Gorilla and the Bird Read online

  When the train stopped, everyone spilled out in their own directions. Half went left, half went right, and I didn’t know who to follow. How do I know where to go? How do I know when this is over? I couldn’t spot the eye in the sky. This was starting to feel less like a TV show and more like surveillance—a sick social experiment to see how far I’d go for the cameras. Alone and without guidance, I panicked. My eyes filled with tears. “What do you want from me?!” I screamed, crying so hard my contacts flushed out of my eyes. I’d lost the game.

  Two NYPD officers approached. Their uniforms looked real. My hands were folded behind my head like a captured soldier. I was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only soccer shorts in late October.

  “What’s the matter, buddy?” the first cop asked.

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to figure it out.”

  “You’re standing on a subway platform with no shoes on, no shirt, and you’re crying. That don’t seem like a problem to you?” The second cop seemed to be playing the role of Bad Cop.

  “I think the problem is I’m cold.”

  “You don’t seem violent.”

  “I’m completely nonviolent.”

  “So you don’t mind if we just cuff you for safety purposes, then?”

  “But you’re not real cops?” I asked as they detained me.

  “No, there’s a costume party later.”

  Like the construction workers, their accents were just a little too authentic, and their radios were a bit overactive. They weren’t real; I didn’t need to invoke my Sixth Amendment right to counsel.

  They led me to a tiny satellite office inside the subway station. “I don’t suppose you have ID?” Good Cop asked.

  “Not in my pocketless shorts, no.”

  I found myself in the back of an ambulance instead of a squad car. The paramedics told me we had to wait but otherwise seemed entirely uninterested in anything I had to say. They listened on the radio to the Yankees playing the Angels for the American League Championship, but it sounded prerecorded. And who under the age of seventy actually listened to baseball games? We were in a holding pattern, but for what I didn’t know.

  After three or so innings, another radio cracked on: “Intake available at Bellevue.”

  Chapter 2

  Normally I wasn’t the guy riding in the ambulance to Bellevue. I was the guy who represented you after the police declared you an EDP—emotionally disturbed person—and decided that you need a visit to the psych ward before you’re stable enough to go in front of a judge. Maybe you took a shit on the subway. Maybe it’s the crack and the bugs are back. Maybe you were so high on meth you convinced yourself you were the devil and put two steak knives in your skull where your horns should be.

  I was in my first year as a public defender in Brooklyn, and I’d already seen more than a hundred of these EDP cases. Earl Miller Jr. was the most memorable, and he wasn’t just screaming at the wind when the police found him; Earl had a “landlord–tenant issue” on his hands.

  Like all my clients, I first met Earl in “the pen”—one huge jail cell in the bowels of Brooklyn Criminal Court, reeking of homelessness, halitosis, piss, and moldy cheese sandwiches that no one eats. Night arraignments run until 1 a.m., and many in the pen—all black or brown, save an occasional drunk Russian—have been through the system enough times to know that if they don’t get called before 1 a.m. they won’t see a judge until the next morning. There’s no rhyme or reason to the order in which they will see an attorney, and some have been sitting in the cage for twenty-four hours. Unsurprisingly, the possibility of a night upright on a cement bench doesn’t result in a calm atmosphere: restlessness, desperation, and anger are as thick as the smell. Every name called pisses off the other twenty-nine men packed in like cattle.

  “Earl Miller Jr.”

  An enormous man, probably thirty-six inches from shoulder to shoulder, squeezed into the interview booth. Before I could hand over my business card and say “Hi, I’m Zack McDermott. I’m going to be your lawyer,” Earl was already shouting everyone’s first question: “Am I going home?”

  Earl Jr.’s head was shaved bald, shiny, and—like his shoulders—cartoonishly huge. His eyes were moist, large, and vacant; his cheeks so puffy it looked like he was holding his breath. But most people’s attention would probably be drawn first to the scar that ran from his left eyebrow to just below his bottom lip. I couldn’t imagine this man smiling. “Dis ain’t nuttin but a landlord–tenant issue.” His voice was deep and sluggish, like a bear that’s been shot with a tranquilizer dart. I still hadn’t given him my card; he was worked up enough that I decided to just skip it for the moment. “Landlord–tenant issue. That’s all this is.” The criminal complaint I was holding suggested otherwise.

