Stacking in Rivertown

by Barbara Bell

  By the time Tuesday rolls around, I’ve had six hours sleep, total. For my trip to court, they sit me in a wheelchair and manacle my ankles and left wrist to it. I don’t know what they think I’m going to do. The whole thing reminds me a lot of Ben.

  Outside that door it’s like walking into a human-size beehive. Cameramen swarm in and a wall of reporters surges forward, shouting questions to Clarisse. Cameras flash bright and fast. At the courthouse, we worm through another batch of reporters and cameramen who could certainly have better things to do with their time.

  By the time I get inside, I only get a five-minute consult with the lawyer Burt found for me, Cynthia White, a polite, exquisitely intelligent black woman that knows how to dress. I feel pretty ugly in my hospital gown and slippers. I can only imagine what my face looks like.

  “I didn’t go there to kill him,” I say.

  “We’ll discuss that later. For now, you’re pleading not guilty to the murder by reason of lawful defense. And you’re pleading guilty to the weapons charges. Correct?”

  “You got it.”

  Once I’m in front of the judge, he refuses me bail. I have too famous a reputation for leaving bad situations and disappearing. The media circus only adds to his decision.

  As they wheel me out, I wave at Josh and Tom as much as the handcuffs will let me. Looking at my face and cast, they both go Scranton white, if that’s possible for Josh.

  The two detectives, Cynthia, and I all arrive back at my pleasantly appointed hospital room at about the same time.

  Cynthia wades right in. “Any statements made by my client in your interview Friday when she was barely conscious are not admissible in court.”

  The looker sniffs once. “We have more questions.”

  During this interrogation, I learn about all the holes in my not-so-carefully laid plans. They found tire tracks from the Rav Four in two different places. Not only that but a second set of fingerprints was found on the door of the Taurus, the van, and in my apartment. This information makes me sweat.

  I suggest that they belong to one of Ben’s thugs.

  The crooked face guy is watching me without blinking, just like a ‘gator. I’m thinking he’s really the brains of these two. I stare back at him.

  They go on punching holes in my version of the story, bringing me back over and over to Ben beating me. I keep feeling how his fists made my ears block up. Soon, I can’t really hear the detectives. And the sound of my shoulder breaking reverberates.

  Cynthia cuts in, looking at me in a strange way. “My client is

  showing too much strain. We’ll take a break. She’s badly injured.”

  The two of them hesitate. Then the looker stands. “We’ll resume our interview tomorrow morning,” he says.

  After they leave, I look at Cynthia. Ben’s fists are still banging away at my face. I wish somebody would make him stop. I don’t think I can take this kind of thing anymore.

  Cynthia shifts her chair so that it’s facing me and removes a DAT from her purse. Setting the microphone up near my face, she looks me straight in the eye.

  “Now let’s have the truth.”

  One day I got sent home from school for beating up some stupid kid during recess. I dawdled my way home, then searched the bank for a suitable fishing pole. Daddy caught me on my way into the house to raid me and Vin’s stash of fishing line. I don’t know, maybe he hadn’t had enough to drink yet. By the time Vin got home, I was barely conscious, lying on the front-room floor. Daddy’d left a long ways back, drunk by then, I guess.

  In the winter, we had days and days of rain. We grew tired of the sound of drops falling from leaves, of trickling leaks, of buckets set beneath to prevent damage.

  But each day, hour after hour, the river drew close, edging up the grass.

  “Someday,” Mama said every now and then. “Someday this old river’s gonna wash our two-room right away.” And she’d shrug.

  When Vin came home and found me that day that I thought Daddy was going to kill me, he got me on my feet and hid with me all night in a thicket by the river.

  What I remember about that night was how bright the moon fell, lighting up like it was day, like we were fuller, deeper, wider than what we looked most other times. The trees, more like magic, drooped over the river. And the black water ran slow beneath our white covering night.

  Cynthia sits in silence writing down notes. I think I drowse for a bit. Then lunch arrives and I’m presented with some packets of stale crackers and a bowl of liquid that looks like sewer water. I push it away.

  All of a sudden, Cynthia comes alive.

  “So you went there,” she says, the end of her pen pressed against her full lips, “intending to kill yourself.” She looks up. “But you couldn’t. Instead, you let him beat the crap out of you.”

  I nod my head.

  She sits back, staring at me. “Sorry, but I’m not buying it. You’re going to have to come up with something better than that because I don’t think the police are buying a damn thing you’re telling them. With the tiremarks and the fingerprints, they’re probably thinking accomplice. A carefully planned murder in the middle of nowhere. You leave and nobody knows the difference.”

  “Then why did I call the police?”

  She sits and thinks. “Why indeed?” Her eyes go wide. “You’re covering for somebody. You had help getting out of the tape. Where did you keep the Smith and Wesson?”

  I don’t answer.

