The Essential Ellison Part 33

He grinned, tapped my hand in rea.s.surance, and disappeared again. I turned around to see what was happening in my cell, and that was when all h.e.l.l broke loose.

It was as though someone had said "Roll' em" and the Marx Brothers had gone into their act. From doors on all sides of the cell, little men with pads of notepaper erupted. Doors slammed. Guards appeared out of nowhere. The prisoners flung themselves against the bars to talk to the little men. The noise level went up a millionfold. It was sheer bedlam. I was grabbed by the scruff of the neck and literally hurled away from the bars, as a brawny derelict moved forward to talk to an approaching note taker. These, apparently, were the public defenders, hauled away from their practices in the awful early morning hours, to try and defend the sc.u.m of New York's streets, without fee, without honor, and usually, I was to discover, without success.

Some of them were registered lawyers who devoted a portion of their time-at the Court's "request"-to the defense of those unable to afford counsel. Some of them worked full-time for the Legal Aid Society. Some of them were philanthropists. Most of them were woefully overworked and frighteningly incompetent.

They bounced back and forth from the barred waiting cell to the courtroom, back and forth, here and gone, back and gone again, like the ping-pong b.a.l.l.s in the air-vent machines used on TV to show how an air conditioner operates. Most of them were balding, and the image of them ricocheting between "clients" and courtroom would have been ludicrous, had not so many men's very existences depended on their ritualistic gyrations.

I sat down on one of the benches, and tried to read, not really knowing what was happening, nor if one of these budding Clarence Darrows was for me. The noise was deafening, and the phrase most heard, over the din, always tinged with a red frenetic tone, was, "You gotta get me outta this!"

I tried to blot out the noise, but it was impossible. They were like animals, fighting for a piece of meat. They reached through and grabbed at the coats and collars of the lawyers, and those worthies shook them off with slaps and harsh phrases, with wrinkled-up noses and utter contempt. Are these the men who will speak for us before the bench? I thought.

They no more wanted to be here, wasting their time on unfortunate b.a.s.t.a.r.ds without a cent in their pockets, than they wanted to be on our side of the bars. How doomed we are, was all I could think, and though it may sound melodramatic, just consider for a moment: the way the System is run today, with all our metropolitan courts so terribly glutted with cases that lawsuits wait a year and two years before they can be heard, with felonies and minor infractions of the law heaped one upon another onto the calendar, with judges overworked and hara.s.sed, with a surfeit of poverty and a scarcity of counsels who put the Law before the Dollar...what man has a chance without hired representation?

Consider: you are before a judge who has handled over fifty cases in the past three hours, who is sweltering in his robes, and distressed at the whining voices coming from in front of him; you are unfamiliar with the rules of the game, or you are not glib and fast on your feet; you don't know what to say and, even if you did, he doesn't want to hear it. If you've been picked up, you must have done what you're accused of having done.

So they send you a public defender, who is totally incapable of helping you, but in whom you put your momentary trust. And he has sixty, seventy, eighty different cases to trot before the magistrate in a matter of minutes. He doesn't know you, has no idea whether you are guilty or innocent, and doesn't really care. It is an obligation; he has been told to do the best he can for you, and so he pumps up to the bars, takes the sketchiest information, and runs back into the court to plead on the arraignment for the poor devil that went before you. Then he rushes back to you, having lost the train of your explanation, makes you start over again, stops you midway with "Okay, okay, you told me all that...what I want to know is what your excuse was." He cannot remember what you've said previously, he doesn't give a d.a.m.n about what you're saying now, all he wants is a few choice words to throw together in some semi-logical order to make a feeble showing before the judge...a grandstand attempt...a sham effort...

"Ellison?"