  “Earl, did you have a problem with your landlord?”

  “That’s all it fucking is.”

  “Okay. I understand you think this is a landlord–tenant issue, but you are in jail. Can I tell you what they are accusing you of?”

  “You can’t tell me shit because dis a landlord–tenant issue! You ain’t my fucking landlord!”

  “No, I’m your lawyer. And they—the cops and the DA—think it’s more serious than that. The police are saying you threatened to burn down your apartment and that you had a bat or a club and you were threatening this guy, Daniel, saying you were going to fuck him up. Is any of that true? Did he threaten you?”

  “I ain’t talking to you.”

  “I think you should, because if you don’t, I can’t really help you, and no one else is trying to.”

  It was late in the night and if I was going to get Earl in front of the judge and possibly save him a night on Rikers, we were going to have to move.

  “Five minutes, Counsel, the judge wants your notice!” a court officer hollered at me.

  People who have been in and out of the system can usually detect bullshit pretty quickly, and normally I can get my clients, however belligerent they are at our introduction, to trust me. But I could tell Earl’s distrust was different from the standard convict’s contempt for every member of the system. He simply didn’t know what the fuck was going on. I followed the script the PD’s office taught us for cases like this.

  “Earl, can you tell me if any of this stuff they are saying about you is true? I’m not saying it’s true. It’s the police’s story. But can you tell me your story? We gotta move here. I have to ask you some questions, fast, if we’re going to get you out of here tonight.”

  “Fuck you mean if?! Dis ain’t nuttin but a landlord–tenant issue! I’m getting the fuck outta here! Just let me talk to the judge! Fuck outta here, man!”

  He got up and slammed his meaty palm against the glass.

  “Real quick, Earl: Have you ever taken any medication?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you know what you take, Earl?”

  “Seroquel.”

  “Anything else? Risperdal maybe? Depakote?” Knowing the names of the popular antipsychotic meds was part of the job—it came up a lot.

  “Depakote.”

  “You ever been to the hospital for anything?”

  “Yeah. I been to the hospital.”

  “Did they give you drugs there? Is that where you started the Depakote?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they say maybe you were bipolar? Or schizophrenic?”

  “Yeah. I been that.”

  “All right, thank you.”

  I scribbled “730?” on the top left corner of my file—shorthand for New York Criminal Procedure Law § 730.10, the statute that says any defendant who, as a result of mental disease or defect, lacks the capacity to understand the proceedings against him or assist in his own defense must have his case dismissed. That doesn’t mean he gets to go home, though; best-case scenario, he’d end up at Bellevue psych ward instead of Rikers. Downside is, at Bellevue he’d still be among “criminals,” and they’d all be mentally ill.

  “One more thing. Don’t talk to the
judge. Don’t say shit. Only I talk, okay? It’s your only chance of getting out tonight.”

  “Fuck outta here, man.”

  “I’m serious. Nothing. If you have something you want to say, whisper it in my ear and I’ll tell the judge.”

  Help us, patron saint of bail arguments, whoever you are. Shut Earl the fuck up for two minutes, in the name of all that is holy. Amen.

  “Counsel, now or never.” The court officer didn’t appreciate me stretching the usual five-minute interview into seven.

  Everything was fine in front of the judge…until Your Honor asked Counsel where, if released (and that’s a big if), his client would be staying for the evening.

  “He can stay with his mother, Judge.”

  “I need an address,” the judge said.

  I whispered in Earl’s ear, “Give me an address. You can make it up. Just give me some numbers and a street. Make it your mom’s if you can.”

  Armageddon. “Fuck outta here! Cocksucker! Tell this fucking judge dis ain’t nuttin but a landlord–tenant issue. I ain’t gotta tell you no fucking address! This a illegal landlord!”

