Chapter 8

 

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Chapter 8

All Santa Cruz County Sheriff Dustin Diesel wanted to do was coast quietly into retirement with his patched  up, duct taped heart still ticking.  The reason why he had been against Donald Trump for President was because Trump was bringing undue attention to the border region that he patrolled, a scrutiny that threatened the integrity of a beleaguered heart that he kind of needed to carry him along into the sunset.

     Dustin Diesel was a big man who dragged his bulk around like a hoarder lugging a huge trunk filled with useless but coveted secret items. Because of his rather pronounced Baptist belly, the inmates in Dustin's lock up sometimes referred to his jurisdiction as Santa Claus county.  Dustin's houlders stooped and his walrus mustache drooped.  No amount of trimming could keep its bristling porcupine quills, rictal bristles of an insectivorous bird, the macrovibrissae attached to the snouts of any number of species of scrounging rodents, from growing into his mouth, so he often digested them with his food.  Dustin's rather sprawling, amoeba-like physique and unkempt mustache made the Spanish prisoners jokingly refer to him as La Morsa, but not to his face.

     Truth was, Dustin Diesel was a gentle man with a thick skin who was not above a joke at his expense, but he didn't look like it.  All the prisoners in the county jail could think about when he walked by was how he had picked up a desperate gangster by the neck with one hand and flung him across his cell without ever changing the tender expression on his face.  The prisoners also contemplated his legendary dead aim.  Dustin suffered from the early stages of macular degeneration, but could still shoot the cap off a bottle of Bud at 50 paces without leaving foam, which he sometimes did as a party trick when called to break up noisy fiestas.  The parties got quiet quick.  Tommy the deaf, dumb and blind pinball wizard played by sense of smell, and Dustin Diesel seemed to shoot by the same method. Without parallel he was the best shot in the Gadsden Purchase, and all men, hardened criminals as well as upstart young punks wisely feared him.

     Women did not. Dustin Diesel also had a reputation as the most henpecked man in the Gadsden Purchase. The principal reason he worked fifteen hour days was because his wife Doris berated him from the time he hung up his gun at home until the time he went to bed, which was within as little as half an hour if he could help it.  According to Doris, Dustin was a horrible father, husband, and human being in general.  She had been threatening him with imminent divorce since about 1972.  If Dustin had done anything worthwhile in law enforcement, it was only through dumb luck, divine intervention, or because he had been smart enough to take her advice.  Doris chastised him for not being at least a Congressman or Senator by now.  He was relentlessly rebuked for not opposing Arapaio up North in Maricopa, so they could move to a civilized place like Phoenix.  Doris complained about living in only a four bedroom house, even though they occupied just one of the rooms, and not often. Dustin's pathetic lack of ambition was the cause of all of their domestic difficulties and insurmountable social problems in their entirety south of the Gila River.  Truth was, Dustin Diesel lost all of his fabled swagger around Doris, which was why he tried to avoid her whenever he could legitimately duck out.

     A few years ago, after a particularly exasperating and humiliating round with Doris, Dustin had been in his office complaining to his secretary Lupe about it.  The Gadsden Purchase is a small place - Tony Vargas was there too, having decided to drop by and pick up a free donut as he rolled through town.

     "I think if two people don't love each other anymore there's nothing wrong with getting a divorce," Lupe told Dustin in her breathlessly seductive Latina accent as she pressed her sweater puppies provacatively against her desk. Lupe had been trapped in a haze of impossibly unrequited love with the Sheriff for years.  She smelled opportunity.

     "Bullshit," Tony retorted. "You got to stick it out and suffer.  You get points in heaven that way.  It's like airline miles.  You can exchange them for swag when you get up there."

     “What kind of swag?" Dustin growled, his words muffled by his thick mustache.

     "You know, like head of the line privileges in the duty free. Stuff like that."

     "Where the he’ll did you hear that?"  the Sheriff asked cautiously.  All too often, stuff Tony said that sounded like pure bullshit later turned out to be true.

     “Pastor Rick said it." Like most Catholics in the Gasden Purchase, Tony dabbled in evangelical Protestantism when convenient.  There were no first run movies, video games, free snow cones, or rock and roll bands at Catholic mass like they had at the mega church in Yuma. Unlike the pedantic, tired, stodgy priests, Pastor Rick was super chill, like a stand up comic.  Furthermore, people tended to believe him because he had his own airplane.

     "You're full of shit, Tony," Lupe hissed at him, like someone had let the air out of her tires. Dustin had been vulnerable.  He had been on the point of straying. Tony had fucked up her opportunity.

