"Murder," I muttered.
"Murder?" he said loudly, and the jailhouse fell ominously silent. "One?"
"Three. No, four."
"Four?"
"And a building. Arson."
"Them four, they just happen to be in the buildin' when you took it out?"
"No, they were separate."
He nodded, watched me. The black guy returned to his several colleagues to report. They glanced over their shoulders at me as he did so. Word spread to the Hispanic delegation, thence to the white one. I tried for a psychopathic glint in my eye. Don't fuck with that dude, he'll dismember your sister and torch her joint.
"Arthur Deemer."
"Here, right here!" I leaped to the door. Was this it? Was I out?
"Lawyer's here," said the obese CO, who with a key from a twenty-pound ring unlocked the door. What lawyer? I'd called no lawyer. The CO led me into an alcove off the holding pen. It was lined with tiny dark cages. He locked me in one and left. When he returned, my attorney was with him. My attorney wore a Zig-Zag Rolling Papers T-shirt, black high tops with no socks, and he carried his cue case under his arm. It wasn't too late to pretend I'd never seen him before.
"How did you know I was here?"
"It was in Variety."
"Calabash called you."
"Right."
"Can you get me out of here?"
"Looks doubtful for tonight."
"Tomorrow?"
"Tomorrow looks good. They want to check your priors on the computer in Albany, but Albany's closed now. You have any priors?"
"Of course not."
"That's in your favor. What's this about all the slayings?"
"I think they're trying to scare me into talking."
"About what?"
"The slayings."
"Don't tell these people anything without me present. These people are Nazis, Artie. They got places in this building that aren't even America anymore. As your attorney, I advise you to eschew those places." I looked into my attorney's eyes; they were abnormal.
"How the hell would you suggest I do that, Bruce? Straighten up!"
"It's crucial they understand you are not without legal representation. These people are brutes, Artie. They respond only to naked power. Suspecting weakness, they'll rip your pancreas out." Then suddenly he shouted, "Guard! Guard!"
"Bruce—"
Two fat COs with angry bloated faces appeared in the alcove.
"Bruce, don't—"
"Perhaps you tubs don't know who you have here. This is Artie Deemer! This man has a world-famous dog."
"Shut up, asshole," said the fatter of the two COs.
"If you don't release my client with all possible dispatch, I'll call in the heavies of advertising!" He turned to me. "I'll handle this, Artie. We'll discuss the fee later." Then, back to the COs, he said, "You—with the Uniroyal—release my client."
"That's all, asshole," said the CO, who put a whistle to his fleshy lips. The shrill blast blew me back against the rear wall of my cell and summoned a half-dozen other COs like guard dogs. They were clearly itching for action, flexing rubber cudgels.
I remained encaged as they bodily ejected my representation.
"There isn't a nine-ball player for shit in the whole penal system," I heard him bellow from beneath an igloo of blue uniforms.
A hostile CO grabbed my upper arm and ran me back to the holding pen.
The black guy slid down the wall and sat beside me. "Let me give you some free advice, sailor. Get yourself some different representation or you're gonna fry."
"Arthur Deemer."
"Here, right here, sir."
Still another fat CO unlocked the door and led me down a hall and stood me before a wooden desk. There were four other arrestees in line ahead of me. By the time my turn came around, I had the idea. The guy behind the desk gave you a manila envelope into which you emptied your pockets; then you removed your shoelaces and put them into the envelope with your pathetic belongings. But my shoelaces were not removable. I worried about that as my turn approached. Could unremovable shoelaces land me in one of those rooms not in America anymore? I figured I was on thin ice with my COs, since they didn't get to cudgel my attorney senseless. Or did they? After you had filled your envelope, you signed it.
"Those permanent shoelaces?"
"Yes, sir."
"Okay, put him in seven."
