Put a Lid on It (2 page)

“I don't have a briefcase,” Jeffords said.

“That's the point. The lawyers have briefcases,” Meehan told him. “Old, battered, scuffed, packed full of paper. They're coming in for thirty seconds, tell you the delay was denied, we're going to trial Thursday, they're outta here, they still carry that briefcase. The
purpose
of that briefcase is to let you know, you're not the only scum they're taking care of around here, they don't have all that much time to spend on you. So for all of these many reasons, plus I notice you don't have your fingernails professionally attended to, you aren't a lawyer, and what that means is, we don't have a lawyer-client privilege.”

Jeffords gazed on him in a dumbstruck way for a few seconds, as though listening to a simultaneous translation, and then a big goofy smile lit up his face, like a haunted house going up in flames just as the sun comes out, and he said, “Wow. Mr. Meehan, did I luck out with you.”

And what was
that
supposed to mean? Sparrows take shit. Meehan could see this was gonna be a day of conundrums, and he could get along without such a day. If there was an upside to jail time, it was at least you got some rest. He said, “Does this luck work both ways?”

“If you're as smart as you appear to be, yes.” Suddenly businesslike, actually sitting upright, Jeffords opened the folder in front of himself, rested his forearms to flank the papers within, leaned forward like a bombardier, and read, “Francis Xavier Meehan, forty-two, no fixed abode.”

“This place is pretty fixed,” Meehan told him.

Jeffords looked up. “They call you Frank?”

“Never.”

Jeffords waited, his silence inviting Meehan to tell him what “they”
did
call him, but Meehan didn't feel like getting into all that. Barbara used to call him Frannie, which nobody else did. When he was a kid he was mostly Francis, except a few of the guys he hung out with called him Zave, which followed through into the army and for a while after that. Now and again, somebody thought it was cute to nickname him Professor, but it never took. The last ten, fifteen years he was called Meehan, which generally eliminated confusion.

Giving up without a fight, Jeffords bent his head to the folder: “Divorced from Barbara Kenilmore, two—”

“That's her maiden name.”

Jeffords looked up. “She went back to it.”

Meehan grinned. “That'll put me in my place,” he said.

“You're already in your place,” Jeffords told him, “but we'll see what we can do about it.” He looked down again. “Two sons, Bri—”

“I know their names,” Meehan said. “I even know their ages, their birthdays.”

“We'll move along, then,” Jeffords agreed.

Meehan said, “You're not gonna reel off my arrests and convictions, are you? I'll do what in court they say, stipulate. I'll stipulate to that. Many many burglary arrests, six, no seven trials, two convictions, lot of waiting time in places like this around the country because nobody ever thinks I'm worth bail—”

“Do
you
think you're worth bail?” Jeffords said.

Meehan had to laugh at that. “The judges would do it, don't get me wrong,” he said. “It's the bondsmen. They look at me, they know they'd rather not have to find me.”

Jeffords leaned back, morphing toward his natural sprawl. He said, “So we both know everything that's in here.”

“Makes sense.”

“But this is your first federal rap,” Jeffords pointed out.

“I'm not glad I switched brands,” Meehan told him, “if that's what you want to know.”

Jeffords looked thoughtful, almost kindly. “Federal prisons,” he said, “are not easy places.”

“So I've heard.”

“They've got you, you know,” Jeffords said. “Witnesses, fingerprints—”

“It shouldn't be federal,” Meehan insisted. “I'm not one to bitch against the system, but this is a fucking
truck
, Mr. Jeffords, supposed to be full of computer chips. This isn't blowing up army bases. This isn't even fucking stock fraud.”

“The feds don't want to let you go,” Jeffords said. He sounded as though he knew what he was talking about.

“Shit,” Meehan said, and he meant it.

“Forever,” Jeffords told him. “You're looking at life, no parole.”

“For a truck.”

“I wish I could help,” Jeffords said.

Meehan gave him a keen look, while that sentence just lay there in the room with them. There's a reason we're having this conversation. He said, “Mr. Jeffords, I'm sorry, I feel awful about this, but I've just got this miserable memory. Already I'm starting to forget
your
name.”

“No no, Frank,” Jeffords said, “you've got—”

“Well, I suppose it had to happen,” Meehan said.

Thrown off stride, Jeffords frowned at him: “What?”

“That somebody would call me Frank. Sure hope it doesn't happen again.”

Jeffords took a slow half minute to think about whether he might get pissed off, then decided no, which Meehan found very interesting. This guy really wanted Meehan's cooperation. It was only too bad he had nothing to give him. I regret I have but one life to give for my federal penitentiary.

“Mr. Meehan,” Jeffords said, “let me clear up any confusion between us.”

“Go ahead,” Meehan said.

“I'm not interested in the past,” Jeffords said.

Was this another conundrum? Jail, courts, holding cells, the past was all they were ever about, because the future is already determined and set. Everybody knew Francis Xavier Meehan's future; they just had to tidy up his past before they could send him on to it.

While Meehan tried to work out what this was all about, Jeffords turned his notepad to another blank page, wrote in it fast, then turned it and the pen toward Meehan, who leaned closer to read

If you might want to help me,

I might want to help you

YES

NO

Meehan studied this ballot, while Jeffords said, “If you could see your way clear to help the federal authorities on this hijacking case—”

Surprised, doubly surprised, Meehan looked up to see Jeffords' head shaking back and forth like a metronome while he talked: Ignore the words coming out of this mouth.

