After arresting Jesus for a dine and dash, the Spokane Police department wanted the truth.
You said no strings could secure you at the station.
--Eric Clapton
Part 4
The Bribe
With the windows up in the back of the police cruiser, I felt a kinship with all the dogs left baking in parked cars across Spokane. The sun seared through the windows, and beads of sweat started to pop out of my forehead. The tickling itch, as droplets rolled down my temples and nose, was more of a hassle than the tightness of the cuffs. Without being able scratch, I rubbed my face on the window, leaving a smear, but hardly alleviating the itch.
My shoulder was all kinds of jacked up, and throbbed with an ache that pulsed in time with my heartbeat. There was nothing I could do but accept the consequences. The delusion, which I had embraced as truth, was getting me chucked in the can, but I needed it. I needed my existential theories tested. The big bang couldn’t really get anything wrong as it unravelled. And if not, shouldn’t I push it? Could I override any negative subjective bias when the going got rough? But dammit, my shoulder sure seemed to think I was a fool. Surely the universe had flaws, but that was only if you listened to pain as it jarred your brain into submission. Somehow, this was all perfect.
The police officer had returned to the air conditioned Caboose. He was making me wait in the back seat of his car as punishment. Resisting the clutching grip of claustrophobic panic, which was making it difficult to breathe, I closed my eyes and tried to roll back the clock.
James, what a crafty guy. The yellow fog in the whites of his eyes hadn’t been a trick of the restaurant’s lighting. The rheumy look had been due to the fact that James was high as a kite. I had known this. But it had seemed necessary to override my intuition. Thinking such a thing was from all the deep seated prejudice lying dormant within me. Sociology classes had taught me that the first step in cultural evolution was to acknowledge the innate plague of racism which I, as a white man, couldn’t help but suffer from. When I met James, I realized that latent programming, from having grown up in white suburbia, was coloring what could be a beautiful interaction with unfounded bias. Stereotypical crackhead was what I had pinned on James, but then I had been quick to chastise myself for jumping to conclusions. I strove to abstain from any kind of labeling. I might have been determined not to be bigoted, but hindsight had exposed the blinders of such optimistic naivete.
After another fifteen minutes of broiling in the back seat, the cop walked out, pausing at the door for goodbyes to Larry and the logger.
“You know we’re going to find out who you are,” he said, as he got in the car.
“I am who I’ve always been,” I replied.
A bitter kind of indignance was all over his face when he glanced at me in the rearview mirror. I realized he must be a Christian. That, or maybe he didn’t appreciate being fucked with. Especially not by some dreadlocked hippie Jesus poser. But I had to do it my way. Without any wallet, let alone a piece of identification, I knew they’d have their work cut out at the station. For the rest of the short drive, the cop didn’t say a word.
I looked out the window, hoping I might spot James. Of course, even if I was able to point him out, the cop wouldn’t give chase. Besides, I had nothing against James. I wasn’t going to be a poor sport about being the fall guy, but I wished we’d ordered desert. Served my just deserts, instead, by the yank of a lawman.
When we arrived at the station, I was locked in a small holding cell. It was no bigger than a broom closet, brightly lit, with white walls and a thick wooden bench. All was quiet, except for some disturbing muffled noises coming through the wall. An agonized moaning, close to a wail, was making me think that a junkie must be in a bad way. Whoever was pleading, was in desperate need of a fix.
After a moment trying to picture the moaner, I decided to amuse myself by drumming on the bench. I sat on the floor and found that with open palmed slaps I could produce a crisp snare crack. With a closed fist, the bench resounded with a rumbling boom of rich bass. Boom boom smack. My, oh my--the acoustics in the room were phenomenal! So, already things were looking up. Even if I couldn’t catch the bus to the drum circle in Manito Park, I could groove in captivity.
Lost in my rhythm, I hadn’t noticed the face in the window. How long had the cop been watching? Carrying on with my beat, I listened to the clinking keys as he unlocked the door.
“Alright Jesus,” said the new officer. Using the Spanish pronunciation, he had swapped the ‘J’ for an ‘H’ sound.
“It’s Jesus,” I corrected.
His face was stone.
He retrieved a pair of blue latex gloves and slid them over his beefy hands.
“Yikes,” I said. “I suppose there’s no way to stop what’s coming next.”
His eyebrow raised for a moment, and then he asked, “Do you have any needles, knives or sharp objects on your person?”
“No,” I said, a tad nervously. They sure didn’t look like kid gloves.
“You sure? Because if I prick myself, it’ll be your ass,” he warned. He wasn’t nearly as big as my arresting officer, but his stubby fingers were like sausage links. Then it dawned on me that what he had said might have been a play on words.
“Wait,” I said, with a trace of hope, and asked for procedural clarification. “Are you telling me that it won’t be my ass if there aren’t any sharp objects in my pocket?”
“What?”
“Oh thank God,” I exhaled, relieved. “I was thinking you were going to probe around where the sun don’t shine. You know, like at the end of Wayne's World.”
