Done for a Dime

by David Corbett

  Arlie’s eyes went stony and yet, at the same time, he yawned. Tension, Murchison guessed, not fatigue.

  “Just the way of things. We know what stunts your friends will pull just for an angle. But you get a lawyer, from that point on, we do what we’re told. And we’ll get told, ‘Nail it down.’ DA’s not gonna care if you really did it or not. Close it out, that’s the plan. One of your buddies is desperate for a play, decides to point the finger at you, it’ll be your job to prove he’s lying. Not ours. By that time, things’ll be stacked against you pretty good. And because you lawyered down, I’ll be out of it. What help I can provide, I can provide now, not later. You want to clear the air, I’m gonna listen. But the chance won’t be there for long. I can understand how it might have happened. I know a lot about this guy, the one who was shot. I know a lot about you, about your crew. Waddell, Michael, J.J., Eshmont. Long Walk.”

  The kid’s breathing came faster. He started blinking a lot.

  “You got something you think I should know, tell me now. You’re not in this thing, fine. But you gotta tell me who is. You gotta give me a name.”

  Come on, Murchison thought, knowing enough not to prod. You’ve sold him the product. Don’t buy it back. The wait drew out, the tension faded a little. Murchison sensed he was losing the kid.

  “You’re not going to be the only one dealing with this, you know. Your family, they’re gonna go through it, too. Your mother.”

  Arlie winced, did a little put-upon dance in his chair, and a vein in his neck fluttered.

  “I’m gonna need to talk to her, Arlie. Your mother. Explain why you’re in here. There anything you’d like me to tell her?”

  “Yeah! Tell her I ask for a lawyer, you don’t listen. Tell her my rights been violated.”

  Murchison felt it slip away. The kid wouldn’t bend. Not without more to leverage.

  “Anybody you want me to call?”

  “Didn’t ask you to make my call.”

  “You don’t want me to call your mother?”

  “No!”

  “What’s the problem? Your mother gonna take the news you’re in here—again—a little hard? Could be your third strike.”

  Arlie shook his head in disbelief, glancing away. He looked about ready to cry. Back in business, Murchison thought. Most welcome sight in the world, a suspect ready to cry.

  “I’m here to listen, Arlie. It’s all I’m here to do.”

  “You gonna do what you wanna do,” the kid muttered.

  Murchison leaned forward. “I didn’t hear that, Arlie. I’m sorry.”

  Arlie snorted and grinned. “Go ahead, ask your damn questions. Fuck yourself up. I done asked for my lawyer.” His voice rose. “Say what you want. You see nigger in front of you, you think, Fool. Brothers know all about this shit. Got guidelines from the motherfucking DA, tell you how to talk ‘off the record’ and shit, so you can twist me up, get me to say something stupid, make sure I don’t take the stand. Well, I’m innocent. There. Off the record, on the record, on the stand, off the stand.”

  He tried to clear his throat, but there was nothing there—his lips, his tongue, everything bone-dry. He shook his head and made a spiteful little laugh, then glanced down at the floor, chest trembling as he breathed.

  “Ain’t gonna make no difference regardless. Only thing goes down is what you wanna go down. What you don’t wanna go down, don’t go down.”

  9

  Sarina Thigpen shuffled blearily through the worn, dimly lit lobby of Overlook Convalescent Hospital, heading toward the electronic glass doors opening onto the parking lot. She’d stayed late to help the understaffed relief crew as they launched the new day, lifting patients from their beds, guiding them to the closet-sized bathrooms that the old folks soiled in their blind, palsied, or delusional efforts to relieve themselves. With the patients occupied, Sarina changed the bed linens, thick with a toxic urine stench or the bitter chalky smell of sweat. If no voice called out from the bathroom, she knocked, entered, lifted the frail thin body off the toilet, wiped it clean, and guided it back to its fresh bed. Returning to the bathroom, she picked her rag out of the ammonia bucket and washed down the walls, the floors, the toilets inside and out. By the time she removed her uniform at shift’s end, it peeled away bearing unspeakable stains.

