by Jason Rose
Wilson never talks about his army days—he must really not want to walk. “You really want those guards, who already think we are suspicious morons, wondering why the two of us walked directly into the woods . . . together . . . after leaving a prison?”
“I don’t care what they think. They’re guards at a shitty prison in the middle of nowhere. They don’t care about us or what we do. And, regardless, there is no way they think a handsome, distinguished gentleman like myself would ever go for someone that looks like you. Keep dreaming, pretty boy.”
I can’t help but laugh. “Distinguished—is that another word for old?”
“Old. We are practically the same fucking age.”
“Yeah, but I make this look good,” I say while talking with my hands. “And you . . . just look old.”
“Fuck you,” says Wilson with an ear-to-ear grin.
After another five minutes, Wilson stops. “That’s it, I’m not walking any further. Draw us a gate!”
“On what?” I point at the forest around us. “These trees are all as skinny as 1990s era Victoria Secret models. Not a one has any junk in the trunk.”
Wilson smirks at the pun but keeps on whining. “I don’t know, figure it out. I’m not walking any further, unless, . . . I get a raise. Or at least a bonus,” Wilson suggests hopefully.
“You’re not getting a raise.”
“Bonus?”
“No.”
“What do you care?” he reposts with dripping disappointment. “It’s not even your money. It’s literally blood money. It came from some ancient Roman blood-sucking vampire claiming to be your great uncle or some shit, who made you kill him. Talk about fucked-up family dynamics!”
“That’s Sinn’s pop you’re talking about,” I snap.
“So?” he says with a grin. “I don’t see Sinn’s scary ass anywhere, do you? You got to admit though, it is a beautiful ass. Isn’t it?”
I shake my head and keep walking. Wilson is incorrigible, but he keeps pace. “So,” he repeats again.
“So . . . you already make more than you’re worth. On pure principle—you’re not getting a raise.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“Why do you want one, anyway? You make plenty of money.”
“I want a Tesla.”
“A what?” I ask, nearly tripping over my feet in disbelief.
“A Tesla.”
“Whatever for?”
“They’re awesome. The new ones have something called ludicrous mode. It’s better than insanity mode. So fast it will make you crap your pants.”
“Sounds . . . pleasant . . . I just don’t see it. You’re a . . . I don’t know, a cross between a surfer and a hick who talks like a pimp. You drive a pick-up truck, for god’s sakes. Half the time you’re wearing shorts, a wrinkled t-shirt, flip flops, and smell like booze—the other half of the time you’re wearing jeans, a wrinkled t-shirt, boots, and smell like booze. You’re the last person who I would ever imagine driving a Tesla.”
Wilson frowns in mock liberal snobbery. “For someone with your background, you’re awfully closed-minded. A man is not defined by his car, his clothes, or his alcohol consumption. I am a unique snowflake and refuse to be defined by anything less than the sum of my total being.”
“Right, you’re the picture of wokeness,” I mutter. “You’re still not getting a raise.”
“Fine, then I’m done walking.” Wilson stops and crosses his arms like a pouting child. “Where are we going, anyway?”
Sometimes you must give a pouting baby his pacifier even when he is too old for it. I sigh and reach into my pocket for my gate-pen. I hate drawing gates on the ground, it gives me vertigo. For some reason, it’s difficult for me to properly envision the point in space I want the gate to connect to when I am drawing on the floor. I can draw a door on a tree and it opens into the center of my living room—no problem. I draw a door on the ground, I envision it opening to the same spot, and instead, it opens up on the floor or ceiling of my apartment. Have you ever stepped down through a gate and fallen six feet onto your ass? I have, it hurts. Or worse, stepped down through a gate and fallen up? That shit will ruin you. It’s extremely disconcerting.
When I am finished drawing the gate, I turn to Wilson, “We are going nowhere. You are going to earn some of your bloated paycheck. I’m gating you to downtown Pittsfield and you’re going to find out what the police in Pittsfield know—and more importantly, what they left out of the official report.”
