Dark Days

by D. Randall Blythe

  “Well, the consulate is kinda closed for the night and the officer has left for the day, so nobody will be able to see you this evening. I’ll leave a note for the morning officer, who gets here at 8:30, to run over and see you. Right now there’s really nothing we can do for you—they arrested you legally. It is just our policy to call and make sure you are being treated humanely. Are they feeding you?” he asked.

  “Hey, Alex, are y’all gonna give me any food?” I asked him. He nodded yes. “Yeah, I guess they will feed me.”

  “They aren’t torturing you or anything, are they? Because if they are, we can go a different route, and things will change very quickly, I can promise you that.”

  “No, they have been pretty polite so far. I just need to get a lawyer—I think the guy who arrested me is trying to get me to take a court-appointed one.”

  “Look, we aren’t allowed to give you any legal advice, but we gave your lawyer, Mr. Cohen, a list of names of Czech attorneys who have worked with Americans before.”

  “Yeah, I heard. He’s trying to contact them now.”

  “Well, just hang tight, David. I know this isn’t fun. I’ve left a note on the desk of the officer coming in in the morning—we’ll have someone over to visit you first thing tomorrow, I promise.”

  I hung up and handed the phone back to Alex.

  “I hope your embassy will help you? It is their job, I think.”

  “I suppose so. They said they will send someone tomorrow morning.”

  “But you must have advocate by 8:00. Or the sou-”

  “Yes, yes; I know. The soud will give me one.”

  “Yes. By 8:00. I think the soud is good for you.”

  “Maybe so, but I think I’ll wait and get my own.”

  Alex looked away, shook his head, and went back to playing with his phone. The news from the embassy had not been encouraging. They couldn’t give me any legal advice, it probably wasn’t even dark yet and they were already closed, and a note had been left for some nebulous person to come see me in the morning.

  A note. A note?! Shouldn’t there be some sort of high-tech alert ripping down the cyber-wires? Shouldn’t some brainy communications tech with a sexy-looking headset be leaping up from in front of a giant electronic map of Prague right about now, pointing at the frantically blinking red dot indicating my exact position in the jail, and tersely speaking to the commander in the underground command room (because there had to be an underground command room commanded by a commander in a former Eastern Bloc American embassy):

  “Sir, they have another one. He’s one of ours—David Blythe—a musician from Richmond, VA. And they’re trying the old soud advocate trick again.”

  “DAMMIT!” the steely-eyed commander would curse, a thin cigar clenched between his gritted teeth. “Mobilize A Squad—we’re going in. Tell my wife I won’t be home for dinner—this could take a while. Damn Czechs!”

  Isn’t that what happened in the movies? When I talked to the embassy, I should have heard assault rifle bolts being slammed home, body armor being strapped on, scrambled signal headset communication devices being fired up—where were my heavily armed guys? The Czechs had certainly brought all their scary stuff to the airport—we had to have that kind of artillery for sure. At the very least, someone in a trench coat, a fedora, and leather gloves should be passing a large envelope full of unmarked bills to a shadowy figure in some foggy back alley right about now. Instead, they left a note—a note!—(probably on an old stickie with failing glue) on some doubtlessly over-crowded desk. A scrap of paper that probably said something like, “Hey, you might want to swing by the city jail—there’s some redneck from Virginia locked up down there.”

  This obviously wasn’t the movies, and my status had been reduced to a note, like the honey-do lists my wife leaves me every now and then (“Hey, babe—please don’t forget to take out the recycling when you get home”). What if the office cleaning lady accidentally threw it away? In my mind, some old and very underpaid Czech woman of Mexican descent, (although I had never seen a single Latino in all of Europe to my knowledge, much less a Czexican. By the way, this is why I refuse to eat Mexican food in Europe—there are no Mexicans there to make it, or at least properly train the Euros how to assemble happiness in a tortilla, AKA the burrito) wearily trudged the embassy office, emptying trash cans full of State secrets bound for the incinerator and vacuuming the floors. One wrong bump of a Hoover handle and the note would fall into a waste basket. My government would never know I had been imprisoned, and I would be sent off to make Czech license plates for the next fifty years until a black t-shirt wearing, long-haired grassroots campaign to free me finally reached the ears of a powerfu-

  “I am going to get a coffee. Would you like one?” Alex asked, interrupting my reverie.

