Efrain's Secret

by Sofia Quintero

  Within minutes after we enter the precinct, a detective named Mendoza hauls me into a room and leaves me there alone. I aced a class on criminal law last year where the teacher repeatedly emphasized how things were not like the way they’re depicted on television shows, yet I sit here for hours like a murder suspect on Law & Order. As much as I rack my brain, I don’t remember learning anything that can answer the questions racing through my mind. Why would they separate me from the others? Are they all in rooms by themselves, too? If they’re going to question me, why are they taking so long? This just isn’t textbook.

  Mendoza returns with his partner—a Black guy named Mays—who removes my cuffs. They spend the next twenty minutes firing questions at me. I answer the simple ones. Name, age, address—all the things they must already know since they confiscated my wallet. I dig for the courage to ask for a lawyer, but every time the words scale up my throat, I swallow them down. They start to ask questions about Nestor, LeRon, and other foot soldiers in Snipes’s crew. Why do they call me Scout? They’re my friends, aren’t they? Do any of them go to Albizu Campos with me? As harmless as the questions seem, I exercise my Fifth Amendment right to keep my trap closed. Despite my silence, the questions come faster, sharper. Nothing fazes me until Mays asks, “So, I guess you don’t know anything about this turf war between Snipes and Hinckley?”

  He might as well have slapped me. Mendoza realizes Mays caught me off guard and says, “Frankie, Frankie, Frankie … You’re five months away from graduating high school, you have no priors…. What are you doing out there, kid? Really. Did you get your girlfriend pregnant?” Something in his eyes makes me want to tell him, but I force that down, too. Finally, Mendoza says, “Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it.” He motions for me to stand, and Mays cuffs me again.

  They toss me into a cell with some random guys, including that kid who guessed that Kayla and Martita were undercover officers. He acts grown, adding his two cents when the others crack jokes and make comments about every female officer who enters their line of sight. I just stay close to the bars, gripping them tightly while searching for someone I know. Apprehend (v.) to seize, arrest. The SAT vocabulary words ambush my conscience. Grievous (adj.) injurious, hurtful, serious or grave in nature. At first, I try to fight them. This is no time to be thinking about the damn SAT. Fractious (adj.) troublesome or irritable. Soon I welcome them because I have no other friends here.

  “Rodriguez, Efrain.” A female officer comes to the holding cell. She ignores the catcalls and leads me to an area where she fingerprints and photographs me. Finally, she allows me to make my telephone call. At this hour, she can still be at work, already home, or on her way from one to the other. I take my chances.

  “Yannis Discount.”

  “Mami… It’s Efrain.” Mendacious (adj.) having a lying, false character.

  “Hi, honey! I was just on my way home. Do you need something?”

  “I’m … at the precinct.” Unctuous (adj.) smooth or greasy in texture, appearance, manner.

  “Oh my God! Did something happen at work?” I see the scenario running through my mother’s imagination. I’m ringing up a sale when a masked gunman sticks a pistol in my face and orders me to empty the register…. “Efrain, are you still there?”

  “No. I got arrested—”

  “Arrested?”

  “They’re holding me at the Forty-first Precinct.” Incorrigible (adj.) incapable of correction, delinquent.

  “Efrain, what happened?”

  “Time’s up,” says the officer.

  “Just come down to the Forty-first Precinct on Longwood Avenue, and they’ll explain everything.”

  “But, Efrain—” The cop takes the receiver out of my hand, hangs up the phone, and brings me back to the cage. Egregious (adj.) extremely bad.

  Timorous (v.) timid, fearful

  Before my mother can make it to the precinct, the police chain a group of us together and pile us back into the van. I don’t know anyone else, and I suspect that this is no coincidence. The kid starts singing “Ninety-nine Bottles,” and everyone laughs except me. To settle my nerves, I switch my recall from vocabulary words back to criminal law.

