Slater pointed to Nick and said, “You need to go back wherever it is you come from. Mr. O’Brien, stand on the dock with Deputy Myers, please. Deputy Morgan and I are coming aboard to search your boat.” He handed me the search warrant.
“Search it for what? What’s your probable cause? Maybe you don’t need one.”
Slater crossed his arms, glanced at one deputy then looked at Nick and me. He said, “Get off the boat or my men will remove you.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Nick protested. “You think I look like a terrorist?”
“You can get off the boat or I call INS,” Slater said.
“And you can kiss my IN AS—”
“That’s ludicrous, Detective,” I said, jumping in before Nick lost his temper enough to get him arrested. “You talk about immigration and yet you party with people who exploit people because INS doesn’t interfere.”
“You made quite an impression the other night, O’Brien. Pissed off a lot of people. The wrong people. Mr. Brennen didn’t find any humor in your wrecking his party and breaking one of his employee’s wrists. This, by the way, is one reason I’m here. Roger Burns has filed assault and battery charges against you. Deputy Morgan will be taking you in and booking you on that one. Before we all go down to the sheriff’s office, we’d like to see what’s on your boat.”
“By all means, Detective. Nick and I’ll just step aside and let the long arm of the law reach wherever it pleases.” We got off Jupiter as Slater and his deputy boarded.
The deputy on the dock stood with his feet spread, arms folded across his chest.
Nick lowered his voice. “Sean, that dude definitely got a boner on to screw you, man. What the hell did you do to piss off the onion?”
“I found a body, a body somehow connected to his wealthy friends, or at least their farming operation. His millionaire pals are no doubt funding his bid to become sheriff. If he gets it, I’ll probably be in jail on some violation of the Patriot Act. Max will be tossed in the dog pound.”
“Man, that’s where they kill dogs.”
I lowered my voice. “Dave ought to be watching the show live about now. After they take me, go to Dave’s boat and play back the recorded images on the hard drive. When you edit the video, show a few seconds of the master cabin right before Slater enters, keep the video going as he searches, and then cut it right after he leaves.”
“No problem.”
“Here’s the e-mail address.”
“When you want me to send it?”
“I’ll call you.”
“Okay.”
“Thanks, Nick.”
“You be careful, man. That dick is crazy, and he’s wearing a badge.”
My cell rang. “Sean,” Dave said. “You got him! He went ballistic searching your cabin. Caught on video! Body language really tells the story.”
I watched Salter exit Jupiter and I said to Dave, “Work with Nick on the editing.”
“Will do. Talk about reality television.”
I closed the cell as Slater approached, the sunlight reflecting off his head, sweat dripping from his face. “Pretty clean boat you keep. O’Brien. Guess you vacuum and scrub it down, that sort of thing, a lot.”
“I like a clean boat.”
“Then you won’t like our county jail. Nasty place. Not nearly as clean as your boat.” He turned to the deputy. “Book him. Bring Mr. O’Brien in for assault charges.”
The deputy pulled the handcuffs off his belt and walked my way. “Hands behind your back,” he said. Then he read my rights to me.
“Nick, don’t forget to lock Jupiter.”
The large deputy reached for my upper arm to lead me down the dock.
Slater and the second deputy followed. With my hands cuffed behind my back, I was marched by my marina neighbors. People paused from polishing or washing boats, turning my way to see the parade.
We had to walk right by the tiki bar leading to the parking lot. A dozen locals stopped talking, put their beers down, and watched. One man, Big John, who lived on a twenty-year-old trawler called Heaven’s Gate, held up his beer in a toast. He yelled, “Sean, you’d better be out before St. Pattie’s day! Ya hear me?”
Kim looked at me in disbelief, her mouth forming an O, and her right hand touching a spot beneath her throat. As I was led to the patrol car, I heard a blackbird’s cackling mixed with drunks laughing and Buffett on a CD singing, Changes in Latitudes.
THIRTY-FIVE
I was booked and fingerprinted. They took my wallet, watch, clothes, and dignity. I was given an orange jailhouse jumpsuit that was three inches too short. Bond was set at two-thousand. The flip-flops were worn down to cracker-thin soles. I had three minutes to make a call. I had two to make. The first was to an attorney friend in Miami, Carl Hoffman. He started the procedure to post bond. My second call was to Nick. “I have less than a minute. Tell me exactly what Slater did.”
“Onion head lost his cookies once he started searching your bed. At first he looked like a man who’d lost his key. Lookin’ under the pillow. Feelin’ the mattress, getting’ down and lookin’ across the mattress, and the pillow. He was cussin’ your name the whole time. He said, ‘Bastard’s found it.’ He started ripping the bed apart.”
“Have you edited the video, the way you just described?”
“Dave and me. Finished!”
“Send it to the e-mail I gave you. Include ‘warmest regards,’ and my name.”
“Three clicks, and it’s gone. Boom, boom, and boom. Gone!”
“Nick, I’ll need you to come down here and make bail for me.”
“I’m on my way.”
“From my laptop, send the Slater video to Dave’s e-mail for backup. If something happens to me in this jail, if I’m beaten up or killed, you and Dave e-mail the video to the media, include CNN.”
A deputy, with a shaved head and a body built by a neighborhood gym and chemicals, escorted me to the holding cell. The only time he made eye contact with me was when the cell door was slammed shut and locked. He simply nodded and walked away, his boots hollow, and then faint, marching down the corridor.
There is no sound on earth that rocks the cradle of your spirit quite like the finality of a cell door closing and locking in your freedom. Your mind paces the eight-by-six-foot cage like a wild animal searching for an exit that isn’t there. You urinate through a hole in plain sight. You are stripped bare of the most precious of human rights — sovereignty. You are under the absolute authority of people who don’t care what you did or didn’t do, who you are, who you think you were, or what you want.
I stood in the center of the cell and listened to the sounds of despair. The sounds of madmen, the yelling, swearing, the never-ending noises coming from inmates who grunted, protested, and roared like zoo animals at feeding time.
There was graffiti scraped into the wall. The deadening effect of prison brought out jailhouse art and poets that bordered somewhere on the fringe of genius and insanity.
I could smell the stench of urine and chemical bleach. I sat on the hard bed. I’d been standing so long that my legs felt rubbery, muscles tight. I thought about how far I’d come in a half circle. I’d been responsible for putting hundreds of misfits in jails like this. Now I sat among them. Their catcalls, threats and screams reverberated around my rectangle cage like heat lighting bouncing off steel. I felt like I did in the motel room, a smothering sense, as if the air was poison. In the motel room, though, I could walk out in the chill of the rain to escape. In the cell, I had no where to hide from the torrent of misery that flowed down the long corridors searching for company.