On The Beat (Goosey Larsen Book 3) (14 page)

I glanced back over my shoulder, as did nearly everyone else in the place. I was still a little put out that no reporters had managed to sneak into the courtroom, but I shrugged off the slight. Judging by the sound of all the hushed whispers around us, nearly everyone present was already familiar with the allegations of Regan’s scandalous behavior. From the second row, Duke stood up and strode forward to join Antoine. He walked at a measured pace, moving in lockstep with a serious looking professional who could only be his attorney. As they reached the podium, Regan made the smart decision to let his hired help do the talking. “Yes, your Honor” the shyster said. “Thank you. We are ready to proceed.”

I should have expected some rich white dude to go all out and bring a lawyer to our joke of a municipal court, where the worst possible outcome would have been going up the road for a couple of weeks. It did come as somewhat of a surprise, though, when I heard the defendants say they were ready to go forward. Your typical defense attorney’s strategy normally involves asking for as many delays as possible, if only to prolong the case and increase their billable hours. What’s more, at CPD there’s always the chance that some crucial piece of evidence, or even the case file itself, will simply get lost over time. These things just kind of happen, you know? But just as often, the arresting officer will find himself a better job and simply resign from the department. I swear, defense attorneys in Charleston must have it easy since they square off against a law enforcement agency with the retention rate of a revolving door.

Judge Smallton must have been just as surprised as I was, although she did manage to hide it better. She peered over her glasses to stare at Regan as he gazed impassively back. It was a well-known fact to us cops that the judge grew up in the Gadsden Green housing projects, and she’s held a long-standing resentment for privileged white folks. It must have given her no small amount of satisfaction to see a wealthy cracker standing before her as a defendant, and I was kind of surprised that she chose not to gloat. After another long, silent moment in which the judge took stock of both Regan and his huckster attorney, she finally turned her attention back to the paperwork. “Mr. Brown and Mr. Regan. You men are both charged with….vandalism?” You could almost hear the disbelief in her voice, as if she had been secretly hoping to string them up on some major case like securities fraud, or maybe even a civil rights violation. “How would you like to plead?”

Again, Regan’s lawyer piped up. “We’d like to plead no contest, your honor.”

The judge looked a little surprised at this, but still made no comment. After a moment’s pause, she shifted her wide butt over to look directly at Antoine. “Mr. Brown?”

“Same thing, your honor. No contest here either.” I nodded in approval. The kid was no dummy, or at least he was smart enough to mirror Regan’s statements word for word. Getting arrested at the same time as a millionaire, and on the same charges too, was probably just as good as getting free legal counsel. I followed my suspects’ lead, keeping my own words to a minimum in the hopes of speeding along the judicial process. I’d actually been bracing for indignant resistance since I figured there was no way in hell that a somebody like Regan would ever cop a guilty plea. The thought that I could potentially wrap the entire case up in just a couple minutes came as a pleasant surprise, offering the possibility of a free and unspoiled morning. It’s also pretty unusual to hear an exotic plea of “no contest” in a criminal case, and particularly in our shitty little municipal court. Those “no contest” pleas are just a fancy legal way for saying that the defendant doesn’t want to dispute the prosecution’s arguments, but on the other hand they aren’t going to come right out and admit to being guilty. It’s a plea that you’re more likely to hear if a defendant may also be facing some kind of civil charges, where the settlements involve actual cash damages instead of just a few days on ice. For a piddling little misdemeanor charge of vandalism, anyway, a plea of “no contest” is pretty much unheard of. But I wasn’t about to start questioning my good fortune, at least not out loud, since a quick plea deal was definitely the path of least resistance.

Judge Smallton looked down over her glasses again. Her deep, scowling frown made it clear that she was sorely disappointed about not getting the chance to throw the book at some rich white guy. She probably knew just as well as I did that the only reason Regan was opting not to put up a stronger defense was that he must have been guilty of something more serious. At that point in the game, I’d of bet anything that Regan’s main goal was just to hold off as much negative publicity as possible. I mean, it would’ve been one thing if a man of his standing had simply chosen to come out of the closet. That kind of press might not have scarred his reputation too much, since the city of Charleston is a melting pot for all kinds of fruits and nuts. But to come out of the closet and admit his lover was a Negro? Nope, even rumors of an integrated tryst would be taboo. If all the details of this scandal ever came to light, the incident could effectively end all of Duke Regan’s business dealings with South Carolina society.

