A change of gravity

by George V. Higgins

  "But he had been; he finally convinced me his real name was Adidas.

  Cops told me it wasn't even that unusual; I just hadn't happened to run into it before. Those people really do that. There're kids named "Reebok" and "Nike" around, too,

  "Lawyer" "Colonel" and "Duke." Those're their actual names. I just wasn't aware of the style. Hell, I didn't know anna thing instead of ranting and raving at a kid named after a sneaker, I should've been getting ready for prisoners named after nothing I ever heard of:

  Rajahlakah Muhammad and Buforce Elijah. I get a guy named after a city these days, and I recognize it, I can actually spell it, I tell you, I'm almost grateful.

  "So I wrote it down on the form and gave Ottawa Johnson the once-over.

  He didn't look dangerous to me. So that's one thing out of the way, before I decide on his bail. I held my usual chat with him while I was fillin' out the papers; I'm telling him as he doesn't know that he's charged with B and E in the night-time and he has to show up in court tomorrow morning early if not bright and tell the judge whether he plans to get his own attorney or wants one appointed for him.

  '"One appointed," says Ottawa right off, very sure of himself. He knows the drill pretty good, as you would expect from glancing at his papers. Six-page print-out suggests to the casual eye he's not a newcomer to the criminal justice system. They get that rap-sheet now at the station the minute the guy comes in. If it's not waiting for him when he gets there, logged-in by the arresting cop in the prowl car at the crime-scene. Name, date of birth, Social Security; in six or eight minutes his whole history prints out nice and neat any time of day or night. Prior offenses; outstanding warrants; bingety-bangety-boom.

  '"You still gotta come to court and tell the judge that," I say.

  '"I know dat," Ottawa says, very matter-of-fact. I'm sure he does.

  Ottawa turned eighteen on June fourth, and here we are now, less'n three months later, writing up his third adult encounter with the law.

  No rest for the wicked; Ottawa keeps busy. But no surprise there;

  Ottawa was precocious. Sixteen juvenile matters on his sheet. Some of them involved the unauthorized use of other people's motor vehicles.

  Others the unauthorized removal of stereo-tape decks and custom nag-wheels from other people's motor vehicles; the removal of stereos, TVs, silverware and jewelry from other people's dwelling places; and just about everything you can do with controlled substances buying, selling, possessing.

  '"Ottawa," I say to him, "I don't see no occupation, job, here on this printout. Whatchou do fo' a livin'?" '"Yeah there is, it say right there," Ottawa he say to me. Points it out to me with his ringer, there. "See? Says it right there: I'm Essesseye."

  "Supplemental Security Income S, S, I. In their eyes that's a recognized trade or profession. Like licensed barber or plumbing inspector. Or at least the Ottawas of our world think it should be.

  It's the occupation of choice among the majority of folks who visit the lockup and the courthouse. They be disabled, and can't work, so the Commonwealth gives them one-hundred-and-twelve dollars a month and the federal government kicks in four-hundred-seventy more. Meaning you and I and everybody else who's working for a living, and has taxes withheld from it, is making it possible for our governments to give every single shiftless bum who asks for it six-thousand-nine-hundred-and-eighty-four American dollars each year. They don't have to do a fuckin' thing but cash their checks which is good 'cause they don't feel like doin' anything legal just now; what they want to do is hang out."

  "Oh, Amby," Diane said, hopelessly.

  He ignored her. '"Essesseye," I say to Ottawa, "now what inna world're you getting' that for? You look pretty healthy to me. Why is it that you can't work?" '"Well, 'cause I'm nervous." Ottawa says, and he grins. "I always been very nervous. So I never could hold a job down." '"Maybe it's always doin' things that get you arrested that's making you so nervous," I said. "Havin' cops after you most of the time.

  "Cause you been arrested a lot." '"You know, that could be," Ottawa says to me. "I never did think of that."

  "So," Merrion said, maneuvering around an old brown pick-up truck doing sixty-five, towing a wire-fenced trailer overloaded with power tools four lawn mowers a wheeled leaf-blower; a large rototiller and racks of untethered rakes and hoes and shovels banging around with each bump and curve, "Ottawa seemed pretty familiar with what can be done to him at a trial in a court of law, so that advice didn't take long. Of course he's never really had a trial yet; his cases all plea-bargained, but he knows the warnings by heart. Along with the rest of his several rights and responsibilities as an accused. I didn't see any reason to make Ottawa stay overnight make the taxpayers give him board and room, three hots anna cot, on top of everything else so us two old hands had him on his way in a New-York-minute or so."