I sat there, considering the plight of all those poor dumb b.a.s.t.a.r.ds who wouldn't have a feather's chance in the courtroom, who were going out there to get arraigned and slapped into the Tombs till they met bail or were transferred for trial. I wanted to scream at these phony creeps with their yellow note paper pads, "You're louses, all of you! Nothing but G.o.ddam students of the law and you don't care what happens to any of these men! You shouldn't be allowed to practice! These men need help, not play-actors like you!"

"Ellison? Is Ellison in here?"

How terrible it was, to know you were going up against the System, the Machine, the Beast, with nothing standing between you but a paper lance. How terrible to know that the ma.s.sed indifference and cynicism and boredom of the men of the law were ready to crush you, mold you and force you into a false position, with no help from these bland, dewy-eyed lads who came down to practice on you; like apprentice barbers in a tonsorial school. If you got sliced by their straight razors, or had a chunk taken out of your ear, well, it didn't really matter: Who were you? Just another face. Just another guy with a stubble from having slept overnight in the Charles Street station. So what did it matter.

"Hey! Ellison! Ellison Harlan, Harlan Ellison! Is there someone here named Ellison or Harlan or something like that?"

I suddenly realized that a tall, good-looking man in a Brooks Brothers sport jacket and dark slacks was standing on the other side of the bars, with the animals trying to grab his lapels and his attention, calling for me.

"I'm Ellison, hey, I'm Ellison," I yelled, jumping up.

"C'mere. C'mon, c'mere already, will you. I've got other cases waiting in there, you shouldn't slow me up that wa-"

He never got a chance to finish telling me what a ghastly inconvenience I was to him. A guard poked his head in through the wooden door from the courtroom. "Strangways?" he yelled, and my Defender whirled, belting back, "Yeah, what's happening?" The guard jerked a thumb toward the courtroom, and my Defender, the Right Honorable Upholder Of Speed and Facility, Attorney Strangways, urged me to "Stay right there. I've got a case up, I'll be right back..."

And he was gone.

So help me G.o.d, he said: "Stay right there." It sounds like a bad W.C. Fields gag. It sounded that way then. But he said it. He really did.

I couldn't laugh. It was too uncomplicatedly frightening to laugh about.

I went back to sit down and read, and wait for Mr. Strangways to work me into his crowded poor-man schedule.

My man Strangways burst through the door again and motioned me to the bars. I went to my counsel. "Now," he began, as though we had accomplished something on his last trip through, "let me have that again."

"Have what again?" I asked.

This was incredible.

He gave me a cold look, as though I was wasting his time. "What happened, what happened, boy! Tell me what your story is."

"My story, Counselor, is that I'm innocent. I didn't do anything. I was just-"

"Yes, yes," he broke in. "I know you didn't do anything, but what are you in here for?"

I decided I'd better cease my lofty tactics and tell this clown everything I could, in hopes he might retain a bit of it, either in his gray cells or his yellow note pad. "I'm a writer," I began, talking rapidly. "I've done two books on juvenile delinquency. I ran with a kid gang for ten weeks, about five years ago, to gather background data. When I came out of the gang, I had a bunch of weapons I used for lectures before PTA groups, youth groups, that sort of thing. A guy I haven't seen in a few years, who wanted to hang me up, called the police and told them I had an a.r.s.enal. They picked me up on the Sullivan, and I have a perfectly legitimate use for the weapons-I never thought of the gun as a weapon, only as a visual aid, or I would have had the pin pulled and had it registered. Anyway, I've been out of the state for the last few years and I haven't done any-"

He broke in rudely, "Ever used it for an illegal purpose?"

"What're you, kidding or something?" I was outraged. "I just told you, I'm a legitimate writer, and I used it when lecturing to youth groups, YMCA cla.s.ses, that kind of jazz. Don't you believe me?"

"Sure, sure." He indicated no belief whatsoever, putting a palm up to placate me. "I believe you. I'll see what I can do. Wait here." And the Lone Ranger was gone again.

I had a feeling with this bush league Perry Mason on my team I might wind up on the guillotine, rather than in the slammer.

