A UNIFORM SHADE OF RED

Part 2

Theodore, a bit uncomfortable speaking to a blank wall, proceeded with his arrest and being taken downtown to the police station. He told the wall how he had been bound in chains and handcuffs, then taken to a large, steel-walled room for interrogation. He described briefly his confusion and extreme nervousness in the beginning, and how the detective in charge handled it.

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Then the detective said to me, “All right, Mr. Pendergast, how are you feeling now? A little better?”

The detective, Lieutenant Belmont, was an all right guy. You know, not abrasive and nasty like most of them you see on TV. You know what I’m saying? I think he really was concerned about how I felt. He looked a lot like Kojack on a bad day, but acted a lot more like Columbo. You know, the funny little guy with the antique Peugeot? Well, maybe you don’t remember either one of them unless you stay up late to watch old reruns on the Crime and Punishment Channel…like I do — did.

“Yes, sir. Much better now, thank you,” I said.

“Do you feel like telling me about it now, or would you rather wait for your attorney?” he asked, then put a small recorder on the table in front of me. He smiled. It was a friendly kind of smile that helped make me feel at ease.

Oh, don’t get me wrong, he was serious all right. I couldn’t blame him for that. I mean, I’d done something pretty bad and, well, it was his job to get all the information he could about it. But I think he really wanted to make me feel comfortable…well, as comfortable as you can feel when you’re wrapped up in chains and locked in a little room with no windows like a solid cage for a wild animal. There was a tiny slit of a window high on the door and I could see shadows moving outside.

He didn’t resort to planting his nose against mine and shouting obscenities or pounding the table. He even brought me a glass of water and helped me drink it. He offered me a cigarette, too. Not at all like in the movies or on TV. I think they go way too far with that stuff, don’t you? I mean, it’s really not like what they depict in those shows at all.

That’s the reason I felt bad when I told him I wanted my attorney present before explaining why I had done it. I wasn’t trying being obstinate, I’ve just seen enough to know that Berni, he’s my attorney, might have been able to get me off on some obscure technicality if he wasn’t there when I talked. Something like that might not have set too well in Belmont’s record, you know. Anyway, I explained my reasoning and he sat back and laughed. I’m not sure why he did that, but I assume it was out of nervous relief for my having reminded him of that potential.

Berni arrived about five minutes later and insisted he be allowed some time with me — alone. Belmont smiled at him and said he didn’t see anything wrong with that. As soon as he left the room, Berni opened his briefcase and threw a big yellow pad down on the table. Then he screamed at me.
“Theodore, what the devil have you done? Tell me none of this is true!” I could tell Berni was upset because he always called me Ted when he wasn’t, and his ears, much too large for his little head, were all red around the edges.

“No, Berni,” I said. “I did it, all right.” His expression told me that was not at all what he wanted to hear.

“Are you aware they can hang you for this?”

“No they can’t,” I said. “I have my choice between the gas chamber and lethal injection, Berni. You’re thinking of some other state.”

Berni turned all pink until his face matched his ears. Then he slammed his fist down on the table. From the look on his face, it must have hurt. “What? Are you completely out of your mind, Theodore?”

“I don’t think so,” I told him. “You know, Berni, I think I’ll go for the injection.”

“Okay, okay, okay — do you want to tell me what really happened. This can’t be true. Not the way it reads in the crime report,” he said. He was almost crying. I had never seen him like that. Close a couple of times, but never like that.

“Oh, it’s true, Berni. And yes, I want to tell you and Lieutenant Belmont about it. Why don’t you call him back in now?”

“Theodore, I don’t want you to say anything more to the police until I’ve had a chance to work up a defense. What have you told them, so far?”

“Not a whole lot, Berni. Just my name and address…stuff like that. I wanted you here before I told them about it.”

“Well, that’s something you’ve done right. If you give me a chance to do my job, I might just be able to get you out of this. Well, maybe not out of it — but we can bargain for a lesser charge or at least a more lenient sentence. All right, Theodore? Are you listening to me?” Berni’s nose pressed hard against mine and he was shouting.

“Berni, you’re getting all red in the face,” I said. “That can’t be good for you. Look, all I want to do is tell them why I did it…so they’ll understand. I don’t want them to think I’m some kind of a nut, you know.”

“If you haven’t told them anything, how can you be so sure they know you did it?”

“Because, Berni, the people who saw me do it told them. You didn’t read the whole report?”

“There were witnesses? Theodore, are you telling me people actually saw you do this…this thing?” He was beginning to wheeze and I was getting worried that he could have a heart attack, or something worse, maybe. It also bothered me that he hadn’t read the report.

