by Owen Thomas
“Mind if I eat my lunch, Mr. Johns.”
“David. And no, I don’t mind.”
“I’ve got another hearing in an hour, so, like they say,” he pauses and thrusts his forefinger in the air and smiles like he is posing for the money shot in a public library promotion, “it’s now or never!”
“Yeah. Well, knock yourself out there with the lunch, Lonnie. Can I just ask you a couple of questions and then I’ll get out of your hair?”
“Oh, sure thing Mr. Johns…oop, sorry, David. Ask away.”
Lonnie opens and closes a drawer down by his knees and produces a brown, wrinkled, splotched paper sack. This is obviously not the sack’s first trip to the office. He reaches in and extracts his food like he’s performing some sort of magic act. Someone has made him a PB&J sandwich wrapped in wax paper. He pulls out an apple. And a large dill pickle. And a plastic baggie full of corn chips. And a stack of large cookies, one of which he holds out to me across the alleged desk. I shake my head.
“Will I have to testify?”
“Hold that thought Mr. Johns.” He stands so suddenly we might have been playing Pop Goes the Weasel. “I need to grab some coffee. Can I get you some?”
“No, thanks.”
“It’s good stuff.”
“No.”
His finger in the air again. “It’ll cure what ails ya.”
Really? Felony drug charges? Suspicions of moral turpitude? Bankruptcy? Disownment? Eighth Amendment sex for the rest of my life? That must be some fucking coffee, Lonnie! Because that’s what ailin’ me. That and a long list of other things. How about bad prison food? Will this wonder-bean blend take care of the bad prison food?
An hour of Lonnie under stressful circumstances has shaken me like a can of warm soda, but I find a way to settle for a simple “No, thank you.”
He races out into the hall and instinctively I reach out to make sure that papers do not flutter away in his wake. He is back in mere seconds with a steaming mug. He sits heavily and sips and unwraps his sandwich and takes care of a third of it in a single bite.
“So. Do you have to testify?” He leans back and chews and wipes his mouth with a napkin. “No, you don’t have to. Can you? Yes. Will you testify? Probably not.”
“Why not?”
“Lots of reasons. Most defendants are better off keeping their mouths zipped.”
“I didn’t keep my mouth zipped today.”
“All you said today is Not Guilty.”
“How’d I do?”
“Oh, real good, Mr. Johns.” He is sincere. He is immune to sarcasm. He thinks I am fishing for praise, as though we have come from a recital rather than an arraignment.
“So why can’t I testify?”
“I’m not saying you can’t. Ultimately, it’s your decision. But I generally recommend against it. You’re getting way ahead of things, here. We don’t even have a real trial date. I don’t even have all of Ms. Laveau’s records.”
“Have you talked to her?”
“Sure I have.”
“About me?”
“Of course.”
“How’d she sound?”
“Glenda always sounds like Glenda, I’m afraid. She’s a tough one of these.” He points to the stack of cookies. “And without the raisins.” He smiles because he is pleased to be so clever.
“Is she mad?”
“Angry or crazy?”
“I already know she’s crazy.”
“Angry at you? Oh, I don’t think so. She’s just a tough character. You know…filthy and coarse and more than a little scary.”
“That’s her.”
“So what else do we need to discuss?”
“Trial date.”
“It’ll be in the judge’s order, but that’s not the real date. We’ll waive your speedy trial rights.”
“Why?”
“Speed usually benefits the state of Ohio and not the defendant. We need time.”
“Why do we need time?”
“Because we don’t know enough. We don’t even know if we want a trial.”
“What? Why wouldn’t we want a trial?”
Lonnie takes another bite of his sandwich and chews at me a few moments before answering. He palpates his apple, committing every dimple and ridge to tactile memory. Then the smile.
“I’ll be honest with you Mr. Johns, I don’t really like what I’m seeing so far. They’ve got a case and we may need to look for a deal. I don’t like to bargain on the courthouse steps. We need some room.”