He shifted his weight uncomfortably and said, “Be straight with me. You don’t have anything that’s going to poke me, right? If you do, now is the time to say so.”
“No. I don’t have needles, knives, thumbtacks or nails,” I assured him. “No rabbits up my ass either.”
He seemed unsettled by my mention of a possible cavity search. Whatever might, or might not, be stashed out of the light, had nothing to do with his job. Being patted down wasn’t disagreeable until he retrieved a list of phone numbers from my pocket. I winced, having forgotten about the piece of evidence. All the names on the list were coded, but it was a bread crumb leading to my other name.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Just some of my apostles,” I shrugged. “Many are called, but only a few pick up their phones.”
He muttered what an idiot he thought I was being, and then began feeling through my dreadlocks.
After he left the room, I resumed drumming on the bench. Free flowing, I tried to come up with fresh rhymes as I banged out the beat. The reverberation was so sublime that I thought I wouldn’t mind spending a week or two in the small room. Every time I stopped, I could hear the groans of the man in the next room. His monotone complaint was like a drone, so I rapped in the same key as his wretched lamenting.
Time had trotted on at a casual gait when there was a tap on the window.
“Hey, I really like your music,” said a female officer. Her blonde hair was pulled back into a ponytail which complimented her green eyes. She looked out from an angular face which cut the light much like the brunette who sat across from James.
“Thanks,” I said. But I smelled something rotten in Denmark.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Do you want to get out of here?”
“Um, maybe later?”
“Well,” she breathed, feigning consideration, “we’re willing to let you go and give you a hundred bucks if you tell us your real name. How’s that sound?” She held up a hundred dollar bill, and pressed it to the glass.
“That’s disgusting,” I said, with a sour look. “Please keep it in your pants.”
She kept the C-note against the window, looking over it and encouraged, “Come on now. Your name isn’t Jesus. You’re not fooling anyone.” She had pronounced the name with an ‘H’ like the other guy.
“It’s Jesus. You know, like ‘geez’ with an ‘us’ at the end. Do I look Mexican? Why do you all keep calling me Heysoos? I might have a tan, but I can see that you’re definitely not latina.”
“You’re funny,” she said, tilting her head with a smile. She tried to make whatever it was she was trying pull off look convincing. At best, her acting skills were an atrocity, disgraceful. Her eyes had the depth of a manikin, the shine of cardboard.
“I’m not as funny as you, doll face.”
“What do you mean?” she asked, batting her eyelashes. Unbelievable!
“Listen,” I said, “I’ll bet you that hundred dollar bill that you were never going to give me that hundred dollar bill.” I raised my eyebrows, challenging her to get real with me.
“You don’t trust me?” she crooned, shooting me an offended look. It was all a bit much. She was probably the station’s best looker, but I couldn’t believe it had come to this.
“Let me get this straight,” I said, squinting at her. “You expect me to believe that you’ll not only let me go, but I’ll be rewarded $100 for telling you my name?”
“I said I would,” she played coy with a shrug.
“Tell you what,” I proposed. “If you hold that hundo up to the window and light it on fire, I’ll tell you anything you like.”
An appalled look crossed her face, and she frowned, explaining, “It’s a federal offense to deface or destroy currency.”
“But you and me, we’re above all that nonsense. Besides,” I mused, winked and then promised, “it can be our little secret.”
“No, I don’t think so. But I’ll give it to you,” she said, playing with her ponytail which she’d let flop over her shoulder. “After that, it’s up to you what happens to it. Wouldn’t you rather buy something nice?”
“You promise to give me that dead president, but no. Although I’m not calling bullshit, it’s not what I want. I’ll tell you what I do want, what I really really want.”
“What’s that?”
“I ‘promise’”--I made air quotes--“to tell you the name on my birth certificate. It’s easy. All you have to do is burn that ugly green thing. Right here, right now. I want to see you light it up, and then I’m down to spill the beans. I’ll give you my mother’s maiden name, but we gotta get on the same page first. Tit for tat.”
The corner of her smile twitched, but it was only a small crack in her facade before she recovered, and said, “Come on, you can tell me your name.” Her eyes had changed.
Something about the way she said it, the sudden flip in her act to that of a friend, made me laugh. The tactlessness of it all was so very amateur.
“Oh, you’re just adorable, aren’t you?” I patronized, laughing.
“Thank you,” she said, ignoring my tone. “So do you want to get out? You can burn this, if you want. All I’m asking is your name. Your real name, and it’s yours. You can burn it. I won’t tell.”
She was like a flight attendant attempting a surgical operation with a seat belt. Her approach was deplorable, worse than tacky. Could it be possible she’d had success with this ruse in the past? I imagined the guys outside, a few other officers lined on the sides of the small window, listening in. I wondered how many had bet that I’d be a sucker. I was almost offended.
