“Well, your face is more alert. Has to be a good sign, particularly with all the painkiller they put in. You’re healthy and perky again or thereabouts — congrats. I’m Janie Pershcolt, remember? We just had a long involved conversation about your life and bad breaks of late, but all the time you weren’t even awake? How can that be? Anyway, I’m your court-appointed etcetera, not that I’m available to you now, etcetera — and you won’t flake out on me again?”
“Try not to.”
“Hungry? Want food, Mr. Fleet? Mr. Fleet, are you there? Food. Pudding. Potatoes, munch munch, and buttered bread. You should be starved after two days of just tubes. They’re giving out the trays now and before you said you didn’t.”
“Still don’t. Stomach.”
“You’re not nauseous. If you are, be a friend as I’ve been to you and forewarn so I can step aside? Anyway, as I told you previously, the reason you’re here is you were hit on the head with a pipe two nights ago or with some comparably solid instrument and possibly thrown off your bed, remember that?”
“Not talking about or happening it.”
“Why would, assuming he did, and looks like to me, one of your fellow cellmates do that or any combination of the three? In your sleep conversation you said you only dreamed getting bonked.”
“Looks like to me? Combination three?”
“Forgive me, but are you accusing all three prisoners of participating in the attack?”
“The guard?”
“The guard too or alone? Which, if either, and what’s your basis for stating that?” “Let me think.”
“That’s a pretty wild charge, Mr. Fleet. Earthshaking anytime the lawbreaker’s the law. I’m not a prosecuting attorney or your lawyer anymore, but because my field is criminal jurisprudence and the penal system and so forth, I would like to know.”
“Let me think.”
“I hope there’s no permanent brain damage. I mean I know there’s none permanent or otherwise because the doctor told me there’s not, so don’t let me worry you, but I hope there isn’t.”
“I don’t feel it. Please, Ginny, let me think.”
“Janie, Janie — So how are you today?” she says to the next bed.
“Fine and dandy, ma’am, and you?”
“I’m hardly the one in the hospital plus incarcerated, but I feel terrific today. I adore snow.” And suddenly to me “Quick, Shaney, what’s your name?”
“My what?”
“Name, quick, your name.”
“Shaney Elborn Fleet.”
“Quick, what do you do and where and all that?”
“Own a bar. Barowner. Ten to one. Tend one too. I do. One twenty-three East 5th Street, postal code forgot. Mitchell’s Bar and G. B and Grill. Bar and Grest, Rest, please — these questions hurt my head. And will you please stop whistling?” I say to the next bed. “It’s a nice tune and you whistle well but it’s killing me.”
“Ever you say, pal.”
“No, you’re all right,” she says. “Quick response, natural verbal confusion, though what you said made sense. But your three ex-cellmates say they didn’t touch you. That while they slept you must have rolled off your bunk to the floor because you weren’t familiar with upstairs sleeping, and no one could find the pipe or comparable solid instrument.”
“Forget what I said of the guard. I just wanted to know if he knew anything. But the police won’t prosecute?”
“You have some proof?”
“My head. What the doctors said. For why they think a pipe?”
“Type of skull gash. No fist did it. Broke the skin and a bit of bone and was caused not by your head hitting something but something hitting it. Sixteen stitches. That’s what your turban’s all about. Concussion they’ll only know when—”
“Because they’re after me those bastards and word in, they did, got the, to the jail to nail me, get me, that’s it, has to be, that sonofabitch whoever did it, so what the hell else is new? Don’t you see, and excuse me for my cursing and muddledness, but they’re all from the same group.”
“Who? You claiming the pipe, apartment fire and reason for your delivering that street beating are all related to the garbage can company you complained about in the police report I read?
You have to have something backing you better than wild charges or that company will nail you for defamation of everything and then you’ll really go to jail and pay. Because as I said before. Well, I don’t know if I said it but I’ll say it now. I’m not saying you’re a fabricator, Mr. Fleet. Or that anything you said happened to you couldn’t have in this city individually or even as you stated be intertwined. But so far you’ve no case. One, there’s no bludgeoning weapon, so maybe the forensic medic was mistaken and your head did roll off your bed and hit a shoe we’ll say or your own elbow on the floor and made that gash like a pipe might make. Two, three men in your cell are prepared to swear that none of them brained you or at least neither of them witnessed it. And three, it’s not as if you’re a prison guard who got piped, so who’s really that concerned? Be realistic. To most people, judges or otherwise, what occurs in a prison cell is your own fault for getting in there, even if how you got in turns out to be an error of the police or court. And four, that man on the street you beat up says he won’t reveal his name and address for fear his wife will find out he was in town with his mistress that day when he told her he was to be a hundred miles from here on business. That’s why he won’t press charges against you, which when you think of it could make sense. And five, if that fire was deliberately started, then it was an arsonist’s dream job. Forgive me for butting in more than I was appointed to. But if you — pipe story aside, which might have been a personal affair between you and one or all of your ex-cellmates and so not something they want to disclose — have any doubt you’re telling the truth about this Stovin’s group or anyone you’ve accused so far, then for your own sake, and I say this with all my professional expertise and individual sincerity, don’t you think it’d be wise to maybe see a psychiatrist?”
“Thanks very much, but didn’t the police look in the man’s wallet for my note?”
“Note? Hold it. Maybe I’m the one losing my memory now.”
“The note, my note. Under the phone shelf. I told the police he—”
“Oh yeah. Now how could they? He wasn’t the one brought in and arraigned.”
“But they looked for his name and address, didn’t they? Since my note was the only thing in his wallet besides money, because I looked in it myself, they had to have seen it.”
“Even if you didn’t put the note in and they did find it, which I’m only being hypothetical for argument’s sake about, it would most likely be classified as illegal evidence because the note wasn’t what they would have been legally searching for.”
“If they found a loaded gun in his wallet while they were only searching for his address, would that be illegal evidence too?”
“Then they might have questioned him, though maybe only to find out how he was able to fit a gun in his wallet — do you get what I mean?”
“Excuse me, but can I check out of here when I want?”
“According to the call before, they’re not holding you for anything anymore and you don’t seem to have a serious concussion the way you’re now making noise, so I think so — of course. But why leave when you can stay a few more days courtesy of the city before they transfer you to a paying hospital, especially with the state of your head. I didn’t mention that they said you’ll have a permanent deep dent there around the metal plate, which is just how bad the blow was.”
“Because I won’t feel safe anyplace but in my bar or hotel room. There I got my own locks and regular grounds and my own form of weapons if I want. Here, who knows what can happen. Another pipe at night. Dent in a dent perhaps where I’ll end up with a tin helmet for a head, or maybe something in my food. Sure, by your look I can tell I must sound to you like I feel way overpersecuted. And whatever I say after it to explain why I’ve these fears will make me sound even more so till they think I’m too crazy to go home, so why even stay here and risk being tossed in a mental ward?”