Seven was a tiny cage with an unpadded bench bolted to the steel wall and a seatless toilet. I was alone. You can't get gang-banged alone. Was this where I was to spend the night? Could I sleep? I longed to be unconscious while time passed. I sat in that dim cell and for the first time noticed the unrelenting din of the place, steel slamming steel, shouts, curses, nameless clanks, clatters, and crashes, and from somewhere close by an unintelligible rap song from a cheap radio. Maybe later they'd tune in WKCR for the celebration of Duke Ellington's birthday. "Mood Indigo." Sleep would not be possible.
They brought in a young white boy I had not seen before, about twenty-one, his face covered with volcanic acne and fresh tears. They slammed the door behind him. The boy didn't register my presence but stood near the door, put his ravaged face in his hands, and sobbed. Even the back of his neck was aboil with pimples. "I ain't goin' back there! I ain't!"
"Where?" I asked.
"Home!"
"Take it easy...Maybe they won't make you," I said, the Birdman of Alcatraz. I felt like holding the poor bastard, but I did nothing. I let him stand there in his laceless Nikes and weep. Suddenly he took two deep breaths like a swimmer about to plunge into cold water. He bent at the waist and ran into the steel wall. The top of his head bore the brunt of impact, and a new sound was swallowed up in the din, that of someone slapping a honeydew melon with his open hand. I couldn't believe what I'd just witnessed, but there he was, with his ruined complexion and ruined spirit, staggering around as if one leg were six inches shorter than the other. I reached out to grab him, but he batted my hands away, and I saw that his pupils were rolled back, only the whites visible. Then he did it again. Bent and rammed the steel plate with the top of his head. This time he dropped flat and did not move.
"Guard!" I screamed. "Guard!" I went to the boy, but the CO at the door told me to get away from him. This was not real. I did not see this thing. Other COs arrived and looked at me with a mix of hostility and suspicion.
"No!" I squeaked. "He hit the wall with his head!"
Four of them picked up the boy lengthwise like a railroad tie and carried him away, his sad laceless shoes bouncing behind.
"Everybody up. Yer movin' out!" One by one, the cells were emptied, and we were herded into another holding pen, about twenty of us. "Greetings," said the black guy. They prodded and shoved us into groups of four, and another CO produced chains about six feet long, each with four wrist cuffs implacably attached. They locked us to the chains and left us that way. The slightest movement jerked at one's neighbor. Given my neighbors, I squatted, unmoving, until they herded us by quartets onto a loading dock and into the back of a big van. All aboard, they slammed and locked the van doors. Everyone braced for movement, but none came. We waited. I stood at the rear of the dark, crowded van where the double doors met and tried to breathe fresh air through the crack. I couldn't shake the sight of all that blood shining on my street.
Finally the engine started and we lurched away. Unable to see the turns from our windowless cage, we bounced around helplessly inside. A skinny Hispanic guy at the front of my chain (I was number three) began to twitch and tremble.
"He a junkie," said the man behind me. "Soon it get bad for heem."
"Chill out," a black man advised the junkie helpfully, and the junkie nodded about ten times and made to grasp the black man's hand, but it remained out of reach.
We arrived somewhere and stopped. We shuffled into position to alight, the grimmest cell being much preferable to this stifling van. But nothing happened. We waited, chains tinkling. Panic began to spread as the air th
inned. I could hear us breathing. I sucked air through the tiny crack and feared someone would notice my access and take it away. Normal breaths no longer sufficed in the wet heat. The young junkie began to whimper, then to chatter in Spanish. I caught the word muerto. Two inmates at the front end of the van began to beat on the driver's steel partition. "Hey, we got a sick man here!" We fell silent awaiting help or at least an answer. None came. The junkie shook himself like a wet dog until they opened the doors.
"Arthur Deemer."
"Here!"
They unlocked the junkie's wrist and my wrist. Mine got cuffed behind my back. We were on a loading dock identical to the last one. They led the inmates in one door, the junkie in another, and me in through a third, down a hall, and into an elevator. I was helpless, but still two COs, one black, one white, both fat, gripped my arms on either side. Was I leaving America, no passport necessary? They planted me in a room very different from those in which I'd languished thus far. There were no bars. Only the cyclone fence bolted over the window spoke of jail. I looked out on a sooty brick wall ten feet away, but I saw daylight. The night had ended. The room was gray and bare except for a metal table with four chairs. My shin throbbed. I pulled out one of the chairs and sat sideways on it to accommodate my handcuffs. More comfortable physically than I'd been since my arrest, I waited.