“Sure there were witnesses, Berni. It was in the Tribune’s main office in the middle of the afternoon. That’s a morning paper, Berni. Deadlines, you know. There might have been thirty…maybe forty people in there at the time.”

“I can’t believe I’m hearing this. Forty people saw you? Actually saw you…do it? This is incredible! How can I possibly offer up a reasonable defense?” He stopped, dropped into a chair and began thinking. I knew he was thinking hard because he has a habit of sticking his pencil in his nose when deep in thought. It’s disgusting, I know, but that’s Berni.

I explained to him that they hadn’t actually seen me do it because the door was closed, but they saw me go into the office and the results when I’d finished.

He looked horribly perplexed, then, after a few minutes of maneuvering the eraser around in his nostrils, he slammed the pencil down on the table and announced, “I’ve got it! This case is so absolutely, utterly, totally absurd — I know it’ll work.”

“What’s that, Berni? What will work?” I asked.

“You, Ted.” I felt better because he called me Ted and that meant he was calming down. “You — you’re incompetent, Ted.”

“I beg your pardon?” I couldn’t believe Berni would actually try to hurt my feelings, so I hoped he would explain that remark.

“Mentally incompetent, Ted. You know very well what I mean. You…you blacked out. Something snapped in your mind. In a moment of heated passion — rage — you committed the crime and now…now you can’t remember a thing. You got that? You can’t remember anything between the time you entered the Tribune’s office and this morning. It’s all a blank. Just tell them you don’t remember anything. Can you do that for me, Ted?”

“Sure I can, Berni.”

Berni sighed and his body slumped back down in the chair. He looked…relieved.

“That’s my man, Ted,” he said, then called for Belmont.

“But I won’t.”

I couldn’t fight him off because of the chains and Berni was doing a good job of strangling the life out of me when Belmont pulled him away. I don’t know what got into him to cause him to do such a thing. A brief struggle ensued between Berni and Lieutenant Belmont. They scuffled for a minute or two, then the detective pushed Berni out into the hall. I think I remember Berni crying out something like, “The man’s insane and I’m going to kill-l-l-l him-m-m-m. Kill-l-l-l him-m-m-m.”

Anyway, he and Lieutenant Belmont returned a little while later — maybe fifteen minutes or so. Berni seemed unusually calm when they came back in. Subdued, you could say. There was a wad of toilet paper stuffed into his left nostril and his right eye looked a little swollen.

They both sat down on opposite sides of the table and Belmont pushed that little recorder in front of me again. Berni shriveled in his seat and said nothing.

“Now, Mr. Pendergast,” the lieutenant began, “the recorder is running and a Mr. Melvin L. Bernstein is present in the room. Is Mr. Bernstein your legal counsel?”

When we had dispensed with all the preliminaries, Belmont told me I could proceed with my story…in any way I wanted, like what you said a minute ago, you know? He showed a genuine interest in what I had to say, so I told him how, when I was very young, my father had it set in his mind that I would follow in his footsteps and take over the family shoe store. Three generations of Pendergasts had run that store and he let it be known, in no uncertain terms, that he was not about to see that chain broken.

Mom, of course, had other ideas and tried to interest me in becoming a doctor. Their division over the issue persisted for several years until they reached a compromise they found mutually acceptable. I, they said, would become a podiatrist and my little brother, Danny, would run the store. Danny would lease me space above the store at cost-plus ten and we could feed off each other, like sharks in a feeding frenzy.

“No,” I said. “I don’t want to be a whateverologist or a somethingiatrist. I’m sorry, but all I’ve ever wanted to do is write. I want to be an…an author.”

I might as well have said I wanted to be a kiddy-porn baron, or that I was a serial rapist in training.

“What did I tell you, Martha? Your son’s going to be a no-account bum. He doesn’t even give us the courtesy of sinking into the gutter over time. No, he…he plans this idiocy in advance!”

“Son…Teddy, are you sure you don’t want to work for a living like normal people? Your father and I would like to see you make something of yourself, be somebody,” Mom said sweetly.

“Yer stupid, Teddy. Stupid, stupid, stupid,” Danny said.

During the next six years, Danny did well enough to open two new locations uptown, while I made it to Manager Third Class of our local BurgerBeast. It was in that year that I sold my first short story to one of the literary magazines. They paid me ten dollars and two free copies, neither one of which contained my story. I went to the corner newsstand and spent half of what they had paid me for a copy with my brilliant piece in it, you know, so I could give it to Mom for her birthday.

Click here for Part 3 [agnostic.com]