THE FOURTH WATCH (7 page)

"Certainly not, Mrs. Footman. Please don't
worry," I told her.

Her sweet face was lined with fear and her
eyes were red from crying or because she had been up all night
worrying. "I've never even been to a jail," she said, ''not even
with the women's club at the church. I mean, I would have gone,
it’s not that I don't want to help those poor men. Oh my God, I
hadn't thought of that, will I be in jail with the men or do they
have a different place for women? If my grandchildren can't come
and visit I'll just die. Well, now that I think of it, I wouldn't
want the children to go to such a place! I wouldn't want them to
see me in there anyway. What would my Frankie think! He'd turn over
in his grave to think I'd got myself put in jail. I'm sorry I was
rude to that police officer, it's just that he was accusing me of
stealing things. Can you imagine, I just. .. "

I cut her off. "You will not go to jail today
or any other day, Mrs. Footman. That man is not a police officer,
he is an idiot. He made a big mistake and the court is going to see
that and send you home. I promise."

She heaved a big sigh. "Really?"

"Absolutely. I don't want you to worry about
it for another minute, do you

understand me?"

"What a nice boy you are, Mr. Knight," she
told me, "thank you."

"Not another moment of worry, do you
hear?"

She nodded and cast her eyes at the floor and
I knew she was still terrified.

*****

COURTROOM 412 IS A
beat-up old hovel, rectangular in shape and set
sideways off the main hallway on the 4th floor of the courthouse.
Its foolish design has plenty of room for the judges, clerks and
lawyers but almost no room for anyone else. The public crams into
two rows of wooden benches along the back wall that can usually
hold about one third of them. A door at the back leads out to the
lockup, and every time it opens, those in the courtroom are
subjected to the vile howling or the defendants beyond. Courtroom
412 is also home to three different session clerks. They were Jean,
Ron or David. Mamma Bear, Papa Bear and Baby Bear. The session
clerk organizes the courts business. Jean is good, if a little
deliberate. She will call the list the first time through and get
everyone arraigned and assigned. Then she will take the tenders of
plea in the order in which they are presented to her. She strives
for fairness and order. If you ask her to call something ahead of
its place in her line she gets flustered because doing so violates
both goals. She'll do it for me, but I can tell she wishes I would
wait my turn. Ron is the perfect clerk. He has basically the same
system as Jean but is willing to accommodate the lawyer's requests
when reasonable. He is always in a good mood and he likes his job
and performs it flawlessly. Nothing seems to bother him. If you
have to get your business done and be on your way, he is the guy
you want to see sitting before the bench when you walk into the
courtroom. Then there is David, Baby Bear, as he is known because
he is an ill tempered, moody, red-faced, self-important lifetime
state employee who believes that he is a critical player in the
dark comedy of modern justice. He has no discernible system for
getting through the business of the day, but if you ask him to call
your case before he gets to it he gets defensive and will almost
always call you last. When I walked into Courtroom 412 that
morning, David was sitting at the clerk's station, rolling a rubber
band around his hands. He is small and thin with a long neck and
big ears. His hair is sparse and shoved without much effort to one
side of his head. He has blotches of red on his pale skin, a mostly
unsuccessful attempt at a mustache growing below his nose and beady
eyes that are magnified by the comically large eye glasses that he
wears.

David gave me a nod and an evil grin in
recognition when I came in. I nodded in return but didn't approach.
Instead I sat in the lawyer's gallery and pretended to review files
so I wouldn't have to talk with him. I prayed silently that he
would call Mrs. Footman's case of his own volition prior to my
other client arriving from the jail. My prayers went
unanswered.

*****

EDWIN RAMON GARCIA GRINNED
at me with bad teeth through the square hole in
the steel door in lockup. The wagon from the House of Correction
got in at about 10:30. I was waiting for him when they got him
settled in his cage. He was delighted at the prospect of pleading
guilty to all charges in return for a six-month jail sentence,
which he would serve concurrently at Concord with the two years he
was already serving. After his escape, that number was likely to go
up, but that was another problem, and another court appointed
lawyer. From his perspective, he at least had this minor annoyance
behind him. His record was nine pages in length and included a wide
range of offenses against society. The 2-year state pen stretch was
for assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, to wit, a bamboo
garden switch, which he had used to whip a former girlfriend into a
bloody horror. Even though it had nothing to do with my case, the
Assistant District Attorney had showed me pictures of the victim,
in order to add emphasis to her contention that my client was a
scumbag and a dick head. The pictures were gruesome. The first
showed a small Hispanic woman in her late teens or early twenties.
She was standing in front of a blank wall, nude except for a pair
of panties. She was starring straight into the camera and looked
terrified. She was covered with angry looking red welts. Her face
and small breasts, which must have been the attackers target areas,
were criss-crossed with stripes and badly discolored. In the next
picture the panties were gone and she was facing the wall. Her
back, buttocks and legs were covered with the same viscous pattern.
This particular ADA wanted to give Mr. Garcia the max allowable for
his new offenses, which would have been a minimum of two and a half
years, and wanted the time added on and after any time he was
presently serving on the A&B. She was idealistic and wanted
justice. Rick Wall, however, was her boss, the principal assistant
DA, and was responsible for administration, which meant getting
cases off the docket, and he knew I would put him through a trial
on this if necessary. So, as a result, this ADA, whose name was
Lisa Hollis, would reluctantly report to the court that we had
agreed upon a disposition because Wall was making her.

