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“Okay, listen,” he says—unnecessarily, since I am doing nothing but. “Let’s go over what will happen at your arraignment.”
“When is that?” I ask with keen interest. I find that I am suddenly, stupidly eager for arraignment. It will at least get me out of my cell for a few hours.
“The law says within forty-eight hours of your arrest,” he says impatiently.
“I’ve been here two and a half weeks,” I tell him.
He frowns, tucks the phone between ear and shoulder, and looks at the papers. He shakes his head. “That’s not possible,” he says, digging deeper into the paperwork. Or I assume from the motion of his mouth that he says that. I do not hear him say it, since the act of shaking his head causes the phone to lurch off his shoulder and swing down to the end of its cord, smashing into the concrete wall with a thunderous crash that leaves me half-deaf in one ear.
I switch ears. My lawyer picks up the phone.
“According to this,” Bernie says, “you were arrested last night.”
“Bernie,” I say. The use of his name appears to offend him, and he frowns, but flips a page and continues to look at the papers. “Bernie. Look at me,” I say, and I admit I am pleased with the vaguely sinister sound of it. Bernie looks up at last. “Have you seen my face before?” I ask. “In the paper, on TV?”
Bernie stares. “Yes, of course,” he says. “But…that was a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t it?”
“Two and a half weeks,” I say again. “And I have been here ever since.”
“But that’s…I don’t see how…” Once again he flutters through the assembled pages, and once again the phone leaps off his shoulder and smashes into the wall. Now I am half-deaf in both ears. By the time Bernie has the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear again, the ringing sound has subsided to slightly less than symphonic levels, enough so that I can hear him.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “There’s some problem with the paperwork. It’s completely…Did you have a psych evaluation?”
“I don’t think so,” I admit.
“Ah,” he says. He looks relieved. “Okay, well—I think we should set that up in any case, right? Because to kill all those people like that—”
“I didn’t kill them, Bernie,” I tell him. “I’m innocent.”
He waves that off. “And the pedophile thing, you know. That’s being reclassified as a mental illness? So we can work that, too.”
I open my mouth to protest that I am innocent of pedophilia, too—but Bernie drops the receiver again, and I choose to save my hearing instead, yanking the phone away from my ear and waiting patiently until he picks it up.
“So anyway, the arraignment has to be within forty-eight hours. The law. So it should have….” He frowns again, and pulls out one stapled stack of papers. “Except—shit, I didn’t see this before.” His lips move as he reads, flips quickly through three pages to the end, frowns heavily. “Didn’t see this,” he repeats. “Shit.”
“What is it?” I ask.
He shakes his head but miraculously keeps his grip on the phone. “I don’t get it,” he mutters. “This doesn’t make any—” Bernie flips through the entire stack once more, apparently without finding anything he likes. “Well, shit, this changes everything,” he says briskly.
“In a good way?” I ask hopefully.
“This whole…The paperwork is…” He shakes his head.
This time I am ready, and with the lightning reflexes for which I am justly famous, I hold the phone away from my ear as, once again, Bernie drops his end. Even from a safe distance, I hear the crash.
I put the phone back to my ear and watch as Bernie juggles the stack of papers, vainly trying to shove it into some state that resembles neatness.
“All right,” he says. “I’m going to look into this. I’ll be back,” he promises, without sounding even vaguely sinister.
“Thank you,” I say, since good manners must prevail even in the darkest circumstance. But Bernie is already gone.
I hang up the phone and turn around. My faithful companion, Lazlo, is right there, and he nods at me to stand. “Let’s go, Dex,” he says. I rise, still in something of a fog, and Lazlo takes me back to my snug little alcove. I sit down on my bunk, and for once I don’t feel the hardness underneath the pitifully thin “mattress.” There is much to ponder: arraignment within forty-eight hours of arrest, for starters. It rings a dim bell, summoning up some faint memory from a criminal justice class long ago at UM. I believe I recall that it is one of my most basic rights, along with Presumption of Innocence, and the fact that Anderson has managed to avoid both is very troubling. Clearly things are much worse than even I could anticipate.
I think of my next-door neighbor, here since 1983. I wonder if Detective Anderson’s father arrested him. I wonder whether some gray-bearded version of Dexter will still be sitting here in thirty years, listening to some future version of Lazlo, perhaps even a robotic one, telling some new hopeless ninny that poor feeble-witted old Dexter has been here all along, still awaiting arraignment. I wonder if I will have any teeth left by then. Not that I need them for the cheese-substance sandwiches. But teeth are good things to have in any case. They improve your smile, no matter how fake it is. And without teeth, all the money I have spent on toothpaste over the years would be a complete waste.
I vow to keep my teeth. In any case, I am more worried at this point about keeping my mind. The reality of my situation is not in any way encouraging. I am trapped in a true nightmare, confined to a small and inescapable space, with absolutely no control of anything at all, except possibly my breathing. Even this, I am quite sure, would be out of my control if I decide to stop it. Suicide is actively discouraged here for some reason, in spite of the fact that it would help reduce overcrowding, save money, and lighten the workload for Lazlo and his comrades.
No way out, no power over my own fate, no end to it all—and now, with a surreal flourish of bureaucratic cruelty, my court-appointed attorney has informed me that my papers are not in order, without informing me what that means. Naturally I assume the implications are ominous. I know very well that things can always get worse—the kitchen might run out of cheeselike substance—but really, isn’t there a point where even a hypothetical god has heaped on enough? No matter how furious he is at Dexter for violating some basic Rules of the Playground, haven’t we piled on sufficient fecal matter?