  We arrive at the courthouse, and they bring us handcuffed into the building through a back entrance and down several flights of stairs to more holding cells. Before I can orient myself to the place, they remove the handcuffs, only to put us on a line that seems to have no end. It inches for hours until the guard finally ushers me into another cell where a man sits at a table. He makes final notes in the file before him, then adds it to the high stack beside him. Finally, the man stands and extends his hand. “Efrain Rodriguez?”

  “Yes.” He motions for me to sit in the seat across from him. While he reviews my file, I guess that he has only three or four years on me. Five tops. “Are you my attorney?”

  “No, I’m with the Criminal Justice Agency,” he deadpans as if he is asked that constantly. “I’m just going to ask you a few questions.” Criminal law class floods back to me. This is the first step toward my arraignment. His job is to interview me, and based on his report, the judge will decide whether or not to set bail and, if so, how much. If I’m at this point in the process, my fingerprints are on the way to Albany. My belly softens. When they return, everyone will know that I’m a youthful offender who has never been arrested before, and the judge will likely release me on my own recognizance into my mother’s custody.

  Moms. The police have probably told her I’m here now, and she’s on her way. My stomach tightens again.

  Once I finish the CJA interview, they cram me back into another fifteen-by-twenty-foot cell with others waiting to meet their public defenders. After a few hours, I lose track of time and run up on despair. An officer and a thin man wearing wiry glasses and a wrinkled suit approach the cage. “Rodriguez, Francisco?” I and two other guys rush to the bars.

  “Me! Here! I’m Francisco Rodriguez!”

  “Yo, you meant Francisco Dominguez, right?”

  The anguish in their voices makes me nauseous. I cringe at the thought of being as pathetic. Still, I shudder, hold my stomach, and ask the guard, “Can you be sure they got my name, please? Efrain Rodriguez. Not E-p-h-r-a-i-m. It’s E F-r-a-i-N.”

  Once the attorney leaves with the chosen Rodriguez, Francisco the Unlucky spits on the floor of the cell. “Man, it’s gotta be almost one already. Y’all know what that means.” Some guys grunt while others suck their teeth in agreement. “Night court’s done, man.” Dominguez throws his back against the wall of the cell. “Ain’t nothing happening ’round here at least for another eight hours,” he says to the uninitiated hiding in plain sight. Then he slides down the walls as if to settle in for the night. “Damn, I wish I had a cigarette.”

  The weight of his announcement forces me, too, to lean against the wall and slide down to the floor. I sense eyes making the descent with me, and I fight to keep my head up and my gaze hard. When I feel the show of strength has served its purpose, I fold my arms across my knees, put down my head, and pray I don’t cry in my sleep.

  Forlorn (adj.) lonely, abandoned, hopeless

  “Efrain Rodriguez!” I wake up lying on my side and facing the wall. Someone wedges his foot into the back of my thigh. “You Efrain Rodriguez, right?” I roll onto my back and squint up at Dominguez. “If you Efrain Rodriguez, they just called your name.”

  I want to leap, but it seems I’ve aged five decades overnight. “Right here!” I yell as I fight my aching bones to get to my feet. “I’m Efrain Rodriguez.” As I stand up, I chide myself for rushing. Like they might think I got tired of waiting and went home.

  I walk to the bars, where a woman with locks and a pantsuit waits for me beside the guard. He opens the cell, and I follow her to the opposite side of the room. “I’m LaTonya Avery from the Bronx Defenders,” she says over her shoulder. On the way, we pass a single cell no larger than two by two feet. Locked inside is a woman, but just when I think how unusual it
would be to mix the sexes in a place like this, she lifts her head, and I see the razor stubble peppered around her—his?—smeared lipstick. Before I can get over my shock, we pass the next single cell, where a man rocks in the corner and sings, “Peeeg, it will come back to you. Peeeg, it will come back to you.” And in the next cell is that kid. With a voice hoarse with despair, he calls out to Miss Avery, “Are you my lawyer?” His tears are at full stream now as he grips the bars, and I thank God that there are no more cells to pass.

