Andrew Vachss: The Weight

“I get it,” I said. “I was just saying, maybe when she sees me in the courtroom, looks at me real close, she’ll see something she didn’t see when… it happened to her.

“Just any little thing, I don’t know. She ID’ed me off a photo-at first, I mean-but she’d already told them something . And my eyes, they would have been in the book.

“Only what if she never saw the guy’s eyes? Any little thing could do it. Maybe she just said the guy was big because he was like… large, you know. A fat guy, even. At least it’s a chance.”

“That’s a double-edged razor, that chance,” he said. “Could even be worth taking… if it wasn’t for the gun.”

“That’s a pound, tops. I could do that stand-”

“Sure. Unless the judge decides you’re a menace to society, and consecs you. Not taking a plea deal, that’s enough to turn you into that kind of menace real quick. And they’ve got leverage on their deal, too. That gun again. If they were to call in the federales… ”

He just let those words trail off, like making me look down into this pit so deep I couldn’t even see the bottom.

“You came all the way out here just to tell me I’m fucked? Next time, send a postcard,” I told him.

“They put an offer on the table. Not a bargaining chip. One time only. You want to hear it?”

“Sure,” I said. What else?

“Five years on the rape charge. They knock it down to some kind of sex assault, make it a D felony. You’re a predicate, so you’re looking at two-and-a-half to five. And they forget about the gun. They never found one.”

“Why couldn’t they give me the five on the gun, and forget about the-?”

“And have picket lines all around the DA’s Office? Sure, that miserable relic’s finally stepping down, but he wants to name his own successor. Preserve his ‘legacy.’ Get a building named after him before he checks out. So anyone who wants to move up in that office has to be aces at getting the victim to go along with a deal-make her afraid of being cross-examined, you know how it works. Remember, the Mayor and the old DA, they weren’t exactly pals, so there’s serious pressure to keep getting those convictions, be tough on crime for the media. You do the math.”

“If I take the rape-”

“Everything else goes away.”

“Not everything,” I reminded him.

“What do you want, immunity? Look, that’s the deal. Take it or leave it. But if you take it, and one of your crime partners gets nabbed for something else…”

He looked at me close when he paused. But if he expected me to show him a new face, he’d grow old waiting on it.

“If that happens, you better hope he holds it together like you did,” the lawyer said. “Because, if they can tie you to that job, they will.”

“So I could end up doing time for the one I… for the one they think I did, plus the one they know I didn’t.”

“Exactly.”

“Wait!” I remembered something. At least I thought I did. “What’s the statute of limitations on… whatever they think I was really doing when that girl was raped?”

“Five years,” he said. “Of course, if they could prove you eluded prosecution, left the jurisdiction, anything like that, they could get the time extended.”

“But if I’m in their custody for the whole five, they’re the ones who’re fucked.”

“Exactly.” He leaned back in his chair, smiling like a guard dog giving you fair warning. Waiting.

“Tell them they just bought themselves a rapist,” I said.

It was all supposed to go down quick-and-dirty, but the only thing that fucking judge got right was the dirty part. The fat-faced pig started off asking me simple questions, playing his role like he was supposed to. But then he switched up and started playing it for the papers. Made a big speech about how he , personally, didn’t like the deal, but he was going to respect the wishes of the victim, especially because her therapist’s report said that the stress of a trial might be too much for her.

I just looked straight ahead. He wanted to pose, what did I care? But then he goes and wrecks the train.

“Mr. Caine,” he says, “I want you to tell the court exactly what happened on the night of July 3, 2005.”

I didn’t fucking know what happened.

My lawyer and the DA rushed the bench together. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but it looked bad-the judge was getting all red in the face.

When my lawyer came back, he whispered to me, “The deal was, no allocution. We’ll have to straighten him out in chambers.”

They called a recess. I went back to the holding cell. They probably had a long lunch.

When they brought me back in, my lawyer told me, “Just say ‘yes’ every time they ask you a question.”

After that, it didn’t take long. Then they were all finished with me.

The papers said I got five years. They always report the max, never the minimum.

But, this time, they weren’t lying. I knew the Board was never going to cut me loose early. It’s easier to do time when you don’t get yourself all fucked up hoping for something. Hoping for anything, that’s a mistake.

I didn’t last long in the Sex Offender Treatment Unit. Once they finally figured out I was never going to talk about some rape I never did, they kicked me out. That’s when I knew I wasn’t getting any of that “good time” off my sentence for sure.

If you wanted to be in treatment, you had to talk about what you did. They called it “owning your behavior.” I thought that was pretty funny, considering that the only reason you were there was that the State owned your body.

Some stooge-greasy little slob, a real veteran of what they called “group”-he decided to confront me.

“Confront” is what they call it when you get to spit on a guy and he can’t make you pay for doing it. Like calling a man a pussy from the other side of the bars.

“You have to take responsibility, Tim,” he said. “That’s when the healing can begin.”

“The assholes of those little kids you fucked, think they healed up by now, ChiMo?”

“We’re not talking about me.”

“Who’s ‘we,’ ChiMo? I’m talking about you. What’s your problem? Too much fucking ‘stress’? You don’t like it, go back to your cell and jack off some more, you baby-raping sack of puke.”

“No personal attacks,” the whiny little shrink who came in twice a week to run the group said, not looking at me. “And we don’t use terms like ‘ChiMo’ in here.”

“Look in one of those books of yours,” I told the shrink. “See if it tells you what it means, you call a guy ‘ChiMo’ like it’s his name.”

“I know what it means,” he told me, all snotty and superior.

“No, you don’t. You think all it means is ‘child molester’? Maybe in this room. But outside this little ‘group’ of yours, it’s another world. And it’s got different rules.”

“We all agreed-”

“ ‘All’? Me, I didn’t agree to shit.”

I turned in my chair so I could look at all of them, one at a time. “How many of you skinners walk the yard? You, the greasy punk with the beard, you think fucking your own kid makes you special? Yeah, I know, you’re all special, right?”

None of them said a word.

“What’s that tell you?” I asked the shrink.

He looked everywhere but my eyes, rubbed the patch on the elbow of his sport jacket, like it would give him strength. “Societal attitudes-”