I put my foot in his hands and stood up. The two cops caught me under my arms and flopped me up on the dock the way we’d brought in my tuna. I rolled over and stood up. A cop pointed to a spot on the boards under a lamp nailed to a post and said, “Have a seat. Right there.”
I sat.
John and Ireland sat across from me. We looked at one another, eyes vacant, saying nothing.
The cops had found a ladder somewhere and tied it to the dock. They were scurrying up and down the ladder, checking out the boat.
I could hear them laughing.
The cuffs were cutting into my wrists. Handcuffs? I wondered what Patience and Jack would think if they could see me now.
“You are advised that anything you may say may be used as evidence against you. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney to be present during questioning,” the cop said. He added, shaking his head sadly, “You’re in big trouble, Mr. Mason.” The cop was a detective from the South Carolina State Police. Three other plainclothes cops sat around the table, staring. Yes. I was in big trouble. I nodded. My hands were crammed behind me, numb. I leaned against the back of the chair, but I couldn’t feel it with my fingers. We sat at a table in an office. The owner of the docks had come and unlocked the building so the cops would have a place to do some preliminary interrogation. They’d taken us into the office one at a time. John and Ireland had already been here. I wondered what they’d said.
“We know you were just a crew member,” said the detective. “Your buddy, Tillerman, said he was the captain; said you and Ireland were crew.”
I nodded. John had said that if we were caught, he’d tell them he was the captain. He wanted the responsibility. He figured it came with the job.
“You mind speaking up, Mr. Mason? We have to tape this.”
“Yeah. That’s right.”
“What’s right?”
“Tillerman was the captain.”
“Okay. Now.” The cop looked at his notebook. “Where’d you get the pot?”
I looked at the cop. “I don’t know.”
“Who’s your boss?”
“I told you. Tillerman was the captain.”
“I don’t mean him. Who’s he working for? Who’s the real boss?”
“I don’t know.”
The cop nodded, screwed his mouth up grimly, and leaned across the table. “Look, Mr. Mason. You’re in deep-shit trouble here. You’re looking at twenty-five years in prison. You know that?”
“Twenty-five years?”
“That’s right. Now, if I were you, I’d cooperate with us. We can’t guarantee anything, but we can tell the judge you cooperated. Could help you.”
I nodded.
“So where did you get the pot?”
“Look,” I said, “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression, sir. I really do want to cooperate with you. I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but I think it would be smart for me to have an attorney here.”
“Don’t be stupid, Mason!” the cop yelled. “You won’t have this opportunity again. This is your chance to help us out—and help yourself. Do it and I know it’ll be easier for you. Where’s the rest of the people—the shore team?”
Good question. Probably they were still trying to figure out what happened. I could see the shore team, Dave, Mitford, Wheely, Rangy Jane, all twenty of them, each of them fumbling around trying to find their asses with both hands and missing. “Like I said, I will definitely help you gentlemen. Just as soon as I have an attorney with me.”
The cop slapped the table. “That’s about the dumbest thing you could say, Mason. Now the judge’ll know you were uncooperative when you were arrested. We got you on tape. Goes into the arrest report. Makes you look bad, Mason. He’ll know you’re protecting criminals. And for what? Don’t you think for one minute we won’t find them, your buddies. We have a hundred men out there right now. We’ll find them. We’ll get them anyway, so you have nothing to lose, everything to gain. Where are they, these shore guys?”
I stared at the cop. I had no reason to protect Dave and the band of idiots who were supposed to have the creek under control, who were supposed to clear it for us. All it would’ve taken was a simple radio call, tell us the creek was being watched. No. Their last transmission said everything was clear. John had asked; I heard him when we got to the creek.
“Absolutely. All clear,” Dave had said.
I looked at the head cop, at the three other cops. Everybody was looking as mean and as grim as they could look, like cops are supposed to look when they’re trying to scare the shit out of you. They were all staring at me like I was on my way to death row. I felt like I was on my way to death row.
There was something more important than saving my ass. There was this thing: loyalty. I did the same thing in Vietnam. We were wrong to be there, but I fought the fight. It’s loyalty to the side you’re on. You pick sides, you play the game the best way you know how. When your team fumbles the ball, well, that’s the way it goes. Maybe you work it out after the game. You do nothing to help the other side. “You have my statement on your tape machine, sir.”
The cop shook his head. “Okay, Mason,” he said quietly. “You’ll never be able to say I didn’t give you a chance. You live with that?”
“I’ll have to.”
The cop stood up. “Okay. Let’s go.”
I stood up and walked out to the waiting room where John and Ireland and Chuck and Sam waited. They told me to sit in a chair across from John and Ireland. I sat. The cops went back into the office. I said, “Uh, Chuck.”
“Yeah, Robert?”
“Bob. Just call me Bob,” I said. “Look, Chuck. This fucking plastic piece of shit handcuff you snapped on me is killing my hands. I can’t feel a thing.”
Chuck look concerned, nodded, and came over. I stood up and he looked behind me. I felt him tug the cuffs. “Is a little tight.” He said to Sam, “You got another cuff, Sam?”
“That was it, Chuck,” Sam said, shrugging.
Chuck nodded and said to me, “That was it, Bob.”
“Can’t you just cut the fucking thing off? I mean, where am I going to go, Chuck? I don’t think I deserve to lose my hands over this, do you?”
Chuck shook his head, seemed to be thinking. “Just a minute.” He went into the office where the state cops were talking cop strategy, working the phones, radioing messages to search teams and stuff. A minute later he came out with a new plastic cuff. “They had a spare,” he said, smiling. He fished a pocketknife out of his pants. “Turn around, I’ll fix you up.”
Chuck cut off my cuffs and let me rub my hands together. They were blue, swollen, numb as dead flesh. After a while I could feel them tingle. I put my hands back behind me and Chuck put on the new cuffs and cinched them up loose enough so they didn’t cut my circulation, but tight enough so I couldn’t get them off. “Thanks, Chuck,” I said.
“No problem, Bob.”
I sat down and stared at the posters on the wall. There was going to be some kind of county fair in McClellanville in a couple of weeks. The Clyde Beatty Circus was coming. A big tiger jumped through a flaming hoop. On the other wall was an OSHA safety poster with diagrams showing you that you should not bend over to lift heavy objects; you should squat down, use your legs. Most industrial back injuries, the poster said, are caused by workers using improper lifting techniques. An electric clock over the secretary’s desk said it was five o’clock in the morning. Funny, I wasn’t the least bit tired. Guess it was the nap. I stared at the carpet. What a dingy color, brown with yellow speckles. Probably it was supposed to not show dirt. Nice. You could puke on this carpet and never know it.