     Dustin knew damn well Tony was full of shit – they were old friends.  It was possible Pastor Rick had preached a sermon about airline miles in heaven, that sounded like his style, but Tony had twisted it out of context.  Dustin Diesel had been raised in a good Christian home.  A sense of guilty acceptance over being a horrible sinner had seeped through his mother's placental walls into the womb.  Womb and tomb rhymed, he thought while he was on the subject, but he didn't know if that meant anything. Anyhow, even though bullshit like Tony's seemed harmless at face value, it often touched a deeper truth.  Maybe there were no frequent sufferer programs in heaven, but even if Pastor Rick's prosperity gospel implied that it was okay to ditch your wife if she was digging too deep into your bank account, Dustin Diesel still looked upon marriage as a sacred deal.  Divorce was like severing a spiritual limb, and heaven wasn't keen on amputees.  His Daddy had taught him that. If you bought the horse on your earthly farm you had to ride the old nag into heaven.  Saint Peter didn’t let you check your baggage at the terminal.

     These were the things Dustin Diesel was pondering in his heart as he went to see the prisoner preventing him from coasting smoothly into retirement.  What was he supposed to do when he retired anyway, get yelled at by Doris on a full time basis?  Might as well get abused at work and get paid for it.

     Sheriff Diesel didn't know what to expect from this brick throwing fiend. He visualized some wild haired, tatooed, crazy-eyed anarchist carpet-bagging punk with piercings trying to stir up trouble in the name of progress.

     The prisoner had his head down when Dustin approached his cell, so the sheriff couldn't see the perp's face through his long mop of hair.  When the door buzzed open the detainee looked up briefly at Dustin, showing wide, intelligent eyes that were not wild at all, but indicated defiant stubborness.  It was a rebellious face, all right, but not the kind of face that belonged to your typical brick thrower.

     "What the hell were you thinking kid?"

     Mike looked straight at the Sheriff.  There was desperation in his eyes, but there was also resistance.  When you have several million in the bank, it is easy to resist.  You can afford to chill in jail a few days when nobody is expecting you at work the next morning.

     “What do you mean?  Like I told everyone else, I didn't do anything." He wanted to add -I actually stopped the brick from hitting that orange haired  jackass- but he was pissed, and it sounded like sucking ass.  He was in no mood to suck ass.

      Dustin laughed.  "That's the first time I heard that one."  He made a sweeping gesture with his arms, like a flabby Atlas holding Santa Cruz County on his shoulders. "This whole jail is filled with people who didn't do anything."

     Mike was not of a temper to get chatty with anybody in uniform. There are plenty of people who claim they hate law enforcement, but nobody really hates and mistrusts the police until they have been at the bottom of a dog pile eating dirt, while at the same time being handcuffed for doing nothing.

     "Look son," continued the Sheriff paternally, because he sensed he was not dealing with a hard core criminal element here, and cops always like to pretend they are there to reform, not punish.  "I've seen police officers do a lot of messed up things to young people like you.  I've seen kids get beaten up just for carrying signs but I've never condoned it and never participated in it.  In fact, I've thrown officers in jail for getting rough when they shouldn't have.  But you can't have this attitude that the law is always wrong.  You can't sit there looking at me all surly because they locked you up for trying to hurt people.  Peaceful protest is one thing, but throwing bricks cannot be condoned."

     Mike couldn't help but think about Krazy Kat getting a brick thrown at him by a clever mouse espousing the doctrine of bricks is love and he smiled despite himself.

     “I don't see what's funny, boy," said Diesel.

     Betcha if you knew I was black you wouldn't be calling me boy, thought Mike.  Black or not, didn't much like being called boy.

     "It's all really frickin funny actually," said Mike, "because I didn't even want to be here, much less be here throwing bricks, which I didn't.  My girlfriend dragged me along, with some of her useless friends.  Now they've all run off and left me.”

     "They left you holding the bag," said Diesel with surprising sympathy.

     Mike looked up from contemplating his hands in an ironic fashion.  Same hands, same capabilities, they could either throw a brick or stop a brick, but they didn't amount to shit behind bars.  "Beg your pardon, sir?"