  A fella Earl’s size doesn’t have to flail too long or too hard to get taken down by four or five court officers and dragged by his feet out of the courtroom and back into the pen. I took a little sidestep away from the lectern, just far enough to avoid getting gang-tackled along with him, but I kept a poker face in a feeble, nonverbal attempt to persuade the judge that This ain’t nothing to be scared of. Just a little ol’ landlord–tenant issue. In other words, My dude’s not a threat to society.

  “Judge, if I may be heard on bail.”

  “Counsel, just stop.”

  “But, Judge—”

  Gavel.

  “Enough! I’m done here. Bail is set in the amount of five thousand dollars.”

  Gavel.

  “Judge, it’s a misdemean—”

  “AR-3 is adjourned for the evening and will resume at nine thirty tomorrow morning.”

  The crowd clucked and groaned. Their loved ones would be caged overnight.

  “Counsel, a quick word?” The judge was all smiley now, off the record and on his way to a cab.

  “Of course, Judge.”

  “Is he 730?”

  “Off the record? Maybe.”

  Pretty switched on, that judge. Managed to deduce that something wasn’t quite right with the flailing giant who could still be heard screaming “Fuck outta here!” from all the way back in the pen.

  “I thought so, Counsel. Good night. Good job.”

  “Thank you, Judge. You too.” You indifferent cocksucker.

  I became a public defender to represent the dregs, the castoffs, the addicts, and the Uncle Eddies. People who come from the kind of poverty that makes them steal Tide from a Rite Aid to sell on the black market and puts them in the pen, in line right in front of Earl at night arraignments. My opponents: judges who take offense at profanity out of the mouths of schizophrenics; DAs who think the best solution for a guy like Earl—a man who could barely tie his shoes, let alone light a brick building on fire—is to lock him in a cage; cops who collar and drive the Earls of the world to Central Booking instead of the hospital.

  I grew up in Wichita, Kansas, in a house that was a baloney sandwich throw from the trailer park. My mom, the Bird—a high school teacher with a passion for helping the “bad” kids—welcomed into our home any thug, gangbanger, ex-con, or other member of the general discard pile. When I was in high school, she tutored Crips and Bloods alike around our dinner table every day after school. Some got shot, some went to jail, some went to college. A couple did all three.

  Watching my mom tutor eighteen-year-olds who read at a second-grade level—and who considered our humble abode the Taj Mahal because we had a weight bench and a Sega Genesis—showed me that the difference between the track to prison and the track to grad school boils down to roughly a thousand consecutive nights of Clifford the Big Red Dog and Where the Wild Things Are, along with being told by someone who loves you: “A writer is always writing” and “A writer’s job is to tell the truth” and, once, “A writer is a liar. A good writer is a good liar. And you’re a silver-tongued devil, boy.” In other words, being lucky enough to have the Bird or someone like her as your mom.

  Playing video games and pickup basketball in the driveway with guys who would graduate to federal prison introduced me to America’s locking-black-men-in-cages phenomenon. I studied Malcolm X and Cornel West in college and started reading prison memoirs, which got me to thinking: Isn’t locking a man in a cage and subjecting him to beatings and possible rape and murder a tad harsh for selling a little dope?

  Law school was not only my ticket out of the lower middle class and out of Wichita, but also a chance for me to help keep the disadvantaged out of prison. I grew up on Natty Lights, mac ’n’ cheese, and Camaro lust; I was never going to be a slick dick corporate lawyer drinking $17 cocktails after work and slamming my fist on the boardroom table. Researching contracts for the Koch brothers or Exxon held no appeal. No, my mission was to push back against the weight of racial injustice. Get my Malcolm X on.

  While I never doubted that I’d picked the right hill to die on, even in my first nine months on the job, I couldn’t help but wonder if I was too late to the battle. After crumbled communities, failed schools, narcotics, disease, prejudice, and disregard had done their work, I’d be lying if I said it didn’t feel like I was trying to clean up the ocean one gum wrapper at a time.