Guessing that I had an unseen audience, I tried to make my eyes look brooding, leveling my gaze at this temptress in blue. In a mock latino accent, all suave and baritone, I said, “Listen chica, first things first. Just burn that for Heysoos. Come now, mi amor. Make me an offer I cannot refuse.”
There was a moment where I thought she was going to scream an obscenity. Her eyes were volcanic caustic cauldrons. They were seething hot, but somehow iced me. And then, she squinted, shook her head, and walked away from the window without having lost her cool.
Left alone, I shook off the creepy residue of her eyes with a shudder. In or out of the police station, that girl was poison. I felt the need to express myself, so I resumed drumming. My lyrics were all about the shameless bribery, the deceit, when my arresting officer appeared in the window.
“Alright, Jasper,” he announced, after opening the door. “We called your dad, and he told us your name. Your other friends weren’t as forthcoming, but your dad was straight with us.” He sounded triumphant, but also condescending and smug.
“Huh,” I grunted, noncommittally. It was a bummer, and I was a bit disappointed in my old man. I had penciled him in as GB53 on my list, but he must have cleared that up before snitching.
“You really let him down,” the cop gloated.
“I’ll bet,” I granted, picturing him on the phone at his counter, shaking his head in dismay. The thought of dad bailing me out made me smile. That wouldn’t happen, even if hell froze over with pigs flying above. How would I learn my lesson? You can’t run from the consequences you incur. It is best to face all challenges head on. Pain is good. It fosters fortitude and character. Dad’s worldview had been formed out of Jack London novels, and he didn’t believe in shortcuts. But now that I was on my way to jail, I would settle for nothing less than the full tour. God forbid that I be bailed out by anyone. I wanted nothing less than to be able to Jack London the county jail. How would the system test my mettle? Maybe I could get a story out of it.
As the officer wrapped the handcuffs back around my wrists, I asked his name.
“Sergeant Mitchell.”
“Well, Sergeant Mitchell, do you need cut off my circulation, or does that tight fit do something for you?”
“Don’t be a pussy. They’ll be off soon enough. Too soon, if you ask me.”
He led me out of the cell, and I looked in the next room to behold a horrific figure. The man who had been moaning was silent now. Through the window, I caught sight of an emaciated wreck. He was rocking back and forth, skin and bones. With gnarled hands, all black with grime, he had bits of debris lodged in his unkempt hair.
“Where’d the zombie come from?”
Mitchell didn’t answer, or say anything more until we stopped by a water cooler.
“We’ll see who’s making jokes after a couple weeks,” he goaded. He filled a paper cup and tilted it for me to drink.
There was an escalation of cranking tension.
“Hey bro, you got me.”
His chin tilted upward. “I’m not your bro.”
“Still, I’m just saying, bully for you. What do I have? Like a month?”
“You’ll be sentenced in a couple weeks,” he said.
“A few weeks,” I considered. “Could be a lot worse.”
“I agree, and I think the judge will too. Don’t think I won’t show up for court if you try to claim you were wrongly accused.”
No, we weren’t comrades, and he was making that abundantly clear.
“Oh I’m guilty,” I conceded.
It was no accident that the cuffs were biting into my wrists. Both of my hands were numb by the time we arrived at the processing center of the station. I was passed off to an older officer with a sizable paunch hanging over his belt. Sporting a bushy white mustache, I saw a walrus in a cop outfit. He had large drooping eyes, a bulbous nose, and seemed indifferent about having to deal with me.
As he took my prints, I looked around at the small cubicles partitioned by gray dividers. There were a handful of officers milling about under the low ceiling. The metal desks and filing cabinets looked cheap. The lights cast a dismal blue hue from the white panels above, marked with up with rusty islands of water damage. The entire place looked drab until I noticed the lady cop who had tried to bribe me. In contrast with the rest of the place, she was worthy of a protracted glance. She was a dazzling diamond in the rough, an emerald eyed princess in a pig stye. It was no wonder they had sent her to at least try and work her charms on me. She glanced over with a haughty look. It quickly changed into a threatening glare when I mouthed the words, ‘I love you’.
Smiling for the mugshot, and making jokes about the fingerprint ink, did little to change the spacey disposition of the walrus. Not once did he look me in the eye. His jelly-like gaze would drift around the room coming to rest on different computer monitors. His breathing was hoarse, and his face was red from the effort of moving about the place. After passing me off to another officer, he seemed happy to collapse back in his swivel chair.
The new handle had some sympathy when he noticed my bruised wrists. He reattached the cuffs like loose fitting bangles.
“So, you’re Jesus?”
“At least you said it right,” I shrugged. He had pronounced ‘Jesus’ in the gringo dialect.
“Was it worth it?”
“What?”
“Joe told me that he wouldn’t have brought you in if you wouldn’t have been an asshole.”
“All I know is that I’m going to jail for being Jesus. It might not be ideal, but it sure beats what happened last time.”
“Last time? We ran your name through the database, but you don’t have any prior convictions. Nothing we found, so what happened last time?”
“Crucifixion is a lot worse than jail time. Trust me on that.”