  "And now what'll happen to him, tomorrow?" Diane said. "Is it even possible that this time somebody might finally take a look at this kid, take an interest in him, maybe even try to find a way to help him?"

  "Ottawa asked me something like that. I did not say to him, as I will to you now, that he oughta know that by now, all the experience he's had. In the past there've been complaints from some visitors that such comments suggest to them we're "prejudice"; because the cops've lugged 'em, we believe they're guilty. I said "the judge'll appoint Mass Defenders to represent you. Trial in a month unless you plead before that." '"M I gonna jail this time, you figure?" he says.

  '"I'm not a lawyer, Ottawa," I tell him, as of course I'm not, "and if I were I couldn't give you any legal advice. You get that from your lawyer. You know all of this stuff."

  "In other words," Diane said, 'the answer to the question I just asked you would be No. The answer's No." '"Yah," he says," Merrion said, disregarding her remark. "He agrees." '"Judge'll continue the same bail," I tell him. "You don't show up; you'll owe the court another hundred. Next time the cops run you, you'll stay in jail 'til you see the judge."

  "Ottawa's already coughed up his twenty-five-buck bail fee, two tens and a five. Your seasoned old pros prepare for another night in the life of crime by setting their bail money aside. Fold it up and put it in their sock or in their shoe. So if they get to drinkin' or stoned on crack or something, they wont be tempted to invest their getting'-out dough in more happiness. Of course when they get well-wired, they pull off the shoe and spend the dough. But the principle is there. Anyway, Ottawa's money's still lying there on the desk. I haven't picked it up yet.

  "That goes toward it," he says, meaning the hundred for bail if he scoots and then gets caught. His tone of voice gives me my choice. I can take it as a statement or a question. In all the times that Ottawa's made bail before, it happens that he's either never gotten grabbed in Canterbury or else he's come in on a night when someone else had the detail. So he doesn't know me. He's trying me out. "Nice try, pal," I say, and I pick up the cash. "This's my fee, not your bail." "Just asking'," he says, and he grins. Just a couple old hands, like I said.

  "Then I have a couple more kids who aren't as personable as Ottawa and're facing different charges, but basically got nabbed at later stages of doing the same thing: Being someplace where they shouldn't be, using stolen money to buy illegal stuff, and not being able to give the cops who happened by and caught them a satisfying explanation of why they were there and what their plans'd been. And so they got arrested.

  "One of them said he actually has a steady job at United Parcel in Wilbraham. He said he was afraid being busted for buyin' crack might make him lose it. He looked very worried, so he might actually've been telling me the truth.

  "One of the other two was on Essesseye. He has a physical problem:

  "Bad back. Chronic," he said to me. Put his right hand back on it right above his belt, so I'd know where it hurts. I didn't believe him, but I do believe his claim that a doctor and a caseworker believed him in the past doctors and caseworkers believe many things the average person would strongly doubt and the average cop wou
ld laugh at.

  "The third one was kind of vague. He said he's on workman's comp. He had a bandage on his left hand. Said he sliced it twenty-stitches' worth cutting pipe on a construction job. Could be, but he looked shifty. He had almost four hundred bucks on him, though, so it's possible he was telling the truth. Also possible he isn't, and that he got the cash from selling something that he stole, or else from selling dope. Leave that one for Probation to sort out Monday.

  "Then comes my next customer. She's a young-lady barkeep at Cannonball's on the road up by the pond. She sold she's alleged to have sold, excuse me a gram of coke to a State cop. He was in civvies and he looks like a Cub Scout. She's maybe about twenty-six, twenty-seven years old. Five-five, zaftig, very blonde, long pony-tail. Unusual for a defendant in that she is Jewish.

  Rosenbaum. Leah Suzanne Rosenbaum. I suppose this's going to qualify me as an anti-Semite, go along with my well-documented racist tendencies, but the fact is we don't get much weekend trade from the Chosen People in my line of work."

  "They're not doing their part?" Diane said.

