I lifted myself off of the chair, grabbed onto the walker, and started pushing it toward the door.
“I don’t understand,” said Fran. “Where are you going?”
“Just out for some air,” I said.
“I know what he wants to talk to William about,” Rose said. “Some fight he got into with a man from the radio. He thinks if he goes out into the hallway, I won’t know what he’s up to.”
“He got in a fight with a man from the radio?”
They were talking about me like I wasn’t in the room again. I was hearing all of it, because I had only made it about a third of the way to the door. Our room was maybe thirty feet from end to end, but I needed ninety seconds to cross it. Maybe a little less, if I was in a rush to get to the toilet.
“Yes. A journalist, I think. It’s something to do with one of his old cases. He keeps finding these doorways back into his past, like a Pevensie child finding portals into Narnia. And meanwhile, I’m dealing with cancer. I’ve had to remind him three times in the last two days that I am sick, and every time I tell him, it’s like I’m telling him for the first time. But he hasn’t needed any help remembering a stupid phone call from a reporter.”
“Do you want me to stop him?” Fran asked. “I feel like we have some important things we need to discuss.”
“Let him go. William will keep an eye on him. There’s no reasoning with him when he gets like this, anyway. If we call downstairs, I think we can get somebody to send up some coffee.”
“How is the coffee here?” Fran asked.
“Disappointing,” said Rose. “Just like everything else.”
Then Tequila opened the door, and I shuffled through it.
TRANSCRIPT: AMERICAN JUSTICE
CHESTER MARCH: Hey, how you been?
CARLOS WATKINS: I’m all right. How are you?
MARCH: You know me. Every day is a new adventure.
WATKINS (NARRATION): Death row inmates aren’t allowed any visitors other than their lawyer, and, as their execution nears, a religious adviser. They don’t get to see their families. They can make occasional phone calls, if they have enough money to pay the extortionate per-minute rates the phone company charges prisoners, and they can send a limited amount of mail that is screened and heavily redacted by prison censors. They get an hour in the yard each day. Otherwise, they’re in their cells. It’s the most maddening existence I can imagine, and Chester March has been living it since 1976.
By the way, that’s why the audio quality for my conversations with Chester is a bit worse than it would be otherwise—all our conversations have been over the phone, and I have to record both sides. I’ve never been able to meet Chester face-to-face. I’m in Nashville right now, but the closest I can get to Chester is Riverbend’s gate.
MARCH: Regular prisoners get to have jobs—they can cook or work in the laundry. Some of them get trained to do maintenance on the facility. Plumbing or electrical work. There are group counseling sessions, and GED classes, and even some college courses the men can take. I don’t get to have a job. I never thought I’d be jealous of something like that, the right to mop some floors or change out light-bulbs. But the state figures there’s no point in me learning or doing anything. No point in me bettering myself, or keeping myself busy, or even staying sane in this dump. I’m a dead man. I’ve been dead since Gerald Ford was president.
WATKINS: What do you do to pass the time?
MARCH: A lot of fellas on death row, they just get real fat. They say, when the ghost leaves you, you lose seven ounces, but while you’re waiting for your big day, most folks here seem to put on about two hundred pounds. If you can die before the state can kill you, that’s the only way you beat the house. Since they don’t give us any sharp objects, or even shoelaces to hang ourselves with, diabetes is the way most of the guys here try to punch their own tickets. I know a man who ate so many Oreos, he lost a foot.
WATKINS: How many Oreos does that take?
MARCH: Who can count that high? I’ll tell you something, though: You eat fifty or so of those cookies every day for a week, and your shit will turn black.
WATKINS: Black?
MARCH: Yeah, and dry. Chalky or—I don’t know—powdery? Never seen anything like it. Eating all those cookies dries your guts out so much that, when you fart, it’s like your ass is coughing.
WATKINS: Does it smell like chocolate?
MARCH: You’d think that, but no. It smells evil. Like rotten eggs, but a hundred times worse. The stink carries into the other cells. And the air circulation in here isn’t so great, so that really lingers, especially in the summertime.