  When we reach the interview area, Miss Avery motions for me to sit as she takes her own seat. “Now, I haven’t read your case yet….” She looks up to face me and instantly senses that I’m teetering on the ledge. “I’m doing everything possible to get you out of here as fast as I can, Efrain,” she says gently as she opens my file. “Just give me two minutes to acquaint myself with the facts of your case.” All I can do is nod and wait. She can take an hour. She can take three. She should take as long as I need to stay out of another cell. “Your codefendants Nestor Irizarry and LeRon Bishop … Do you know how old they are?”

  “Nestor’s eighteen. I don’t know how old LeRon is.”

  “Would you happen to know if either has been arrested before?”

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “Definitely.” Then I feel guilty.

  Miss Avery jots down notes on her yellow legal pad. “If that’s the case, they can forget about YO status because they only give you one shot at that. Now I can get that for you and probably a program, but first I have to move to sever—”

  “A program?” I see myself in a dormitory like one of those kids in Sleepers. I chase that image away with a milder one of me wearing a fluorescent vest while poking trash along the Bronx River Parkway. It barely makes me feel better. “What kind of program?”

  “An alternative to detention,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say. My relief is so profound, it embarrasses me. “Like community service.”

  “Right,” says Miss Avery, eager to put me at ease. “I might be able to get the judge to grant you probation on the stipulation that you attend a weed program for a year.”

  “But I don’t smoke weed.” My lawyer smirks at me. “I know everybody must say that to you, but I’ve never even tried it, Miss Avery, I swear on my mother. I’m, like, the poster child for Just Say No.”

  “That may be true, Efrain, but you’re being charged with a drug felony—”

  “I know, but it’s one thing to cop to something that I did do—”

  “A B-level drug felony—”

  “I don’t want to say I did something that I’ve never done.” Miss Avery clasps her hands under her chin, allowing me to speak my piece. I’m excited now, ready to pull off the gloves and defend myself, no holds barred. “They charged me with intent to sell, Miss Avery, but I never had any drugs on me. Does the police report say they found drugs in my possession?” My lawyer stares at me so intently, I wonder if she actually can see through my polemic—(n.) an aggressive argument against a specific opinion—to the opposing emotions colliding within me. One side takes no small pride in my ability to make a strong case for myself, showcasing my lawyerly potential. Meanwhile, the other stands shell-shocked. After all those hours between cells and handcuffs telling myself that I didn’t belong there with them. I sound exactly like they do, attempting to reason away a guilt that is as precise as it is real.

  When I finish, Miss Avery slowly lowers her clasped hands and opens my file. She flips through several pages and then holds up a photocopy of several dollar bills for me to see. “You see these, Efrain?” she says, pointing at the serial numbers on each of the bills. “These are copies of the dollars used by the two undercover officers to purchase the drugs. The serial numbers on this twenty matches the one on the bill found in your pocket at the time of your arrest. Do you understand what this means?”

  Now I’m the kid in the paddy wagon after getting head-butted, and no amount of sucking my breath and blinking my eyes can hold back that tear. “Miss Avery, I can’t go to jail.”

  “Efrain, that’s what I’m trying to explain to you. Even with a guilty plea, with no prior criminal history and youthful offender status, there’s a very good chance that I can keep you out of jail. All you would have to do is agree to attend some kind of program. One, maybe two, meetings per week for a year … It’ll fly by, and you’ll be back to your life before this—”

  “I can’t do a program and go to college!” I yell. I know the math. Bronx arrest plus Bronx judge equals Bronx program. Then another realization crashes over me like a wave against rocks, launching me to my feet as I imagine my fingerprints scanning through a computer in Albany and triggering alerts on computers in every financial aid office throughout the country. No matter it probably doesn’t work like that; the result is the same. If I plead to a felony, I’ll no longer be eligible for federal student loans. Neither Harvard nor Hunter will offer me a financial aid package that doesn’t include student loans. “My financial aid applications!”

  An officer yells, “Hey!”