     Dustin Diesel sighed impatiently.  "You kids today don't understand analogies.  You want to be fed everything literally.  I want to give you steak but all you can chew is oatmeal. Holding the bag is an expression that comes from an old prank called a Snipe Hunt.  In a Snipe Hunt the participants, that is the ones who are in on the joke, sweep through the woods to scare up an imaginary animal toward one sucker they leave in place, holding a gunny sack.  Said sucker is supposed to capture the non existent Snipe when it runs by.  Now, most times a Snipe Hunt is harmless fun, a little rough on the poor sap bullied into holding the bag, but not leaving any long term emotional damage.  In fact, if the bag holder is smart he figures out quick there is no Snipe, drops the sack and goes home alone, or better yet hides in the woods to ambush the jokers.  But not always does the snipe bag wind up empty.  Sometimes something really does get trapped in that bag, and I shouldn't have to tell you that the something is never good.  You, son, got left holding the bag, and now there is something bad squirming around in there.  Like it or not you're going to have to pay the price for that something because in Santa Cruz County, as in other jurisdictions across this nation, saying you were only the bag holder is no defense before the law.  Get some sleep, because tomorrow there’s no telling what will happen.  Good night."

     The cell door slammed into place behind the sheriff.  Mike never felt so abandoned.  He was an introvert by nature, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t comforted by the buzz of people around him.  Yeah, admittedly he was a douchebag who got annoyed easily when people chattered too much, but it felt awfully lonely without that chatter.  Certainly somebody must be waiting for him outside, but he hadn't seen any evidence of that.  Lisa had bailed, her douchebags friends had bailed, even that lowlife Tony had bailed, most certainly with Mike's truck.

     When Mike had arrived in the Gadsden Purchase, he had expected people to be more honest and loyal than in California. The reason he had sold his company and fled out here is because he had been fed up with the predatory nature of people in the Silicon Valley.  Even the bums there were aggressive, ungrateful, and hard to shake off.  The name of the local hockey team was completely appropriate, because everybody was a shark, patrolling the reef, sniffing for signs of blood, ready to rip apart the helpless and weak.  So now he had escaped deep into the desert, only to find that people were the same everywhere.  His Dad had told him that before he left.  It sucked that his Dad was always right.

     Mike really needed some moral support, but the only person he could rely on for that was his father, and his Dad didn't need this shit right now.  If things continued the way they were going he would have to call him eventually, but he was going to hold off as long as possible.  Mike supposed he should call his lawyer, but the number was in his phone and they had confiscated his phone.  Wasn't his Dad always ranting you goddam kids rely too much on your phones?  "I got all the important numbers right here in my head," his Dad bragged, "but you’re helpless without your goddam phone and it is going to come back to haunt you." It had come back to haunt him.

     Come to think of it, weren't they supposed to at least offer him a phone call?   Wasn't that a basic Constitutional right or something?  He remembered seeing that on a shit load of TV shows. Well, nobody in this dusty little shithole of a town had offered him a phone call, and he had the feeling they wouldn’t.

     As Mike sat stewing in his lonesome misery, Dustin Diesel walked wearily down the corridor in front of the holding cells.  The six or seven inmates being temporarily stored here were on their best behavior. Nobody catcalled him or started bitching about their rights.  They could hear his heavy, plodding steps and took that to mean his temper was temporarily on a hair trigger.  Nobody fucked with Sheriff Diesel when his footsteps went below a certain amount of RPMs.

     The double doors at the end of the hall popped open and half a dozen hard bitten G-men pushed through.  The suits were forming a formidable huddle around somebody in their midst, who was hunkered down where he couldn’t be seen. Dustin heaved another somber sigh, recognizing this interruption for what it was and deciding not to let himself be star struck.

     "You gentlemen caused enough of a stir in my town.  Don't you have somewhere else to be?"

     Muffled Brooklynese rose from the center of the huddle, but the Secret Service G-men wouldn't allow the speaker be seen.  It was a situation akin to when the burning bush talked to Moses.  Moses kept looking around for a speaker, because it was stupid to think a bush could be talking to him.  By the same token, it was stupid to think that a President-elect would be hiding like a scared bitch amidst a ring of knuckleheads.

     The burning bush voice coming from the interior of this human Stonehenge encircling the President-elect turned out to be uncharacteristically meek and subdued, not at all like what Dustin was expecting.

     "Excuse me, Mr. Sheriff Sir," sounded the thin east coast whine. "I was wondering if we could impose upon you to release your prisoner."

     Dustin Diesel did not appreciate it when carpetbagger Feds came in and tried to impose their will.  People assumed they were backward yokels here that could be easily walked over.  Hell, maybe they were yokels, but these out of town sophisticates could at least go through the motions of respect, buy us a drink before fucking us.

     "Why would you want us to release him?  He tried to hurt you."

