I did not know, until recently, that the eye in the sky also has ears. Mark the Guard had warned me about this but I had not quite believed him.
“What were you two talking about?”
That’s Detective Conrad Stevenson again, and they’d been listening in when Toledo Vasquez approached me that day. That was the day when he got a five dollar tip off a million dollar win and the timing seemed right for him to open up. There are 60 surveillance monitors up there, each scanning a particular spot. There are about a hundred surveillance authorities up there and their job is to nab theft and stop larceny among players and employees and they’re well trained and good, very good at their job. They had only picked up snatches of my halting conversation with Toledo for all that casino ruckus; coins make heavy noise. For visual, they can zoom in for close-ups so magnified that they can catch it if your teeth need flossing, but the sound system of those cameras are not yet cutting edge.
So mostly what they heard was that he wanted to talk. Which is no crime, as yet. Mark the guard would say that’s next. The one remark of Toledo’s that caught their attention and had them going “Aha” was when he made that quite Biblical remark about his vexation: “Mine is too big to carry alone.” I thought it beautifully quotable, and so did they, those guys up there in the sky.
“What did he mean by that?” asks Stevenson.
“I have no idea.”
Which I don’t, technically.
“No idea, huh?”
“No idea.”
“You talk to a guy but you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“It’s hectic down there,” is my only comeback.
“You two were sure going back and forth.”
I explain about that million dollar win and that five dollar tip. That’s something to talk about, but not much to remember.
“I know about that,” he says.
He even knew about the tip. Upstairs, the cameras picked that up. One of our supervisors got fired for taking a tip, against company rules. He hid it fast, but not fast enough.
“So you know everything.”
“Not quite,” he says.
I am in for a grilling. This isn’t like last time, when it was almost civil. Once they get a grip, these guys, they don’t let go.
“I really have nothing to add.”
“We think you do.”
It goes back and forth like this and yes, Stevenson has dropped the good cop routine. He’s near unpleasant.
I recall that his wife read my book. Makes no difference. I forget if she liked it or not. I don’t remember. I think she liked it, yes.
Some people say they’ve read your book, period. They say nothing else. They say, “Hey, I read your book.”
Some saw the movie but THINK they’ve read your book and begin to take your book apart for all the movie’s flaws.
Stevenson informs me that if I know and don’t tell I could be charged and detained for complicity. I think he threatened me with that before.
Now he changes his approach and appeals to me as one educated man to another. “You’re not like them,” he says.
Maybe it didn’t start like that, but now I am like them, I think. I’m pretty sure I am. Anyway, what’s wrong with THEM?
I’ve gotten to like them, most of them.
They’re people like everybody else. I’ll take Gabe and Mark and even Toledo over Roe Morgan any day, and where is Roe Morgan?
I do this often. In the middle of one conversation I find myself abstracted into another, into something else, altogether.
Where is Roe Morgan? Is Sylvio still talking to him? Is that door still open?
“There are no secrets,” Stevenson says. “You’re a smart guy and you know there are no secrets. We know everything.”
George Orwell said it about the same way. Back in 1985, when I was quite young and working through a first novel by means of doing PR for the phone company, the department head came over to my desk to tell me, smugly, how wrong Orwell was about 1984. He said, “See, nothing like this has happened.” Meanwhile, monitors scanned every work station and every desk.
“Know what I mean?”
“Of course.”
“I’m not nuts about it myself,” he says. “The shadow knows. Technology has us by the balls. Every minute of every life is watched, recorded, documented, sealed. We’re bar-coded like lemons at the supermarket. We’re bar-coded and stamped from cradle to grave and even beyond. You can’t even die without them bringing you up again. Our DNA tells everything about us and makes us everlasting. Really, immortal.”
He’s right. You’re not even allowed to die. There’s all that, and then there’s DVD where everybody comes back.
A couple of officers step in to talk some business with Stevenson. It’s not about me but I wonder if it’s for show. They’ve got those weapons and handcuffs at their sides. These guys, they don’t do anything that isn’t calculated. When I was doing martial arts regularly with Boris, he also had a crew of municipal cops and even State Troopers in there brushing up on moves, especially defense against gun, and lately more and more defense against knife for the new brand of domestic violence that was developing out there, and I got to know some of them, even sparred with them, and when I earned their trust they told me how calculated it all was.
They’re always watching, even when you don’t know they’re watching. It’s all profiling, racial and otherwise. They can tell what kind of person you are by what kind of car you drive, how you drive it, how you stand, how you sit, how you walk, even how you move your eyes. That’s all profiling.