And all the while, the other inmates were clamoring and jostling and going a little mad trying to get heard.

Strangways came rushing through, with a set of briefs under his arm-and I thought he was coming to talk to me, but he called out another name and a seedy old man leaped up from where he'd been sitting cross-legged on the floor, and they huddled (much as I had) for about thirty seconds. Then Strangways bolted again, as a guard held the door for him. (It looked like a torero making a pa.s.s at the bull, and as Strangways went spinning through the door in his own personal veronica, I felt like hollering Ole!) Then I went cold allover, because I was yelling to the vanishing Strangways, and I realized I'd been yelling for almost a full minute, and I heard my voice above the other desperate animals in that pen.

I was yelling, "You gotta get me outta this!"

Then, much later, while my head was spinning so completely from the noise, they let me out of the pen, and it was my turn to go before the arraigning judge.

The only impression I now have of that few seconds before the bar was a room very heavy with wood paneling, a great many people, the' scent of rain-wet clothes, a great deal of bustle and confusion, and half a dozen public defenders, bailiffs, cops, guards, hangers-on and crying women, all cl.u.s.tered around the bench.

I had no idea how the judge could see me, examine me, hear my plea, As it turned out, I needn't have worried about it, He never bothered, Pay attention, then. This is the face of preliminary justice in the morning courts of New York City: The clerk read off the charge in a monotone, the Judge scratched his white hair, examining himself for signs of dandruff, my Knight in White b.u.t.ton-Down Armor, the sharp and pithy Mr. Strangways, came bursting on the scene and said (so help me G.o.d this is word-for-word): "Your Honor, this man is a writer. He obtained these weapons in the pursuit of a story, and he has a legitimate right to own them, becau-"

WHAT DO YOU MEAN HE HAS A RIGHT TO OWN THEM? came the voice of someone's G.o.d. SINCE WHEN DOES BEING A WRITER GIVE HIM ANY RIGHT TO OWN A WEAPON? ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS BAIL.

I nearly fainted.

"Your Honor," whined Strangways, "five hundred!" ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS BAIL.

And that was that.

Strangways didn't say another word. He turned on his heel, picked up a new set of briefs on another poor soul, and disappeared into the room with the cage, I stood there, waiting for a chance to say something, but that chance never came, I had had it. Completely.

G.o.d, the absolute futility I felt! The helplessness! The need to say or do something! And not being able to move an inch, being so confused by what had happened and its rapidity that I was still lost in a fog!

I turned slowly around as a bailiff grabbed me, and I saw my mother and Linda and my friend Ted White, the jazz critic with his wife Sylvia, and they were absolutely stark white with disbelief and terror. I caught sight of my agent, Theron Raines, and I felt compa.s.sion for him, for gentle Theron was practically faint with helplessness at what had happened to me, his friend and his client.

"You got the bail money?" the bailiff asked me.

I don't even know if I answered him.

He dragged me back into the room with the cage, and they tossed me back into the pen with the other losers.

I was down the toilet now. Completely. I had been booked, mugged, printed, and at last, arraigned. It was the end of the game-playing. The Author was now a felon.

All I could think of was that my mother was out there, who knew in what condition. This kind of thing might very well kill her. I can't think 'of any mother who enjoys seeing her pride and joy being hauled away to the pokey.

I didn't have too much time to think about it, though, for Strangways came trotting back in. "Have you got the bail money?" he asked.

I shrugged. "No. I haven't got that kind of money, but my agent's out there, Mr. Raines-"

"Yes, I met him," he said. "Well, I'm sorry I couldn't do more for you."

I wasn't feeling too salutary at that point. "Thanks anyway," I replied. "If you'd done any more I might have gotten the chair." He looked at me as though I was some kind of a whack, and didn't I appreciate all he'd done for me, taking off from his valuable, moneygrubbing, ambulance-chasing practice to come down here to help me-and I was probably guilty anyhow.