“What do you mean you don’t like what you’re seeing?”
“I mean that they’ve got a good case of possession of controlled substances, and by that I mean a lot of marijuana, some cocaine and some ecstasy, the combination of which is a felony. You don’t contest having possession of those substances in your home and your car and…”
“None of it was mine!”
Lonnie stops chewing and gives me a playfully scolding look. He is about to wag his finger at me or use the word fib or fibbing, which is not good because then I will have to fucking choke him. So I correct myself, even though I have told him all of this before at least twice.
“No, okay, like I told you, the little bit in the car was mine. Okay? But the rest…”
“I understand, Mr. Johns. I understand. I know this is upsetting. But I have to tell you how I see things. Okay? You say the cocaine and the ecstasy belonged to Brittany Kline. I hear you. And you say that the marijuana they found in your closet you were holding for a friend and that it didn’t belong to you. And I hear that too. Okay?”
He is speaking slower and more carefully than normal and this really irritates me because I feel like a child getting a lecture on how to play nice with others. I bite my tongue and loosen my tie and unbutton my collar.
“Problem is there is no one to corroborate your story. Brittany Kline is missing, obviously, and pinning the drugs on a missing minor last seen making out with you at a nightclub, well…boy, that’s just not a very good argument to be making.”
“We weren’t making out, Lonnie.”
“That’s not what the prosecution will argue, Mr. Johns.”
“Please… just David. Can’t we get all of that excluded?”
“Not if you want to use Brittany as a defense. You want to talk about Brittany, then they get to talk about Brittany too.” Lonnie stuffs a couple of chips in his mouth, washes them down and looks at his watch. “Yikes! We’ve got to wrap this up. Okay, as for the drugs in the closet, you won’t disclose the identity of this friend of yours. Which makes for a really good friend, and he or she is lucky to have you, it’s just that sometimes what makes you a really good friend makes you a really bad criminal defendant. Or a really good criminal defendant if you ask the State of Ohio. And, frankly, Mr. Johns, since they found the same marijuana in your car, and since the police report notes that you smelled strongly of marijuana at the time of your arrest, I am not optimistic about how successful we would be in arguing that none of the drugs were really yours.”
Lonnie takes an enormous bite out of Granny Smith and holds his finger in the air. “You know the saying…possession is nine tenths of the law!”
“What about the warrants?”
“What about them?”
“You think they hold up?”
“Ms. Laveau always likes to go after the warrants, but in my experience that’s almost always a waste of time. Judge Wilkes probably has never invalidated a warrant in his whole career. Not in a drug case anyway. So I would not go getting your hopes up about suppressing any of the evidence. Assume all of it is coming in.”
I wait for the rest. But there is nothing. He is looking at me and chewing as though he is done explaining my future. His jaw unhinges and an entire cookie disappears. The chewing resumes, only with a new sideways grinding action. It’s like watching a white, apple-cheeked cow in a bad suit grazing in a field of paper.
“So then… so… then… what? What does this…?”
“It means that we want to look carefully at evaluating the possibility of a deal.”
“What deal?”
“Don’t know yet, Mr. Johns.”
“Dave. Take a wild guess, Lonnie.”
“I really need to start preparing for this next…” He tosses another cookie into the maw and brushes his hands together with a vigor that is to precede a switching of gears.
“Just… what deal?”
“Okay. You’re a first offender and you really don’t have, you know, a druggie look to you. I’m just thinking out loud here, Mr. Johns, so don’t carve any of this in stone.” Lonnie speaks as he polishes off the remaining scraps of food and starts filling the paper bag with detritus. “But I think there is a decent chance that if we promise to cooperate on the Brittany Kline investigation, we might get somewhere. Finding Brittany is what they’re really interested in. I agree with Ms. Laveau about that much. So we would promise to cooperate in every way we can.”
“So… define cooperate.”
