I could tell that the older woman had developed a love for me even though I’m regarded as just a teenager. She talked to me like a woman talks to a man. She respected me like a woman respects a man after listening to his words and observing his conduct and actions. She looked at me like a woman looks at a man. She confided in me the most intimate of things, like a woman confides in her man. She lusted after me, like how a woman lusts after a man. Naturally, and instinctively, she even served me, like a woman serves a man whom her heart and her eyes and her mind have realized is not a child, is not her son, is not a dependent, a burden, or a parasite, in my case, despite being a prisoner.
22. THE EAGLE
She walked in bringing a breeze, the scent of summer, and a piece of the skylight. It was either that, or my mind had multiplied and magnified every tiny little thing after being in the box for fifty days, so far. She entered the meeting room, which was reserved for consultations between inmates and their attorneys.
Her green eyes pierced through the dim, stale air and lit up. She looked at me as though I was the light and as if she had just walked out of darkness. With her back to the guard who had escorted me from my cell to the meeting room, she smiled. I would have showed her my genuine gratitude by allowing my natural smile to reveal itself, but the guard was facing me and I was facing him. We both had to maintain the profile of the jailer and the jailed.
He left.
She skipped the greetings of “Peace,” or “Shalom,” or “Hello,” or “Hi,” or even “How are you doing?” Instead, she looked at me, placed her pocketbook and briefcase on the table, and then murmured, “Troublemaker.” From her tone, I could tell that she didn’t mean it.
“Thank you,” I said to her.
“I haven’t given you anything for you to thank me for as of yet,” she said, reminding me of her sharpness.
“For wearing those heels,” I said, glancing beneath the table at her Charles David pumps. “The heels beat the Birkenstocks,” I added, and my smile broke through naturally.
“Your smile is misleading,” she said. “It suggests to me that Rikers has been kind to you. My brain knows that’s next to impossible, highly unlikely . . . and you just came from the box, not the beach. So wipe that beautiful smile off of your face.”
“Yeah, I been in the box. But you chose to wear the dress and the heels. Did you expect me not to notice?”
“Today is my day off and I have a date after my meeting with you,” she said.
“I must be your date since you always seem to come to see me when it’s your ‘free time.’ Free time is reserved for what you want to do, not for what you have to do,” I said. She smiled and swiftly and calmly spit her clever reply.
“The fact that you haven’t grown a beard in fifty days confirms that you are in fact an adolescent, in which case I will refrain from engaging with you in a conversation about my date, my dress and my heels, or about your glowing skin and awesome physique.” She had silenced me.
Finally she sat down. She wasn’t wearing her black crocheted bracelet over her deep scar. Instead, she wore a silk ribbon, which she tied over the scar like a wrist ascot. The ribbon matched her summer dress nicely.
“Did anyone give you a hard time coming in here?” I asked her curiously.
“They know me here, and they know better,” she said confidently. “And I should be directing that question at you.”
“I’m chilling,” I said.
“ ‘Get me out of here.’ That’s supposed to be your line,” she told me with a great seriousness, as her feminine eyes conducted a soul search on me, the opposite of the intrusive strip search that the guards enforced. After a pause, she searched her Donna Karan handbag and pulled out a folded document. She unfolded it and smoothed it out like it was a tablecloth. It was the IOU I had written out, promising to pay her for each expense that I generated as she worked on my behalf. I looked down on it, seeing that she had added some expenses and written in her own notes, and even added an additional sheet of paper to make space for more details. I was cool with it. I felt certain about repaying my debt.
“Good news, bad news, choices, and options. Which would you like to hear first?” she asked me.
“The worst first,” I said.
“They found the murder weapon.”
“What murder weapon?” I asked on purpose. She cracked a half smile.
“The nine-millimeter that killed Lance Polite.” I didn’t react. She waited, her eyes making note of my nonchalance. “It cleared, no fingerprints,” she said, watching and waiting for me to celebrate the results. I remained still and solid.
“The autopsy results confirmed that the cause of death was the six bullets discharged into his mouth. It also indicates that Mr. Polite was stabbed in his right eye.” She paused. I had the face of a listener, not a speaker. So I listened.
“The stabber and the shooter, I believe, are two different persons,” she said. Her eyes revealed that she was becoming disappointed by my silence. “So maybe I have been giving the wrong person credit for defending the cat that was choked to death and avenging a murderous animal abuser?” She said it like it was a question and an accusation both at the same time.
“I see one thing changed,” I said, cutting short the intensity that was building up in her and purposely ignoring all of the other issues and questions she raised in order to focus on the one thing that I knew touched her heart and for her meant the most. “You are now definite that the one who was murdered is also the same one who abused and murdered the cat,” I observed aloud.
“He did, one hundred percent. Forensics identified cat hairs on the clothing of Lance Polite and he even had the poor animal’s guts beneath his fingernails,” she said bitterly.
“Crazy.” That was my sincere one-word response.