All I could think of was how he had whined, actually whined in front of the Judge. "Your Honor, five hundred!" Jeezus G.o.d in Heaven! What a schmuck! Pity the guy who had no mother, agent or friends in the circus audience.

He went on to his next customer, and another sterling success jousting with the Beast of the Law.

Unless you have seen the conveyor-belt justice of an overcrowded New York court, until you have felt the helpless inevitability of not being heard, you don't know what it means to be hung up. The Judge was no better or worse a man than any other; if polled, he would consider himself a fine example of what a magistrate should be. But then, Eichmann probably didn't think of himself as a perverted killer, either, Hitler probably never thought of himself as a maniac. This is the nature of the sickness: not to recognize it. Not to know when you are subverting morality and ethics and common humanity in the name of expediency.

This is the sickness of our times, and the men we put in positions of power, to rule us wisely and with an iron hand. The Judge, hara.s.sed, tired, overworked, filled with a deadly cynicism and callousness from years of seeing pleading faces before him, impatient and uncomfortable, perhaps even subconsciously guilty about the shabby job he had been forced to "pa.s.s off as competent, had found it unnecessary to hear any of the facts in the case, and had intoned, "One thousand dollars bail," without really knowing what he was doing. I felt more pity for him, then, and the anger came later; not too much later, but later nonetheless.

He, too, was trapped.

Then began the horrors, as I went through the police-detention routine, while awaiting the arrival (from Lord only knew where!) of my thousand-dollar bail money.

The Tombs are very clean, brightly lit, and because of this more frightening than the typical romantic conception of Torquemada's inquisition chambers.

The closed-in feeling, the almost claustrophobic terror of being chivvied, harried, moved wherever they want to move you, in a line with dozens of other men, faceless and without freedom-the entire weight of the building, the city, the law, life-everything weighing down on you...this is the most terrifying single reality of existence in a jail.

Don't believe it: a grown man can cry. Frighten him long enough and hard enough, it'll happen.

I don't know how conditions run in the other, more permanent, prisons of the New York area-Hart or Rikers Island to name just two-but in the Tombs, the goal is to turn you from a human being into a number, a piece of flesh that will obey, a body that will be where they want it, when they want it. The total de-humanization of a man. And for some of the unfortunates I saw in the Tombs, this was a short step.

The first batch of us who had been remanded to custody were moved out of the waiting pen, and the men tried to hold back, to stay near the little door to the outside world, so gray and cadaverous with rain. The guards shoved them forward roughly, though not with any real brutality, despite the fact that one old man screamed like a chicken, "Keep your f.u.c.kin' hands offen me, hack!"

That was my first occasion to hear the prison slang word for guard used. From that moment on, I thought of them as "hacks" also. After all, wasn't lone of the boys?

We were led out through the fire door and down the twists and cross-corridors of the rabbit-warren that is the Tombs maze. We got in an elevator (perhaps the same one we had been on before) and went down...way down. It was like being taken beneath the Earth forever.

When we settled, and were led out of the elevator, we crossed a large open area to another heavy barred door, with a metal fire door arrangement bolted to it, and a thick pane of chicken-wired gla.s.s set in the middle. The hack who was leading the caravan banged with his fist on the door, and then rang a bell. After a second another face appeared in the gla.s.s, noted who was waiting, yelled something we could not hear through the gla.s.s, over his shoulder, and unlocked the door.

We marched into the reception area of the Tombs, where I was to spend the next five or six hours, the worst five or six hours of my life. It was a huge marshalling area, with pens along both walls, and, to our left as we came in, a high-countered desk behind which uniformed hacks were busy arranging records and dossiers, preparing files, typing reports, slamming the drawers of filing cabinets, arguing about undecipherable subjects, and in general making a h.e.l.luva racket. Down the spine of the room ran two long wooden benches-back-to-back-like the kind they have in railroad waiting rooms or in the princ.i.p.al's office of the high school. At the end of the left-hand bench, at the far end of the room, was a gray-slate-colored counter, behind which two men were busily working. One of them was stuffing possessions into a manila envelope, and the other was getting men to sign something in a huge ledger.

