Joe's Black T-Shirt (3 page)

“The call was collect,” she said. “I couldn’t accept.”

Before I could look up from the handwritten script, her fingers were a blur. The plastic keys beneath her glossy red fingernails clacked away at the body of a letter. The small black letters formed on the monitor like stitches in a blanket. I wondered if she even read what she was given to type any longer?

I sat down at my desk and put the note to the side. It could wait. I concentrated on the first rule of law: deal with the paying customers before even thinking about a pro bono client’s problems.

After a busy morning of answering client’s stupid questions, or as it is sometimes called ‘practicing psychiatry without a license,’ I finally had time to return my attention to the odd note.

I dialed the number. A ring-tone buzzed through my end of the extension, as if I were making an overseas call and not simple long distance to an isolated, if not forgotten, patch of Missouri farmland called Sikeston.

It took fifteen minutes before I could be connected to the highly controlled extension. I could almost see the plain, beige phone, reminiscent of a rotary, sans the dial. When the automated message played to remind me all conversations would be recorded and reviewed for content, is when I quit daydreaming.

“I was beginning to think you wouldn’t call me back,” Marvin said cheerfully through the static. You would think I was calling him at his summer place in the Ozarks.

“I’m your attorney,” I remind us both. “It’s my duty.”

“How’s Mary?” he asked disregarding my official tone.

“She’s fine,” I say not willing to engage in small talk at three dollars a minute.

I wait for him to speak. In the background I can clearly hear the sounds of dozen thirteen-inch televisions. It sounds weird, the mixture of news, cartoons, and talk shows. The humdrumity of passing time without hope it would go any faster.

After a full minute, Marvin spoke. “I’ve got a good one here.”

My shock is impossible to disguise. “What the hell are you talking about?”

A ‘good one’ is an unofficial term for a case not listed in any legal text. It means you’ve found a case that is winnable and consequently a decent payday. The idea that my brother was still hound dogging for clients gave me a momentary elation. It quickly dissipated when I rationalized he was probably losing his mind.

Without my responding, he elaborated. “ A young guy, lives across the hall from me. I’ve thoroughly interviewed him,” he said like he was talking to me from the extension in his old office and not from cell block fourteen. “I am completely convinced he is innocent. Unfortunately, my current situation offers certain restrictions.”

“No shit,” I blurted. “Jesus, Marvin, everyone there is innocent, ask them.” My frustration was diluted by my compassion. To keep from losing his sanity he set up shop in a four by eight foot room of concrete and metal bars. It wouldn’t have surprised me if he had somehow had a sign made by the convicts pronouncing him:

Marvin Shipman

Convicted Pervert, Former Attorney at Law

“This boy is different. He doesn’t belong here, Warren.”

“What’s your proof?”

“I can’t talk about that on the phone.”

“You have got to be…” I dropped off in mid-sentence when something occurred to me. “You don’t expect me to come all the way down there, to talk to him myself?”

“Of course I do,” he said. “How else will you be able to sign him up?”

The idea of the three and a half-hour drive did not thrill me. To see my brother, I had no problem. I had made it a point to see his time served in the state. His rotting away in some cell a thousand miles from home was not an idea I found comfortable. With the Thanksgiving holiday rolling around things would be slow. It would be a perfect time to make the trek.

“All right,” I said, “I’ll come take your client’s statement.”

Marvin was nobody’s fool. He was locked up because he had grown sloppy in his habit, like all junkies eventually do, not because he was stupid.

“Look asshole,” he attacked me, “I can remember plenty of times I pulled your ass out of the fire. No questions asked. You needed help and I delivered. Should I go into the details of four August, nineteen eighty-eight.”

The son of a bitch, I thought, he was prepared to trump my ass with the blackmail card from the beginning.

“Marvin---”

“I would hate to bring to light how on that night, a certain attorney and an underage drinking partner---”

“Enough!” I shouted. I’m sure whoever was listening to this conversation was having a good laugh. It’s not often a con has this much control over his lawyer. “I can be there Thursday morning. Is that good enough?”

“That’s Thanksgiving.”

“It’ll give your client a reason to be thankful.”

“What about Mary?” he asked.

“Let it go, Marvin,” I said hanging up the phone.

***

I left the office early Wednesday afternoon and wished my secretary a happy holiday. In kind she did the same. We exchanged a platonic hug, then I went home to pack.

The house was quiet. I still wasn’t accustomed to living alone. Mary had left a year ago last week. My advocacy for Marvin in court, fighting the good fight, pissed her off to the core.

“How can you do this?” she would morosely ask.

Every night of the trial, it was the same thing.

“He’s my brother.”

“He’s a monster and a purveyor of filth. The lowest kind of human being imaginable. Why do you have to do it? There must be somebody else.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you realize all the neighbors know? The things they say. Your name, our name, on the front page everyday, airing our dirty laundry.”

“I don’t give a damn, Mary. He’s always been there for me and now it’s my turn.”

That usually shut her up.

Her arguments with me eventually became unilateral warfare with a bottle of Absolute. Before the trial was over, she had quit talking to me.

The night she wrapped her BMW around a light pole downtown, I had to pull an all nighter. Like a coward, I sent my senior associate to post her bond. At the time it made sense. She knew work always came first. By the time I came home to shave and change into my power suit, a blue Italian job that had cost me more than my first new car, she was gone.

The emptiness of our home didn’t affect me until after Marvin’s trial. The crystal was still in the cabinet, and the maid service took care of housework. Her scent, though, was gone.

My overnight bag packed, I stopped and stared into the walk-in closet. The room built to hold our clothes was hardly smaller than our first apartment in college. With her half empty, it looked much bigger.