I recognized them immediately. The Four Freshmen, minus two. The spokesman was there. He looked like an investment banker arriving with an attache full of insider information. He sat opposite me, opened the case, fastidiously arranged its contents, then got around to addressing me.
"We've been looking forward to meeting you, Mr. Deemer. I'm Agent Watson and this is Agent Hargrove. You've been a very busy young man," said the condescending little prick as he removed Billie's photographs from his case and spread them out before me on the tabletop. Jones and Ricardo, Leon and his late brother, Harry Pine and Harvey Keene, the usual. I waited for the rest of them, for the Family Snaps, but he didn't produce them. I could see into his attache. It was empty. When I fetched a set of photos for Chucky, I had removed the Family Snaps and hid them in a Thelonious Monk album on a shelf full of albums.
"Do you recognize these?" Watson asked.
"Of course. You got them from my apartment?"
"Hidden beneath your refrigerator." He was giving me the tough-guy glare, but I'd been glared at lately by far tougher.
"I suppose you had a search warrant."
"Unnecessary under the circumstances. Where did you get these photographs?"
"Billie Burke mailed them to me." This was the fucker who told Eleanor Beemon that her daughter was murdered.
"Don't bullshit me, Mr. Deemer. I'm your best hope for the future."
"I have a right to a lawyer. Do you deny me that right?" But at this point in my new career, I was feeling neither cooperative nor frightened by authority, at least not in his form.
"Do you know this man?" He pointed a squeaky-clean finger at Harry Pine's chest.
"We've met."
"Is it not true that Harry Pine paid you to report to him?"
Sybel. "Yes. But there has been nothing to report."
"Nothing to report? His building was burned to the ground. His employee was found dead in the same little refrigerator from which you got the photos. Still another of his employees was shot to pieces outside your door. Nothing to report?"
"Why don't you ask him? You know I didn't do any of those things. You're denying me my civil right to an attorney. Is that your intention?"
"I heard about your attorney." He gestured dismissively over his shoulder at Hargrove, who left. "Not a lot of this makes sense, the murders, the arson, but you make the least sense of all." Who could argue with that?
Hargrove ushered Sybel into the gray room. They had her hands cuffed together in front. Her face was pale and drawn, her black hair oily and disheveled. Our eyes met. She seemed too exhausted for surprise as she sat at the head of the table and folded her chained hands. Jailhouse grime was lodged beneath her fingernails.
"Sybel, did they allow you to phone a lawyer?" I asked.
She shook her head wearily. "They kept me in a cell all day and night. They had me strip searched."
I didn't get it. Why would he do a thing as stupid as that. Even Bruce, tripping, could get his whole case tossed out on that basis.
"I told them how you got the photographs, Artie." Then she seemed for the first time to see that those very photos were spread out on the table.
"She also told us about a certain note from the Burke woman." He consulted his notebook. "Saying in effect, 'I'm dead. Look in the ice tray.' Where is that note?"
"It was with the photos. Didn't you see it?"
Watson re-consulted his notebook. "Leon Palomino informed you by phone that he had touched off the fire which destroyed the building at number 89 West Eleventh Street known as Renaissance Antiques. I believe you were present during that time, Miss Black. That makes you both accessories after the fact to arson in the first degree."
"Come on, Watson," I said. "You know it can't be first-degree arson if the building was not inhabited."
"You know what? You'd better stop fucking with me." He looked back to his notebook. "Destruction of evidence in a capital crime, withholding evidence in a capital crime. I have a half-dozen eyewitnesses who heard the gunman, after he killed Richard Ricardo, call you by name."
Sybel's mouth gaped open. She had been in jail when that went down.
"The gunman said, 'Now you take care, Artie,' at which point he walked away. Who was that man, Mr. Deemer?"
