Apprehensions & Convictions

by Mark Johnson

  “Listen to me now, Lamont, I’monna be one hundred wit’cha now, Lamont, this ain’t no good cop–bad cop bullshit like you see on TV, Lamont, this is the real deal. I don’t lie to you, you don’t lie to me. It’s big-boy time now, Lamont, no more juvie slap onna wrist. It ain’t even Metro time, Lamont, y’feel me Lamont? This is the big house we talkin’ ’bout now, Lamont. Huh, y’hear me? Listen to me now, Lamont: what we got on you, it’s Atmore-for-shore, Lamont. And a young kid like you? Them fellas up in Atmore see you comin’, they be lickin’ they chops thinkin’ a splittin’ yo’ sweet cheeks, Lamont. Them boys up ’ere be horny’s three-dicked dogs, Lamont, for somebody just like you: a ass-virgin, Lamont, you hearda anal, ain’tcha, Lamont? They’ll be the pitchers, you’ll be the catcher. You ’n’ yo’ homeboys may think you rule 1010 Baltimore, but that’s kiddiegarden compared to Atmore, y’know that don’t you, Lamont? Kno’m sayin’, brah? They spend all day long pumpin’ iron and stroking they big cocks just dreamin’ a sweet tight twenty-year-old ass like yours, Lamont, fresh from the projects. Fresh meat! Y’feel me, Lamont?

  “And y’know what? That ain’t even the worst part, Lamont. The worst part is how you gonna do your sweet ol’ mama and your little brothers, Lamont. Mama’s gonna be too ashamed to talk about you at church, your little brohs gonna get teased about you at school, y’feel me, Lamont? And you won’t even wanna talk to them about your life up there in Atmo’ ’cause you know you’ll just start cryin’ and if you tell them how you’ve become some big murderin’ mothafucka’s bitch and he makes you suck his cock every day and swallow his spunk, they’ll just have nightmares and wanna die, so you can’t tell nobody nu’n Lamont, ’cause you’ll be wantin’ a die your own self. Y’hear me? And you can just forget about all your homeboys and baby-mamas back at 1010 B’mo, ’cause you sure’s hell don’t want them to know you be takin’ it up the ass e’ry day, Lamont. They be sayin’ ol’ Lamont gone sissy. ‘You heard about Lamont up in Atmo’? Word is, he done gone sissy!’ And who’s to say that’s even wrong, Lamont? Man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do, when his life’s on the line. I ain’t sayin’ there’s anything wrong with it, but it sure ain’t for me, Lamont. And I’m pretty sure it ain’t f’you either, Lamont.

  “And don’t forget, it don’t end when you get out, ’cause then you’ll be a convicted felon. Can’t own a gun, can’t hunt, can’t vote, can’t get a job. Can’t even get into the army. Can’t get any kinda scholarship. And they’s a good chance you have AIDS, Lamont. AIDS up the ass. Ass-AIDS, Lamont: think about it. Ain’t be getting any mo’ sweet pussy when they all know you got the Bug, Lamont. Your life is totally fucked, Lamont.

  “But it don’t hafta be that way, Lamont, if you just do the right thing now, Lamont, the smart thing, Lamont. All you gotta do is man up, get one hundred wit’ me right now, Lamont, and there’s a good chance Atmore never happens, Lamont.”

  Lusty hits about a .350 average with this approach. Thirty-five out of a hundred Lamonts crack for Lusty. Which is about twice the national average, according to FBI stats.

  Because I don’t have a style, a rap, or a shtick like the others, most of the cases I worked in my first year were theft cases. I tended to devote more time to them because they’re often easier to solve than burglaries: theft cases often come with suspects, because the victim knows the thief. Since there’s so often an eyewitness, getting confessions isn’t essential to clearing cases—it’s mostly just a matter of tracking down the known suspect.

  A theft involves taking someone’s property without permission. A burglary requires unlawful entry into someone’s premises, such as a garage, shed, residence, or business, for the purpose of committing a crime (usually theft) therein. A robbery occurs when someone’s property is stolen from the person of the victim, or taken at gunpoint, or under direct threat of bodily harm. Often victims will say they’ve been robbed, when they’ve actually been burglarized, or a simple theft has occurred.