As I prepared to leave, certain the coffeepot timer was off and windows were locked, I noticed the answering machine. The number one flashed, warning me, a message waited to be heard. I pushed the play button. Instantly I recognized Mary’s voice.

“
Warren, are you home? Please pick up if you’re there.”
Pausing momentarily, she continued as if I was listening.
“Mother wanted me to call and wish you a happy Thanksgiving. She insists on your coming up for dinner Thursday. I’ve tried to explain how busy you are, that it is hard for you to get away. Still…”
She stopped again. I could tell she was trying to choose her words.
“Look, I don’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other. Come if you want or don’t, but do, please call Mother. This is all very confusing for her, and believe it or not Warren, she loves you and I…”
catching herself in mid-sentence, she edited her usual farewell salutation to me,
“hope you are doing well.”

“I hope you are doing well too,” I said aloud, trying the words out for myself. Nothing could ever replace ‘I love you,’ but it was nice. I played the message again, then erased it.

***

I drove eighty miles an hour on cruise control as soon as I passed the county limits. The straight road offered no challenges and the passing farmland no distraction. By the time I made it to Sikeston, it was dark. From the highway you could see the Wal-Mart sign and the faint square shape of the prison.

The motel was the best the town had to offer. Better than a commercial chain, but by no means a real hotel. I was fairly sure the middle-aged woman who checked me in, swiped my Visa card, and explained to me how to make long-distance calls would be the same person in the morning making my bed, cleaning my toilet, and inspecting my room for its’ overall tidiness.

She was nice enough, saying the prison would have amended hours for the holiday. An hour earlier than normal, friends and family would be let in to see the incarcerated.

“What about attorneys?” I asked trying to make a joke.

“A visitor is a visitor, I guess.” she said.

I found my room easily enough and slid my key into the gold-plated lock. The solid thump of the dead bolt retreated inside the steel door. What they lacked in amenities they certainly made up for in security. Possibly it was the idea that less than two miles away rapists, murderers, and pedophiles were kept behind bars. Maybe the doors, the locks, and the better-than-average security cameras in the manager’s office and on the parking lot gave visitors peace of mind. I thought it all was smoke and mirrors. What better deterrent is there to crime than having a federal penal institution in your backyard?

After I unpacked, I undressed and lay down nude under the clean sheet. The last thing I thought before falling asleep, regardless the bullshit reason my brother had called me down here was that it would be nice to see him.

***

Above the visitors entrance should have hung a sign reading ‘
abandon all dignity here.
’ Men, women, and children were randomly grabbed and prodded by the overtly diligent guards searching for contraband. Christ, with the consistency of these searches, my third thus far, I couldn’t imagine the ingenuity by which all the reported drugs were getting in the place.

Like a dumb ass, I had forgotten to leave my Montclair pen back at the hotel. It was gift from a friend whom I had successfully defended against charges of unlawful carnal knowledge. The pen had become a part of my apparel, but I should have thought about it.

I argued to no avail with a guard who practically proved Darwinisim. The huge moron kept repeating the same phrase over and over again. “You may file an incident report for improper seizure with the Warden’s office, sir.” I figured I would shut-up while I was ahead. If you didn’t treat these people with kid gloves, you would be bent over holding your ankles. A BCS (body cavity search) was a thrill I was not hoping to experience any time soon.

The visitor’s area; a collection of perfectly spaced round stainless steel tables set permanent into the concrete below them. I looked for Marvin. A sea of orange jump suited men sat one per table as a bullpen of candidates waited and smoked behind what I presumed to be soundproof glass. White men, black men, brown men, and yellow men with less freedom than a damn dog tied to a stake and almost utterly forgotten by the society that placed them here. I still believed that in a truly democratic society of justice, those given life sentences should be allowed the bullet option. That is placed alone in a room with a gun, loaded and cocked, they could make one final free decision. Screw the Eighth Amendment. Until you spend a year in a hellhole like this, stripped of your pride, your culture, your identity as an individual, you have no idea how rational an idea it is.

Among the safety orange prison jumpsuits, Marvin in his lime green stood out. The idea was to easily tell special protection cases from the general population. In essence, make it easier for the testosterone-driven gorillas that ran the place not to accidentally throw him in with the animals. Despite their own atrocities, they would tear him limb from limb.

Escorted to his table, I sat with my legal pad and no pen. I was obliged the loan of what was once a pencil by the humorless guard.

Marvin’s salt and pepper hair had gone shock white. He had lost weight and his eyes had taken on perpetual glaze. Older by ten years, he looked more like my father now than my sibling.

“Happy Thanksgiving,” he said.

Inside this place it was implausible to discern it as a holiday. It was probably the first we had spent together sitting at the same table since our mother passed away. I dismissed the melancholy moment for substance and got down to business.

“Name of the client?” I asked.

“Prisoner 664568G, Vasquez, Ricky. Alleged sodomy of a minor.”

“At this point that would be convicted,” I reminded him.

“True enough,” he said, ”but innocent.”

I almost started to argue with him then remembered the exercise in futility we were both carrying out.

“He was a cop, highly decorated. This is all a setup, like me, the conspirators that run this world have prevailed upon another good man. This time, buddy boy, we got them on improper search.”

“A technicality?” I moaned. Once convicted, screaming technical foul was no more effective than shooting bottle rockets at a nuclear warhead. An impropriety such as that would have been raised long ago at an indictment hearing.

“It’s true, Warren,” he said. “A prima facia fact. Their discovery was because the building manager, a so called friend, opened his locker without Mr. Vasquez’s express consent, supposedly looking for cigarettes, which by the way he did not find.”

I dreaded the answer before I asked. “What was found?”

“Irrelevant. Next question.”