  “Beneath the front seat? That’s where most people keep concealed pistols in their cars. That and the glove box. That’s why the fingerprints on the driver’s door.” Her eyes narrow now.“And the last two shots close up.” She looks me straight in the eye. “So you would have traces of the shots. You didn’t kill him. You were taped up in the back of the van.”

  She should get the Perry Mason snot nose award.

  “Look,” I say, like I’d been around Burt too long, “Ben was my problem, my responsibility. If anyone should pay a price for his death, it should be me. If I’d gone back with Ben sooner, none of this would have ever happened.”

  “That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a long time.” She looks me straight in the eye. “This is serious, Becca. The way your case stands now, I’d say you’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of winning in court. I don’t like those odds. And your history as a hooker won’t endear you to any jury. They’ll think a beating by a pimp might be what you deserved. And since you didn’t try to call the police and get help, they’ll say you took the law into your own hands.”

  “So I’ll cop a plea.”

  “If you’d tell me who shot him, you wouldn’t have to do that.”

  I pretend I’m overcome with pain and let out a small moan. She ignores me.

  “You had a lover, didn’t you? The word at the restaurant is that you were having an affair with Miriam Dubois.” She waits after dropping this bombshell.

  I lie my head back. All my assorted pains get worse as if somebody cranks up the dial. I moan again, this time for real. And thinking about Miriam, my longing for her hurts so deep that I decide I’d much rather feel the elephants tromping on me.

  “Let’s just assume for a minute that it was Miriam up there,” Cynthia says. “Everybody I talk to says she’s a gentle, good person. Not the kind to go out and just shoot somebody. So,” she eyes me, “her case is clearer than yours. You were in imminent danger of great bodily injury, as the law states in the statute for lawful defense. If I’m guessing right, she came upon the scene having no prior knowledge that Ben was there, meaning that her shooting of him couldn’t be premeditated.

  “And she had no time to call the police in order to protect you from him. On top of that, she’s a well-respected figure without the history you have that makes you easier to convict.”

  “I don’t want her dragged into my muck.”

  “And if it came down to life in prison, you’d accept that?”

  That’s a kicker. “I want to say yes, but
I might get cowardly as this goes on.”

  “What would she do if it looked that bad for you?”

  I stare at her, blank, because I remember Miriam’s eyes when she drove off in the Rav. How they were dead, empty. I realize that I’m not sure what Miriam would do.

  “Okay,” Cynthia says, checking her list. “I want you to give me a good description of this Kat person that got you into the car near the museum. I need any information as to where you think we might find her. And I’ll get in touch with Detective Bates in New York, or the men on his team, to get his notes on the murder investigation.”

  Now she writes something on her pad. “All right. Is there anything personal you want me to check on?”

  “Jeremy,” I say. “We are still married, after all.” I look away. I don’t want to start crying in front of Cynthia.

  Her voice is softer now. “I’ll take care of it,” she says, gathering her things together as she stands to leave.

  “Thanks for helping me,” I say.

  “My pleasure,” she says, smiling. “And don’t talk about any of this to anyone.”

  I salute her with my good arm and out she goes, leaving me deflated and sinking into darkness.

  The next few days are hazy, interrupted now and then by interrogations with Beauty and the Beast, as I’ve begun to think of my two detectives. Cynthia tells me she’s gotten in touch with Johnson, who is refusing to give out information about Miriam’s whereabouts. He even threatened her with a lawsuit.

  “What a great guy,” I say, lumping Johnson, the looker, and Ben all together in my mind.

  They move me at the end of the week. It’s a new facility for prisoners who pose a high-security risk. When I get to my new home away from home, I’m put in a cell with a large black woman whose shape is reminiscent of Mama (which endears her to me), and who apparently has a fondness for stealing credit cards and amassing lots of stuff. She doesn’t like messing with the cash that she gets out of women’s purses.

  “Small potatoes,” she says.

  I find that, for the most part, my fellow women prisoners think rather highly of me because the word is out that while a prostitute in New York, I screwed some pretty important men. Even the president, the rumor goes.

  Not this president.

  As the days go by, I let my hair grow again, looking more like the old Clarisse. I even begin to feel like the old Clarisse, seeing how the dangers are everywhere. I dream of the days when gun stores were a dime a dozen, when all I had to do was turn the key in that Porsche and put my foot on the accelerator.

  I nag my roommate, whose talents with acquiring stuff have landed her in a position of supply inside the prison. I want her to get me a weapon.

  “You don’t want to mess with no tools now, Becca-Clarry.” That’s what she’s gotten to calling me. “You just get yourself in a pot of trouble.”

  Eventually she comes up with a piece of a knife, the tip chipped and most of the handle busted off. I get that special feeling again.

  Finally, I’m cleared to have visitors.