When the others leave, Stevenson turns back to me as if he forgot what page we were on.
“Where were we?”
“How you know everything.”
“How everybody knows everything, right?”
“Right.”
He makes a joke. “Your mother-in-law has the goods on you every day when she checks the computer.”
“Probably.”
“I understand you’re married to a very beautiful wife.”
“I hope this doesn’t get personal, Sir.”
He knows he’s stepped over a line and switches back. “I underestimated you,” he says with a roughhouse smile. “The camera picked that up, too.”
I didn’t have to ask. I knew what he was getting at, that brawl I had with Franco DeLima out on the loading dock. It was a mistake, it was juvenile, it was schoolyard – but it had to be done! Franco had youth and size on me, but I had the speed and the tricks, and the indignation, so he was no match. I took care of business. I also used Boris’ line: “I see ten feet under you,” and it worked.
Stevenson says, “For all we know, you’re part of this ring.”
Why else, he adds, would I be so evasive?
“So catch me if you can.”
“That’s a wise answer.”
“Well I’m resenting this – this Third Degree.”
“Resenting? You’re wasting my time, and you’re resenting?”
“I’ve done nothing wrong.”
“Maybe. But we know that kid has, and we’re going to nail him.”
“He’s a good kid, Toledo. He’s getting married.”
“So?”
“The last thing he’d want is a stain.”
“Or maybe he’s desperate. We know all about Maria. She wants a house, a car. You can’t get that at eight bucks an hour.”
“I’m not an informer, Mr. Stevenson.”
“You think you’re being honorable?”
“It’s all we’ve got.”
“No, freedom is all we’ve got. Staying out of prison is all we’ve got.”
“I’m not going to jail.”
“Let’s hope so.”
“I suggest you find somebody else to do your snitching.”
“I think you’ll come around.”
“Don’t hold your breath.”
It’s getting ugly. “Really, I was hoping you’d be different. I thought you were different.”
“I once thought so, too.”
“You’re all the same.”
I can’t resist. “So are you.”
He agrees that a wall of silence exists among his elites as well. It’s the same all over. Then the phone rings and he turns soft, obviously a child, his son, he’s talking to, and a loving father he is, or seems to be. He’s a father now, Dad, and likable. I remark, to myself, as I’m listening in, how different we are in the different places of our lives. In another place, this man and I could be friends. We would not be talking about informing, about going to jail. I would not be on the hot seat, my freedom at risk.
We’d be talking sports. Those Eagles, those Phillies. I know he’s originally from Philadelphia.
He’s telling his kid, as kindly as he can, that there is nothing he can do. He can’t just go over there and do that, especially in his position as a cop.
After he hangs up, he confides that his kid is having trouble in school, with a bully. He’s taught his kid, of course, some of the tricks of fighting, but this bully is big, and won’t let up. As a father, there is nothing he can do, and as a cop, there’s especially nothing he can do, except report it all to the principal, again. These days all the rules protect the bullies, he says. All the laws protect the bullies.
He’s lost in thought. Then: “It’s getting worse out there for the rest of us. The courts…”
I know what he’s talking about.
So he resumes, after he hangs up – he resumes that soft, or softer, approach. He wants to talk Literature.
He loves Hemingway.
Yes, I agree, Hemingway taught writers not to be afraid of writing.
Somebody pokes a head in and says he’s needed outside. There’s new information on something. Stevenson excuses himself and steps out.
I’m wondering about this new information, as I sit here, just a touch concerned. How would this play in Haddonfield?
Sure to make the papers, if this goes on. Me, I don’t care, but Melanie! That would be devastating.
I really do not give a damn what they do to me, as if they haven’t done it already, and the casino is the least of it all.
New information, huh? Well, maybe it’s about me and maybe it isn’t. What did I do? Something wrong? Maybe.
I know I once parked in a handicap spot at the 7/11, and didn’t even park, just ran in for a carton of milk Melanie forgot, and I kept the car running. But I’ve done worse. Plenty.
But jail, may just be the career move I need. They publish sinners. Sylvio made his bones on O.J. type tell-alls. Confess, repent, and you’re on TV. Crime pays. Crime publishes. They love scoundrels. They love it when you done bad and then repent. America loves rehab.
Detective Stevenson steps back in and keeps on eyeing me and shaking his head. I’m waiting for my rights to be read, and the handcuffs.
“You can go for now.”
“Thanks.”
He keeps eyeing me as I go for the door.
“This isn’t over,” he says.
“I’m sure.”
“But you can go.”
“Thanks.”
“But don’t go too far.”