James Burke - Pegasus Descending

“We don’t have to charge you, because you’re not under arrest,” I said.

“Then why am I in handcuffs?”

“You gave us a bad time,” I replied.

“If I’m not under arrest, take the cuffs off.”

“When we stop,” I said.

I saw Top look into the rearview mirror. His red hair was turning gray and two pale furrows ran through it on each side of his pate. His mustache looked as stiff as a toothbrush. “I’m not as forgiving as Dave, here,” he said.

“What I’d do?”

“You stepped on my spit shine. You scratched the leather on my brand-new shoes. Those are forty-dollar shoes.”

“I’m sorry,” Tony said.

“How would you like it if somebody stepped on your new shoes?” Top said.

“This is crazy. I want to call my father.”

“Your father is under arrest. I don’t think he’s going to be of much help to you,” I said.

“Arrest for what?”

I turned around in the seat so he could look directly into my face. “Either you or he or your mother killed a homeless man with your automobile. Y’all thought you could get away with something like that, Tony? How old are you, anyway?”

“Twenty.” The handcuffs were on tight and he had to lean forward on the car seat to keep from pinching them into his wrists.

“You’re studying to be a doctor?” I said.

“I’m in my second year of premed.”

“And you’re starting out your career with blood splatter all over you?” I said.

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“How did the dead guy’s blood get on your headlight?” Top said.

“I’m not saying anything else. I want to talk to my father. I want to talk to a lawyer.”

“Glad to hear that, kid, because I’m very upset over what you did to my shoes,” Top said. “You just graduated from ‘friend of the court’ to ‘punch of the day’ in the stockade shower. I hear if you close your eyes and pretend you’re a girl, it’s not so bad after a couple of months.”

Then both Top and I turned to stone and watched the billboards and fields of young sugarcane slide past the windows. After we had crossed into Iberia Parish, I gestured toward a turnoff. We left the four-lane and drove through a community of shacks and rain ditches that were strewn with litter and vinyl bags of raw garbage that had been flung from passing vehicles. Thunderclouds moved across the sun and the countryside dropped into shadow. The wind smelled like rain and chemical fertilizer and dead animals that had been left on the roadside. Beyond a line of trees I could see the ugly gray outline of the parish prison and the silvery coils of razor wire along the fences.

“Stop here,” I told Top.

“He wants to lawyer-up. He’s a fraternity punk who deserves to fall in his own shit. Don’t end up with a bad jacket, here,” Top said.

“I’m going to do it my way. Now stop the car.”

I got out of the cruiser and opened the back door. Tony looked at me cautiously. “Outside,” I said.

“What are we doing?”

I reached inside and pulled him out on the road, then marched him toward a clump of cedar trees. He twisted his head back toward the road, his face stretched tight with fear. “People at UL know we left together. You can’t do this,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said. I pushed him into the shade of the trees. He began to struggle, and I shoved him against a tree trunk and held him there. “I’m going to uncuff you now. The conversation we have out here is between you and me. You’re being treated like an intelligent man. Try to act like one.”

I unlocked the cuffs, pulled them free of his wrists, and turned him around. His face was gray, his breath rife with funk.

“Your old man didn’t kill the homeless man, did he?”

“No, sir.”

“Did your mother?”

“She has bad night vision. She doesn’t even have a license. You can check.”

“So that leaves you.”

He was shaking his head even before I finished the sentence. “If I’d killed a homeless guy, it would have been an accident. Why would I want to hide it?”

“But it’s obvious you know when and how it happened.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

“You said your mother has bad night vision. How do you know the homeless guy was struck at night?”

He closed then opened his eyes, like a man who has just stepped on the trapdoor of a hangman’s scaffold. “You got to let me see a lawyer. It’s in the Constitution, isn’t it? I’m guaranteed at least a phone call, right?”

“Listen to me. A man with no name was killed by an automobile your family owns and drives. The dead man was probably a wino, a guy with few if any friends, no family, and no known origins. He was the kind of guy who gets bagged and tagged and dropped in a hole in ground, case closed. Except that’s not going to happen here. That guy had a right to live, just like you and I do. Whoever ran over him is going to be indicted and sent to trial. I give you my absolute word on that, Tony. You believe me when I say that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re a young man and young people make mistakes. Usually the cause is a lack of judgment. People get scared, they can’t think straight, they make bad decisions. They want to run from the deed they’ve committed because it’s almost as though it didn’t happen, it’s not them, it’s like someone else did it. If they could only go home, this terrible moment in their lives would be erased. That’s what happened, didn’t it, Tony? You just didn’t think straight. It’s only human in a situation like that. Tell us your version of events before somebody else does. Don’t take a fall you don’t deserve. That’s not stand-up, it’s dumb. Just tell the truth and trust the people trying to help you.”

He watched me carefully while I spoke, his face turned slightly aside, as though he didn’t want the full measure of my words to undo his defenses. But I had not convinced him. I took another run at ip.

“You ever read Stephen Crane?” I said.

“The writer?”

“Yeah, the writer.”

“No,” he said.

“Crane said few of us are nouns. Most of us are adverbs. No tragedy is orchestrated by one individual. An event we blame ourselves for may have been years in the making and may have much more to do with others than ourselves. Without recognition of that fact, we never acquire any wisdom about anything. Our case name for the homeless guy is Crustacean Man. Help us give back this guy his name. You can start correcting things, turning them around, right now, as we speak. It’s that easy.”

His eyes were locked on mine, his eyelids stitched to his brows. His bottom lip was white on the corner where he was biting down on it, to the point I thought the skin would break. I could almost hear words forming in his throat. Then his gaze broke and the moment was lost. “I want to talk to my father. What have you done with him?” he said.

“Your old man can take care of himself,” I replied.

“He might actually go to prison?”

“It’s a good possibility.”

He started to cry. It was the first time I had seen Tony Lujan show any concern for anyone but himself. I took out a clean, folded handkerchief and handed it to him. “We’re done here. I’m not going to question you any more. Other people will talk to you later,” I said.

He cleared his throat and spit. He looked at the clouds scudding across the sky and the gray outline of the parish stockade. “I need to confess something,” he said.

I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. “What is it?” I said.

“I’m holding.”

“You’re dealing?”

“No,” he said. He unbuttoned his shirt pocket and removed a small plastic bag rolled around three joints. “I smoke one or two a day, that’s all. I know if I’m arrested at the jail, I’ll be searched and then charged for holding.”