  In Alabama, all robberies and burglaries are felonies. Robberies are more serious felonies than burglaries, because the victim is there, threatened, when the theft occurs. Robberies, though the most serious, are often easiest to solve, because there’s always a witness (the victim) and often security video (in commercial robberies). Most burglaries occur when the victim is not present, but the violation of the victim’s premises still makes the crime a felony. There are rarely witnesses or video of residential burglaries.

  Some thefts, by contrast, are not even felonies. The gravity of a theft is determined by the value of the property stolen. If the value of the stolen property is less than $500, and it’s not a firearm, a credit card, a motor vehicle, or a controlled substance, it’s just a misdemeanor.

  If a thief steals your lawn mower out of your backyard, and it’s worth less than $500, you’re out of luck, because it’s just a misdemeanor, and there are probably no clues, and a detective won’t even be assigned to it. If you had kept your old, used $100 lawn mower in a shed or garage, however, it would constitute a felony, even though it’s worth less than the new $495 self-propelled Toro lawn mower that got stolen from your backyard, because the thief violated your building/residence to steal your beat-up old push mower.

  A majority of felony thefts involve stuff stolen from inside a residence but which required no unlawful entry to steal the stuff—in other words, the theft is performed by someone who has a lawful presence inside the victim’s house: a family member, ex-lover, a friend or neighbor who’s been invited inside, the plumber who’s been called in to fix the kitchen sink, the cable installer who’s hooking up your new flat screen with surround sound. Except it’s very seldom the cable guys or the tradesmen who’ve ripped off people’s jewelry, or chrome .45, or new bottle of prescription Lortabs.

  Usually the mere thief (as opposed to the burglar or the robber) is somebody who the victim thought was a friend. And when pressed by the reporting officer, or a detective, the victim will reluctantly admit that the likely thief is actually “that no good drug addict son of mine” or “my ex, my baby’s daddy” or “that thieving sumbitch who lives across the street” or, as was the case with many middle-aged or older bachelors in my first year as a detective, “that goddamn whore I brung home from the Parkway Lounge last Saturday night.”

  The more timid, modest old bachelors would refer to them as just friends, or acquaintances or drinking partners, sometimes housekeepers, cooks, occasionally as lady friends or even sweethearts. They would be embarrassed to admit that they’d been snookered by the oldest game in human history, that they had been drinking with their big heads rather than thinking with their little ones. They would strongly deny that the girls were prostitutes, that there was any quid pro quo, and act insulted when I would suggest such a thing. But eventually they would admit that sometimes there was sex and that sometimes they would “help her pay the power bill ever’ now an’ ag’in.”

  Most of the victims did not even know the girls’ real first names, much less last names, until I collected signatures from the credit card receipts. (As often as not, they’d sign their own real names, which were seldom compared to the male name on the stolen card by the clerks at the liquor stores, gas stations, and Walmarts where their sweethearts had run up hundreds of dollars in purchases on the stolen cards. If challenged, they’d simply claim the victim as their old man who’d sent them to the store for a six-pack and some smokes.)

  I wouldn’t have put much effort into solving these cases, figuring the horny old fools got what was coming to them, except that I was getting so many of these kinds of thefts. It was two or three a week. And it always seemed to be the same women whose names came up: Heather, and Victoria, and Kelly Ann. Sometimes more than one of them would be named by the same victim for the same theft: they had enticed the guy with a ménage à trois, which turned out to be a double-team bait-and-switch.

  The ladies were well known in certain circles: the courthouse (where they had extensive histories of theft, soliciting, and
drug arrests), the topless joints (where they had worked as waitresses and bartenders and even done a few turns at the pole), and of course among the habitués of the finer watering holes of the First Precinct. Places like Liz’s Haven, the Ideal Lounge, Legends, the Zebra, and my favorite, the cleverly named Club Chez When (known to non-francophones—and most police dispatchers—as the Cheez Whiz). As a patrol officer I had often been dispatched to the Cheez for bar fights and disorderly drunks and had seen a few of the ladies working the place. Though I knew they had to be hustlers and hookers, I rarely arrested any of them, at least not for hooking. (Vice arrests are made by undercover cops working stings, not uniformed patrol.)