I grinned back at Garcia and went through the
standard colloquy regarding the rights that he was giving up by
pleading guilty. These rights included the right to a jury or bench
trial, the right to confront the witnesses against him, the right
to participate in the selection of jurors, the right to remain
silent and force the state to carry its burden of proof and so on.
The judge would do the same thing but would also ask him if his
lawyer had explained the rights he was giving up to him prior to
having him sign his plea. He nodded good-naturedly throughout,
knowing the drill better than I. When I was finished we both signed
the back of the plea. He had spent eleven years of his life in jail
on his various offenses. He was thirty years old. Edwin Ramon
Garcia was doing life on the installment plan.

When I got back to the courtroom I found out
that David had called Mrs. Footman's case while I was in lockup.
Because her lawyer wasn't present she was given a second call,
which meant that her case moved all the way back to the end of the
line again, and made it quite unlikely that it would be called
before lunch. I grumbled under my breath, settled down Mrs. Footman
and reclaimed my place in the lawyer's gallery. Rick Wall came in
while I was waiting and took at seat at the Commonwealths table. He
looked at me with a question mark on his face, as if to ask if we
were all set. I nodded.

Twenty minutes later the court officers
brought Eddie Garcia up from the lockup and put him into the
defendants dock. He was adorned in all nature of jailhouse jewelry:
bracelets, chest restraints, ankle chains, but nothing that quite
matched the turquoise pentagram in his left ear. David had no
choice but to call his case once the court officers brought him up
and dumped in the judge's lap.

"Commonwealth vs. Edwin Ramon Garcia," he
called bitterly.

I jumped to my feet. "Your Honor, we have an
agreed upon disposition in this matter for the courts
consideration."

''Very well then," The Honorable Thomas Farron
said from the bench above, "lets have a look at it." He took the
"green sheet" as the tender of plea is known and began to peruse
it.

Terrible Tommy Farron was a crusty old buzzard
who had been on the bench, it was rumored, for more than two
hundred years. He was perpetually seventy years old and retiring
but had powers beyond those of mortal men, including the power to
indefinitely suspend time. Prior to ascending to the bench, he had
pieced together a minor league political career as a State
Representative. Such career was ended abruptly by the voters in his
district when his democratic primary challenger ran a scathing add
campaign accusing him of corruption and indifference. He fought
back hard, but didn't really care. His cronies in the Legislature
rallied to his side, and within six months of being ousted, he was
sworn in as a Justice of the District Court. On the bench he was
notorious for wild outbursts toward disrespectful defendants. He
was self-righteous and defiant and self-important. He hated
lawyers, although he had been one himself briefly, and ignored
almost everything they had to say. His grasp of the rules of
evidence was rudimentary at best, and he hadn't written a decision
in ten years. He followed his instincts, and even though he was
pompous and condescending, most of the lawyers who practiced before
him had to admit that he was a fair judge, and had an uncanny
ability to do the right thing, if not always the thing that they
wanted.

He glared down along his beak-like nose at
Eddie Garcia. One eye seemed always to be closed, the other wet and
squinting. He had no more than sixteen hairs on his head, and they
were glued back along the top of his bald pate. He was Popeye
without the pipe. Eddie squirmed as if on a hook.

"I thought I told you I never wanted to see
you in my courtroom again," Judge Farron suddenly barked, his voice
raw from years of whiskey and cigarette smoke.

Eddie wisely said not a word. He simply
lowered his head and looked repentant. He had been before Terrible
Tommy on many occasions.

The judge looked back down at the papers for a
long time, then slumped over onto the bench and grabbed his head.
"Why in the sweet name of Christ are you driving a car if you don't
have a driver’s license? What portion of this law continues to
baffle you?"

Eddie studied his feet.

"Why is it that you do not stop when you see
that a police officer is chasing you with his siren screaming and
his wig~wags and blue lights flashing?"

Silence.

"Why are you such a boil on the ass of
society?"

Eddie would not be provoked.

The judge went back to his papers. ''It has
come to my attention that you have taken to beating women with
bamboo sticks for God's sake! I should send you to Singapore and
have you caned!"

"Judge, if I may ... " I began.

"You may not," he said without glancing in my
direction. I am one of the few lawyers that Judge Farron tolerates,
so I did not push my luck. ''Mr. Garcia you are a loathsome man,"
he told Eddie, "and if I accept this plea it will be because if I
don't your lawyer will put the tax payers of this Commonwealth
through the expense of a trial, wasting more precious resources on
the likes of you, which would make me vomit. I suppose I can take
some measure of satisfaction in knowing that you are presently
caged and will be in jail for a significant period of time to
come."

Silence and staring. The judge at Eddie, Eddie
at his ankle irons. The probation clerk, sitting at the right of
Judge Farron finally broke the silence saying: "Would His Honor
like to review the defendants probation record?"

"For what?" Tommy barked at him. ''I don't
know this miserable creature? I haven't sentenced him on a dozen
occasions?" His glare snapped back to the defendant.

Eddie was as if made of wood.

"Alright, listen up, I'm going to advise you
of the rights you are giving up by pleading guilty to the charges
against you, although why you have any rights at all is beyond
me!"

He rattled them off without enthusiasm. When he
was done, he said: ''Does the

Commonwealth have anything to add?"

Rick Wall said, "No, Your Honor."

Farron looked at me. "Counselor?"

"No, thank you Judge," I said.

"Mr. Garcia, I'm going to reluctantly accept
your plea for the reasons I've already stated, you stand committed.
Now get him out of my sight!"

With that, as a stem David read the sentence
aloud, the court officers wrestled a smiling Eddie Garcia out of
dock and through the door into lock-up. Judge Farron rubbed his
head at the absurdity of it all.

Before David could call the next case Rick
Wall said, "Your Honor, while Mr. Knight is before the court, the
Commonwealth would like to move to dismiss the case against his
client Mrs. Ethel Footman. If the clerk could call that matter
please."