  “Yes!” I almost screamed. Coffee, the black stuff of life that coursed through my alcoholic veins like blood does in normal humans, was exactly what I needed right now. All sober alcoholics consume way too much caffeine. It is a requirement—just ask one of us. I couldn’t even remember if I had a cup today, other than the instant I had made in my Norwegian hotel room that morning, which might as well have been a hundred years ago. Things were looking pretty grim, but I still had a couple of cigarettes, and soon I would have coffee. At least I wasn’t being held hostage by some savage rainforest tribe—thank God the Czechs possessed the accoutrements of a civilized nation.

  Alex left, locking me in the cell, and returned briefly with two mugs of instant coffee. The Nescafe was strong and sweet, and I was extremely grateful for it, even though it was instant. Alex and I drank our coffee and smoked silently, until he began clearing his throat and furrowing his brow. I could see he was searching deeply into his mind, trying to find the correct terminology to convey whatever it was he was about to say.

  “Maybe is bad . . .” He struggled mightily to find the words, then continued, “No, maybe is . . . good for big heavy metal star to . . . to . . . taste Czech prison.” He finished with a smirk, as if I had never considered the horrors of incarceration.

  Holy CRAP—Alex was trying to play good cop/bad cop with me. All by himself.

  The faux concern for my touring commitments. The extolling of the virtues of the soud’s advocates. The coffee. And now, the threat of prison. This was freaking amazing. Was it really possible that Alex did not know that you needed at least two cops to play good cop/bad cop? What kind of police training did this man actually have? Didn’t he know that by embarking on a solo broken English good cop/bad cop mission, he had just reinvented himself in the image of a huge, cigarette smoking, mildly schizophrenic kindergartener who had gotten a late start learning to speak? Since bad Alex had momentarily wrestled the psychic reigns from good Alex, I saw no reason not to smirk back at him.

  “No, I don’t think that would be so good for me. In fact, I don’t think that will be happening—sorry, I’m not so interested in ‘tasting prison.’ Yes, I think I’ll be skipping that.”

  Alex seemed a bit surprised by my confidence, raising an eyebrow above his coffee mug, but didn’t say anything else. I wondered if the mental exertion it had taken to be two different officers in a day had taken its toll. He finished his coffee, told me he was going to make a phone call, and left me locked in the cell. Exhaustion set in and I lay down on the long metal bench, threw my arm over my face to block out the sickly glow of the flickering fluorescent tubes closed my eyes, and fell into an uneasy sleep . . .

  I awoke from my nap to the cell door opening and Alex walking towards me with a phone. “It is advocate,” he said as I took the phone, shaking my head to try to wake up. A polite man on the other end informed me in a Czech accent that he was a lawyer, that Jeff had contacted him, but that he lived a few hours away from Prague and mostly dealt with cases of fraud. He also wasn’t listed as a lawyer by the Czech bar association, which would be a necessary qualification to take on a case like mine. I told him I could see where that could present a small hurdle to
our attorney/client relationship. He told me he was sorry he couldn’t help me, but that he would try to give Jeff the names of some qualified attorneys. I thanked him and hung up.

  This was getting more bizarre by the second. An out of town fraud lawyer with no legal credentials? It was nice of him to call, but I wasn’t charged with swindling old ladies out of their retirement checks. Plus, even if I had been, could a lawyer who wasn’t really a lawyer help me out there anyway? Apparently things worked differently in the Czech Republic—I mean, so far I had been under the watchful smoking eye of Alex, a cop who didn’t seem to know how to be a cop. I hoped the fraud attorney (or whatever he was) would give Jeff a name or two of someone who at the very least had passed their bar exam. I sighed and handed the phone back to Alex, who could tell the conversation hadn’t gone well and mercifully didn’t ask me any questions.

  Soon my cell phone screen lit up displaying Jeff’s number. “Tell me something good, Jeffrey,” I said.

  “Okay, kiddo,” he answered with one of his patented catch-phrases, “I got a hold of one guy but he’s two hundred kilometers outside of Prague and mostly deals with white collar crime, not this kind of stuff.”