“—I think I might be able to help you in a variety of ways, particularly choice of penal institution, that sort of thing.”

Meehan picked up the pen. “I'm really sorry, Mr. Jeffords,” he said, “I just can't.” He voted YES, a big X inside the box.

“Well, that's a shame,” Jeffords said. “It was worth a try. Goodbye, Mr. Meehan.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Jeffords.”

3

T
HAT WAS THE
afternoon 9 South had library privileges, three to five. Meehan had checked out the library when he'd first been tossed in here, but didn't think much of it, though everybody else loved the place, went there every chance they got.

Essentially, the inmates' part of the library was two rooms, the first a fairly big rectangle with two long library tables and some chairs, the walls lined with bookcases, the shelves full of fairly recent fiction and non-fiction, hardcover and paperback. There were no stacks, just the wall shelves, because stacks would give you a place to hide, exchange contraband, shiv an associate. That first room was where Meehan went, twice, to see what they had that might be of interest. Both times, he checked something out, only to realize he'd already read it.

The room beyond the normal library was the law library, which was smaller, with a wall-mounted shelf containing four electric typewriters on one side and a counter with a volunteer lawyer behind it on the other. Every typewriter always had an inmate banging away, with every range from two fingers to nine, while two or three behind him waited their turn. Behind the lawyer, out of sight back there, was another room—or maybe rooms—full of law books. The volunteer lawyer was there to answer questions, discuss situations, go back to find the relevant law books, Virgil the inmate through the narrow byways of the law.

This is where the inmates came to work on their cases. That's what they called it, they were working on their cases. Stick around in there long enough, you could come out with a pretty good grounding in tort law, which some of them did. But, since they were mostly assholes, it rarely helped. Still, working on their cases kept them out of trouble and made the volunteer lawyer—young, idealistic, from some seventh-rate diploma mill—feel useful in life.

Meehan didn't work on his case. He knew what his case was, and he knew working on it wouldn't make it any prettier. And he'd given up on the reading section of the library, as being too skimpy for his needs. So he was one of the few residents of 9 South present in his cell when the two guards came along, with that usual expression on their face—it's only the vow I made to the Blessed Virgin Mary keeps me from kicking your nose out the back of your head—and one of them said, “Meehan?”

“That's me,” Meehan agreed.

“Pack your shit,” the guard said. The other guard was there mostly, Meehan figured, to make sure the first guard kept his vow.

Meehan said, “Pack? Whadaya mean?”

“It means what you leave behind you leave behind,” the guard told him. “What you take with you is still yours. Do it now, Meehan.”

There wasn't much. He had a cheap blue nylon ditty bag, his toilet kit, socks and T-shirts and shorts, a couple shirts and pants he didn't put any wear on in here because everybody was in brown or orange jumpsuits (his was brown), the notebook he didn't write in—ten thousand rules—a couple paperbacks that were personal property (
Under the Volcano
and
Lord Jim
, neither of which he could get into, which was why they were still with him, and which he figured was his fault, not the writers'), and a pair of simple black laceless deck shoes for when he had an exercise turn in the yard on the roof, shoes generally called winos because that's who wears them.

Packing these worldly goods, Meehan said, “I'm packing. Okay if I know where I'm going?”

“Otisville,” the guard said. He didn't care.

Otisville. Meehan made a face, but didn't say anything. What would he expect from these guys, sympathy?

Otisville was another more rural federal detention center in this state. Since the criminal justice system around New York City always gets such a heavy workout, the MCC here frequently overflowed, like a cesspool, and then some of the contents had to be drained off to Otisville, one hundred miles upstate in the Shawangunk Mountains, the middle of boonie nowhere. A Department of Corrections bus, which looked like a schoolbus except it was dark blue and had mesh cages over all the windows, ran up to Otisville every evening, back down every morning, four hours out of your day on the bus. Except not until his trial; for now, they'd just ship him off to Otisville and leave him there. But then, at trial time, as though it wasn't tough enough to be on trial in a federal court, they'd throw in this commute, just to help you keep on your toes.

Meehan packed everything into his ditty bag, put on the zippered cotton jacket he'd worn when they'd picked him up, and left his little cell for the last time. Out in the star chamber, Johnson sat at a plastic table, cheating at solitaire. Looking up, eying the guards, he said, “Hey. Where
you
going?”

“Otisville.”

Johnson made a face. “Fuck me,” he said.

“Yeah, well.” Meehan saw no point in mentioning his suspicions of Johnson.

He and the guards went out to the elevators and rode down to 2, for his check-out, which consisted of impersonal clerks, a lot of paperwork, and a moment where, under everybody's indifferent eye, he changed out of their brown jumpsuit into his own gray work shirt and black chino pants.

At the end came the shackles. The shackles was a loose chain around the waist, with a short chain linking it to handcuffs and a longer chain linking it to ankle cuffs. Dressed like that, you shuffled, with your hands at your belt.

Another elevator took the three of them down to the loading dock and departure area, with a big broad opening onto St. George Place, the narrow one-way street at the back of the MCC. The Otisville bus was there, a dozen guys on line, shuffling forward with their hands at their belts, going through the cumbersome motions of climbing up into a bus with shackles on, looking like elephants climbing into a treehouse.