  Thankfully, the cure for soul-crushing impotence in the face of systemic injustice is laughter, and we public defenders are not above having a laugh at some pretty fucked-up shit. And in the modern penal state, once you get over the abject brutality, the brain-seizing injustice, and the rancid smell, there is plenty of comedy to go around. As a PD, even the average phone call is more colorful than the typical corporate lawyer’s entire workweek.

  “Hello. Legal Aid.”

  “This is Anne.”

  “Anne who?”

  “Anne with the prostitution case.”

  “Anne with the prostitution case…”

  “The one that they say I gave a blowjob for ten dollars behind the train station.”

  “Which train station?”

  “Canarsie L.”

  Oh, $10-L-Train-Blowjob Anne. “Right, how are you? So sorry. Let me get your file. Hey, can you hold on really quick? Other line…Hello?”

  “This Keith.”

  “Keith who?”

  “Keith I had a case.”

  Right, Keith, figured. That’s why you’re calling me. “Which case?”

  “They say I beat up my girlfriend and I got an order of protection now.”

  Right, Keith. I have twelve of those…

  “It was my child’s mother.”

  I have ten of those. “Any weapons involved? When did you get arraigned? When’s your next court date? Can you give me your last name?”

  Friends, strangers too, love to ask, “What’s the most interesting case you have right now?” I don’t know. “What’s the most fucked-up?” I don’t know. But then, when I think about my day for a minute, I realize that I can say with a straight face, “Yesterday a woman told me that of course she didn’t have any crack rock. If she had crack rock, she’d have just put it in her pussy. “Why wouldn’t I just put it in my pussy? Answer me that—if I had a rock, why wouldn’t I just put it in my pussy?” It’s a good question. Not sure I’d lead with it in front of the judge, but a valid point nonetheless.

  So that was my nine-to-five: crack in the pussy, homeless people yelling at me, me begging DAs for plea bargains, me selling those plea bargains to the homeless people, piss-smelling jail cells, seizures at the lectern, power-tripping judges, and court officers yelling at mothers worried about their babies being sent to Rikers Island. I had a front-row seat to a fascinating and horrible postmodern morality play starring drug addicts, cops, wannabe cops, crusading DAs, hippie antiestablishment ana
rchist colleagues, jaded and worn-down alcoholic colleagues, and a basketful of various other cautionary tales. I wasn’t sure yet what my role in this production would be, but, Lord, it was horrendous, engrossing, and—if you looked at it right—mordantly entertaining.

  I’d passed exactly five and a half hours in Manhattan before moving there, and three of those were spent interviewing for my job at Legal Aid. Everything I knew about the city came from TV, movies, and late-nineties hip-hop. Seinfeld taught me that I might be able to date out of my league; Home Alone 2 showed me that the Plaza was a fine place to lay one’s head; and Biggie and Jay Z informed me that, for a young and hungry public defender, Brooklyn was where the action was.

  I lived in a half-dozen apartments with fifteen different roommates in my first year in New York. Every time I moved into a new place, I brought fewer and fewer possessions with me. By the time I settled into my apartment on St. Marks, I could fit everything I owned, along with myself, in a yellow cab; eventually it took just two hours to go from first T-shirt packed to housewarming party. It was exactly as glamorous as it sounds—both the good and the bad—but I was drinking New York from a fire hose.

  First stop was Harlem with the Regis brothers. They had the same dad but different moms. Sian-Pierre was working at BET and starting a fashion blog. Joe was an investment banker. We smoked and watched Planet Earth after work every night with the girls next door. They became my first close friends in New York, but Harlem turned out to be too damn far from Brooklyn, even when I still looked forward to riding the subway every morning.

  Next, I moved in with three young attorneys from my office who were a man short of signing a lease on a four-bedroom. That also lasted a month. I called it quits after one of them tried to fight me for declining his invitation to go shot for shot to the bottom of his half-empty liter of vodka; it was a Wednesday. I never complained that he and the other two blacked out four nights a week and occasionally smashed pint glasses against the wall. I didn’t even mind their rampant cocaine use or their dealer buzzing himself up at 1 a.m. on a school night. But haze drinking at twenty-five was a bridge too far.