Homeboy

by Seth Morgan

  For appearances, Joe cursed. Inwardly, he rejoiced that he was being silently beefed for the pharmacist, not Rooski. Tarzon hadn’t made good the veiled threat near Twin Peaks. The felony murder might mean harsher treatment by the Man; the snitch jacket would have spelled swift death at the hands of his fellows. Believing himself shielded from the consequences of his own moral dearth by Tarzon’s helpless surplus, Joe flushed with the coward’s historic vanquishment of the brave.

  “I recommend you change your plea to guilty at this Preliminary Hearing and throw yourself on the mercy of the court. The judge might take this as evidence of contrition and modify your sentence accordingly. He might throw out the narcotics paraphernalia found on your person at the time of arrest.”

  Joe said cool as a quart of beer, “No, I think I’ll take it to trial. Yup,” tugging his ear ruminatively, “twelve in a box.”

  The P.D.’s nose twisted oddly at the end as if smelling sideways at an illusive bad odor. Plainly it irked him not receiving the awe customarily accorded the mysteries of his profession by the indigent. “I wouldnt do that. They’re going to max you on the Four Eightyseven GTA anyway, but if you force it to trial, they can run an additional year consecutively for the paraphernalia. Even though it’s only a Health and Safety Code violation, they can bump it up to felony for your numerous priors … and will, taking the silent beef into account. Copping out might save you a year.”

  “What’s another bullet, wild or bowlegged … Anyway, they have to convict first.”

  “If every case went to trial the system would …”

  “I know. Gridlock and collapse. But case crunch isnt supposed to be your concern, Counselor—my rights are. And chief among those is the right to a trial by my peers. No wonder they call you guys Penitentiary Dispatchers. Maybe I should act in my own defense. At least then I’d have a principled fool for a lawyer.”

  Court was a dim looming chamber smelling of stale floorwax and inarticulate despair. Nary a breath of fresh air to wash the jailhouse stink from Joe’s nose. The prisoners were ushered in a dozen at a time and seated in the unused jury box.

  In the carved wood galleries ornate as RKO poopdecks perched that hardcore squad of spectators who stayed each day till closing, seeking relief from their own misery in that of others: brighteyed little old ladies in crazy hats beside shopping bags stuffed with rubbish, papery lips fluttering around mad mute maledictions, frail fingers flying around unseen guillotine knitting; shabby old men, faces suffused with the same stupefied rapture panned by televangelists’ cameras and lit by the Blue Note’s runway bulbs.

  Excepting this Senior Jurists’ Auxiliary watching the wheels of justice grind human lives, court was nearly empty. Several black mothers huddled in shadows of their own desolation, wringing handkerchiefs and mouthing silent prayers when they spotted their babies in the docket. In the last row slouched an emaciated whitegirl who looked as if she’d been up for a week alternately shooting speed and getting gangraped—and now was being forced to appear by her new pimp to testify against her old one.

  No Kitty Litter.

  “Manuel Echeveria, line fourteen,” called the bailiff.

  A small mustachioed Mexican stood uncertainly and shuffled to the rail. The ones who couldn’t speak English fidgeted and looked frightened. The language barrier compounded the terror of alien and hostile proceedings.

  Judge Trepanian, presiding, leaned on one elbow, hand scrunching dewlaps above ruddy ears attached to what was presumably the tenement of his jurisprudence, intent on a document before him. He leaned back, furrowing his brow, sucking his pencil. Removing it from his mouth, now he used its wet eraser to tick off the digits on one hand, counting.

  “Your Honor,” the P.D. began, standing at the defense table and gesturing in the defendant’s general direction. “Mr. Echeveria is charged with a violation of Penal Code Section Three Seventeen, to wit, Forcible Rape. As per agreement reached in discussions with the office of the District Attorney, it is Mr. Echeveria’s intent today to enter a plea to the lesser charge of Aggravated Sexual Battery …”

  Bang! Bang! The judge glared at the docket where another Mexican was excitedly waving his cuffed hands. “Bailiff! Have that man come to order or remove him from court.”

  “… and be sentenced according to the recommendations of the State …” The sallow P.D. looked up at the bench and smiled three prim millimeters.