  Occasionally, though, I’d see a girl flagging down cars, sufficient probable cause to arrest her for Loitering for the Purpose of Prostitution, a misdemeanor. I’d stop and check her purse for drugs, usually finding a joint or some pills or a rock and a pipe. But I’d just order her to toss the dope down a sewer, destroy the glass pipe with a stomp of her heel, and move to a corner in the Third or Second Precinct.

  The first time I saw Mariah, she was at the Cheez Whiz. I was one of several backups who had been dispatched to an assault by one drunk with a pool cue on another. Both had fled before we arrived. Mariah nonetheless greeted us with a raucous “Thank God, it’s the Law! I thought we’d never get you to come, officers!” Then she rose from her barstool and, stretching like a cat, purred in a husky tobacco-and-whiskey-thickened voice, “Frisk me first, Handsome!”

  All of them were past their prime, and the hard roads they had traveled were etched in their once-pretty faces. Click “All Mugshots” on the Metro Jail web page for a particular female guest, and you get pages of full-color head shots, in one-inch square rows of three (full face, left and right profiles) revealing their declines into addiction, crime, and dissolution. The effect is disturbing. In a decade they go from smiling, healthy (if somewhat slatternly) young women to hollow-cheeked, gap-toothed, vacant-eyed zombies, like the FUCK MEN gal I had encountered with my FTO Porter on my first domestic. If they’re meth addicts, their complexions are mottled with open sores, lips blistered with cankers or herpes. By the time I met the Parkway’s professional companions they were too old to work the streets. Their looks wouldn’t even slow traffic, much less stop any. They had to work harder for their money, relying more on their wiles than their wares. Their haggard forty-year-old faces looked more like mid-fifties, their hot-pink lip gloss only highlighting cracked lips and discolored teeth, their heavy mascara deepening sunken eyes and crow’s-feet.

  In my first interview with Kelly Ann, she was playing stupid and I wasn’t getting anywhere. She probably knew I didn’t have enough to hold her on, so she wasn’t giving up anything.

  I tell her I’ve already got enough to put her in Metro without even questioning her: my victim, a sixty-six-year-old Vietnam vet, his left leg a stump, has identified her by the name Kelly Ann and, based on his description of her (fortyish, kinda plain looking but not ugly, shoulder-length platinum blonde hair), which enabled me to find a likely suspect in our database. He picked Kelly Ann Kennedy’s mugshot out of a six-panel photo spread without hesitation.

  Kelly Ann has a few minor priors. All misdemeanors: a few theft thirds and marijuana seconds, although one drug charge started as felony but was reduced to misdemeanor drug paraphernalia in a plea bargain.

  My victim Mr. Brock says that after Kelly Ann and her friend (a brunette whose name he can’t remember) left his home, his wallet was missing, which contained most of his just-cashed VA disability payment for the month and credit cards. Kelly Ann doesn’t deny “socializing” with “poor ol’ one-legged Randy,” but it was only because she felt “so sorry for him, being a crippled veteran and all.” Of course she knows nothing about Randy’s wallet, nor does she remember the name of the other girl, claiming to have just met her that night at Randy’s.

  “She was there when I got there. He called me over to party. I’ve known him a little while, been to his house a few times, sometimes help him with chores. I like to help people, Detective. He has my number in his cell, calls me when he needs me for something.”

  Kelly Ann’s a little hurt, a little insulted that Mr. Brock would name her as a suspect.

  “Randy’s about half senile, anyway, and the other half’s usually drunk. He probably just can’t remember where he put his damn wallet, bless his heart.”

  I try another tack. I tell her I only want to help her turn her life around.

  “Yeah, right, like you know anything about my life,” she says. “Who says my life needs turnin’ around? I’ve got a college degree and my own business. I’m a decorator. I take care of my half-blind eighty-three-year-old daddy. I cook his meals, give him his meds, do his nasty laundry, take him to the doctor, keep his house. You can ask anybody. They’ll tell you: Kelly Ann takes care a her daddy.”

  “You’re a decorator? What do you decorate?”

  “I decorated the whole damn house. I’m an artist. You seen Daddy’s mailbox? I did that.”

