I beheld the Pipsisewah and Skeezicks, rent physical and massive, blatant and organic, before me. They occupied the entirety of the back office in the warren of Sheriff’s facilities attached to the county jail.
“I was told you had my client,” I started. The answering snicker that passed between them was sinister without being unfriendly.
The deputy sitting at the rusted steel desk rubbed a grubby finger across the pebbled skin on the side of his inimitable nose. He swept the grim office with a pantomime gaze, once back and forth, slow and deliberate.
“I don’t see any clients here,” he shrugged.
“Susie at the front desk told me she was in a cell. She sent me back here to talk to you.”
The deputy standing beside him jerked his bony arms in an attitude of mock offense.
“It’s not a nice office, but it’s not a cell,” he wheezed.
“I understood you were the arresting officers,” I tried.
“Ain’t been called ‘arresting’ since my runway days back in old pair-ees,” tittered the seated man.
“So you deny that you arrested her; that she’s here in the building.”
The jerky man jerked. “I don’t recall saying that. D’you?”
“No,” his seated partner said. “Not that I recall.”
Satisfied that they had put up an impassible barrier, they slumped into a posture of relaxation. The standing man slouched with his whole body, curving into a panorama of uncomfortable angles. In the vintage desk chair, his rounder counterpart leaned back, momentarily filling the available air with the shrill music of elderly steel tested to its limits. He raised his battered and scuffed shoes to the desk’s surface.
Is there anything in the world as sad as an ugly son-of-a-bitch with his feet up? Only the man of incandescent ordinariness who needs something from him, perhaps.
“Maybe there’s been a misunderstanding,” I tried. “You say she’s not here, I’ll go tell Susie you said she made a mistake.” I half-turned to sham beginning the process of twining back through the labyrinth to Susie’s shabby Knossos.
“God don’t make mistakes, so I try to slip a couple extra in there, keep up the side,” said the sitter around a hole better suited to a cigar and the neck of a bottle than to civil discourse. His angular sidekick snorted, apparently finding wit in this dry socket.
“So, can you take me back to her? I know she’s demanded an attorney.”
“Slow down, Andy Matlock. I’m here for a long time, not a good time,” he said without moving his face or dropping his feet.
“Most people say it the other way,” I shot back.
“Yeah. But most people are worthless.”
With that, I felt I had done all I could do. The skuttlemagoon continued well into the morning, back and forth between Susie and the pair of bazumpuses in their tawdry lair, until I could finally get them to admit the client was there, and then get her set to be arraigned before the local magistrate. Sadly, no amount of clever was enough to handle these two.
| Ruth Gibbs | Readin’ |
| Ben Gibbs | Writin’ |