  “Does the State have any objections to disposing of this matter in the manner indicated by defense counsel?” The judge still stared at the docket, where the other Mexican was talking volubly in the bailiff’s ear.

  Up shot the shavetail Assistant D.A. and rapped out, “None, Your Honor. Not so long as it is understood that the State must seek law prescribed owing to the plethora of sexual battery priors …”

  At the word “plethora,” Judge Trepanian started. Quickly he recounted his fingers, then lunged forward, scribbling frantically. Slapping down the pencil, he leaned back with a fatuous smirk.

  Why he’s doing a fuckin crossword puzzle, Joe almost laughed aloud.

  “Manuel Echeveria,” Judge Trepanian charged the pachook. “Are you aware that in entering a plea of guilty today you are waiving your right … What is it, Bailiff?”

  The bailiff trotted to the bench; motioned the judge to bend closer. A fervent whispered exchange ensued. The judge’s face mottled; his eyes popped. He motioned the bailiff away, leaned back and addressed the P.D. sternly: “I have been informed that the defendant at the rail, Senor Echeveria, is charged with nonpayment of child support and driving without a license. The accused rapist to whose charges you have addressed the court is named Manuel Escobar. Señor Escobar is currently standing trial in another court for the subsequent murder of that rape victim!”

  The P.D. gulped, fell back in his chair and began frantically shuffling through his threefoot stack of case files. Joe regretted giving him a hard time in the bullpen. The practice of overloading Public Defenders with every kind of case from juggling expense accounts to human heads was as unfair to them as it was unjust to their clients.

  The judge turned back wearily to the docket. “Senor Echeveria. Do you speak English? No? Well, is there an interpreter in court? Okay, you’ll do”—as the other Mexican rose to his friend’s side—“Bailiff, let the prisoner stand … Senor Echeveria, do you promise to make the payments to your child ordered by the Court?” He waited for the translation; lots of enthusiastic nodding and doffing of invisible sombreros. “And go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and obtain a driver’s license? Good. Case dismissed.” More excited gestures of gratitude as the judge measured the wounddown clockwork of the municipal soul with three weary bangs.

  “Call line fifteen, Joseph Holly Speaker”—the judge gunned the P.D. an arch look of scorn—“unless Mr. Speaker is already domiciled on Death Row.” This witticism drew a crop of ghoulish cacklings from the Senior Jurists’ Auxiliary.

  The Assistant D.A. read the police report into the record, including Tarzon’s narrative of apprehending Joe with the Porsche, then presented its sole witness, one of the parking valets. A regular rattailed Romeo with padded shoulders and pointy sideburns. He identified himself as Horace Desmond, a drama student working his way through the winter and spring quarters parking cars at Rossi’s Famous Seafood Restaurant. He mumbled it in an embarrassed way as if admitting to changing linen at an X-rated motel.

  “Mr. Desmond, could you recognize the man again who was loitering across the street from Rossi’s Famous parking lot the night in question?”

  “You bet!” sang out Horace. The judge cleared his throat, and Horace hastened to amend himself. “I mean, I can … I could.”

  “Kindly confine yourself to answering the questions,” the judge gently admonished, “with a direct yes or no.”

  Horace nodded, studying his folded hands.

  “Mr. Desmond!” The s
havetail prosecutor paused dramatically, bouncing on his toes while Horace prepared himself for the Biggie. “Do … you … recognize that man in this courtroom?”

  Horace slishslashed a shiverish eye around the court. He gave the Senior Jurists’ Auxiliary a onceover in case the culprit had sneaked in disguised as an escapee from a geriatric ward. The speed moll returned his thoughtful frown with a snarl that plainly communicated her impatience to get back to chasing the American Dream counting ceiling cracks. He looked askance at the weeping mammy contingent, redoubling their rockin, wringin, and LawsyLawsyin. At length Horace’s bright censorious eye traveled across the prisoners’ docket, where Joe stood grinning at the rail. He did a convulsive doubletake. He pointed a trembling finger.

  “That’s him! Oh yes, that’s him. Only he didnt have that … awful beard.”

  Horace would’ve identified the Pope were he standing at the rail in Joe’s stead.

  Joe asked loudly, “But can you dance?”