  I had driven by Kelly Ann and her daddy’s place, on Scenic River Drive. Overlooking the wide part of the river with a hundred feet of waterfront and its own dock, the place was easily worth three-quarters of a million bucks. Daddy owns a string of dry cleaners. His mailbox, with some paint and plastic fins, had been transformed into a big-mouth bass. Not exactly a novel concept along Dog River. Or anyplace where there’s water.

  “I’m not disputing you take care of your father, or even that you have some artistic talent, Kelly Ann. But take a good look at yourself.” I shake my head sadly. “You looked in a mirror lately?”

  Her eyes flash, nostrils flare, but she remains silent.

  I pull the “All Mugshots” pages of the last twenty years of Kelly Ann’s life out of my file and slide them across the table to her.

  “Pictures don’t lie.”

  She thrusts her jaw out defiantly but allows her eyes to scan the twenty-odd thumbnails. After a moment she raises her eyes to mine and pushes the mugshots back across the table.

  “Nobody looks good in a damned ol’ Metro shot,” she says.

  “But you do, Kelly Ann. Or did.” I pick up the second page and point to the bottom rows, her first few times as a Metro guest.

  “Look at how good you look back here in your twenties. You were a really pretty girl, Kelly Ann. And you stayed that way, all the way up through the top of this page. A good-lookin’ woman, into your early thirties. But then, on this page, I’m guessing that’s when you started hitting the pipe, am I right? About your mid-thirties? Right in here, where you start to look like you been rode hard and put up wet—”

  “I’ve had enougha your shit,” she snarls, and snatches the mugshots from me, wads them up in a fury that startles me.

  “If you ain’t gonna charge me then we’re done here.”

  I shrug and call for a transport officer to take her back to the Parkway Lounge where they picked her up for me. But I know I’ve hit a nerve.

  I make it a daily routine to drive by Kelly Ann and her father’s place. I write down the tag numbers of the numerous vehicles parked in her driveway, at all times of the day and evening. I run them when I get back to the precinct until I find one that comes back to a female whose DL photo matches the description of the “unknown” other female given by the victim. Heather Thibodeaux. Not unattractive, early forties, brunette. Obviously Cajun. I see that she’s done a stretch in Tutwiler for drugs and theft offenses, and (ding ding, bonus!) she has an active warrant for probation violation. Probably failed a piss test.

  I put Heather’s DL mug on a page with five other dark-haired women in their forties and show it to poor ol’ Randy, the stumpy Vietnam vet. He can’t be sure but says it has to be one of these two (one of whom is Heather), but he just can’t be sure, he had been drinking a bit, “and you know, wasn’t all that focused on their faces, anyway, y’know what I’m sayin’?”

  Yeah, I know what you’re saying, bub. And
what that means is I don’t have enough on either one to make an arrest for stealing your wallet.

  I decide to swing by Kelly Ann’s and pick Heather up for the probation warrant if she’s there. Maybe she’ll confess, or at least put it on Kelly Ann. Actually, I’d prefer that she not confess, as long as she puts it on Kelly Ann. If I hafta charge Heather with the theft, then that turns her account of events into “codefendant testimony,” which won’t play in court, if I can even persuade the DA to take it that far. But Heather’s going away for the probation violation anyway, and if she thinks I might put an additional felony on her, it could incentivize her to throw Kelly Ann under the bus, and I get a two-fer: both of ’em removed from my beat.

  When I pull up to Kelly Ann’s driveway, I see her talking to a dark-haired female in the same brown Corolla with the tag that had led me to Heather. Another female, auburn haired, sort of pretty, is walking down the driveway from the house toward Kelly Ann and the woman in the Corolla. Before I can even put out my location on the radio, I see the backup lights come on, Kelly Ann jumping back, and the Corolla coming at me in reverse. I slam my Crown Vic into reverse to avoid being struck and damn-near back into a passing pickup on Scenic River Drive. Meantime, the Corolla has jerked back into drive and Kelly Ann dives to avoid being mowed down by the Corolla as it ruts its way across Kelly Ann’s daddy’s manicured front yard, uprooting and wrapping an azalea bush around its axle before it disappears around a bend northbound on Scenic River. I hit lights and siren, jam it into drive, and slice a nice donut of my own into Kelly Ann’s luscious green lawn.