Wilson nods, “Fine. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go visit the public defender who claims the comatose victim signed a confession, and then I’m going to go visit the high-priced Pack attorneys who are representing him now.”
“I have to rub elbows with the working man while you sip cocktails in a Boston high-rise?”
“Yep, we all have our burdens to bear. Think of yours as a privilege. I could send you back to the office and have you organize the storeroom.”
“You could, but I doubt you’d like my organizational system.”
“Just call me when you’re done and we can meet up at the Pittsfield hotel where the murders occurred.”
“Sure thing. How am I supposed to get around Pittsfield?” asks Wilson.
I shrug. “Uber? Hitchhike? Skateboard? Camel?”
“Camel?” he asks. “We’re in fucking Massachusetts, not Saudi Arabia.”
“Everything east of Tahoe feels like Saudi Arabia to me. Might as well be a wasteland.”
“That’s because you think California is the center of the universe.”
“Not California, Nor-Cal is the center of the universe. LA can suck a dick.”
Wilson laughs. “Not arguing with you there, boss, but seriously, how am I going to get around? I doubt this small Mass town has a vibrant Uber community.”
“Use some of that inflated California paycheck I sign every week. You’ll figure it out.”
Wilson squints, purses his lip up on one side and gives me a one-man-band salute. I can’t help but smile as I pull the gate open. It’s the little things that bring me joy, and irritating Wilson does it for me every time. It’s like fireworks on the Fourth of July or a hot Cinnabon on a Sunday morning. The only thing that could make this moment any better is if he falls up through my gate and lands flat on his ass. A man can wish.
Chapter Eleven
I’m assaulted by the familiar scent of urine-soaked marble that forms a barrier around nearly every government building in every major coastal city in America. You would think marble is slick and urine would wash right off—it doesn’t. A janitor at the Federal courthouse in San Francisco once told me it has something to do with the porous nature of marble. If you don’t clean it immediately, the marble soaks the urine up like a sponge, and once it’s inside of the marble, the stench ain’t coming out. I don’t know if that’s true or not; it sounds plausible, the awful scent seems to support the theory, and the janitor said it with such conviction that I have no reason to doubt him.
It’s funny how we’ll implicitly trust the words of a stranger, often despite contradictory information from a familiar source, even when the familiar source has a track record of accuracy. In college, I had this girlfriend Macy. No matter what the topic was: Directions. How to do something. Why something works the way it does. Climate change. The name of an actor or movie. She never trusted a single thing I said. She’d readily accept the words of complete strangers over mine. It drove me crazy. Here I was, smart, top of my class, well-read, and rarely wrong, and yet she’d doubt every freaking thing I said. And yet if some random person, a man on the street, or some douchebag frat boy failing all his classes said something contrary to what I’d said, she’d automatically assume, with no evidence, the random douchebag was correct, and I was wrong. I hated that girl, but man, she was hot. Looking back, I can’t help but smile at my shallowness and the fact that I put up with Macy’s craziness for an entire semester just because she was hot. I could
barely stand being in the same building as her, but . . . #StupidThingsMenWillDoForPrettyGirls.
The marble monstrosity before me is breathtaking, a monument to an earlier time when Americans cared more about aesthetics than budgets. A regal building you’d expect to see in London or Rome, and not in America. They don’t make government buildings like this anymore, at least not in today’s political climate where every expenditure is an arrow in the opposition’s political quiver. Before I enter the building, I take my keys, cell phone, and wallet out of my pockets and do a pat down check of myself to make sure I’m not carrying any weapons. It would be embarrassing if I were arrested for accidentally carrying a weapon into a courthouse. You’d be surprised how often that occurs.
Once inside, I nod to the guard manning the x-ray machine and place the items in my hand and my belt and shoes inside a grey plastic tub and place it on the conveyor belt. I raise my hands and slowly walk through the metal detector, palms out. The metal detector beeps. Having done this dozens of times, I know it’s most likely my shoe. “Do you need me to pull up my pant legs?”