  Judge Trepanian banged his gavel with a force that wished Joe’s tongue lay beneath it.

  “Counsel for the defense?”

  “No questions.” The P.D. didn’t even look up from the file open before him; the next case, a juicy kidnap-murder, the sort of celebrity capital case which presented a P.D. with his only chance of promoting himself from court servitude.

  Not that Joe couldn’t have thought of several germane lines of questioning. Like had the witness picked the defendant out of a lineup? Or made him out of mug book? Or had the police just had him memorize Joe’s face—not that it was necessary from his position in court. And how, across a crowded twilit street, and most likely under the influence of whatever might be a valet’s drug of choice, could he be certain of the ID? Not to mention what loitering was supposed to prove. But that kind of Darrowesque defense cost money.

  When the State rested with the motion that the defendant be bound over to Superior Court and requested a date for Pretrial Hearing, Joe sang out from the docket, “Your Honor, on advice of counsel, I’d like to withdraw my previous plea of not guilty and enter a new one of guilty. I have been fully informed that by so doing I am waiving my rights …”

  Trepanian whacked Joe with the expected maximum of three years for the GTA and at the State’s recommendation dismissed the narcotics paraphernalia charge. The bailiff was guiding him back to the bullpen when he spotted a mane of coarse mestiza hair behind the mammys. Kitty! She must’ve come in late. The courtroom began carouseling to a slow waltzing calliope pumped by his heart, and for a dizzy instant he tasted her cunt, all ocean spray and wild fruit.

  The head tilted up then, showing a strange Latin face, and Joe’s heart dropped to his stomach.

  The bailiff thrust him into the bullpen. He stared around, wildeyed. A black jumped back and hollered—“Whoa! I dint sentence yuh, homey.”

  Back in the tank, Smoothbore was showing Clovis how to fold and weave empty cigaret packs into a picture frame. It was an indigenous jailhouse art, as sacred as lying. Smoothbore was more adept with silver foil than what he called his silver tongue.

  “The real trick is closing the square, tucking the last pack into the first,” the drifter schooled the punk.

  Joe stood nearby, staring at his image in a metal jailhouse mirror. His bentnosed reflection further bent by the warped sheet of steel was the only proof he had that time didn’t stand still. The beard he’d grown in jail served an unexpected function—it measured time. It became a living standard of change in the dead changeless world. The slow attenuation of jailhouse days first flossed his cheeks, then trailed mosslike tendrils; now he could curl it around a forefinger.

  “Here, kid.” Smoothbore handed Clovis the finished frame. It should have held a picture postcard of the Virgin over the washbasin of an Ensenada whore.

  “Thanks!” gurgled Clovis. Rapture lit his face like a Christmas ornament. Wondrously he ran his fingertips over the interlocking foil tiles; he held it up to the light to adore its true geometry.

  “Now when yer girlfriend sends in her pikchur, you got someplace to show it,” Smoothbore told him.

  “I aint got no girlfriend,” Clovis came clean.

  “Then whut pikchur you aim to stick in there?” Smoothbore scowled, suddenly suspicious. An artist, after all, has a right to know what uses are made of his work.

  “Mama’s,” Clovis declared, quickly stashing the frame beneath his bunk, lest the dexterous drifter turn Indian giver.

  Smoothbore borrowed the cholos’ traditional gesture of disdain, shaking invisible water from his fingers. He grinned, rolling his eyes at Joe.

  But the grin Joe returned was slack and queasy. The conversation reminded him again of mistakenly ID’ing Kitty in court. As much as he resented her for not being there, for being so indifferent to his fate as to ignore its moment of decision—he resented her even more for resembling the strange chicana in court. He blamed her for the misidentification as much as if she had deliberately perpetrated this hoax.

  “You still thinkin on yer girl,” Smoothbore guessed.

  Joe nodded. A thought swirled up in his mind, sudden and chill as a winter wind through a hidden crack in the wall. Had she guessed the truth about Rooski, did she know Joe’s most silent beef? Had killing Rooski killed whatever in Kitty hoped to love him? … No, that was impossible. Kitty would understand why he had to do it. It was nothing more noble than a stiff dick that kept her away.