With a loud sigh, the judge returned to flipping through all of the paperwork that the patrol rookies had compiled for me. She seemed to be reading the incident report particularly closely, as if weighing our claims against the News and Courier’s weekend coverage. “Officer…Larsen? Did you happen to note the amount of damage caused by this act of vandalism?”

I cleared my throat. “No, your honor.” Before the judge had the chance to read between the lines any further, I quickly added, “It would appear as if we caught these two just before they were able to act.”

She ignored my blatant speculation and held a robed arm out toward the clerk of court, who reached into the plastic milk crate that held all our evidence. The clerk came up with Regan’s tagged duffel bag and handed it over to the judge, who turned it upside down above the bench. All three of the packaged bricks fell out onto the podium with heavy thuds, unleashing a small cloud of fine white powder into the air. The packages appeared even bigger when viewed at eye level, especially beneath the light of the courtroom’s fluorescent bulbs. From behind me, I heard waves of snickering coming from all the young East Side thugs who were waiting for their own cases to be called. Judge Smallton examined the bricks closely, then glanced at my report once again before focusing her hard stare back on Regan. “Laundry soap?”

The giggles grew even louder. On any other day that might have been all it took for Judge Smallton to toss a couple kids in jail on a contempt of court charge, but at that particular moment she was simply too busy to take notice, her attention fully focused on what might have been the one and only opportunity she was ever going to have to tear into an upper-class Caucasian. “And just what were you intending to do with this…laundry soap?”

The two defendants remained silent. Finally, it was Regan’s lawyer who spoke up. “Your honor, my client has already entered his plea before the court. We prefer not to make any further statements at this time.”

The judge reflected on this for a moment. She held her gaze over Regan for a long, awkward moment before finally shifting her attention to Antoine. The kid just nodded dumbly. “Yeah. Me too.”

I cleared my throat, and Judge Smallton took her sweet time about looking over in my direction. When she finally did, her penciled eyebrows were arched up in a questioning fashion. “Thank you, your honor” I began. “In the past, the city has been victimized by a number of vandalisms which involved large quantities of laundry soap or dishwashing detergent being dumped into our downtown fountains, causing them to overflow with foamy soap suds. While these two gentlemen might not have had a particularly malicious intent, adding any kind of chemicals to the water can actually be quite damaging to the fountain’s inner mechanical workings. A vandalism of this type could potentially cost the city several thousand dollars in repairs, as the pumps and hoses may need to be cleaned or replaced.”

The judge glanced back up at Regan and Antoine. It appeared as if she was fully satisfied with my complete and thorough explanation, or else she was just getting impatient and wanted to keep the docket moving. “And you’re quite certain that there was no actual property damage caused by these two defendants?”

I nodded. “Quite, your honor. As I said, they were placed under arrest before they could make use of all this powder.”

Judge Smallton sighed one last time. As thrilled as I was to get my case over and done with, it was kind of sad to see the judge so disappointed at missing out an ass-chewing. I almost felt sorry for the next defendant in line, since that poor sucker was sure to bear the full brunt of her rage. Even though I naturally wanted to hurry off and get on with my day, I thought it just might be worth sticking around to see who would get stuck on the receiving end of her pent-up frustration. The odds were split pretty evenly on whether her target would be an actual defendant or just the cop who’d brought him in but quite frankly, it was bound to be a good show either way.

“Very well then. Mr. Regan, Mr. Brown, the court accepts your pleas. I hereby sentence you to one hundred hours of community service, as well as a fine of five hundred dollars each. Please pay the cashier outside the courtroom before leaving the building.”