“Everything they ask.”
“I do that already.”
“Complete honesty.”
“I have been completely honest. They just don’t believe me.”
“Not even the tiniest fib or the deal would be off.”
“I’m not fibbing. I don’t know what else I could possibly do. They keep hauling me in for questioning and I tell them everything I know and they’re not satisfied.”
“What about offering to wear a wire on this Shepp character? Or her friend. Carlie?”
“Carmen.”
“Right. Carmen. We offer that and we give them the name of your dealer.”
“I don’t have a dealer. I told you, the pot belonged to a friend.”
“That’s some friend, Mr. Johns, to let you take a fall like this. You should give up the name as part of a deal and let your friend fend for himself. Herself?”
“Friend. I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I… I don’t know. I can’t do any of that.”
“Well, think about it. Anyway, the state may have its own ideas. Worth exploring is all I’m saying. If it gets you a good deal. Okay, I’ve got to get prepared.”
“What kind of deal, Lonnie? What’s a good deal?”
“Guilty plea to one consolidated count of possession without intent to distribute, suspended imposition of sentence for one year, maybe two depending on how long they think it will take to close the book on Brittany Kline, followed by maybe some token jail time just so they can keep up appearances. Then basic probation and drug counseling.”
Something about my face must convince him that he has more selling to do.
“No jail time. And maybe just a misdemeanor on your record. That’s pretty darn good, Mr. Johns, considering the way things look. Of course, if they discover the tiniest fib about Brittany Kline then the deal would be off and they would be able to pursue all of the original charges. Oh, and if they find evidence of, you know, other crimes…”
“Other crimes…”
“Well, you know, if they find Brittany and the evidence suggests that you…”
“Jesus Christ, Lonnie.”
“Now there’s no need for that. I’m just telling you, Mr. Johns. The prosecutor will not be making any deals that tie his hands when it comes to Brittany. But the drug stuff. That might be a different kettle of worms.”
“Fish.”
“Fish?”
“Never mind. I don’t want a deal, Lonnie. I haven’t done any…wag that finger at me and I’ll break it.”
“Now, Mr. …”
“I haven’t done anything to Brittany. I have not been making out with her or having sex with her or cutting her into tiny little pieces. None of the drugs, except for the stuff in my car, was mine. I’m a teacher and the school board is looking for a reason. A criminal record is not an option. I’m not a druggie. I don’t need drug counseling. I don’t ever want to see the words Meet Probation Officer on my calendar. Jail time, token or otherwise, is out of the question. And I’m not wearing a wire. The only option here is to clear my name. Okay? That’s it. I need a clean bill of heath from the state of Ohio. And I want to keep this out of the newspapers.”
“I don’t think that’s a very reasonable assessment of the situation, Mr. Johns. See, you’re demanding everything in exchange for nothing. You have to give up something. You have to concede something or the state will just throw the whole book at you. The evidence… well, this is no time to get greedy.”
“Greedy? Greedy?!”
Lonnie stands abruptly with a broad smile, extending a large calloused hand. Meeting over. I stand and he pumps my arm with vigor. If he had an ounce of malice in him, Lonnie could kick my ass into powder. He winks and puts his left index finger up in the air, beaming like he’s waiting for a flash bulb to go off.
“Remember Mr. Johns, pigs get fat, but the hogs get slaughtered.”
* * *
As I drive I cannot accept that I have spent my morning in a courtroom waiting my turn in the company of manacled men wearing jumpsuits and slippers. I have pleaded not guilty to felony drug possession. I have been arraigned. These are things that happen to other people. This is the stuff I read about in the newspaper. This is the stuff of the bad network television dramas that everyone watches because nothing else is on. This is not my life. I am unable – that is, the part of my brain that has custody of my identity is unable – to accept that any of this is actually happening. Lonnie’s ruthlessly practical, sometimes-you-just-gotta-put-the-horse-down vision of my future has left me unsettled and wondering whether I have made a mistake in firing Glenda Laveau. I have fired my first criminal defense lawyer and now I am onto my second criminal defense lawyer. This is not my life.
