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 million-fold. 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 scum 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 balls 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 bastards with a cent in their pockets, than they wanted to be on our side of the bars. Howdoomed 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 harassed, 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 be 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 damn 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 bastards 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 goddam 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 massed 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 bad 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 God, be 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.
Pooch was sitting there, staring at his hands.
I sat down beside him. I had to lean in close to make myself beard over the noise of the animal herd.
"What're you in for?" I asked.
"ADW," he replied. He wasn't too hip on talking. I really couldn't blame him. ADW. Assault with a Deadly Weapon. A serious offense. Particularly if he'd been nabbed before and had any hind of a record.
I started to say something, I don't know what, when my man Strangways burst through the door again and motioned me to the bars. I patted Pooch lightly on the arm to let him know I'd be back, and went to my counsel. "Now," he began, as though we had accomplished something on his last trip through, "let me have that again."
"Havewhat 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."
"Mystory , Counselor, is that I'm innocent. I didn'tdo anything. I was just—"
"Yes, yes," he broke in. "I know. 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 arsenal. They picked me up on the Sullivan, and I have a perfectly legitimate use for the weapons—I neverthought 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'tdone any—"
He broke in rudely, "Ever used it for an illegal purpose?"
"What're you, kidding or something?" I was outraged.
"I justtold you, I'm a legitimate writer, and I used it when lecturing to youth groups, YMCA classes, 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 atorero making a pass at the bull, and as Strangways went spinning through the door in his own personalveronica, I felt like holleringOle!)
Then I went cold all over, 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. I gave Pooch a feeble look, hoping I'd never see him again in that cell, and watched him mouth the words, "See you soon, man."
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 clustered 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 Button-Down Armor, the sharp and pithy Mr. Strangways, came bursting on the scene and said (so help me God 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 HAD A RIGHT TO OWN OF THEM? came the voice of someone's God. SINCE WHEN DOES A BEING A WRITER GIVE HIM ANY RIGHT TO OWN A WEAPON? One THOUSAND DOLLARS BAIL.
I nearly fainted.
"YourHonor, " whined Strangways, "fivehundred !"
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.
God, 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 compassion 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.
Pooch grinned. "Welcome home, man," be said.
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, money-grubbing, ambulance-chasing practice to come down here to help me and I was probably guilty anyhow.
All I could think of was how be had whined, actuallywhined in front of the Judge. "YourHonor , fivehundred !" Jeezus God in Heaven! What aschmuckl! 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.
"How'd'ja do?"
I turned to see Pooch waiting for me. He had been talking to his own Legal Aid man. "About as good as you're going to do," I snapped back. I wasn't feeling charitable, either.
Then his man came for him, and he went out to face the Judge and the Judge's justice. I slumped down on the bench and started to crack up.
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, harassed, 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 pass 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.