Regan and Antoine both let out visible sighs of relief, but apart from that they kept quiet. The entire courtroom fell into a kind of shocked silence, obviously in awe at the speed and efficiency with which justice was being dispensed. The only noise came from Antoine’s East Side thug friends as they tried unsuccessfully to stifle their laughter once again. “Thank you, your honor” the lawyer said. He hustled both defendants toward the back of the courtroom, literally pushing them out into the main lobby. I’d have bet almost anything that shyster was already scheming on how to stick Antoine with a bill for getting him off scot-free alongside an actual paying client.

I had only been two steps behind them myself, seeking to make my own hasty exit, when the clerk of court caught my eye and waved me back over. The clerk was this short, pudgy-looking pug of a woman, but despite her overall unattractiveness she was basically harmless. That old crone had been at the department for at least as long as I had, but she’d never given me any problems to the point where I needed to actually learn her name. I’d only really ever seen her in passing since I usually tried to avoid reading my court summonses, and I used this opportunity to study her sagging jowls up close. When I caught the old bag smiling at me, so I quickly averted my gaze. Hopefully she hadn’t mistaken the eye contact for flirting or anything.

“Goosey, do me a favor, would you?” she croaked. “Could you run this stuff up to the property room for me? It needs to be logged back in.”

I let out a soft groan. “All the way back upstairs? What gives?”

She held out Regan’s duffel bag, clearly hoping that I might somehow feel obligated to take it from her. “We don’t really need it anymore now that the case has been resolved, but you’ll still have to sign it back in as evidence. It’ll be set aside for disposal at the end of the month.”

The thought of walking all the way upstairs brought out an unexpected level of emotion, as I hadn’t been back to the top deck since I’d lost my job as a detective. Besides that, it was one heck of a climb to the second floor. My mind raced into high gear as I tried like hell to figure out a solution which didn’t involve any physical exertion. In my humble opinion, a simple vandalism case just didn’t merit breaking a sweat, especially since the evidence was nothing more than a bunch of washing powder which was probably just going to get dumped down the drain.

“Go on, take it” she hissed. The clerk’s friendly smile disappeared in an instant, replaced by an ugly snarl of pure evil. “Unless of course, you’d like all the command staff to learn exactly how you happened to come by your unique nickname. There’s no need for me to start pulling old skeletons out of the evidence room now, is there….Goosey?”

She held the duffel bag out a second time, nearly pressing it into my chest. For once my body moved faster than my brain, and I found myself grabbing it with a pair of cold, sweaty hands. Really, what choice did I have? I could have either taken custody of the evidence right then and there, or risked unemployment by having Chief Greene learn the truth behind an epic rookie prank which had gone horribly wrong. Yeah, I’d say that my choices were pretty clear at that point.

Once the buck was passed, the clerk turned her attention back toward the huge stack of case files. She moved so quickly that it was almost as if I’d ceased to exist, and even though her vicious threats had been unsettling I couldn’t help but be impressed by her fancy footwork. I’d be willing to bet it must have taken that old crone decades of dealing with lazy cops in order to have mastered moves like that.

In a sudden flash of inspiration, I hustled out into the lobby just as the judge called the next case. Regan and Antoine were quick-stepping it away from the cashier’s window with their lawyer still hustling them along at lightning speed. I tried to spot the tell-tale bulge of a wallet in Regan’s back pocket, burning with a curiosity that made me wonder if that five-hundred-dollar fine had even made a dent. The pair of criminal masterminds hit the front doors at full speed, nearly flying out onto the landing and as a last-ditch effort I charged across the lobby and stuck my head out the door. “Mr. Regan! Sir! Can I speak with you for a moment, please?”

The three of them froze in place. Regan’s shoulders snapped upright, almost as if I’d just caught him stealing from the cookie jar. He turned around slowly, carefully, looking first towards his lawyer and then back to me. His eyebrows raised ever so slightly. “Yes, Officer?”

I jogged down the steps to join them. The spring air had turned brisk, and I shivered at the early morning wind coming in off the Ashley River. Once at the bottom of the stairs, I held out the lifetime supply of washing powder in the hopes that Duke Regan might be dumb enough to fall for the same trick that I had. “Here sir, I believe this belongs to you. You can have your things back now that the case has been resolved.”