"I was a little busy at the time. Do you know this Ricardo asshole was trying to kill me?"
"Did you or did you not meet Leon Palomino at Yankee Stadium?"
"No, I did not."
"Mr. Deemer, I told you time is short. And if I were you, Miss Black, I would not place my fate in the hands of a jailhouse lawyer as reckless as Mr. Deemer." Back to me: "My men saw you at Yankee Stadium with Leon Palomino."
"No, they didn't, they saw me at Shea Stadium."
Watson looked back at Hargrove, who nodded slightly. "Shea Stadium, that's what I said. What did he tell you during that meeting?"
"That he saw Jones and Ricardo wheel the refrigerator across Eleventh and into Renaissance Antiques." I waited for him to follow up on that, but he did not.
"What did he tell you about Harry Pine?"
"That someone was trying to extort money from Pine's friends."
"Who? Why?"
"He didn't say. Just what do you want from us, Watson?"
He looked at Sybel: "Mr. Deemer thinks I can't make these charges stick because of certain technicalities. But what he doesn't recognize—what you should recognize—is that I don't care about making them stick. I can, and shall, make your lives miserable for a long time to come without making anything stick. I'll request at your arraignment that bail be disallowed because your freedom might subvert my ongoing investigation at a crucial stage and could defeat the ends of justice. All the lawyers in New York, Miss Black, won't keep you out of the Women's House of Detention for a couple of weeks. And you, Mr. Deemer, will be arraigned and sent directly to Rikers Island."
"Don't do that to us," Sybel said.
"You have a daughter, don't you, Miss Black?"
"Yes."
"Staying, I believe, with your mother in New Jersey."
"Yes."
"I want nothing more than to reunite you with her, but I'm in the midst of a very serious investigation, and the small people will be sacrificed if they don't cooperate. You are either part of the solution or part of the problem."
"What do we have to do?" Sybel asked in a small voice.
"I'm after Harry Pine's clients. Pine is a small fry, but he's a step up the ladder to bigger fish. That's what I'm after, big fish. We had Pine under strict surveillance, and then it blew up in our face about the time you and Mr. Deemer entered the picture. Now we've lost him. If you agree to help me get him, y
ou will leave this building in about half an hour, and I will protect you from any harm that might come as a result."
"So you don't really give a shit about Billie Burke's murder?"
"No, I do. It might prove useful. Miss Black told me that you are now working for Harry Pine."
"I told you we were forced to work for him."
"That's what I want you to keep doing. Tell him that you've been arrested, and that the FBI is climbing all over him. You will be wearing a recording device and transmitter when you meet him. He's bound to say something incriminating. Pine is scared. Scared people do reckless acts."
"You mean like killing us?" said Sybel. "That would work great for you wouldn't it?"
I hadn't thought of that chilling point.
"You needn't worry about that. My people will have you under surveillance the entire time. I can guarantee your personal safety. My men are not like the NYPD. We get the job done. So what do you say? Do you assist me, or do you return to jail? Your choice."
TWENTY-TWO
"THAT HORRIBLE MATRON," snarled Sybel. "She taped the damn thing to my nipple." Sybel clutched her sweater at the side of her breast and yanked. Tape ripped.
We sat savoring the outdoors on a bench graffitied with Chinese characters and English obscenities in Columbus Square, a concrete pocket park behind the Criminal Court Building from which five minutes earlier we had been released, with strings attached. Technicians had taped listening devices to our bare chests. I had envisioned space-age microchips straight out of Mission Impossible, but these were nothing more than small tape recorders. Watson had buzzed about nervously re-explaining what the technicians had already told us, belaboring the obvious: flip the switch to ON when we were going in for the setup, otherwise leave it OFF to conserve the batteries; and the setup had to happen today. Never mind that we had no idea how to get in touch with Pine, even if we wanted to. As Watson had opened the last door, he came on all avuncular and trustworthy. "Don't worry," he had said. "My people will monitor you every step of the way."
"Do you have any money?" Sybel asked me.
Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery Page 17