own. Took the wife to Joe Abbraciamento’s for dinner last night: Then we stopped around at this affair at the Astoria Manor and I’m sitting there trying to take it easy and here’s Jimmy Musto—you know Jimmy, guy got a restaurant on Hillside Avenue—he’s sending over one drink, then two drinks. The next thing you know, I’m a blind beggar. Wife hadda drive me home. Geeeeezusss!” The judge’s laugh turned into a wet, rolling cough. He turned and headed for the sink with his mouth full of phlegm.
The lieutenant told McNiff that he would go into the courtroom and get Dolores.
“We’ll be out front,” McNiff said. He led Owney through the hall and out a door in the back of the courthouse and into a parking lot alongside the block glass windows and white brick of the detention house. In the middle of each of the windows there was a small pane of glass that was pushed open to reveal thick green bars and to allow prison sounds to rub harshly on the ears. Behind the bars now, voices called out in military cadence, “Hup … tut … thrip …”
“Muslims doing their exercises,” McNiff said. “They’re well organized. They run the prisons.”
“I wonder how many of them I know,” Owney said.
“There’s a guy up there with one leg who killed a cabbie. He lost the leg in Vietnam. Marvin Kleinberg has the case. You know what the guy said when they asked him why he shot the cabbie? He said, ‘Because he tried to fight me.’ How do you like that for an answer?”
“He told the truth,” Owney said.
“Hello, hello,” McNiff said when introduced to Dolores out in front of the courthouse. “We’ll have a drink, we’ll have a drink.”
Dolores started to say something but McNiff was already halfway across Queens Boulevard with his feet nearly coming out of his slippers. As the boulevard here is six lanes wide and the traffic was morning heavy, walking with McNiff was hazardous.
When McNiff came into the bar across Queens Boulevard from the courthouse, the Part One bar, he took off his raincoat and sat at the bar in his flannel pajamas, which had a blue-striped top that came to his knees.
“I want three Manhattans,” he told the bartender. “And a beer chaser. Three Manhattans, three Manhattans. And a beer chaser. A beer chaser.”
Owney ordered a shot of Fleischmann’s and a beer. The bartender looked at Owney as he took the order, but he did not seem to notice the lumped eye.
“Nothing for me,” Dolores said, sharply. Her look was meant to wither, but they were too busy with their glasses to notice.
“Now let me tell you something about dru——Hey! I said three Manhattans, not a triple Manhattan. Three separate ones. Thanks. Now let me tell you something about drugs that even you don’t know. Incidentally, I’m quite proud of you that you didn’t throw up when he started telling you about drugs. They’re quite dumb over there, quite dumb. Anyway, what I wanted to tell you was the way society positions itself on matters. There has been information developed over the years as to what is good and what is bad. Drugs just happens to be one of the things listed as bad. Nobody knows why really. Nobody knows where they got the information from. But they have the information and it says that drugs are bad and that’s all there is to—ahhh! Thank you very much. That’s fine. Now I want the other two right behind it here on the bar. One, two, three. Very good. Now what I’m saying is that drugs are against public policy, whatever that means. Yes, whatever that means. But unfortunately it means if you do drugs you are going to be in continual trouble. Excuse me.”
Eyes rolling, he took the
first Manhattan, cherry too, in a gulp. His head came down long enough for his hand to exchange the empty glass for a full one. The eyes rolled and the second Manhattan was gone. As was the third.
McNiff tapped the final empty glass on the bar. “Bartender, bartender, remove these glasses. Remove these glasses. Anyway, to get back to drugs. I think alcoholism is more dangerous than drugs. But drugs are worse to use right now. The reason drugs are so bad is the cruel way society treats addicts. We shouldn’t allow people to use drugs because if they get in trouble on drugs we persecute them. Alcohol. If a person develops into an alcoholic he becomes a comic figure and then ultimately a tragic figure. But at no stage does society throw him into a cage and beat him up and let some big spade stick it to him. But we do that with an addict. So because we treat addicts so bad, we shouldn’t have any addicts until we learn to be nicer to them. I mean, look what they did to you. Threw you in a cage. Punched you. Punched you! A true military hero and they punched you. A national hero!”
“What about the cop that hit me? Does he get away with a thing like that? You wouldn’t even let me—”
“I stopped you, I stopped you because then they would have remembered to make us sign a waiver saying we wouldn’t sue. They shouldn’t have given the dismissal. They’re supposed to get a waiver first. They forgot. We kept our mouths shut. Now we can sue. The city won’t have the balls to go to court against you. The city’ll settle. Call me about that tomorrow. Tomorrow night. Not daytime. I can’t get up: I wish I could get laid.”
When McNiff stopped talking, Dolores said to Owney, “I hated it there.”
“What could I do?” Owney asked. “I’ll explain it to you home.”
“I don’t want to hear about it. All I know is that I hated it.”
“I’ll explain it home,” Owney said. ‘
“I’m explaining to you now that I’m better than this,” she said.
Dolores stood up. “I’m going out to get the car,” she said. “If you’re not there when I pull around, I’m just gonna keep going.”
McNiff’s eyes followed her as she walked out the door.
“She’s mad,” he said.
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