  Concern luffed Smoothbore’s toothless lips. He’d seen the symptoms enough times to know they were best addressed gently but directly.

  “Jody’s gonna get him some leg,” the drifter said.

  Jody was the moniker all prisoners christened the anonymous lovers inevitably taken by their wives and sweethearts. The sated shadow in the female glance across a visiting room table, the invisible writing between the lines of censored letters, the unknown eye behind the camera at which women smile knowingly and children stare in mute confusion. The cholos called him Sancho.

  “Dont pay bein jealous,” Smoothbore further advised. “Jist cuz you gonna be slammed up three years dont make her a nun.”

  “Jealous?” Joe guffawed. “I used to pimp that bitch.”

  “You cant let Jody live rent free in yer head, Joe,” the drifter continued in the same tone, having seen the act before. “That’s hard time. If you cant shine him on, you gotta cut her loose … Unless you too hard in love.”

  Joe arched a blase brow. “Not me. Love’s too dangerous. It needs victims.”

  After Lights Off Joe lay on his belly gripping the bars at the head of his bunk, feeling their cold travel through his bones. Of course, another man; Smoothbore was right: a woman had her needs and had to do what she must to get by, too. Shine it on or turn it off. Accept or reject, that simple, he told himself. But he couldnt sleep for all their memories replaying with the stagy innocence of home movies in his head. He tried to think of other things, of being processed through the system like a hunk of meat through the packing plant he once B&E’ed, of the things he might do when he raised the streets and recovered the Moon. Yet his mind was drawn back to her like a metal filing to a magnet; no abstraction could displace the visceral anguish of her big ass and chichis wrapped in another’s arms. Just the thought of it set those longgone lost and lonesome blues howling down the canyons of his heart.

  Whore!—that denunciation dampened the self piteous echoes. Furiously scolding himself, You’re beating up on your heart for another just like her! Your mother, yes. Doubledamn that bitch for sucking and fucking the nameless legions of pachook lettuce pickers, cotton stompers, and tomato sorters, while he watched with baby hands clutching playpen spindles the way the grown ones now gripped cold steel bars; condemning the undefended infant heart to hunt forever her unregenerate ghost.

  While down the restless jailhouse line a solitary black voice skitskatted just for Joe:

  Ain
t no use in lookin back

  Jody’s gotcher Cadillac

  Aint no use in feelin blue

  Jody’s gotcher girlfriend too.

  WRITING ON JAILHOUSE WALLS

  “Solly on Pawnshop says Tarzon’s been checking the hock sheets for a diamond,” Quick Cicero droned through clenched teeth. His jaw was wired shut to set the cheekbone fractured in the terrace pistolwhipping.

  “So he knows we lost it,” Baby Jewels wheezed. “The Hooten bitch couldnt have told him, she didnt know.”

  Quick winced rolling his neck and hitching his shoulders. “He’s also scanning the computers nationwide for diamonds missing or stolen.”

  “Tch. I heard Tarzan was king of the jungle, I just didnt know the asphalt kind …”

  “Tar-zone …”

  “I know, shmuck! You ever heard of a joke maybe?” The ringed fingers drumming the desk trembled gaudy lights. Seeing the hurt clamped on his henchman’s mouth, the Fat Man relented. “Never mind, I’m a little tense. Why dont you fix me a bromo?”

  Quick ran a glass of water at the wet bar. Though the parlor upstairs remained closed following the raid, the downstairs office was restored to working order. The filing cabinets ransacked by Faria and company had been neatly rearranged against the velvetflocked wall. The babyspots jiggled askew by trampling police boots were retrained on the framed photographs. All that was missing was the staccato of highheels from above, the cynical tinkle of whore mirth, the throbbing juke measuring the pulse of ejaculant members. Yet these sounds, as much music to the twat trader’s ears as stuttering tickertape to other brokers, would soon resume. Baby Jewels didn’t expect the Tender Trap to stay closed long.

  Quick tore open a foil packet, dropping a pill in the glass, and handed his boss the fizzing beverage.

  “It’s no wonder he knows,” Baby Jewels gurgled between gulps. “We’ve got half San Francisco helping us look for it.” He drained the glass and belched daintily into a fistful of bright lights. “You got the line on this guy yet?”