Our line stood there for two or three minutes.

"Awright, let's go," said the hack who had been leading the procession. He had asked some instructions of the Captain, a chunky man wearing a regulation police cap with badge attached, a black tie (a shade too wide for the current fashion, and a shade too slim for the '40s style), and a white shirt. The Captain had apparently advised him where to put us till he was ready to process us.

The hack shoved one of the men forward, and the man stumbled a step, turned and swung heavily, awkwardly at the guard. "Sonofab.i.t.c.h, you better treat me better'n that!" he snarled, as the blow went wide of the mark.

The hack stepped in, ponderous operator though he seemed, with amazing agility, and chopped the prisoner across the top of his chest. The man staggered with the blow, so accurately and heavily was it dealt, and fell back. The hack moved in, his fist balled for a direct clubbing. He drew back, ready to belt the prisoner, but the Captain's voice came from the other side of the line of men, from the counter right near us: "All right, Tooley, that's it. Let him alone. He's drunk."

Tooley back-pedaled and snapped a curt "yessir, Cap'n," at his superior. He proceeded to get us into a waiting bullpen. Tooley was an exception among the hacks I saw while in the Tombs. While none of them was charming or debonair, most were just bored and cynical enough so that if you jumped when they said jump, you had no trouble. There was no actual physical brutality, in the strictest sense of the word, though on several occasions I saw hacks defend themselves from out-of-their-nut winos or psycho cases who wanted out. In those instances, they leveled the quickest club or fist and settled the offender's hash without comment. On several occasions I saw men struck by the hacks in a glancing sense, that is, they didn't move fast enough, or they lipped the guard, or were just generally surly. But since none of the guards carried guns, they tried to keep their hands to themselves as much as possible.

A hack with busy fists could get himself very squashed in a matter of seconds if a crowd of outraged pen-residents decided to gang him. So they only nudge when necessary.

Yet their att.i.tude is the d.a.m.ning condition. They don't see their charges as men. These are so much meat, to be processed in a certain manner, at a certain rate of speed, and when you speak to them, it' s almost as though they have to readjust their thinking to comprehend that you are a human being, and not some lower form of life.

I would ascertain that most of the hacks were nice guys in private life; family men who loved baseball games and dogs and old ladies, and who would never think of being anything but gentle outside of this gray room that was a Universe in itself. But in the processing room they were something else. They were far from s.a.d.i.s.tic (though Tooley, to my mind, was a cat who could do with a little pounding), but they were not quite human either.

It was as though having worked around chained prisoners for so long had rubbed off on them. They were not of us, but they were not entirely free of the imprisoned taint, either. It is a peculiar feeling, a strange aura they possess, and I can't explain it any more fully than to say that though they were ostensibly on one side of the Law, and we were on the other, we were very much brothers...chained together by what they did to us and what we were forced to let them do to us. It is a strong bond, based in hatred, but identifiable with the authority of a father or brother.

There were exceptions, of course.

Tooley, who seemed to be a thoroughgoing b.a.s.t.a.r.d who delighted in the kicks he could get by humiliating his prisoners, on the one end of the chain...and the Captain, who had given indication of moderation, intelligence and humanity, on the other.

But at that moment we were prey to Tooley, not the Captain, and as we were hustled into the bullpen, I had a feeling that if Tooley could get away with thumbing our eyes behind the Captain's back, he'd do it.

The beefy hack slammed the barred door and locked it. Now began the waiting, till they had processed the bunch of prisoners in the next pen down the line.

