A. Fair - Gold Comes in Bricks

“Sure,” I said. “The fool clerk makes a false identification and puts me to a lot of trouble, but it’s the shyster lawyer for the defendant that’s to blame.”

The cop looked at me for a minute. “Say, buddy, you ain’t trying to kid me, are you?”

“How do we go?” I asked.

“We drive you down the road about a hundred miles. There’s an airport there and a special officer that telephoned us to go pick you up. He’s waiting with a plane. If it’s all a mistake, he’ll bring you back, and you can take a stage from the airport right back here.”

“And I won’t be out anything except stage fare and a day’s time,” I said sarcastically.

They didn’t say anything.

I did a little thinking. “Well, I won’t travel on a plane at night for anyone. I’ll drive down with you. I’ll go to an hotel with the officer. I won’t leave until tomorrow morning. I’ve got some irons in the fire I can’t shove to one side—”

“Kinda independent, ain’t you, buddy?”

I looked him in the eyes and said, “You’re damn right. If you want me to go voluntarily, that’s the way I’ll go. If you want to advertise it in the newspapers that the clerk has made a bum identification, you can take me.”

“Okay,” the man said. “Get in. We’re taking you.”

The special investigator for the district attorney’s office who was waiting at the airport wasn’t entirely easy in his mind. My attitude made him a lot less easy, but he was good and sore at the idea that I was going to stay overnight in a hotel and wouldn’t travel by plane at night. He kept trying to argue with me. I told him simply that I was afraid to travel by air at night.

The officer couldn’t figure it out. “Now, listen, Lam, if you want to get back on the job, this is the way to do it. I’ve got this plane here, and it’s chartered. I can put you under arrest and take you back if I have to and—”

“You can if you put a charge against me.”

“I don’t want to put a charge against you.”

“All right, then, we leave in the morning.”

After a while he said to the officers who had brought me down, “Keep an eye on him. I’m going to put through a telephone call.”

He went into a booth and put through a long-distance call. It took him about twenty minutes. The highway patrol and I sat in the lobby of the hotel. They tried to sell me on the idea of going back and getting it over with.

The special investigator came back from the telephone booth and said, “All right, buddy. You asked for it. We’re going back.”

“Going to charge me?”

“I’m going to arrest you on suspicion.”

“Got a warrant?”

“No.”

“I’m going to call a lawyer.”

“That won’t do you any good.”

“The hell it won’t. I’m going to call a lawyer.”

“We haven’t time to wait for a telephone right now. The aviator is ready to take off.”

I said, “I have a right to call a lawyer,” and started for the telephone booth.

They stopped me so fast my head jerked. One of them grabbed one shoulder. The other grabbed the other shoulder. The clerk in the lobby looked at me curiously. A couple of loungers got up and moved away. The investigator from the D.A.’s office said, “Okay, boys, let’s go.”

They gave me the bum’s rush out to the automobile, cut loose with the siren, and got out to the airport in nothing flat. A cabin plane was there with the motors all warmed, and they pushed me inside. The man from the D.A.’s office said, “Since you’re asking for it the hard way, buddy, I’ll just see that you don’t get any funny ideas while the plane’s up in the air and try to start anything.” He slipped a handcuff around my wrist and handcuffed the other loop to the arm of the chair.

“Fasten your seat belts,” the pilot said.

The deputy fastened my seat belt. “It would have been a lot better if you’d done it the easy way,” he said.

I didn’t say. anything.

“Now, when we get down there, you’re not going to make a kick about going to the hotel where this clerk can take a look at you, are you?”

I said, “Brother, you’re the one that’s doing it the hard way. I told you I’d go down tomorrow morning, walk into the hotel or any place you wanted, and let the fellow take a look at me. You got hard — I’m not going to any hotel. If you take me down, you put me in jail, and I tell my story to the newspaper boys. If you want anybody to identify me, you put me in a line-up, and have the identification made that way.”

“Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

“It’s like that.”

“Now, I’m damn sure you’re the one who went in the hotel.”

“You’re just knocking your case higher than a kite,” I said. “The newspapers are going to play it up that you charged me with murder, that the hotel clerk made an identification from a photograph—”

“A tentative identification,” the officer corrected.

“Call it whatever you want to,” I said. “When he tries to identify the real man, there’s going to be hell to pay — and you’re going to catch it.”

He got sore then, and I thought he was going to paste me one, but he changed his mind, went over, and sat down. The pilot looked back, made certain our seat belts were fastened, gunned the motors, took the plane down the field, turned, came up into the wind, and took off.

It was smooth flying. I leaned back against the cushions. Occasional air beacons leered up at me with red eyes that blinked ominously. At intervals, clustered lights marked the location of little towns. I’d look down and think how people, snuggled in warm beds, would hear the roaring beat of the motor echoing back from the roof, roll over sleepily, and say, “There goes the mail,” without realizing it was a plane taking a man on a death gamble, with the cards stacked against him.

The pilot turned around and made signs to us when we started over the mountains. I gathered he meant it was going to be rough. He did. We went way up to try and get over it, but instead of going over it, we went through it. I felt like a wet dishrag when we came slanting down to the airport.

The pilot landed at the far end. The D.A.’s man got up, came over, and unfastened one end of the handcuffs. He said ominously, “Now, listen, Lam, you’re going to get into a car, and you’re going to that hotel. There isn’t going to be any fuss about it, and no publicity.”

“You can’t do that,” I said. “If you’re arresting me, go ahead and book me.”

“I’m not arresting you.”

“Then you had no right to bring me down here.”

He grinned, and said, “You’re here, ain’t you?”

The plane turned and taxied up to the hangars. I heard the sound of a siren, and a car came up. A red spotlight blazed its beam to a focus right on the door of the plane.

The man from the D.A.’s office jabbed me in the small of the back. “Don’t act rough now,” he said. “It would be a shame to have an argument. You’ve been a nice little man so far. Just keep on going.”

They turned the spotlight into my eyes so it would blind me. The deputy pushed me out. Hands grabbed me, and shoved me forward, then I heard Bertha Cool’s voice saying, “What are you doing with this man?”

Somebody said, “Beat it, lady. This guy’s under arrest.”

“What’s he charged with?”

“None of your damn business.”

Bertha Cool said, “All right,” to somebody who was just a shadowy figure in the darkness, and the man stepped forward and said, “I’ll make it my business. I’m an attorney. I’m representing this man.”

“Beat it,” the officer told him, “before something happens to your face.”

“All right, I’ll beat it, but first let me give you this nice little folded paper. That’s a writ of habeas corpus issued by a superior judge ordering you to produce this man in court. This other paper is a written demand that you take him immediately and forthwith before the nearest and most accessible magistrate for the purpose of fixing bail. In case you’re interested, the nearest and most accessible magistrate happens to be a justice of the peace in this township. He’s sitting in his office right now, with the lights on and his court open waiting to fix the bail.”