  That wasn’t the worst, though. The worst was the slurs and insults shrieked or hissed in her face by white patients, their minds all but gone. An RN had explained the medical reasons once—strokes degrade the frontal regions of the brain, she’d said. The regions involved in social inhibition. “They don’t mean the things they say, any more than they mean to soil themselves.”

  Sarina knew better. In fact, as she saw it, the exact opposite was true—they meant it all too well. They’d been harboring the bile in their hearts their whole lives, and only a quirk of fate—one stroke too many—kept them from being able to keep up the pretense all the way to the grave. Every time she got called “nigger bitch,” “gorilla,” everything else imaginable—the women as bad as the men, worse sometimes—she reminded herself that this was the real them. This was the racist inside every last one of them, screaming to get out. And she would pride herself on not retaliating. No, she thought, the Lord will not have it. Vengeance is His alone. And so every last one of those nasty, ignorant, loudmouth bigots lay clean as a whistle in a spanking white bed with an immaculate bathroom waiting.

  Outside, the eastern sky was cold and blue with daybreak, with night receding in the west. She searched her purse for her keys. Finding them, she looked up again to find two men in sport coats, waiting. Detectives, she guessed. How could you not tell?

  “Mrs. Thigpen?”

  The one who spoke was tall and thin, homely, with reddish hair. The other, she could see at a glance, was a devil. Sarina snapped her purse shut, crossed her hands in front of her. “My name is Sarina Thigpen, yes.” She cocked her head a little to one side, indulging them.

  “My name is Dennis Murchison, I’m with the Rio Mirada police. We have your son Arlie in custody, Mrs. Thigpen. He asked to see you.”

  It was the first time they’d come for her at work. “I suppose I got a stop to make at the bondsman,” she said, and began moving toward her car.

  “Bond’s not an issue, Mrs. Thigpen. Your son’s being held in connection with a murder.”

  A thread of bile slithered up into her throat. “That can’t be.”

  The one who’d spoken, the one with the rust-colored hair, held out his arm, as though to guide her. “I can explain in the car,” he said.

  Stluka got behind the wheel, providing Murchison the role of confidant, bearer of bad news, and negotiator. He sat sideways in the seat, the better to talk with her. She was a short, muscular woman with small, strong hands. Atop her broad neck sat a square face, with high, round cheeks and thin, almond-shaped eyes. As they pulled out of the parking lot, the light from the street lamps played across her face, dappling it with angular shadows. She sat there with her purse in her lap, gripping it to her midriff.

  “As you probably know, Mrs. Thigpen, your son is up for trial in six months on possession with intent charges.”

  “You said murder. I got in this car ’cause you said murder. Not drugs.”

  Over his shoulder, Stluka said, “I thought you got in because your son asked to see you.”

  It was out before Murchison could stop him, and instantly Sarina snarled back, “You gonna try to blame me? This country stinking with drugs, no good jobs, more jails than schools, and you wanna blame me? My God, you are the devil. Stop the car. Stop it here. I’ll walk to see my son.”

  She slapped at the door handle. Murchison glared at Stluka, then reached out his hand in a calming gesture. “Mrs. Thigpen, he chose his words poorly.”

  “It’s the devil in me.”

  “You get your goddamn hand away from me.” She glared at Murchison. “Don’t you dare touch me.”

  Murchison withdrew his hand. “I meant no offense, Mrs. Thigpen
.”

  “You don’t mean nothing but offense. You drag me away from my job, what are people to think? You say my son’s a killer.”

  “Mrs. Thigpen—”

  “I am a woman of the church. I put my faith in God, not you. Certainly not you. I have prayed for my son, and I have worked hard, but I cannot be all places at all times. I cannot save him from a street you refuse—”

  She was shouting. Murchison, nerves frayed, found himself shouting back, “Mrs. Thigpen, we have an eyewitness. Nod your head if you understand.”