  The first time they tell me someone’s waiting to see me, I’m on cloud nine. My depression has been dropping me off tall cliffs faster than I can count.

  I walk in the room and sit down in my booth.

  It’s Jeremy.

  He looks like he’s aged ten years since I saw him last, and maybe has taken a hit in the cheerful department. I think he’s run a little short on bright sunny days.

  “Clarisse?” he says like he’s not sure it’s me.

  “Jeremy?” I say. My humor is always lost on him.

  “I didn’t believe it was you at all for awhile,” he says. “I’d gotten used to the idea that you were dead.”

  “You can hold on to that if you need,” I say.

  “So when are you coming home?” he asks, looking gray.

  “Well, I’m not going anywhere until the trial.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  Had he forgotten about that? “I don’t think I’m coming home, Jeremy. I think it’s over between us.”

  The lines beneath his eyes ease.

  “Who’ve you been seeing?” I ask.

  His cheeks go red. “Just somebody I met at the hospital. You know, from the night you left. The night Ben came over?”

  The night Ben came over? He says it like Ben was his guest.

  “I felt bad about that, Jeremy. About him beating you up.”

  Then Jeremy looks around as though to make sure no one is listening. “Was it really you that weekend? You know. At Ben’s.”

  “‘I don’t like a hood,’” I say, repeating his remarks. “‘I like to admire their markings.’”

  He swallows and his face goes the color of a fine variety of beet.

  “I could have saved you a lot of money, Jeremy.”

  He leans forward. “Maybe after you get out, we could visit every now and then?”

  Oh God. Why me? “I don’t think that’s best.”

  He sits back. “Oh.”

  “I want a divorce, Jeremy. We can split everything down the middle, even my book earnings. I’m assuming it’s been a fairly big lump.”

  “Oh yeah.” Then he races into a long spiel about how he’s invested in this market, that set of stocks, foreign currencies, futures (my personal favorite), etc., etc. He’s made a killing (killing might be the only thing he and I have in common at the present moment) and is looking for an even bigger house. Not only that but he’s had an incredible offer from some magazine to tell the true story about Clarisse Broder.

  “Leave out the part about our afternoon date at Ben’s,” I suggest.

  After he’s gone, my longing for Miriam surges up inside of me. She hasn’t written or sent a message through Tom or Josh. No one has seen or heard from her.

  The news of her tour is all good. Miriam is selling CDs like hotcakes, and the rumors are that she’s in line for a Grammy. I’ve gotten to the point where thinking about her hurts so much that I try to pretend she was a dream I made up in my head.

  Beauty and the Beast heard about her through Cinda, I gather. They forced a short interview, but it must not have come to much. Cynthia got a brief report about their conversation. The police tried to get a set of fingerprints, but Miriam’s lawyers went ballistic. The police would have to come up with a subpoena. In which case, they threatened to sue the state for loss of revenues.

  My agent makes an appearance, overjoyed with my celebrity, as though I’d planned it all along, and she talks about the book I’ll write about my jump from the bridge and my time on the lam. Huge publishing houses are vying for the rights to it, offering her “large six-figure advances,” as she’s fond of saying.

  It takes me awhile to figure out what that means, and when I do, it disgusts me. It gets me to longing for those days by the river with Mama and her groceries.

  Things go along for awhile, and as the weeks pass, Tom, Josh, Greg, and Burt take turns visiting, trying to keep me cheerful, my most ingrained failing.

  I keep harping on Cynthia about copping a plea, but she wants more leverage.

  “Why are the prosecutors hanging on to this?” I say.

  “It’s an election year,” Cynthia says. But then she starts in on that thing I won’t talk about. “You don’t have to shoulder this, Becca. Where’s Miriam?”

  I shrug and leave the room.

  But at night, I wake up reaching for Miriam, searching for her body and its warmth. Sometimes I wake myself up talking to her, telling her the things she always wanted to know, the things I kept from her.

  I lie in my cot empty and filled with guilt. No wonder I haven’t heard from her. I almost got her killed. And I led her to believe I was someone that I wasn’t. I was a fake, a lie.

  There’s an especially bad day at the beginning of February when I’m lying in my cell. I think I hear her voice. I sit up, following the sound into the lounge, and there on MTV is Miriam being interviewed about the CD and another new video just released.
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br />   She looks so good. So beautiful. Tears start in my eyes. I sit mesmerized, hurting like I don’t think any beating or whipping from Ben could have ever done. I search her arms for the bracelet I gave to her. She’s not wearing it. I look for anything at all that connected the two of us. There’s nothing. Even her clothes are new. She’s let her hair grow too, but it’s been lightened and cut to make her look younger.

  I watch her new video all the way through and go back to my cell, lying still, too terrified to move.

  A few weeks later, they come to get me. I have a visitor. When I sit in my booth, I don’t recognize her at first. She’s wearing a wig and a sun hat.