Jeff Sherratt - Guilty or Else

The drive to the new Los Angeles County Jail, in downtown L.A., would take over an hour.

The rain vanished and now threatened to be another hot and smoggy day. The eight A.M. newsbreak predicted a stage-three air quality alert over the entire area except, of course, for the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The smog knew better; Palos Verdes had an ordinance against that sort of thing.

I circled the jail parking lot, looking for a place to park. No luck. But I found a spot on Vignes Street, two blocks away. I trudged up the small rise and entered the building at the visitors’ sign-in door. I walked through a chain-link gate and into a small hall. The gate behind me closed, and the one in front of me opened with a buzzing click. At the counter, I presented my attorney’s bar card and driver’s license to the deputy in charge.

“I’m here to confer with my client, Ernesto Rodriguez,” I said as I signed the logbook anchored to the counter’s shelf. “I’m his lawyer.”

The deputy looked at my credentials, raised his head, and studied me for a moment. “Here,” he said as he tore a page from a pad and handed it to me. “Fill this out.” He pointed to an uncomfortable looking hardwood bench that ran the length of the wall across from the counter. “We’ll call you when we take the prisoner to the conference room. You can talk to him there.”

I perched on the narrow ledge, crossed my legs, and used my briefcase as a desk to fill in the blanks on the Visitor’s Interview Request form. A few minutes later, I gave it back to the guard. Ten minutes after that, an unarmed deputy sheriff approached me. “Are you O’Brien, the lawyer here to see Rodriguez?”

I glanced around the area, up and down the bench. Only three other people were visible. To my right, about three feet away, a spaced-out Mexican kid in baggy clothes slouched, staring at a bug on the floor. To my left, farther down, slumped a grubby old white guy with a red carbuncle nose. His head was tilted against the wall, his face skyward, his mouth a gaping hole. He snored, rattling when he inhaled and whistling when he exhaled. A tall black guy, built like a pool cue, stood at the counter.

He had to be over six feet tall, but couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds. A bright green and yellow bandana sheltered his head and large gold rings hung from his ears. His flat chest was covered with a tight fitting black knit tube, which he tucked into a flowered free-flowing skirt. He wore dainty pumps on his feet. His lipstick clashed with the three-day stubble covering his pockmarked face. The guards called out to him, “Hey, Olive Oyl, show us your titties. C’mon pleeeze, Olive Oyl.”

The deputy sheriff walking toward me and calling my name knew I had to be the lawyer in the room, briefcase and all.

“Yeah, I’m O’Brien. Here to see my client,” I said to the deputy as I stood.

“Can’t take your client to the conference room. He’s on psych watch.”

“Psych watch, why?”

“I guess the brass thinks he’s a suicide risk.”

“A suicide risk? You’ve seen my guy, what do you think?”

“Hey fella, it’s not up to me.”

“I’ve got to talk to my client.” I glanced at my watch. “I’m meeting the deputy D.A. in a couple of hours. I need some answers.”

“I’ll take you to his cell. You can talk to him through the bars. But you’ll only have fifteen minutes. And I’ll have to search you first. Rules.”

After he patted me down, the guard behind the counter buzzed us through the door leading to the bowels of the jail.

“Stay close to me, don’t wander off.”

“Yeah, like where would I go?” I said under my breath.

We arrived at Rodriguez’s cell, a six-by-eight foot concrete cubicle outfitted with a stainless steel toilet, metal bunk, and a sink without a mirror. It occurred to me, he’d spend his life in a place like this. I wondered what it would be like to do time, locked up in prison. Just one look at the other cells on the block, all jammed with prisoners, and I knew the answer. It would be like moving into my bathroom and inviting a few of strangers off the street to come and live with me for, oh say, the rest of my life.

“Are you going to let me in the cell, so I can sit and take notes?” I asked the guard.

“Stand on the outside. You’re not going in there.”

“You have a chair?” I already knew the answer.

He didn’t respond. “Remember, we’re watching you.”

“Watching what?” I said. “Are you listening too, are there hidden mikes around?”

He ignored the remark and wandered away.

In the cell, Rodriguez slumped on his bunk, stared at the floor with his hands folded on his lap. “Listen up,” I said. “I don’t have time for games-no more silent treatment. You’re going to tell me exactly what happened.” I opened my briefcase and took out the police report and a yellow tablet. “I want to hear more than ‘I didn’t do it’. You’re going to answer my questions, or I walk. Is that understood?” After Johnson’s exhortation, I couldn’t walk, but I didn’t think he knew that.

He came over to the bars and grabbed them with both hands. He nodded.

“Okay, tell me what this is all about.”

He removed his hands from the bars and flexed his gnarled fingers. “I am good with plants. I work hard to send my children in Mexico some money. My son, Panchito, he is the oldest, will start high school next year.” A shadow clouded his face. He must’ve just grasped the thought that he might never see his son again. “I can’t pay you.”

“We won’t worry about money right now. We’ll work out something later.” I reached inside my jacket and pulled out a pen. “Tell me everything that happened. Start with Saturday. Tell me in your own words. Tell me about the argument, everything.”

“Nada, No argument.”

“The women across the street…” I glanced at the police report. “Mrs. Wilson, she’s a retired school teacher. She’ll make a good witness.” I mumbled the last part more to myself. “She says you two were arguing.”

“I go to Senorita Graham’s…Gloria’s-she say es okay to call her Gloria-to work once a week, mow the grass, trim the bushes. But she hired me extra to fix up her backyard. Caracoles, it needed too much work.”

The victim’s name was Gloria Graham, like the ’40s movie star, but without the ‘e’ at the end. From her picture, I noticed she had a striking resemblance to the actress, very pretty, but a little hard around the edges.

“You were working in the backyard when she got killed?”

“No way, man. I started early Saturday, eight o’clock, put in a new lawn, planted three palm trees, flowers. All day I work. At six, I was almost done, picking up tools to put in my truck. She come out of the house to see. ‘Es okay, Ernesto,’ she said. But she wanted me to move the trees. She wanted to see them from the kitchen, she said.”

“That’s when the argument started? You argued about trees?”

“No argument, man. She wanted me to move the trees-I move the trees. No problem.”

“Mrs. Wilson, the lady across the street, said that she went to bed at ten, after the Bob Newhart Show, but first she looked out her window and saw your truck in the driveway.” I glanced at my notes. “The back of the pickup truck was hidden by the house, but the front end stuck out and she could see it clearly. She didn’t take down the license number, but she described it: broken headlight, dented fender. She had the color right.”

“ Es muy dark at night. How could she see?”

“Good point, Ernesto, but were you still there at that time?”

He dropped his eyes, “No, senor , I was not there.”