  He regretted it, not telling her eyewitness-to-what, but he was unwilling to suffer any more sermons. Besides, deceit was permissible, that was the law. Blue lies, they were called. Sarina leaned back in the seat.

  “Witness,” she said. Her glance floated from Murchison’s face to the back of Stluka’s head—right, left, then right again. “What did this witness see?”

  “The victim’s name is Strong Carlisle, he’s—”

  “Raymond Carlisle?” Sarina sat up straight, incredulous. Her eyes brightened. “My son has no stock in killing Mr. Carlisle. My Lord, I took care of that man’s mother up there at the hospital ’fore she passed. No, you’re wrong. You’re confused.”

  “Eyewitness,” Stluka repeated. He didn’t call them blue lies. He called them weasel prods.

  Sarina’s fingers kneaded the thin vinyl strap of her purse. “That can’t be right.”

  Murchison took a moment to think through his next step. He saw no point in trying to convince her Arlie had done anything; it was enough she thought they were convinced. Her role in this was to bring the whole immeasurable weight of tortured motherhood to bear on her son, make him see who was going to suffer. But to make that work, Murchison had to give her hope.

  “Mrs. Thigpen, I’m not going to lie to you. We know pretty much all we need to know about what happened, but that’s not saying we know everything about why. I don’t doubt there are some pressures in play that we’ll only find out about as time goes on.”

  “He did not do it. My son did not kill Raymond Carlisle. That’s just—it’s crazy. Crazy.”

  Sarina looked out the window at the empty street rushing by, the hardscrabble housefronts, the blighted yards. “Poor man,” she said quietly. Then, locking her hands in prayer, she whispered, “Dear Lord, Who knows the weakness of our natures, bend down Thine ear in pity.” Eyes closed, she continued in a hush, lips barely moving.

  When she reopened her eyes, Murchison said, “I’d like to explain a few things before we get to the station, Mrs. Thigpen. Would that be all right?”

  There was a chance that Arlie, upon talking with his mom, might cut his losses and confess. Even if the kid didn’t sign a waiver and talk, something might spill out as he tried to make his mother feel better—something Murchison could tie to something else, weave together, work up. This, in legal parlance, was the difference between an admission and a confession. The courts were far more willing to consider an admission reversible error. No big thing, no matter how bad you tooled with the suspect’s rights. And even if Arlie’s lawyer did end up getting it suppressed as evidence, it was still information. Prosecutors could bitch all they wanted, Information isn’t evidence, but the truth remained: Information could be molded. It could be handed around, like money. It could be used for bait.

  “I used the word murder before, and that can be misleading. What we have is a killing.”

  He explained to her the three main concepts involved—malice aforethought, depraved heart, heat of passion—and let the terms sink in. They were the juicy words, the ones juries loved. Then he ran down how impossible it would be for a jury to think Raymond Carlisle’s killing deserved anything but the most severe charge, the harshest penalty. Shot in the back—malice. Followed into his yard—aforethought.

  “Sometimes people think they can lower the charge to manslaughter. Heat of passion. It usually means the victim did something or said something so vile, so degrading, any reasonable person would be unable to control his rage. The law is surprisingly wise in this regard, Mrs. Thigpen.” Remembering her near-silent prayer of just moments before, he added, “It recognizes the weakness in our natures.”

  Her eyes flared. Bingo.

  “We lose it sometimes. Work ourselves up and can’t work ourselves back down. All because some jerk pushed too far. A depraved heart is not an angry heart, it’s an empty heart. That’s why manslaughter, a crime of passion, is the lesser crime. In theory, anyway. But again, Mrs. Thigpen, nothing’s as simple as it ought to be. The law demands there not be a cooling-off period if a defendant’s going to claim heat of passion. If there’s time to cool off, any time at all, then there’s no real heat.”

  “Cool off,” Sarina murmured, trying to fashion the phrase into some form of good news. Her eyes narrowed again. “Time—”

  “You got time to cool off, Mrs. Thigpen, bye-bye manslaughter. You follow a man and shoot him in the back, that’s bye-bye murder two. Which pretty much boxes the thing in. Murder one. In a death penalty state.”