The guard waves me through without ever looking up from his phone screen. I shrug, collect my things from the conveyor belt and walk over to the digital menu board, which identifies the floors on which various departments and offices are located. I ride the elevator to the public defender’s floor, enter the office and lean up against the receptionist’s desk.
The receptionist, a frumpy-looking brunette wearing a green knit sweater and thick glasses, asks me in a heavy Boston accent, “What do you want?” You gotta love Boston hospitality.
“Could you let Rodrigo Ruiz know I’m here,” I answered with a statement—not a question. Receptionists are the front line of defense at any law firm and they are trained to disincentivize people without appointments from bothering the attorneys they protect. This is true at both private law offices and at public offices like this one. If I asked her if Mr. Ruiz was in or if could I see Mr. Ruiz, she would have responded with, Do you have an appointment? Giving her an instruction to let Mr. Ruiz know I am here suggests Mr. Ruiz is expecting me and minimizes the likelihood she will inquire further. If you act like you’re supposed to be wherever you are, more often than not, people will give you the benefit of the doubt.
A strange look crosses her face. She points me over to the sitting area and calls someone on the phone. She turns away from me while she talks and shields her lips with a hand. The whole thing couldn’t be more suspicious. If I didn’t know better, I’d think she just recognized me from a wanted poster and was calling security to come and collect me. Rather than draw more scrutiny by asking her what the deal is or by leaving, I calmly sit down in a chair and peruse a two-year-old Sports Illustrated they have lying on the table in the waiting room. I have done nothing wrong that I know of—I mean, other than when I cut that guy in half this morning, but that was in Canada, and there’s no way they know about that. For the time being, I am content letting this thing play out.
After a few minutes, an older African-American man with a wild grey afro, a neatly trimmed grey beard, and thick black-rimmed glasses, wearing a dapper three-piece-suit complete with a matching plaid pocket square and a bow tie, approaches. The receptionist points him in my direction. I’m having a hard time believing this is Mr. Ruiz, but this is America, you never know.
“Good afternoon. I understand you’re here to see Mr. Ruiz?” There is an edge of uncertainty in the dapper dressed man’s voice, which is missing entirely any hint of a Boston accent. If I had to guess, I’d say Brooklyn, whitewashed by an Ivy-League education.
“Yes, I am.”
He swallows deeply as if unhappy with my response and then, as if falling into a practice roll, gives me a plastic smile and says in a soft and reassuring voice, “My name is Sean Evans. You can call me Sean. I’m a senior deputy public defender and the manager of this office. Perhaps we could go to my office and talk? Would you like a cup of coffee?” I recognize the tone and practiced demeanor. It’s textbook public defender training for managing clients; in other words, how to act when you’re about to deliver bad news: be calm, smile, make eye contact, speak in a soft voice and ask polite questions that give the recipient the illusion they have the freedom to make decisions. Without waiting for a response, Sean turns and walks down the hall, presumably towards his office, more public defender training at work. While it is important to give the appearance of choice and freedom to your clients and their families, a public defender, for his safety and the safety of others, must remain in control at all times.
I follow Sean to a large corner office littered with banker boxes, red-wells, binders, and stacks of manila folders. Sean points me to an empty chair. Not liking the dynamics of this conversation already, I decide to throw him a curveball. “I’d love a cup of coffee, two cream, one sugar. Thanks, Sean.”
A frown momentarily crosses Sean Evan’s face. He expected me to turn down the cup of coffee, nearly everyone does; the offer wasn’t really genuine. It was meant to be polite and I was expected to politely decline, but I hate doing the expected. Sean clenches his teeth, nods, and heads down the hall, presumably to fill my coffee order.