      Dustin leaned in a little, as a test.  The President-elect nearly stumbled as he stooped down lower, and the Stonehenge circle squeezed tighter.  "Heh, heh," the burning bush laughed nervously.  "Without getting into too many details Mr. Sheriff, because this is a delicate matter of national security, probably the most delicate matter of national security in the history of our national security, but we believe that you should either let the prisoner go, or execute him on the spot."

     Never in his decades of law enforcement had Santa Cruz Sheriff Dustin Diesel been ordered to execute a prisoner without due process.  It was such an extraordinarily bizarre request that he actually had to think about it.

     "Well now Mr. President..."

     The President-elect cut him off abruptly.  "President-elect now, President-elect.  Let's not jump the gun."

     “Yes Sir Mr. President-elect.  You do understand that this is the United States of America, and there are a series of trials and appeals we go through before we can legally kill somebody.  Furthermore, we only use it for capital crimes, like murder.  As far as I can see, you're still alive, so there isn’t any murder.  I just can't shoot him on the spot."

     Dustin thought he could hear the scratching of fingernails against bald skin.  "Huh.  Wow.  Constitutional law is complicated. I'm a real estate man by trade. A really fantastic, top notch real estate man, by the way.  I'm sure you've seen some of my real estate. Being a real estate man, I have a whole gang of lawyers to take care of the complicated legal stuff, like executions.  Okay, so why not just let him go?"

     Dustin breathed in some patience.  "Mr. President-elect Sir, from my understanding you still have a month or so to go before you take the oath.  When that happens, I'll gladly respect any executive pardon you might wish to grant my prisoner.  In the meantime, he's a lawbreaker, and I am sworn to uphold the law.  So the answer is no."

     The President-elect poked one of the Secret Service agents in the kidneys, and the agent, who appeared to be a clone of all the other agents, reached back with a handkerchief.  Dustin heard no nose blowing, but couldn't know the President-elect was wiping the sweat off his head with it. "Okay, fantastic, utterly fantastic,” said Trump.  “Well, Sir, in that case, could you let me talk to the prisoner?"

     Dustin's lower teeth bit softly into his upper lip, forming a sort of sandwich out of his drooping mustache hair. "I guess I don't see any harm in that.  But make it quick.  I don't want you to stir up this cell block any more than it already is."

     A frail, pale hand rose to the top of the huddle to give a feeble handshake. "Thank you Sheriff.  I appreciate your remarkable understanding, truly remarkable understanding.  Now, may I impose upon you for one more small thing?"

     "That depends on what it is."

     "A minor detail.  A truly minor detail, probably the most minor detail in the history of details.  Could I ask you to turn off the lights here on the cell block while I hold my conversation with the prisoner?"

     Dustin scowled.  "Now that, sir, is going to create a ruckus here.  May I ask why?"

      "Security purposes sir.  Very weighty considerations of national security."

     It defied common sense that this man had been elected, but he was going to be President in a matter of days and Dustin supposed his decisions had to be respected, even if they were crappy decisions.  If nothing else, Dustin Diesel was a soldier who followed orders.

     "I'll give you five minutes, then the lights go back on," Dustin reluctantly conceded.

     "Outstanding, outstanding.  Err, ahem, may I ask one more question?"

     "You can ask questions all day, sir, but I've got a county to restore to some semblance of law and order, so let's make it quick."

     “Awesome, outstanding," said the President-elect.  "By the way, I'm just a tremendous, tremendous fan of law and order, I’ll have you know.  But my question, Sir, and I don't mean to take up anymore of your valuable time, is whether or not you have a lost and found around here?"

     Dustin's eyebrows lowered suspiciously. "What kind of lost and found?"  These were the kind of questions problem prisoners asked him all the time.

      "Well, you know," the burning bush said with a pathetically un-Presidential squeak. "a place where they turn in found items that were previously lost."

     “Son," said Dustin, forgetting decorum by addressing the future Chief Executive of with this rather diminutive sobriquet.  "This is Santa Cruz County.  In Santa Cruz County, when things get lost, they tend to stay lost.  What kind of items?"

     “No, nothing, forget it," the President-elect whimpeed from behind the safety of his human wall.

     “Okay, five minutes.  I advise you to make efficient use of your time by not repeating the same adjectives twice, like you tend to do.  But it's your nickel."

     The President-elect whispered to a Secret Service man, who whispered back that an adjective was a word that modified a noun.  This confused him even more, so he let it rest.  "Thank you Sheriff.  I'm extremely, extremely appreciative of the wonderful, wonderful work you are doing here in Santa Cruz County."

     The lights went out.  In his cell the sudden darkness startled Mike.  This was the part where they burst in with billy clubs to either beat out a confession or gang rape him, he was thinking. 