  “Yup, he called.”

  “Lovely fellow, certainly not our man though. But I do have some names for you—do you have a pen and paper?”

  I made a frantic writing motion in Alex’s direction, the universal sign for Hey, I need a pen and I need it yesterday. He gave me a pen and I began writing down the strange Slavic names Jeff spelled out for me on the back of my arrest papers.

  “These are all attorneys, recommended by the State Department, who have represented Americans before. I’m still calling around trying to reach them. I’ll ring you back in five minutes,” Jeff said, “Remember, don’t say anything.”

  “I don’t know what I would say other than I need a lawyer, and that I’m about to run out of cigarettes. That’s about the extent of my situation here.”

  “We’ll have you an attorney soon.”

  I hung up and noticed Alex looking at me questioningly. “May I see paper?” he asked.

  I saw no reason not to let him read the list, and handed it to him. Very quickly, I saw his eyes widen as he read the list. He pointed at the very first name on the paper, said something to himself in Czech that sounded like he wasn’t very happy, and then spoke to me.

  “Ah, Jiri Teryngel! Very big, very important advocate in Czech Republic. He will call Jiri Teryngel?”

  “I’m sure he will. I want the best lawyer possible,” I replied.

  “This Jiri Teryngel, he is very expensive advocate,” Alex said, shaking his head slowly.

  “That’s okay. I’m sure we can make it work,” I said, smiling inside.

  Right at that moment, my phone lit up—it was Jeff so I answered.

  “What’s going on now?” he asked me.

  “Nothing. The officer who arrested me seemed pretty impressed by the first name on the list though, Jiri Teryngel,” I said, mangling the pronunciation. “He says he’s some sort of big shot, high dollar lawyer here.”

  “Haha!” Jeff laughed quickly, “Good! Fuck him! Let him sweat. I told you I wou-”

  “Jeff, my battery is dying so we need to make this quick,” I cut in. I love Jeff and he’s never let me down, but he can be rather loquacious and time was of essence here. “Have you found me a lawyer or not? The cops say I have to have one by 8:00 a.m. or they are going to appoint me one.”

  “Listen, can anyone hear us talking?” he said.

  “No, I think we’re good. English isn’t exactly this guy’s forte, if you get my drift.” I said.

  “Okay, good. Look, just keep telling them you will have one soon. I’ve called a bunch of people, but it’s late over there and most law offices are already closed. I have a Czech friend I knew from law school who is making some calls as well. Don’t worry. I’ll keep trying until someone picks up. Will they let you use a phone to call a Czech number? You should try to call some of those numbers, too, to see if you can get ahold of anyone” he said.

  “I don’t know. I’ll try. Just get me a lawyer as soon as you can, bro,” I said.

  “I will. Don’t worry—I got this. Has the embassy called or sent anyone yet? We’ve already been on the horn with them.”

  “Yup, they called. There’s nothing they can do for me right now. Look, I gotta go—my battery is really dying quick. Call me back when you have a lawyer for me, okay?” I said.

  “I will. Hold tight,” Jeff said, and hung up.

  Alex had been watching me closely as soon as I said Jiri Teryngel’s name again, and looked expectantly at me.

  “So, you will have Jiri Teryngel as your advocate?” he asked.

  “I think so. My lawyer is trying to contact him. Can I make a few calls to try and contact these other advocates from a phone here?”

  “I will try to have called some names for you,” he said, and I handed him the list. Alex called to someone in the hall, and they took the list and walked away. He turned to me.

  “It is very late. Many advocates will be at home now, not working. I am thinking it is better for you if to you let soud give advocate. I am worried you will not make your concert if you do not have advocate in time,” Alex said, sounding concerned again.

  “I don’t think we have to worry about me getting to any concert anytime soon,” I said.

  “It is your choice.” He shrugged, and began playing with his phone again.