WATKINS: This has happened more than once?
MARCH: More than once? It happens constantly! That guy has been eating as many Oreos as he can get his hands on for fifteen years. He came in here in ’96, and he was just a scrawny kid. Looked like maybe he was what they call a tweaker, but you don’t ask a man about his past. Not in this place.
He didn’t stay skinny for long, though. When they took him to the hospital for his surgery, they had to haul him out on a reinforced gurney. They cut his leg off just below the knee, got him on insulin, and then they brought him back here to keep waiting for them to kill him. He’s probably 450 pounds, and that’s without the leg. These days, he goes around in a wide-load wheelchair.
(LAUGHTER)
WATKINS (NARRATION): Every funny story about death row is really a sad story, though. These aren’t just stories about poop and bad smells, but stories about mental and physical illness, about the toll it takes on the mind and body to live for decades in a desolate place without hope or joy or, indeed, much human contact of any kind.
Is it okay to laugh at stories about the harm the state is doing to people like Chester March and the skinny tweaker kid, ostensibly on behalf of all of us? I guess it has to be, because if you don’t laugh, you’ll have to cry.
4
The hallway on our floor had two sitting areas carved out of the spaces between the rooms, where there were sofas and little side tables with artificial flowers. Maybe the person who designed the place had envisioned them as gathering spaces, where active older adults would congregate to gossip and reminisce and share in their enjoyment of the residential amenities offered by the Valhalla Estates Assisted Lifestyle Community. I’d never seen them used for that purpose, though. Mostly, it was just a place to stop and rest on the way to the elevator, and it was much appreciated by those among us who couldn’t make it all the way down the hallway without a break.
Even though it was only midafternoon, the common areas on my floor were empty, and the hall was as quiet as a mausoleum. There might have been a few televisions on in some of the rooms, but they were too low for me to hear, and the carpet muffled the sound. And most of my neighbors were probably napping. I usually dozed in the afternoon myself; I’d gotten by on five hours per night until around my eightieth birthday, but the amount of time I spent asleep had tripled in the previous five years. Training for the marathon, I suppose.
I pushed the walker toward a rarely used couch, and Tequila followed me.
“You know the real reason why I asked you to come into town, right?” I asked.
“Grandma has cancer.”
“Yeah, but what are you going to do about that? You can’t even draft the drop-dead instruction.”
He flopped down next to me. “It’s a do-not-resuscitate, and everyone should really have one.”
“Thanks for your advice, Dr. Kevorkian. What I need from you is help dealing with a pesky journalist. This man from the radio is digging into an old case I worked, looking to cause trouble.”
“I’m still kind of stuck on the cancer thing, if I’m being honest,” he said. “Why are you worried about what someone might say on the radio? Nobody even listens to the radio anymore.”
“I’m worried about your grandmother as well,” I said. And I was, to the extent I could remember what was happening. For some reason, trying to hang on to the new
s about Rose’s illness was like holding a live, wriggling fish. “But I can’t have somebody tearing down my past. It’s all that’s left of me.”
“Okay. Tell me what’s going on, and I’ll figure out what we can do about it.”
“There’s a man I put on death row up in Nashville named Chester March. He’s looking for a technicality that will save his skin, and he thinks he can get off by claiming I beat his confession out of him. He’s got this NPR producer, Watkins, listening to his nonsense.”
Tequila held a hand up. “Wait a second. You retired before I was born. How has this guy been on death row that long?”
“I don’t know why they haven’t killed him yet,” I said. I pulled out a Lucky Strike, and stuck it between my lips. “Ask your liberal president.”
“Barack Obama was fifteen years old when you retired.”
“That’s not the point.” I dug my lighter out of the pocket of my Dockers and started flicking it.
Tequila draped his arm over the back of the sofa and crossed his legs. If nothing else, three years of law school had taught him to take up space. Eating all that Mexican food probably helped as well. “Grandma has cancer, and I am taking the bar exam in a few weeks. In the scheme of things, this just doesn’t seem very important.”