     The cell door creaked open slowly, and the featureless silhouette of a man appeared in the doorway, outlined by the faint emergency lights in the passageway beyond.  Mike noted that the visitor was not wearing the Smokey bear hat of his previous visitor.  In fact, his head appeared to be exceptionally round and naked, like Vin Diesel (only distantly, distantly related to the Sheriff of Santa Cruz County), Dwayne Johnson, or other famous bald guys.  Mike had no inkling it was Trump himself.  The silhouette did not jibe.

    Then, as the other prisoners on the block began to loudly protest the lack of light, the shadowed outline opened his mouth, which at once revealed his identity.  "Hello Michael, I think you know who I am."

     "I didn't throw that brick at you," Michael said immediately.

     "Brick? Brick?" the President-elect had to think.  "Oh yes, the brick.  I didn't come here to talk about the brick."

     But Mike was not done talking about the brick.  He wanted to make sure this man knew the truth.  "As a matter of fact, I tried to stop that brick, and I think I kept it from hitting you a lot harder."

     “Hmmm...yes." The umbra of Trump's bald head eclipsed the faint light from the hall in totality. "Aah, I do remember.  The incident is engraved in my mind like a photograph.  Believe me, believe me, the American people and myself are tremendously, tre..." Ah-hah!  That was the double adjective he had been warned about, wasn't it? "I mean, very, very grateful," Damn he couldn't help it but very was a lot shorter and quicker than tremendously, wasn't it? "...about what you did.  But Michael, I didn't come here to talk about the brick.  I came here to talk about something much more potentially dangerous to the security of our nation.  Are you patriotic, Michael?  Are you a patriotic American?"

     Being something of a libertarian, though he did not know that, Michael wasn't a real big flag waver.  He didn't get teary-eyed during the national anthem, but where the hell else was he supposed to live? He was kind of stuck in America, so he supposed he liked it well enough.  Like a wife, for better or worse til death do us part." I guess.  Sure.  Why?"

     "If you love your country, Michael, you have to promise you won't talk about what you saw back there."

     Mike was confused.  The darkness made it worse.  The darkness disoriented him.
"What do you mean?  What did I see?"

     “Exactly, exact- very good Michael. I knew you were a smart kid.  I could tell that right away.  You didn't see anything at all.  But by the way..."  the President-elect leaned in closer to whisper. “Did you happen to see what happened to that thing you didn't see?"

     Now it suddenly occurred to Mike what this man was talking about.  Now that it was brought to his attention, he did remember the brick striking the forehead, then something being jarred loose, then the blinding reflection of the sun and - whoa!  Did this give him some kind of leverage?

     "You mean the - " Mike started excitedly, but the President-elect grabbed his arm to cut him off.

     "I'll have to ask you to keep your voice down, Michael.  This matter is of strict confidentiality.  I thought you loved your country."

     "I want out of here!  You gotta get me out!  If you do I won't tell!"

     The President-elect slowly leaned back again. Somehow, this act was much more menacing than his leaning in had been.  "Easy, Mike, easy.  It's not that easy."

     "What do you mean it's not that easy?  I thought you had special powers to get people out of jail."

     "Get me out too!" Some desperate dude the next cell down yelled.

     "I need to remind you, Michael, that I'm not quite President yet.  Until I take the oath I am powerless, utterly powerless.”  Was powerless an adjective?  He wasn’t sure.  “You have violated the laws of Santa Cruz County, not to mention pissed off the Sheriff pretty badly.  So I'm afraid you are going to have to stew here awhile and think about the consequences of your actions."

     "What actions?  I didn't do anything!  I didn't do anything!  I saved you!"

     The President-elect, supreme wheeler-dealer that he was, was now satisfied that his upper hand, his pimp hand if you will, had been restored. "Michael, Michael my dear, dear friend.  You're just going to have to be patient. In a few weeks I take office, then I'll see what I can do."

      "Lights on in twenty seconds!" a voice at the end of the cell block warned.

      Mike was desperate. "What do you mean, see what you can do?  A few weeks? You have to get me out of here!  I saved you!"

     “Michael, Michael, I'm afraid I have pressing business elsewhere.  Shoot me a tweet in a few weeks and we'll talk."

     A tweet?  A frickin' tweet!  How the hell was he supposed to tweet from inside jail?  He didn't even have a phone to tweet with.  He didn't even have a Twitter account.  He was going to rot in here forever!

     “Wait, wait!  You can't go!  I don't know anything ! I didn't see anything!  I-"

     The cell door rolled shut.

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Image courtesy of Marine 69-71 via Wikimedia Commons.