  Sarina shook her head. “Follow? You said time—”

  “Now, I admit, anything can happen. We’ve got a saying: Inside the courtroom, the rules of gravity no longer apply. And that’s true twice over inside the jury room. Only takes one juror. Feel a little twinge of doubt. Feel a little pity. The number of hung juries is up, way up. Not just that, it’s happening most in trials of young Black men, and it’s Black women who are hanging those juries. So there’s always a shot. Except, well, I feel obliged to tell you, every case where you’ve got a hold-out juror? Case gets retried and the second trial results in conviction. Hung juries just slow the process down, make it more expensive, they don’t stop it. Besides which, capital cases here draw their jury pools mostly from north county. Which means white people. I’m not saying it’s right, Mrs. Thigpen, I’m just saying that’s the situation.”

  “Time,” Sarina said again, this time loudly, as though the concept hovering just outside her grasp had finally come to bear. “Cooling-off period. You said you had an eyewitness. Then you talk about time. Time between what and what? This eyewitness, what did he see?”

  They’d reached the police station. Stluka pulled the car into the public lot, so they could take Sarina in through the front.

  “I’m not at liberty to divulge what the witness did or didn’t see.” Inwardly, Murchison cringed at how lame it sounded. “And since time is short, there’s one more thing I need to explain to you before we go in. One more term. Not a legal term, a street term. I don’t know, maybe you already know it. The term is juice.”

  Sarina had resumed the pose she’d struck upon first entering the car: handbag tight to her waist, small, strong hands clenching the strap. Back where we started, Murchison thought.

  “You work the street, Mrs. Thigpen, like your son, you gotta have juice. Gotta know who else has it. In particular, you gotta know who among your so-called friends has it, who doesn’t, who wants it, how bad they want it.”

  Sarina’s defiance melted a little. The fear returned to her eyes.

  “Think about all those other young men working that street corner with your son.”

  “Street corner?”

  Stluka groaned and looked at his watch. Murchison said, “Your son was spotted downtown, working a corner with maybe half a dozen other young men.”

  “Downtown?”

  Stluka said, “Peddling them powerful powders, ma’am. As he has been known to do.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Eyewitness,” Stluka intoned, his hands thrumming a little tomtom on the steering wheel. “Hate to keep bringing that up, inconvenient and all, but—”

  “You still haven’t told me—”

  “The witnesses saw what they saw, Mrs. Thigpen.” Murchison was irritated—with both her and his partner. “The point I want to make before we take you in to speak with your son is this: Which one of those other young men has got juice?”

  Sarin
a stared.

  “Put yourself in their shoes, Mrs. Thigpen. We’re going to be bringing down here every single one of them. The guys working that corner with your son. Most are in trouble already, and they’re going to be trying to buy their way out of it. There’s eight times as many Black men in prison as there are in college, four times as many for drugs as whites. You think people are pissed off about that? John Q. Public, he’s delighted. Crime’s down. He thinks, Three strikes? Hell, let’s make it two. Make it one. And your son’s so-called friends, dragged in here—it’s already happening, Mrs. Thigpen, right now, this minute—they’ll know all that. If they don’t know it coming in, they’ll catch on quick. I guarantee it. And the writing on the wall, it’s gonna say: Time to get a little juice. Time to say, ‘You know that old man got popped on the hill? I may have something to say on that.’”

  “On the hill. But you said Arlie was downtown.”

  “One of your son’s pals, he’s looking at hard time, years of it. No way out. Except your son. He’s got your son to hand up.”

  “No,” Sarina said, shaking her head violently.

  “He’s got juice.”

  “This is wrong. This is evil.”

  Stluka blew out an annoyed gust of air, opened his door, and said over his shoulder, “You want evil, we’ll take you to the freezer, let you talk it over with Mr. Carlisle.”

  “You can’t do this.”