“Maybe the stabber and the shooter are friends, relatives, or lovers who were offended by Polite. They were avenging the death of the cat and protecting each other and the neighborhood children from ‘Lance the Predator,’ ” she said, seemingly with great thought and seriousness. “Our ASPCA investigator had his interns post flyers trying to locate the cat’s owner. That was some free help that I thought and hoped would uncover some other useful evidence. I wanted it to perhaps lead us to locate the one who had the motive to murder Lance Polite. But no one came forward. No one called in. It’s a very tough neighborhood, that area.”
I didn’t say anything, just listened. I thought it was crazy that she thought someone murdered that fool over the feline. No matter what she said to provoke me to feel or say something, I wouldn’t. My strategy included timing and the skillful use of silence. Besides, I was certain that she was still thrilled that the serial abuser of animals and children was dead.
“Look,” she said, leaning forward, her energy suddenly shifting. “I’ve had lunch and dinner meetings with some men, real schmucks and altercockers who I would never in my life get close enough to spit on, if it weren’t for defending you. You ought to confide in me. I’m your attorney. We’re on the same team. I have a professional obligation and requirement to keep whatever you tell me in strict confidence. I’ve been working tirelessly for you and you’ve been working against me.”
“How?” I asked calmly as I noted that again she was using words I had never heard. Last meeting she had said fercockle, now schmuck and altercocker. I had long ago looked up fercockle in the dictionary I got off the library cart, but the word wasn’t listed.
“At your arraignment, you were charged with resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, inciting a riot, and assaulting a police officer. On your behalf, I entered a plea of not guilty on all charges. I believed you,” she said.
“I know. I received the paperwork. Thank you,” I said sincerely.
“So you know that your bail was denied just as you wanted?”
“Yes, I know. It was not what I wanted. It was what I expected,” I clarified. “The police were using those minor charges to hold me, while they organized some
major charges to sink me. So, I knew no matter what, they had no plans of releasing me.”
“How did you know what they were up to?” she said, jumping right into what she thought was an opening up on my part.
“Easy,” I said. “Because they made up the false resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, assaulting a police officer, and rioting charges in the first place. If they were desperate enough to make up those false charges, then I was sure that they wanted me locked up in a cell either way.”
“You also are aware that a court date has been set concerning those ‘minor charges’?”
“Yes, next Wednesday, September twenty-fourth at nine a.m. I received the paperwork from the court. The CO delivered it to me in the box,” I confirmed.
“Jordan.” She spoke my false name aloud like the jailers never did. In here I’m a number, a number in a count. “What are you expecting to happen?” she asked me, cleverly reshaping her strategy to open me up.
“My grandfather,” I said with false emotion, “without my help, he has probably already passed away.” I was playing on the identity I had invented for Jordan Mann. I did not want to say or do the typical things to my attorney that she was used to hearing and seeing from her hundreds of clients. I wouldn’t beg her to get me released. I wouldn’t pressure her to work on my behalf or seem too eager about anything in particular. The truth is, by now I was certain that Chiasa had done everything that I asked her to do regarding my Umma and my sister. And I was certain that Umma, having received my letter almost two months ago, cooperated with Chiasa. Therefore my women, all of them, were safe and out of the reach of interference from all police, investigators, and authorities Insha’Allah. So there was nothing left for me to do, other than to maneuver these legal situations and to win the smallest amount of time possible for the sentencing of whatever charges they managed to convict me of.
I wanted my lawyer, instead of trying to hear a confidential confession from me, to change her approach and lay out in front of me every single detail regarding my case to date. I wanted to know what was being said in these private conversations with these lawyers and judges and police and politicians. I wanted to know what they were insinuating or working towards charging me with. I wanted her to show me all of the news and/or magazine clippings where my case was mentioned or analyzed, the same way she did before when we met in the hospital. Yet even though I like her, I refused to ask her. I had grown uncomfortable in the victim-defendant position, and more uncomfortable with her cast as my savior. I knew she knew a lot more than she was saying. Instead of her trying to drag information out of me little by little, I wanted her to stop hiding what she already knew and lay it out clearly. I believed that was her purpose in interacting with me at all. I believed that was the reason Allah sent her to me.
She checked her Timex. “Detective Baldassari maintains to this day that you, Jordan, confessed to the murder of Lance Polite. He’s got some connections and a pretty good reputation. He’s been helping the prosecutor even though he’s from a different precinct and not a homicide detective. I met with him and the prosecutor separately. Their investigation, however, has not uncovered any solid evidence to support or charge you with manslaughter or murder one. Astoundingly, to date, they have no witnesses to a murder that was committed in the presence of potentially thousands of people.” She exhaled exasperation.
“So here’s the ‘worst first,’ as you put it. The prosecutor still wants to charge you with the crime of murder.” She leaned back, folded her arms before her, and searched me for an impulse—anger, fear, tears, an outburst, or even a slight shift in my body language. I didn’t give her one, though.