“It’s important to me, Sambuca. Is there anything we can do to get rid of this reporter?” The lighter spouted flame, and I lit the cigarette. I wasn’t supposed to smoke in the building’s common areas, but there was nobody around, and if someone had a problem with me, what were they going to do? Send me to the principal’s office?
Tequila shrugged. “If he says something false and damaging to your reputation, we can sue for defamation, I guess. But you can only do that after you’ve already been defamed. There’s no way to, like, get an injunction to force NPR to kill the story. Protections for the press are First Amendment freedoms, and courts can’t impose prior restraints that prevent people from speaking.”
“So what can I do?” I asked.
“Not much,” he said. “But maybe we can call your representative at the police union. They might have some suggestions.”
“I don’t even know if I have his card,” I said. “It’s probably not the same guy anymore, anyway.”
“Not a problem,” he said, and he started tapping the screen of his Internet phone. I sat there and watched him do that for maybe thirty seconds, and then he dialed a number and set the phone on speaker.
“That seemed a little too easy,” I said as the phone rang.
“Most things are easy,” he replied. That had not been my experience in nine decades on this planet, but I never had a Star Trek communicator that told me everything I needed to know about everything.
A woman’s voice on the line: “Memphis Police Association.”
“Hi,” Tequila said. “I am here with my grandfather, who is a retired Memphis police detective. He’s hoping he can speak with his union representative.”
“Okay, let me transfer you.”
The phone played classic rock while we held. I flicked ash on the carpet. Tequila grinned at me. “See? Easy.”
The music stopped, and somebody picked up. “You got Rick Lynch.”
“Hi, Rick,” Tequila said. “I’m here with my grandfather, who is a retired Memphis police detective. We’re trying to get in touch with his union rep. Is that you?”
“Can your grandfather speak?” Lynch asked.
“Yeah,” Tequila said.
“Then how about you shut the fuck up and let him. Ain’t my job to talk to people’s grandkids.” I liked this guy.
“Are you my union rep?” I asked.
“Maybe. Who are you?”
“I’m retired detective Baruch Schatz.”
“Aw, shit!” Lynch said. “I’ve heard of you. I didn’t know you were still alive.”
“I get up three times a night, just to check,” I said.
“Well, what can I help you with today, Baruch Schatz?”
“A man I arrested, Chester March, is about to be executed. He’s trying to get his sentence overturned by claiming I coerced his confession, and he’s got a reporter from NPR who is listening to him.”
“When did you put this guy away?” Lynch asked.
“Seventy-six,” I said.
“Okay, did you murder anybody?”
“What? No!”
“Is this reporter going to try to say you murdered anybody?”
“I can’t imagine why he would. I expect he’s gonna say I whupped this suspect in the interrogation room.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Lynch said. “Well, there’s no statute of limitations on murder, but anything else you might have done, it’s too late for anyone to charge you on. So you’re in the clear. I’ve never heard of the department opening an internal investigation this long after the fact, especially not into the conduct of retired personnel. I don’t think you’ve got anything to worry about.”
“But this reporter is still going to go on the radio and tell this story about me,” I said, and I flicked my ash again.
“Detective Schatz, I don’t know how things used to be done, but in the Year of Our Lord 2011, the Memphis Police Association ain’t in the business of silencing journalists,” Lynch said. I stopped liking him.
“We were hoping you could help us with public relations or crisis communications,” Tequila said.
“Son, this is a police union. You must have us confused with an advertising agency.”
“Is there anything you can do to help me with this?” I asked.
“If you are charged with a crime or subjected to a departmental investigation, we can get you a lawyer and back you up. If this reporter calls me, I’ll be happy to tell him you were a great detective and that our position is that this guy March deserves to be executed. But there’s not much else I can do.”
I rested my elbows on my knees. “That’s just terrific.”
“Eat a dick,” Tequila said, and he hung up the phone before Lynch could respond.
“So, what’s next?” I asked my grandson.