I sat down on a hard bench and looked around. The pen was much larger than the one upstairs, but it was the same gun-metal gray color, with a floor that was covered with bits of paper, empty candy wrappers, pools of moisture that might have been urine and might have been anything, with a barred window at the back of the cell (but outside the cell itself) in a little narrow s.p.a.ce between the wall of the building and the pen itself. The window was open and the wind was blowing in, and it was d.a.m.ned cold, with the rain slanting through, making it impossible to stand in the rear of the cell without getting wet.

I looked around at my compatriots, and the men therein a.s.sembled were as miserable a bunch as I'd ever seen. Not miserable in the social sense of the word, but miserable in the strictest literal sense. They were unhappy men. Tormented men, perhaps. They ranged from the oldest, dirtiest vag with his rose-nose and bloodshot eyes to the youngest Ivy cat all wide-eyed and terrified at being tossed in here with all these cri-min-als.

A hack came up to the door and said, "Okay, a couple of you guys clean up them loose papers there." Two of the eager young tots, anxious to seem cooperative, hustled about and cleaned up the floor sc.r.a.ps. Now the bullpen around me was clean and bare, except for the puddles I now recognized as water that had come in through the open window.

Clean and bare, like my spirit at the moment. Fresh out of plat.i.tudes and pithy observations.

...I could feel myself slipping again.

One cat got led away to be de-loused. He needed it. He left a vapor trail as he pa.s.sed. Then I was washed, and stepped forward, to hear a hack yell, "Okay, step over here before you get dressed, over here, over here, c'mon!"

I stepped forward, continuing the dehumanizing but sanitizing a.s.sembly line routine.

The Tombs physician asked how I felt, and I said, "Glorious. A delightful little resort you have down here." A hand came out of the right-hand portion of nowhere and Tooley slapped me across the side of the head.

I told the Doctor I felt fine. He made me spread my toes to show him if I had Athlete's Foot. I said, "Dermatophytosis," and he looked up, shocked that one of his charges would be literate. If he'd known I'd memorized the word off a bottle of foot powder, he wouldn't have been so impressed.

He nudged me ahead with a nod of his head, I went back and got my basket, re-dressed, and walked out of the shower room into another tiny waiting area where they had a fingerprinting set-up ready. They printed me again, and again offered no means of washing the black; condemning stains off my fingers. It was a perfect ill.u.s.tration to me of how they systematically reduce you to an animal. Instead of having the inking ready at the other end of the shower, enabling a man to wash himself clean in the hot water, they wait till he is clean and again bears some vestige of personality, humanity, dignity, and then they rub his nose in his own s.h.i.t again.

As I stood there waiting to be told what to do next, an old sauce-hound staggered out of the shower, perspiring terribly from either a disease Herr Doktor Quack-Quack had decided was unimportant, or from the heat of the shower room. He vomited on my shoes, though I leaped back quickly.

The smell remained on my shoes for three days no matter how hard I was to scrub them. I finally threw them away. The memories were bad enough, without olfactory additions.

I stared at my black fingertips with morbid curiosity. A physical reminder that I was a criminal.

It seemed, at that point, that I had been locked away for months. Time has a peculiar and hideous manner in jail. It does not move. It stops completely, and since they have taken away all watches, since there are no clocks in sight, since the hacks will not tell you what time it is, the mind boggles, and you lose sight of the time-flow, and consequently, a little more of reality is stolen away from you, while you feel your mind decaying underground.

The men were being printed and harangued into a cell midway down the line, directly opposite the big bullpen. It was a waiting cell, the last one before they transferred you to a home in the main cell blocks.

I knew if they got me in there I'd snap completely. I had to make a move now, or go with the rest of them, get locked away in the Tombs and they'd lose my card and when the bail money came they wouldn't know where I was and I'd become just another person in a cell and they'd tell my mother and my agent and my friends that I must be somewhere else because I wasn't listed here as being in a cell and they would go away and the bail money would lie waiting and I'd be in the Tombs forever and forever and forev- I caught myself.

That was how it happened, I guessed.