“He has to deliver a culprit to satisfy the state senator,” she said sternly, letting me know that even if it seemed unjust, it was likely to happen. “I had lunch with the state senator as well. I shared my file and all of the information I had gathered on Lance Polite with him. I wanted to convince him that Lance Polite was not the ‘poster-boy violent crime victim,’ that he, a state senator, should want to get behind. I let him know my exact sentiments, that he as a human being should not align himself with an offender like Lance even though I understand why this murderer has to be apprehended and charged,” she said passionately.
“Now, I do and I can and I will represent you; however, you need to tell me and show me that you understand that this very serious matter could blow in either direction. It’s an established, respected police detective’s word against yours. There’s a photograph of a faceless black male youth in a hoodie, committing the murder. They will stand you up, have you in a hoodie posing in the courtroom, and although you and every other well-built male your age would look the same in that pose, they will convince the jury that you are their guy. And I’ve seen and tried other cases where the prosecution had flimsy to no real evidence, but because of the climate of the country and the fears and mind state of the jury members, a conviction accompanied by a very severe sentencing was handed down.” She paused.
“There are no words in English, Yiddish, or Hebrew to describe the look on the face of a defendant in such cases where it seemed obvious that there was little to no evidence, when the head juror stands up and says that one-million-ton word, guilty,” she said, dropping her arms to her sides.
“You said that I was working against you. What did you mean by that?” I asked her.
“By withholding yourself from me, it hurts your case. You have not identified any of your friends who could and would be willing to say good things about you, or the names of a couple of schoolteachers who could testify to your good character and conduct. You haven’t named a pastor who knows you and saw you in church even once on Easter! You say you have no relatives who could come forward and share with the court how loving and supportive you’ve been in the family. You have not even provided me with your home address or presented any neighbors who could testify on your behalf that they have lived next door to you, seen you coming and going, taking care of your grandfather and doing good things. Not one person who would say, ‘this young man is not capable of committing this crime!’ ” She took a breath.
“And you are still not saying anything!” She gave me a deep stare. “I can feel that you are good because I am good at that sort of thing. But feelings and my masterful intuition are not admissible in a court of law. They mean nothing. They’re meaningless,” she said, exhaling again and throwing herself back into her chair, her arms flopping at her sides and her legs extended straight out.
“Maybe your sister was right about me being evil,” I said, testing how certain my lawyer is about me, and measuring how much pressure she would take before breaking and turning on me. I knew her sister was closer to her than any human. I found it odd that she would go against the sister who she seemed to love more than her own life.
“My sister does not think that you are evil. She knows that you are good. She was the first to say so right after we both met you at the courthouse. It’s just that my sister believes you are guilty. She can’t forgive anyone for murder no matter the circumstance.” Then Lawyer Ayn leaned forward and the volume of her voice dropped down very low. “She doesn’t believe in revenge, but I do.” She leaned back and straightened her posture into the chair.
“And I am the one who is a lawyer. Lawyers believe that everyone has the right to a defense, and that’s what I am here to do for you. Please trust me.”
Thick-skinned, I confirmed it, and was glad I asked her the loaded question. My mind was speeding, my thoughts piling up in layers. Then I was asking myself, but is an untaped and false confession admissible? She didn’t know how to interpret my silence. The more silent I was, the more she tried to convince me to talk. I caught the feeling that she planned to visit me today and give it her best, most passionate and honest shot, but that if it failed, she would bow out. I didn’t want that to happen.
“I spent the first few days after we saw each other at the hospital trying to get those resisting arrest and all of those ‘co
ver charges’ dropped. I painted you as the misunderstood African-American youth for whom I had documented medical records that revealed that you had been abused and suffered injuries at the hands of the police, who held you for an illegal and inordinate six days of questioning without a parent, lawyer, or an arraignment. A young man whose urine was tested and clean, and whose eyes were clear. Then as soon as you got to Rikers, you end up in the box where the most unruly, violent, and difficult prisoners are held,” she said. “What’s with the fighting?”
“Men fight,” I responded. I wasn’t trying to be arrogant or ignorant. But I wasn’t about to recount to her detail by detail who said what, who did what, and what I did and what exactly happened after my Rikers arrival.
“Why aren’t you speaking up?” Why is someone so intelligent not using his voice at the most critical time in his life? Why aren’t you confiding in me? Would you prefer that I leave?” Then she admitted, “I saw the tape.”
“What tape?” I asked.
“The riot in the Robert N. Donovan Center here at Rikers was caught on camera.”
Everything is on secret camera, I thought to myself. If they could film it, why couldn’t they prevent it from happening or stop it before the bleeding bodies began to pile up, before the beatings and the pepper spray had everybody gagging and choking?
“You should have called me and told me what happened. I gave you my business card. If you have never in your life memorized a phone number, my number was the one to memorize! If you had called me, then perhaps I would not have been embarrassed painting you as an angel and a literate, scholarly, well-mannered person, and then hearing the prosecutor tell me, while cutting into the bloody steak he ordered, that you had an in-house hearing and had been convicted of a ‘Tier Three’ violation and had been confined to the box for three months, which is the maximum,” she said with attitude.