Уолтер Мосли - John Woman

The room was as bare as John’s cell but the light was warmer. The walls were painted institutional green. The only furniture was a dark brown wooden table attended on opposite sides by folding metal chairs.

A woman was seated in one of these chairs. She rose when John and Marle entered. Wearing a conservative dark green pantsuit she had dyed her hair almost blond, was verging on fifty and had put on ten or twelve pounds. But despite all that John recognized Colette.

“You can take the cuffs off,” she said to Marle.

“That’s against protocol, ma’am.”

“Take them off and leave us.”

John was glad to see that he wasn’t the only one who could be cowed by the policewoman’s authority.

“Sit down,” Colette said after Marle was gone.

John stayed on his feet alternately rubbing his wrists. His fingers felt swollen and on fire with pins and needles.

“Sit,” she said and he obeyed.

Lowering into the seat across from him she took a moment to look at the prisoner.

“Do you know why you’re here?” she asked.

“Tell me.”

“The state of New York has determined that you are the prime suspect in the murder of Chapman Lorraine.”

John hunched his shoulders slightly and breathed in through his nostrils the air of relative freedom.

“Being the head investigator on the missing person case,” she continued, “I was deposed by the department after the body had been identified. I told them what I remembered and turned over my notes. Last week they tasked me to come here to identify you if I could.”

With his eyes alone John asked her the question.

“It is my determination that you are the young man I interviewed.”

“I loved you.”

Back in his cell for a dozen meals or more John had learned to curb his masturbation regimen. Too often and the skin of his penis got chafed, the orgasms less satisfying.

He didn’t think about the regimen of history. Instead his thoughts were of food and women and too much wine. He longed for the holding cell with its hungover businessmen; tangle-haired Christopher Minor; and especially Andrew, the peace-loving, knife-wielding Navajo.

“John Woman,” Marle Josephson announced through the square hole in the door. It had been more than four days since he’d been visited by Colette.

“Hey, brother,” the guard said to John as they navigated the underground holding area for the criminal class of Arizona. “I don’t mean to be cold or nuthin’ but my boss, Captain Anton, been watchin’ me like a mothahfuckah so I’m tryin’ not to talk too much to the prisoners.”

“Okay,” John said wondering what Colette would be wearing.

“I been studyin’ for that exam like you said.”

“How’s that going?”

“Not too good.”

They passed Andrew just then. He was in a cell with its door open. The Navajo sheep thief was clad in a lemon yellow jumpsuit, squatting in a corner, his hands wrapped around his knees, his eyes searching out beyond the jail.

“How come I don’t have a prisoner’s uniform?” John asked.

“Only people convicted of stuff get them,” Marle said. “You aren’t guilty of a crime in Arizona. Are you gonna talk to me about the test?”

“What’s the problem?”

“I read the material and I understand it too... But just a hour later I don’t remember a damn thing.”

“That’s due to computers,” John said.

“I don’t even own a computer.”

“Even so people are so used to putting something into a screen then calling it back that they think the human brain works the same way.”

“What you talkin’ ‘bout, Woman?”

“Reading is rereading.”

“Huh?”

“Read the exam booklet from front to back three times before taking the practice test,” Professor Woman advised. “Then you’ll find that you know more. Not everything but more. Then, when you see what you got wrong and right, you read it again. That’s where the true learning will happen.”

“Really? I got to read it four times?”

“Maybe even five or six but that’s nothing because you’ll be a cop for twenty years.”

Marle led John to the same room as before.

The guard knocked again. A woman’s voice said come in again. But this time it was a Caucasian with red lips and long brunette ringlets cascading down the sides of her made-up face.

Without her having to ask, Marle unlocked the handcuffs and left the room.

The new woman wore perfume whereas Colette had not worn any. John liked the scent.

“Professor Woman,” the brunette said. “Pleased to meet you.”

She held out a hand. John shook but couldn’t feel it because he was once again numb from too-tight handcuffs.

“My name is Nina Forché,” she said. “I’m your lawyer. Please sit down.”

Forché was wearing a scarlet dress and a blue sapphire pendant. Her fingernails had been painted peach by a professional and her tan came from long hours on a pleasant beach somewhere. She was past thirty but forty was still some years off.

“I’m here to discuss our strategy at the hearing,” she began.

“I don’t remember engaging a lawyer.”

“I was retained by William Pepperdine.”

“Are you on the Path?”

Forché gave John quick smile moving her head and shoulders with a noncommittal shrug.

“How did I get here, Ms. Forché?”

“You mean what brought you to the attention of the NYPD?”

“Yeah.”

“An informant told them that Cornelius Jones’s mother was living with her son in faculty housing at NUSW.”

“Who?”

“Those records are sealed,” she said. “We may never know because that testimony would have no bearing on the murder trial, if such a trial were to happen.”

“If?” John felt sluggish, like some woodland creature coming awake after a long hibernation.

“If we’re smart I don’t believe this extradition request will hold.”

“Why not?”

“They have no proof that you are this Cornelius Jones.”

“None?”

“There are no fingerprints on file,” Forché said. “No DNA evidence, no eyewitness, not even anyone who has ever seen you with the victim. There are no childhood photographs except one in an elementary school third grade annual. There aren’t even any relatives that could offer a close enough DNA comparison.”

“What about France Bickman?” he asked.

“The ticket-taker? He’s of no concern to us.”

“That detective,” John said. “She said that she recognized me.”

“First of all she interviewed a teenage boy,” the lawyer argued. “Secondly, her records say that the entire interview was less than ten minutes. An eyewitness account of a brief conversation with an adolescent seventeen years ago is not enough for an extradition. They must prove your identity with something more than a detective’s say-so.”

“What about the woman living in my house?”

“There is no one living in your apartment and the school has refused New York’s request to search the premises. When we get in to see the judge he will ask you if you are Cornelius Jones and you will say, ‘No, your honor, I am not.’”

“No, your honor, I am not,” John parroted. “No, your honor. Yes, I understand.”

Nina Forché smiled at her student.

In the dream John was standing on a long line behind a large, broad-shouldered man. It felt as if he had been waiting forever. His feet hurt and, for some reason, his fingers were numb. The sun bore down and there was nothing to read. He had an iPod but the battery was low. The woman behind him was chattering on a cell phone. He thought about asking her if he could borrow it to call his mother but when he turned to ask she looked away. He tapped the shoulder of the large man in front of him. Maybe he had a phone.