Steve Martini - The Arraignment

“Listen, man.” He sits up at the table, elbows on top, and leans close to me as if he’s about to explain the mysteries of life. “Look at me,” he says. “I ain’t talking to you ’til I know who you are. You got it?”

I shrug my shoulders. “Fine. I hope you like the accommodations.” I get up from my chair, grab my briefcase, and move toward the door.

“Hey, man. Where you goin’?”

“You said you don’t want to talk.”

He glances over his shoulder at the guard who starts to move this way to take him back to his cell.

“Sit down, man.”

“Not unless you want to talk.”

“Fine, man. Fine. We’ll talk. Relax.” He’s back, slumped in the chair, trying not to notice the guard and hoping he will go away.

“Sit down, man.” He taps the stainless steel surface of the table with two fingers, an invitation for me to join him again. Anything is better than the cell inside. “Maybe we can talk about the weather,” he says.

I take a seat, and the guard backs off and returns to his position against the wall outside, watching us.

“You gotta be cool,” he says. “Gimme a minute.” He is thinking, trying to piece together who would hire me and why. “I just wanna know who you are,” he says. “That’s all.”

“I told you.”

“You tol’ me nothin’. Who hired you?”

“What difference does it make as long as we get you out of here?”

His eyes darting around, thinking about this.

“Why would you do that?”

“Call it my civic duty,” I tell him.

His eyes read bullshit, but he’s afraid to say the word for fear I might get up and this time walk.

So instead he says: “Can you do that? Get me out?”

“I don’t know. First you’ll have to trust me. Tell me what’s going on.”

“Can you get me out on bail?”

“It wouldn’t be easy.”

“Then what the fuck good are you?”

“This close to the border and you charged with taking a truckload of U.S. visas, a judge might have a problem giving you bail.”

“What the fuck, you think I’m a flight risk?” He knows more lawyer lingo than half the attorneys I know.

“It’s not what I think that counts.”

“I don’ know nothin’ about it, man. Those fuckin’ passes. I don’t know how they got there.” He is sitting up now in the chair, dropping the detached demeanor, looking at me directly, trying to focus a shimmer of honesty in those dark, beady eyes.

“They were in your apartment. On your closet floor.”

“Only three of ’em, man. Where’s the rest?”

“Maybe they think you’re going to tell them.”

“How do I know? I mean, I don’t know shit.” He’s looking around, shaking his head, palms up and out, extended in the con’s perennial disclaimer, your average honest man filled with disbelief. “I’m sleeping in my bed, man, these assholes come in, fuckin’ flashlights in my eyes, put a shotgun in my face. Next thing I know, they’re pulling this shit out of my closet. I’m telling you, man. You know everything I know. I don’t know how they got there. Maybe somebody put ’em there, man.”

“Obviously. The question is who?”

“How would I know?”

“It’s your apartment.”

“Lots of people come and go,” he says. “Maybe they did it.”

“What people?”

He thinks for a second. You can read it in his eyes. He’s opened this door a crack, and now he wants to close it.

“Them.”

“Who’s them?”

“Fucking Immigration,” he says. “They’re always after me.”

“You’re saying the INS framed you? That they dumped the evidence onto the floor in your closet?”

“How do I know? Anything’s possible, man.”

“You’ll have to do better than that.”

He looks around, the gray cells moving at light speed now, sullen, thinking of new ways to lie to one more lawyer.

I tell him that if this were a state action, he would definitely have something to worry about. “It would be strike three,” I say. “I’ve seen your record. It’s not good. How does a lifetime behind bars sound?”

“But it ain’t no fuckin’ state action.” He takes solace at least in this.

“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t.”

Espinoza gives me a sideways glance. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It was federal property that went missing. But the fact that some of it turned up in this state, specifically on your closet floor, could make out a case for possession of stolen property.”

“They can’t do that, man. Can they?”

I make a face. Anything’s possible.

He’s up close at the table now. I have his undivided attention. “Tell me, man. Why would they want to do that to me?”

“Why not? You think they’re going to cut you some slack? In case you haven’t figured it out, they want to squeeze you, Miguel. I can call you Miguel, can’t I?”

He nods. “Why?

“Because they think you know something. They want you to roll over on some of your friends.”

“Who sent you?” he says.

“Are we going through that again?”

“I don’ know nothin’.” Just like that he’s back to low riding in the chair, only this time he has a hand up to his mouth, nibbling fingernails. From the tip of his tongue, he spits out the chewed-off remains along with the black crude from underneath. I watch him for several seconds as he sits there biting and shooting looks from beady little eyes in every direction as if the walls have ears. In this case, they may. I can’t be sure that our conversation is not being monitored. There are now in place what are called Special Administrative Measures. These permit federal prison authorities to listen in, even between lawyer and client in cases where national security is believed to be at issue. The fact that Espinoza is charged with the theft of a thousand high-tech visas to enter the country must have them wondering for what purpose these documents were stolen.

A tattoo across the back of Espinoza’s hand reads “Sangre” (meaning “blood”), in Gothic block letters like some ethnic mural on a wall in East Los Angeles.

“Even if they don’t turn you over to the state, the feds are not likely to go easy. In case you haven’t noticed, scrutiny at the borders has been turned up-just a notch.”

I emphasize the last few words. It takes him a beat or two to make all the intended deductions, then he looks at me. “No way, man.” Then he looks away as if this puts distance between himself and his own conclusions. “I ain’t no fuckin’ terrorist,” he says. “Maybe people once in a while. Sure I brought people across, sometimes. But, but not that shit. No way, man.”

“Maybe they don’t know that. We’re talking some risky stuff that went missing. These were not green cards knocked out on somebody’s home computer, Miguel. These were laser-etched visas with holograms. You know as well as I do they can’t be traced. The little camera they use at the border down at San Ysidro to shoot pictures and send them back to Virginia.” He follows my every word. Espinoza knows exactly what I’m talking about.

“You know the one, where they check to see if they’re forgeries. That little camera, and those people in Virginia, they wouldn’t be able to stop you if you had one of these cards at the border. They’d think you were just another honest citizen crossing over to do business. Bad people could bring a lot of dangerous shit into the country with cards like that.”

“That’s not…” He bites the next word in half.

“That’s not what? That’s not why they were stolen?”

All of this has him thinking of perils he’s never considered, looking down at the tabletop again and then back to me.