  "Not even close to it," Merrion said. "Oh, now and then we'll get a stray, some Jewish college kid who went out partyin' with the hard-drinkin' goyim, or a middle-aged businessman who knew but forgot that Jews aren't supposed to be big drinkers and there's a good reason for that. The kid gets bagged in an underaged-drinking round-up, he's out drinkin' with his pals, not as drunk but just as under-twenty-one as they are, and therefore just as illegal, so he gets busted with them. His older landsmen: it's so unusual for him to have more than a drink or two that he doesn't realize when he's had too much, not being that familiar with the symptoms, so he tries to drive himself home. If you or I're in that same condition, wed probably make it. We really shouldn't, we know, but because we've had some practice wed probably make it all right. The Jewish guy's all over the road and promptly gets busted."

  "You can leave me out of that speculation, if you wouldn't mind," she said.

  "Sorry," Merrion said. "You idealistic grass-and-magic-mushroom people don't know about intoxication like we evil drinkers do. Forgive me for suggesting it. I'd make it home all right. You should stay where you are and sleep it off.

  "This young lady's got a lot bigger problem," he said.

  "Selling a gram of coke?" Diane said. "How big a problem is that?"

  "Not big at all," Merrion said, 'if that was the full extent of it.

  First offense, as this is, suspended for sure, with stern lecture.

  Cavanaugh yells at her for five or six minutes, "serious offense; mighty big risk you're taking, young lady; ruin your life," so on and so forth, "go forth and sin no more. Don't let me see you in here again." Her problem's not just what she sold to the cop after her boyfriend gave him the sales pitch that got him to the bar; it's what the cops found, under the bar, where she got the toot that she'd sold: thirty-four more grams, give or take."

  "I can never remember…" Diane said.

  "A little over an ounce," Merrion said. "Twenty-eight grams to the ounce. That tips you off something's wrong here. It's unusual to find someone in her position with that much stuff within her reach. That's the second tier of the statute. Anything between twenty-eight and a hundred grams wins you a full five years as a guest of the Commonwealth. Mandatory minimum: they prove you had that much, you go.

  If she's the retailer, and the boyfriend's her floor-walker, then the dealer that they're working for's been kind of careless, exposin' his loyal employees like that. Leavin' the help to twist in the wind.

  "That's dangerous. When employees start to shiver, they usually decide to clear their throats and see if the cops wanna patch the thing up and be friends. Case like this, the guy they have to talk about usually turns out to be the guy that owns the bar. If he isn't, he's the night manager and the guy who owns the joint's either stupid or partners with him. If the cops can prove the owner let that stuff go on, his liquor license is history. He may beat a criminal charge, if he can convince a judge he wasn't smart enough to know what was going on and get a piece of the action, but that wont save his license. He's supposed to know if there's something like that goin' on in his place, and get rid of anyone doin' it. Not do nothing and let it go on. The only hope he's got is that his people go through for him, swear he didn't have a clue.

  "Over twenty-eight grams though, what Leah Suzanne's got this morning, that hope becomes kinda slim. That much makes her look like a kingpin herself. Very tough for a prosecutor to make more than an ounce of the stuff into less 'n fourteen grams, half an ounce, a mandatory three, and then shrink it even more so a judge can put her on the street. This child is in serious trouble.

  "She's gotta know this," Merrion said. "She oughta be in tears, out of her mind. She's not, she's as calm as an angel. She's fixing her hair. Combing and primping, you know? I'm talkin' to her; I'm explaining the charges. She's nodding, not really listenin'. I guess it must be a lotta work, long hair like that, steady part-time job. Got this elastic ruffled thingie that she's gonna put around to hold it that is in her teeth. She needs both her hands, work on her hair. One to hold it; one to brush it, really hard, yankin it between strokes.

  So, she's got it all pulled around in front of her, over her shoulder there, all nice and brushed out. Looks at it; it's okay. All right: takes the elastic thingie outta her mouth, spreads it open with her left hand, pulls it on over the hair, all the way up the back her head, and then tosses her head alia way back, an' flips the hair back over her shoulder.