“I think you should ignore this reporter and this whole situation, and just focus on supporting Grandma,” Tequila said.
“But if I don’t talk to him, he’ll tell the story without my side of it.”
“So what? Journalists write and broadcast stories about death penalty cases all the time. Nobody pays much attention, and the reporters almost never prevent people from getting executed. If you don’t talk to this reporter, you can’t make an inculpatory admission.”
“A what?” I asked. This damn kid and his law-school Latin.
“A damaging statement. The reporter has got nothing but old records and the killer’s self-serving narrative. He needs a climax for his story, and he wants it to happen when he confronts you and makes you admit to wrongdoing. He’s trying to get you, and all you have to do to avoid being gotten is stop taking his phone calls.”
“Okay, maybe that makes sense,” I said. “But I just can’t let March broadcast his lies on NPR and not respond. I can’t let that animal have the last word.”
Tequila smacked a hand against his forehead. “Okay, well, why don’t you tell me what really happened.”
“Not much has happened yet. The reporter called me on the phone and said he’s been talking to March and he wants to talk to me,” I said.
“For fuck’s sake,” Tequila said. “Tell me what happened between you and March. What did you do to him? What is he telling this reporter?”
“Oh,” I said. I stubbed out my cigarette on the armrest of the sofa, and hid the spent butt underneath a cushion. Then I lit another one. “Well, that’s a whole thing.”
PART 2
1955: JEW DETECTIVE
5
The woman sat in the chair on the other side of the desk from me and sobbed. I had gotten used to looking at people in this state, but I never managed to get comfortable with it. I lit a cigarette.
“If you need a minute to compose yourse
lf, you’re free to step into the powder room,” I said, gesturing toward the toilets.
Her eyes widened, and her mouth fell open. “No!” she shouted. I must have looked alarmed, because she said, “I mean, I am afraid that if I leave, you won’t be here when I get back. I’ve come to this police station four times, and this is the first time anyone has let me speak to an officer.”
“Detective.”
“What?”
“I’m a detective.”
“That’s even better,” she said.
The shield was new, and very important to me. I’d earned it in the face of some pretty harsh circumstances. It had been tough for me to even become a cop at all; I’d caught a bullet overseas and messed up my shoulder pretty good. It took three surgeries and a couple of years of rehabilitation before I was able to get a medical clearance to sign up for the academy. I’d gone to Memphis State on the GI bill in the meantime and got me some liberal arts. I joined the department in 1949.
An officer with a college education could sit for the detective’s exam after two years on patrol; men without college had to wait three. I took the first test I was eligible for and earned top marks. They told me they didn’t have an opening for me, but they somehow had openings for guys with worse scores. It wasn’t a mystery why: I had the wrong kind of name, prayed in the wrong kind of place, and I didn’t belong to the right social kkklubs.
It was another three years before I got called up. It only happened after a spectacular display of heroics that got my picture in the paper, and I wasn’t well liked in the detectives’ bureau. Which was probably why this lady that nobody wanted to deal with was sitting in front of me.
I tapped my cigarette against an ashtray. “So what is it I can do for you, Miss…?”
“Ogilvy. Hortense Ogilvy.”
I nodded. “Of course you are.”
“A friend of mine has gone missing.”
I read once that, for at least a short time, in the flower of their youth, all girls are beautiful. But whoever wrote that never met Hortense Ogilvy. Miss Ogilvy had very large gums or very small teeth, or probably both. There was visible inflammation around the gumline, angry red with a few pockets of yellow-green pus. Her lips didn’t quite stretch far enough to cover that whole disaster, so the gums were constantly exposed: florid, spit-slick, and glistening. I’d seen a mouth like that once before: on a bloated cadaver we’d fished out of the river. I caught a whiff of something foul, and I wasn’t sure if I was actually smelling Miss Ogilvy’s mouth or having a vivid sense memory of the stink of that particular corpse. I wondered if she would take offense if I tried to smoke two or three cigarettes at once.
Running Out of Road Page 3