Stuart Woods - Short Straw

"That's all right. You take it easy, you hear? If you've lost a lot of blood, you'll need time for your body to replace it."

"Aw, I didn't lose all that much; it just looked awful. People on the street ran from me until I could get a cab. You're gonna owe me for a new suit, though."

"Bill me. Now take a day or two off before you start moving around again."

"The first thing I'm gonna do is find me a piece. I'm not going after that lady unarmed, I'll tell you."

"I'm astonished to think she would do that; I would have warned you, if I'd thought she'd get violent. Was she alone?"

"Yeah, she was. I was sitting in the lobby for an hour or so-the desk clerk had told me she was upstairs, alone-and she came down and left the hotel. I followed her, and she turned into an alley and turned around to face me. That's when I called you."

"Let me know when you decide on your next move, Cupie. I take it your cell phone is still working."

"Yeah, I'm talking on it. I'll talk to you tomorrow. I'm gonna get some sleep."

"Good night, then." Eagle hung up. "He's all right," he said to Wolf.

"That's good news."

"Flesh wound; he's still on the job."

Wolf stood up. "Well, I'm going to go home and get some sleep; I've got to work tomorrow."

"So have I," Eagle said. "I've got to meet with a client."

THE FOLLOWING DAY, EAGLE VISITED THE SANTA FE County Detention Center. He parked, went through a door marked visitors, and through another marked attorneys. He gave his card and the name of his client to a guard, signed in and was shown to a small room, bisected by a table and containing three plastic chairs, two on his side of the table. He sat down, opened his briefcase, set it on the spare chair, extracted a yellow legal pad and took out a pen. Though he took few notes, the pad seemed to be expected of him by clients.

After a ten-minute wait, during which he reflected on his absent wife and the nature of her absence, a guard brought in a prisoner. He was a thickly built man of about six feet with a buzz haircut and dark, leathery skin, wearing a sour look. He was handcuffed to a chain around his waist, and Eagle could hear another chain rattle each time he took a step.

"Unhook him," Eagle said to the guard.

"Can't. Policy."

"Policy is that attorneys can talk to their clients without benefit of restraints." It was his experience that prisoners were more talkative when they were not chained.

The guard unhooked the man and left the room, taking the chains with him. "There's a buzzer on the wall if he attacks you," he said, as the door closed.

Eagle didn't look at the buzzer, only at his client, who did not seem happy to see him. "My name is Ed Eagle," he said. "I'm your court-appointed lawyer."

"Never heard of you," Joe Big Bear replied.

"You know a lot of lawyers?"

"Nope."

"That could be why you've never heard of me. Ask around the yard."

"Where's the other lawyer they sent?"

"He blew his brains out in the courthouse men's room."

"I didn't think he had enough brains for that."

"Maybe he didn't."

"What do you want?"

"The question is, what do you want, Mr. Big Bear?"

"I want a steak and fries and a six-pack of beer," Big Bear replied.

"First things first," Eagle said. "Mind if I call you Joe?"

"Suit yourself. What do I call you?"

"Mr. Eagle will do."

"What tribe are you?"

"I'm from an eastern tribe."

"I never met a court-appointed lawyer that was worth a shit."

"I thought you didn't know any lawyers."

"I've met a few, but I wouldn't say I know them."

"It's like this, Joe: when the court calendar is crowded and the legal aid people are stretched thin, the judge will appoint local lawyers to handle cases."

"How'd you pick mine?"

"I got the short straw."

Big Bear managed a derisive laugh. "I've had a few of those."

"Yeah," Eagle said, removing Big Bear's file from his briefcase, "I've been reading about you. Let's see: arrests for assault, domestic battery, public drunkenness, DUI and now for a triple homicide."

"One: I never assaulted anybody who didn't assault me first; two: the domestic battery was a lie made up by a woman I yelled at, once; three: I wasn't drunk in public, I just pissed off a cop; four: on the DUI my blood test put me at.081. How drunk is that? Oh, and five: I never killed anybody."

"Oh, well, then, you're a saint. They didn't put that in your record."

"They didn't put any convictions in there, either, did they?"

"No," Eagle admitted, "they didn't. Tell me something about yourself."

"Born on the reservation; educated there, sort of, through high school, did a stretch in the marines, came back here."

"What kind of discharge did you get from the corps?"

"General, under honorable conditions."

"Who'd you slug?"

"A shavetail lieutenant, right out of Annapolis. I did thirty days."

"Why'd you slug him?"

"I asked him not to keep calling me 'Chief.' He forgot."

"How do you earn your living?"

"I'm a shade tree auto mechanic, except there ain't no shade trees, to speak of. I take my tools and go to peoples' houses and fix their cars."

"You any good at it?"

"There are a lot of crates around Santa Fe that would have already been compacted, if it hadn't been for my work. People get their money's worth."

Eagle tapped the file. "Says here you killed three people with a shotgun. You want to tell me about that?"

"You want the long version or the short version?"

"The short one."

"A guy was fucking my girl and a girlfriend of hers. That was my job. I came home to my trailer and found them splattered all over the bedroom, and I called the cops."

"Tribal or local?"

"Local. I don't live on the reservation. My trailer's parked out near the airport by that junkyard, which I like to think of as my parts department."

"Who was the guy?"

"I didn't recognize him; he didn't have a face."

Eagle glanced at the file. "The name James Earl Hardesty mean anything to you?"

"Jimmy? Was that who it was?"

"Says here."

"Yeah, I know… knew him. We both drank regular at a bar called the Gun Club out on Airport Road. I didn't have nothing against him."

"Until he screwed your girl?"

"Well, if I'd known about it, and I ran into him at the Gun Club, I might have taken a pool cue to his head, but I wouldn't have killed him. It's not like she was a virgin."

"Your call to the cops came in at six-ten p.m. last Wednesday?"

"That sounds right. They were there in two minutes and asked me a lot of questions. Then two detectives showed up, looked around and arrested me."

"Where were you before six-ten? Tell me about your day."

"I left my trailer about seven-thirty, had breakfast at the IHOP on Cerrillos Road, fixed a guy's car out on Agua Fria-that took all morning; I ate lunch at El Polio Loco; I got a call on my cell phone about a job off of San Mateo-a fan belt was all it was. I went to Pep Boys for the belt, then put it on the car. I always check out a car for other things wrong, so I pointed out a couple things to the owner, and I fixed those, so he'd pass his inspection test. I didn't have any other work for the day, so I stopped by the Gun Club for a beer around four-thirty and shot a couple games of pool, then I went home."

"Who saw you at the Gun Club?"

"The guy I played pool with, but I didn't know him; never seen him before. I took ten bucks off him, so he'd remember me. The bartender knows me; his name is Tupelo."

"From the Gun Club, it's a short drive home. Did you stop anywhere?"

"I picked up a bottle of bourbon at the drive-thru, that was all."

Eagle tapped the file again. "Says here they found your fingerprints on the shotgun and gunshot residue on your hands."