  "By now I've finished with what the offense is. She's heard me say she's facing five years inna can. She gives me this big lovely smile, like I'd just told her: "You won the lottery, Cupcake." And then what she starts doin' is countin' out twenty-five more bucks from her bra, which's got a whole lot more'n just money in it. My own guess is that all that this young lady does extremely well on tips, tending bar at Cannonball's by making sure she always leans 'way over the counter when she serves the drinks. And my guess would also be that whenever she's had a major purchase in mind, like a car or a high-priced vacation, she knows a reliable way to pick up a little extra money on the side.

  Prolly has to take her gum out for that, though she took some out and started chewin' the instant I said she was free.

  "I tell her about her right to an attorney and she says: "Get my own."

  I start to warn her what'll happen if she doesn't show up eight-thirty tomorrow, report to Probation. She says, really bored: "Yeah yeah, I know, a hundred bucks." Like it's all she can do not to say: "Get real I spill more'n that."

  "I begin to think I must've gotten the wrong lady's rap sheet Accordin' to the one the sergeant gives me, this's her first arrest. "This your real name I got here?" I say to her. '"Leah Suzanne Rosenbaum?" '"Yeah," she says, very nasal voice, "that's who I am don't I look it?"

  She laughs. "Have tah tell my mother that. She's always after me.

  "Leah, Leah, heaven's sake, whyncha get your nose fixed. They say there's nothin' to it no more; I'd do it myself, I was your age. You really should give it some thought." '"You ever go by any other names?" I say to her.

  '"You serious1" she says to me. Thompson's bringing her boyfriend out.

  "I do not believe this," she says to him. "Can you believe this, Felipe, what this guy is doing? He's asking me if my name is my real name. You tell him, Felipe, all right? Tell him who I am here."

  "Felipe's ambition in this life's to be a comedian. He sees this as the chance he's been waiting for, goes right into his shtick. The lockup's on network TV. "He don't believe you're who you are? Of course you're who you are. I take care of this for you. This's the guy here I tell?" And Felipe points to me.

  '"Yeah, him," she says. She thinks Felipe is hilarious. "He's the one, thinks I'm not me." '"Certainly," says Felipe. He clears his throat and stands up straight. "This young lady here I know most of my life to be Candida Rivera, right? Candida Rivera. She is Geraldo's top woman assistant, all right? That's probably where you
seen her. Onna TV all the time.

  Candida Rivera." He looks her up and down. "Nice lookin' woman, don't you think? Very shapely, nice and plump." "Hey" she says, sticks her elbow in his ribs, "I'm not plump. What is this, plump7." Meanwhile he's looking innocent. "That what you want me to tell him, Candy?

  Everything fio-kay now, little one?"

  "This cracks her up completely," Merrion said, taking the ramp south of Holyoke connecting Route 91 with the Massachusetts Turnpike, in West Springfield. "This is the most fun I have ever seen two people having who've just been arrested on a serious charge and aren't so drunk I can't let them out for fear they might fall inna river. They are perfectly sober, deep in the shit, and happy as larks.

  "Well, nothing off mine. I give him the speech. Like her, although he's a spic and has a record, minor stuff, he's got what we call "ties to the area." Family lives here. Owns a house in East Longmeadow, with a mortgage. Wife and kids. He's also got a little something going with the barmaid; nothing says that means the wife an' kiddies're no longer local ties. And a bank account, as well, he says. I've got no reason not to grant him bail. She makes his bail fee. And that's where we stand, they're just leaving, when the woman trespasser comes out. The woman they arrested inna woods.

  "The name she gave is Linda, Linda Shepard. She's in her early thirties, thirty-two, the sheet said, but she looks a lot older; maybe forty or so. She's got her three kids with her. Cops've got 'em back in the conference room the lawyers use, they come in to talk to their clients. Giving them tonic and something to eat, and they put a TV in there, too. Still, they got no place else to go so they're taking part in this "life experience," finding out what it's like to get arrested, put in jail. Great for "show-and-tell," their next foster parents ever get them back to school. One of them's eleven, other two're nine and six; Sylvester and Bruce and Demi.

  "Mom's new boyfriend's also joining us tonight. Ronald Bennett, early twenties, looks like he had an IQ of maybe ninety, ninety-one, last time he was sober enough so that someone could sit him down and test him. His father most likely was his grandfather, and his mother's father too. The five of them, him and her and the kids, all of them living in a cabin up there in the State Forest.