  No sooner had Miss Avery assured him that everything is fine than I sink back into the seat. She looks at me, shaking her head. “Efrain …” And with that utterance of my name, she asks all the questions I’d be too ashamed to answer. With that one word, she lets me know that she finally believes me when I insist that I’m not like all the others who have sat at this same table pleading innocence. The problem is, I myself no longer believe that anymore. “You have my word that I’m going to be very proactive on your case, and I will do everything in my power to build a solid preplea report that proves to the court that you’re a fine young man who made a mistake you won’t repeat. You’re not the big fish they want, Efrain, so I think I can get the DA to reduce the charges so you can plead to a misdemeanor with youthful offender treatment.”

  See, Mrs. Colfax. I’m not a big fish in any bowl. “Which means?”

  “It means I have a good shot at getting you community service that you can complete before school begins and eventually get your conviction off your record.”

  “Expunge,” I say. “Verb. To obliterate, eradicate.”

  Miss Avery sighs, then closes my file. “So you’ve already applied to college.” I just stare at the red marks around my wrists left by the handcuffs. I can’t look my lawyer in the eye, instinctually aware that for once my initiative and discipline about the college admission process are not an advantage. “Efrain, the criminal justice system can be slow and unpredictable. You may want to consider withdrawing your applications until your case is resolved.”

  Incendiary (n.) a person who agitates

  When I finish meeting with my public defender, they transfer me to another cell adjacent to the one I just left. I pass the time doing another emotional workout, following an hour of wallowing in self-pity with another hour of kicking myself for getting in this situation. What if the system is as unpredictable as Miss Avery says, and the judge decides to impose bail and send me to Rikers Island? It doesn’t matter that the gig is up, and I can tell my mother to go into the shoebox in my closet, where she’ll find enough cash to post bond. Until she pays it, I still have to spend some time in a real jail.

  The terror of the mere thought must give off an odor. “Them kicks is hot.” The gruff voice belongs to a compact body hovering above me. My eyes make a reluctant trek to his face. I eke out Thanks, which is all the permission he needs to reach down and grab me by the ankle. I yell and flail, but others just gather to watch, some cheering Get ’em. get ’em! He gets off one Jordan, quickly tucks it under his armpit, and snatches for the other, all without letting go of my leg.

  Officers burst into the cell. One drags him off of me after harnessing him with a nightstick while the other pulls me up to my bare feet. She points toward a sneaker on the cell floor where the thug dropped it. “Get your shoe.” I do as she orders while watching her look for the other one. She finds it in the hands of another detainee, who obviously confused the ruckus for a
game of finders keepers. The officer grabs the sneaker out of his hand and gives it to me. Once my kicks are on my feet, she takes me to the tiny cell where I had seen the kid several hours ago. “I’m going to put you in here for your own protection.”

  Clang! And there I sit for another half hour or so before someone finally calls my name. This officer cuffs me again and takes me through a door and up two flights of steps to the courtroom. When I enter, Miss Avery is already playing verbal badminton with the district attorney and the judge. As the court officer leads me to my lawyer, I scan the gallery looking for my mother. Instead, I spot Claudia in the crowd with her wailing baby. “Face forward,” the bailiff barks as he deposits me next to Miss Avery.

  “How does the defendant plead?”

  “Not guilty,” Miss Avery replies on my behalf. For a second, I wonder what she’s doing. Then I remember that this is how the process unfolds. If she is going to negotiate a deal where I can plead guilty to a misdemeanor, I can’t go on the court record copping to a felony. “Given that the defendant is a minor who has no previous brushes with the law, I ask that he be released into the custody of his father, who is present in the courtroom.”

  Rubio? Here? Now? I jerk my head around to look for him.

  The court officer yells, “Turn around and face the judge!”

  Miss Avery puts her arm on my shoulder, which must be like pressing her palm against a block of ice. I stare straight ahead toward the bench. Without taking her eyes off what she is reading, the judge asks, “Is the state in accordance with that?”