I yelled at him, ‘I’m going to stay right here!’
He shoved me around. The Arizona officer snapped handcuffs on my wrists. I refused to talk, and they hauled me out of the jail and into the car.
The big man put on a leg iron. ‘You asked for this,’ he said, mopping perspiration from his forehead. ‘Why can’t you be reasonable? Don’t you know it’s hot?’
‘You’re going to regret this as long as you live,’ I said. ‘I haven’t committed any crime and you can’t pin one on me. I’ll—’
‘Forget it. Shut up,’ he interrupted. ‘I’ve got a hot drive across the desert ahead of me, and I don’t want to hear the sound of your voice.’
‘You won’t,’ I said, and sat back against the cushions.
We drove through the shimmering heat of the desert. The horizon twisted and danced in the rays of a blistering sun. The air was so hot it cooked my eyes in their sockets as boiling water boils an egg in its shell. The tires seemed to stick to the road, snarling a steady whine of sticky protest.
‘You would come at the hottest time of the day,’ I said.
‘Shut up.’
I kept quiet.
We drove into Yuma and went to the courthouse. The deputy district attorney said, ‘You made these people go to a lot of trouble, Smith. Where do you think it’s going to get you?’
‘They didn’t need to go to any trouble,’ I said. ‘If they think they’ve had trouble so far, wait until you see what they get.’
‘What are they going to get?’
‘I’m going to sue them for malicious prosecution, false arrest, and defamation of character.’
He yawned and said, ‘Don’t pull that gag. You make me laugh. If it had been a new car, the situation would have been different. As it is, it’s a demonstrator. You’ve given it a few miles’ run. It hasn’t hurt the car any. But you made them go to the expense of extraditing you. That’s going to hurt.’
‘Why the hell didn’t they cash the check I gave them?’ I asked.
He laughed and said, ‘Because you’d been down to the bank and drawn all the money out.’
‘Nuts,’ I said. ‘That was the other bank.’
‘What do you mean, the other bank?’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘You’re damn right I know what you mean. It’s the old flimflam game. You went down and handed out a line of soap. You deposited two thousand dollars in the bank. You left the check, knowing damn well they’d take steps to find out whether the check was good, but they wouldn’t cash it until you’d signed the papers and driven out with the car. You figured on getting the car delivered just a few minutes before closing time, beating it down to the bank and drawing out everything except two hundred dollars. You figured you’d have eighteen hours’ start before anyone found out the check wasn’t any good. But you beat your own time a little, and the automobile agency showed up at the bank about five minutes after you’d left with the money. They deposit every night just before closing time.’
I stared at him, letting my eyes get big and my jaw sag. ‘For God’s sake,’ I said. ‘Do you mean they tried to cash my check at the First National?’
‘Why not? That’s the bank it was given on.’
‘No it wasn’t,’ I said. ‘That check was issued on the Bank of Commerce.’
He showed me the check, marked with the telltale ‘NSF’ in red ink. I said, ‘Well, then, I drew the eighteen hundred out of the Bank of Commerce.’
‘Why all the talk about the Bank of Commerce?’
‘Because I have an account there.’
‘The hell you do.’
‘Yes.’
‘You don’t have anything to prove it.’
‘I was going to take a long night ride,’ I said. ‘I didn’t want to have my checkbooks on me. I put them in an envelope and addressed them to myself at General Delivery. You can go down there and find them if you don’t believe it.’
The officer and the deputy district attorney exchanged glances.
‘You mean this wasn’t a flimflam?’ the deputy district attorney asked.
‘Of course not. I will admit that I drew a sight draft on H. C. Helmingford. There isn’t any such man. I was going to beat it, into Los Angeles and take up that sight draft as H. C. Helmingford. But I didn’t defraud anyone with that sight draft. I simply put it in for collection.’
‘What the hell were you trying to do?’
‘Build up a banking credit,’ I said. ‘I wanted the bank to think I was important. There’s no law against that.’
‘But you gave the automobile company this check, and then drew out all of your balance except two hundred dollars.’
‘No I didn’t. That was on the other bank ― or I sure as hell thought it was.’
The deputy district attorney rang up the Bank of Commerce. ‘Has Peter B. Smith got an account there?’ he asked.
He held the phone and waited a minute. Then I heard the receiver make noise in his ear. He deliberated for a minute, and said, ‘I’ll call you back in a few minutes.’
He said, ‘Write your name.’
I wrote Peter B. Smith.
He said, ‘Write an order to the post office asking them to deliver to me any mail that’s addressed to you and held at General Delivery.’
I wrote the order.
‘Wait here,’ the deputy said.
I waited in the office for an hour. When they came back, the man who had sold me the car was with them. ‘Hello, Smith,’ he said.
‘Hello.’
‘You caused us a hell of a lot of trouble.’
‘You caused yourself a hell of a lot of trouble,’ I said. ‘My God, you might have known it was all a mistake. Why didn’t you get in touch with me? If I’d been a crook, you don’t think I’d have left two hundred dollars in the bank, do you? I’d have taken it all.’
‘Well, what were we supposed to think tinder the circumstances?’
‘How did I know what you were going to think?’
‘Look here,’ he said. ‘You want that car. It’s a good buy. We want the money for it.’
‘You,’ I told him, ‘are going to get slapped in the face with a suit for false arrest and defamation of character.’
‘Nuts,’ the deputy district attorney said. ‘You can’t pull that stuff, and you know it. Maybe you made a mistake, but it was your mistake, not theirs.’
‘Go ahead,’ I said. ‘Stick up for your taxpayers. I’ll import a lawyer. I’ll get someone to come in from Los Angeles.’
He laughed.
‘Well, from Phoenix,’ I said.
They exchanged glances.
‘Look here,’ the automobile man said. ‘This has been a mistake all around. It was your mistake. You drew your money out of the wrong bank, or gave us the check on the wrong bank. I don’t know which.’
‘I got mixed up,’ I admitted.
‘All right. You’ve had an unfortunate experience, and so have we. The governor wouldn’t issue extradition papers until we guaranteed to pay all expenses. That cost us money. Tell you what we’ll do, Smith. You give us a check for sixteen hundred and seventy-two dollars on the Bank of Commerce, and we’ll shake hands and forget it. What do you say?’
I said, ‘I’ll give you the check on the Bank of Commerce because I always pay my bills. I’m sorry that mistake was made. But you had no right jumping at hasty conclusions and running to the police. That’s going to cost you money.’
The deputy district attorney said, ‘You can’t get anywhere with the lawsuit, Smith. As a matter of fact, you’re technically guilty. If the automobile people wanted to, they could go ahead and prosecute you.’
‘Let them prosecute,’ I said. ‘Every day I’m in jail is going to cost them a lot of money.’
The sheriff entered the conversation. ‘Look here, boys. This has been a mistake. Now let’s get together and do the right thing.’