She shakes her head. "No, you want to."
She turns and leaves. I feel bad that she is hurt, but I feel much worse that she believes I would intentionally hurt her.
BEING PUT IN COUNTY JAIL IS LIKE SIGNING A FIRST baseball contract and reporting to the low minor league team they assign you to. You're in professional baseball, and while you know you might someday find yourself in the big leagues, for right now this seems pretty significant. Of course, if someday you do make it to the majors, you realize just how small the minors were.
County jail is the flip side of that. When you're sent there, you know you might find yourself in state prison if you get convicted, but for right now this seems pretty awful. Of course, if you do wind up there, or in a federal prison, you realize just how easy you had it back in County.
The thing is, when you're in County, at least things are happening. You're getting the lay of the land, seeing your lawyer, preparing for trial … it's a new experience. When you're convicted and sent to State, it feels like the system has forgotten about you, and in fact it has. Your life is not only miserable, it's also boring, and there is no end in sight.
I guess my point is that, all in all, county jail is a pretty super-duper place to live. But for some reason, Oscar Garcia doesn't see it that way. Oscar thinks it's an outrage--a "motherfucking joke" is the homespun way he puts it--that he should be in this position.
He rants and raves for two or three minutes, then finally realizes that, since I am sitting there, I just might have a role to play in all this. "Who the hell are you?" he asks.
"My name is Andy Carpenter. I'm an attorney working for the public defender's office on your case."
He stares at me for a few moments, as if trying to remember something. "Don't I know you from somewhere?"
I shrug. "Maybe. I went to NYU. What fraternity were you in?"
Oscar's sense of irony doesn't seem that well developed, and I've got a hunch he's not going to be a master of self-deprecating humor either. He ignores my comment, mainly because he's just remembered where he's seen me.
"You're that lawyer, right?" He points at me, no doubt to make sure I know he's not talking to the table.
"That's what I just finished telling you."
He shakes his head. "No, I mean the guy that was on TV."
I nod. "That's me. The TV lawyer."
He sort of squints at me, checking me out. "What do you want with me?"
He's suspicious, the first sign of intelligence I've seen. I decide to tell the partial truth, which seems to be the most I can manage these days. "I thought you might need my help."
"I don't need nobody's help."
"Then I'll find someone who does." I stand up to leave. "See ya around the campus."
I reach the door and I'm halfway out when I hear, "Wait a minute, man." I can pretend I don't hear it and keep walking, or I can turn around and continue with this self-destructive insanity. I turn.
"What is it, Oscar?"
"I didn't do it, man. I've done some pretty bad shit, but this ain't me."
"Did you know Dorsey?" I ask.
"A little bit, no big deal. He hassled me a few times. Nothing I couldn't handle."
"How did you handle it?" I ask.
"I just let it slide, went about my business."
"And just what is your business?" I ask.
"What the hell is the difference? This ain't about my business. My business is my business."
I pull up a chair and sit down less than a foot away from him. "Listen to me, Oscar, because I'm only going to say this once. Your business is my business. Everything about you is my business. And every question I ask you, every single one, is one you are going to answer as best you can."
He can tell I'm pissed, and he's afraid I'm going to walk away. "Okay, man," he says. "But you can't tell nobody, right? It stays between us?"
I nod. "It's called attorney-client privilege, and you can't imagine the shit I go through to maintain it."
He proceeds to tell me about his drug dealing and prostitution activities. It's fairly small-time, but like Danny Rollins, his small territory has been bestowed upon him, and he pays a substantial portion of his earnings to his patrons. The days of Al Capone are over, but the mob influence, at least in this area, is surprisingly substantial.
Oscar adamantly refuses to talk about the mob people that he deals with. He pathetically considers himself "connected," even though the truth is that the only people below him on the mob food chain are the victims. I don't press him on it, since there is little possibility his connections had anything to do with his facing these charges.
I move the conversation to the specifics of the case. I don't want to ask too many questions at this point; I'll save that for when I know more about the police's evidence. I concentrate on the warehouse where the body was found.
"Of course my prints were there," he admits. "That's where I operate out of."
He goes on to explain that because the warehouse was adjacent to the park, he would occasionally hide merchandise in there and have certain customers meet him inside when the police were in the area. He considered the warehouse his corporate headquarters.
And besides that, as he so eloquently puts it, "Prints don't mean no damn shit anyway."
"Write that line down. I'll want to use it in my closing argument."
He doesn't respond; there may be no bigger waste of time than using sarcasm on someone who has absolutely no understanding of it. "Now, this is important," I continue. "Someone called the police, a woman, and told them that you killed Dorsey. Do you have any idea who that could have been?"
"Shit no, man."
"What about one of your girls on the street?"
He shakes his head vigorously. This he is sure of. "No way. No fucking way. They know what would happen."
Every time he opens his mouth I dislike him more. "There's no one you can think of who might want to frame you?" I ask. "No one who has it in for you?"
"I got some enemies, my competitors, you know? It's part of business."
We clearly have a Macy's/Bloomingdale's situation here. "Make a list of everyone who dislikes you," I say.
He nods. "Okay."
"How many reams of paper will you need?"
"The guard'll get me paper."
What I think, but don't say, is, "Oscar, I'm insulting you. I'm your lawyer and I'm insulting you! Fire me!" Instead, I mentally vow to swear off sarcasm for the duration of this case. I'm not sure if I can do it; my addiction goes way back. I wonder if they make a sarcasm patch that I can wear to wean me off it.