  Alex seemed to be suffering the delusion that he had given me a parking ticket, not arrested me for manslaughter. It was becoming more and more apparent that I wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. I just hoped that if Jeff couldn’t find me a lawyer by 8:00 a.m. that they would let me switch to one of my choice once one did become available. I got the distinct feeling that Alex was ready to wrap up the evening’s festivities and go home for a cold beer and a nap. I didn’t think he really cared who represented me in court; he just wanted to clock out and leave the police station. I couldn’t really blame him. By this time it had to have been hours since I had been arrested, and we had been in this cell for several of them. The place sucked, and I bet he wanted to leave it almost as badly as I did. I tried to fall back to sleep, but couldn’t get comfortable on the metal bench. My cell phone began to vibrate.

  “Tell me you have me a lawyer, Jeff,” I answered.

  “Yes! He is at dinner with his wife right now, but will call you shortly. His name is Martin Radvan, he speaks English, and he practiced in America for several years,” Jeff said.

  “Sounds great. But is he a licensed member of the bar association here? The fraud guy wasn’t. I need a real lawyer.”

  “Yes, he is—he’s on the list the people from the embassy gave me.”

  “Wonderful. I hope he has the number at the jail, because my cell phone is going to die any second.”

  “No worries. Hang in there, kiddo—he’ll call soon.”

  “Thanks, Jeff,” I said, and hung up. Immediately the screen on my phone went blank as the battery died. I was now cut off completely from the outside world. Hopefully this Radvan guy would actually call. I handed the dead phone to Alex.

  “Well, that’s the end of that. She’s kaput. But my Czech lawyer will be calling the jail soon,” I said.

  “Yes, phone is kaput. I take it now to remove SIM card for records,” he said.

  “Excuse me? You are going to read my SIM card? Is that what you are saying?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, and walked away, leaving me fuming in the locked cell. If this had been in America, I would have started raising hell, yelling about invasion of privacy, guilty until proven innocent, habeas corpus, four score and seven years, Rodney King, Waco, and a bunch of other inapplicable stuff. If that didn’t work, I would have quoted some imaginary obscure legal precedent that ended with a phone-snooping officer doing life in prison in order to make Alex at least question the wisdom of digging through my data. But this was the Czech
Republic, I had no idea of the legality of this act (actually, I had no idea about its legality in the States, but that’s beside the point—it just seemed awful Orwellian to me), and I wasn’t about to give Alex the satisfaction of knowing that he had rattled my cage. Besides, I didn’t have anything in my phone that could indict me of a crime that, to my knowledge, I didn’t commit. I figured the worst-case scenario would be me having to explain to some of my more famous friends why some crazed Czech police officer was calling them in the middle of the night to tell them how much they loved their new album (metal fans are everywhere). Still, it reminded me of exactly how little control I had over anything that was happening to me in this foreign country. I could only control myself, so I tried (unsuccessfully) to not smoke my remaining cigarettes. Dammit.

  After a while (I have no idea of how long, for the police had taken my watch when I was first arrested), Alex returned to the cell with the cordless phone again, handing it to me with what looked like relief on his face as he said, “It is Czech advocate.” Thank God.

  “Hello? Is this Mr. Radvan?” I asked.

  “Yes, this is Martin Radvan. What can I do for you today, sir?” a pleasant-sounding voice said, as if he was a waiter asking what I would like for dinner. Mr. Radvan’s lightly Czech-accented English was clear, and he spoke with an ease that revealed his familiarity with my language. I felt a rush of relief flow through me.

  “And you are an attorney? A member of the Czech bar? Who can handle a criminal case in court? In Prague?” I asked, just make sure he wasn’t another out of town non-licensed fraud specialist.

  “Yes, I am a lawyer here in Prague. That is why I have called you. Now how may I help you, Mr. Blythe?” he replied in his even voice, probably wondering why in the hell this American idiot was asking him such ludicrous questions.

  “Well, you can come get me out of here,” I said, and explained my predicament briefly, starting with my arrest and ending with my current residence at the jail. Martin assured me he would be there by 7:30 a.m., thus relieving my court appointed lawyer anxiety. I hung up the phone and told Alex I had retained a lawyer who would be there bright and early, so he could forget all that soud advocate stuff. Alex grinned as if to say Hey—you can’t blame a man for trying! He led me down some stairs into a room where I was fingerprinted and had my mug shot taken.