I take a seat in the chair Sean offered and study his office, looking for anything I can use or relate to. It’s important to try and feel comfortable in your surroundings, particularly when in an unfamiliar place—you’ll think more clearly. One reason that interrogation rooms are cold and metal is that it’s hard to get comfortable in such a frigid and sterile room, and uncomfortable people say and do uncharacteristic things. Things they would never normally do. It’s a biochemistry thing. When you’re in a stressful environment, your body actually acts differently on a biological level, causing you to think differently. This is part of the phenomenon that explains why people confess to things they never did. Their bodies get so twisted up, they will say or do just about anything to get out of the uncomfortable setting. You can combat this biochemical reaction by tricking your mind into thinking you’re in a familiar place. I like to look for things in the room that remind me of my everyday life. If I’m in an interrogation room, I think about how the metal chairs are just like the ones in the shop class I took in high school. And then I think about that cute cheerleader Vanessa in my shop class that I used to make out with behind the bleachers during second period. Or, I imagine eating breakfast at the table with my mom. She made these amazing banana pancakes. It sounds silly, but once you’ve found a mental anchor, your body will relax, allowing you to think more clearly.
Sean’s office identifies him as a working lawyer and not just management. He has numerous plaques on the wall, most for obscure achievements that only other lawyers would recognize as impressive. He graduated from hoity-toity East Coast schools, the kind that cost a small fortune to attend, and rarely produce public defenders. His classmates probably look down their noses at him. At reunions, they whisper about how he’s an embarrassment to the school. A man like him hears the whispers and could not care less. He took a job like this, not because he had to, but because it’s his calling, his social responsibility. When most people say it’s not about the money, they’re lying; Not this guy. Something other than money drives a man like this. There are no family photos anywhere. You might think that’s a sign of something; it’s not. Public defenders deal with a lot of disturbed people in their work. People who sometimes blame the public defender for their happenstance. You don’t want pictures of your family around; it could make them a target. I’d bet a substantial sum that Sean Evans is a family man.
The sole non-work-related personal item in the room is a signed baseball set in a glass case placed carefully on the desk. Lots of guys have signed sports memorabilia in their office, which more often than not just means the guy likes sports. This particular baseball is different; it speaks volumes about who Sean Evans is and what he believes in. It shows that he’s confident, a bit of a rebel, appreciates greatness, believes in redemption—and he has a soft spot for
longshots.
Sean enters the room and places a cup of coffee on the table in front of me and then takes a seat across from me. Before he can speak, I ask, “So what’s the deal with the Doc Gooden baseball? Aren’t we in Boston? Isn’t that sacrilegious?” Doc Gooden signed baseballs are a rare thing. He’s most remembered for not living up to expectations, for what could have been. He was an all-world talent, with all-world problems. He fought demons his entire career. That he achieved what he achieved, despite his inner demons, is a testament to his talent. A nod to the gods.
“You a baseball fan?” he asks, shifting the focus back on me.
“More of a basketball fan, but I take in the occasional stick ball game.”
Sean stares at the ball fondly as if reliving a good memory. “Most people don’t remember Doc’s time with the Yankees, they think of him as a Met. The Mets aren’t really considered the enemy around here. If anything, people feel sorry for you if you’re a Met fan. Until you, nobody’s given me any grief about it. Between us, it’s hard to live in Boston when you’re a Yankee’s fan. The baseball is my undercover protest to being surrounded by Sox fans. My proverbial middle finger to the establishment.” He smiles, happy to have found common ground in our banter. He’s still using the public defender’s playbook. Telling me something personal about himself that makes him appear non-threatening. A gambit to create trust between us.
“I bet. West Coast guy myself, more of a Billy Beane Oakland guy.”
“Oh,” he raises his eyebrows slightly. “How did you know Rodrigo?”
Did he just use the past tense? Was that intentional, or a Freudian slip? “I don’t know him. Just need to talk to him about a case he handled. I’ve agreed to represent one of his former clients. I need him to turn over his file.”
“Oh,” the tension eases out of Sean. “I thought you might be a friend.” Sean sighs with relief.
“Nope.”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this; Rodrigo is no longer with us.”