Of course, firing my lawyer suggests a directness, a brutal candor, entirely absent from the voice mail message I left for Glenda at three o’clock in the morning on the day following my first meeting with John-Boy Walton aka Lonnie Lumkin. The message was not so much, you’re fired as I can’t afford you and, therefore, any continued representation by such a skilled and accomplished and well-respected attorney would not be possible and, when she really thought about it, greatly unfair, since there are no doubt very deserving clients who can afford the best legal talent available in Ohio, and since it is clearly not right that I should get such top drawer representation for free, and so on, for far too long because it was late and because I was in the throes of battling nerve-racked insomnia with the last of the malt whiskey.
So, it’s probably more accurate to say that I called her up and fired myself as an unworthy client. Inelegant, yes. Undignified, absolutely. But it seems to have done the trick. Fortunately, Glenda has not called or shown up on my doorstep to … bargain. I am glad. Or, I was glad. Now, with Lonnie’s words in my ears, I am no longer so sure.
I banish all further undisciplined rumination. I need purpose. I need an infusion of resolve to shore up the crumbling firewall around my sanity. I point all four cylinders towards home and kick the Civic into its high speed, gerbil-sprinting whine.
But I don’t want to go home. I have no discipline at home. At home, almost as soon as the door closes and I drop my keys in the bowl, worry becomes tyrannical. Doom etches its name on the furniture. In my head, all of the cells automatically unlock and doors swing open and the inmates take over the asylum. I can’t go home. Not until I have to. Not until it’s dark and the only thing left to do is go to bed and be unconscious.
So what, then? My stomach answers with an indiscriminate urgency. I pull into a drive thru for the burger joint with the tallest revolving sign on the road in front of me. I throw a mental dart at the metal clown and order by number, the # 5 Meal, because I do not really care and because, even if I did care, I do not have it in me to weigh my options. I am weary of weighing options.
I park and eat my food and watch the traffic. Streams of people pass me. Not a single one of them has a care in the world
. Each is ecstatic to be alive. The sky is overcast and it is a few degrees cooler today than yesterday. Winter is only a few weeks away. I can see from their expressions – one after another in the stream of candy-colored, metal encased humanity – that these few meteorological facts comprise the complete list of discontentment with which they must contend. The rest – the length and breadth of all human suffering to be found outside of meteorology – belongs exclusively to me. It is my burden alone.
I begin wishing for an actual meteor. All of my problems go away if the State of Ohio has to contend with an actual meteor. Are court dates still scheduled if greater Columbus is in the path of a cosmic fireball? Does anyone really care about hemp or coca derivatives if we are all going to blister and pop into flaming bags of bones? Does anyone really care who Brittany Kline has kissed – like an impertinent, tarted-up remora – if the Buckeye State were about to become one giant crater of powdered buckeye soup? And wouldn’t that sudden charred “oneness” among all individual Ohioans count as “finding” her? That’s what was missing in this world; a little fucking perspective.
I am thoroughly sick of myself. Sick of the metastasizing wad of angst that has replaced my heart and stomach. I am sick of the voice in my head. I reach out in search of another voice. Anything. Anyone.
… pinheads about Hurricane Katrina. Okay? This is not about spin. We don’t spin here at da’ Fixture. We don’t dress the news up with a bunch of malarkey. If you’re a Bush hater, if you’re looking for someone to turn natural disasters like Katrina into some excuse for baseless partisan political attack, and if you can hear my voice …
I have been hasty and rash in wanting a different voice in my head. I bag up the remains of the thing I just ate, start the car and drive, trying to reconnect with the odds of a well-placed meteor collision. After twenty minutes of almost random steering, I pass the Buckeye Putt-Putt and I decide to drive out to see Pete Miller.