CHAPTER 16 : JAILBIRD

The origin of the word “jailbird” can be traced back at least

to Medieval England, where convicts were often placed

in iron cages suspended several feet above the ground. These

cages were generally visible to passersby, who were routinely

inspired to refer to the caged occupants as jailbirds.

It didn’t take the police long to find Sweets and stick him back behind bars in the Alameda County jail, accused of murdering Arabella Duan. Thankfully, they’d picked him up on the street and not in my apartment. This time there’d be no bail for the ancestor of Jean Lafitte. Carter Innis, his lawyer, called right after I got to work in the morning to tell me that Sweets fingerprints had been found in the apartment and there was other physical evidence pointing to his client. He hadn’t received all the information from the District Attorney’s office. Arabella had been Winona’s friend and ex roommate, so the police had jumped all over that connection. When I got the news in the morning at work, my first thought was Sweets could save us all a lot of trouble by hanging himself in his jail cell. I’d no sooner hung up talking to Carter, than my pop called telling me he’d just heard about the terrible tragedy that had befallen Sweets.

“E un peccato,” he said. “This thing they do to an innocent.”

I wasn’t sure about innocent, but agreed it was awful. “Figurati, Pop, I’ll think of something.”

“Magari,” he said.

Not a great vote of confidence. What he was hoping for and what I could accomplish seemed to me to be wildly limited by my infinitesimal investigative skills. Things were getting completely above my pay grade. “Yeah, Pop, let’s hope so.” I hung up the receiver, stress tightening all the muscles of my body into one head to toe Gordian Knot.

“Was that Pop?” Vincent asked.

“Who else?” I said. He knew better than to ask me why Pop had called.

“He can’t possibly want us to continue trying to help Sweets.”

“He can and does,” I said. “All the lawyer’s fees are coming out of his pockets.”

“Our pockets, too, you realize.”

“Onore,” I said half-heartedly.

“Yeah, frigging honor,” Vincent said, sighing.

We stood looking out the office window onto East 14th, saying nothing, thinking about frigging onore, until Sylvia spoke.

“The reality is that Sweets might very well be the killer,” She said. “You know I’ve never liked the guy. I’m guessing that the only way he was able to save your father, back when, was because he’s friends with the Blacks.”

“Sweets is hardly a Negro,” Vincent said.

“Bi-racial,” I said.

“He thinks he’s a Frenchman,” Vincent said.

I remembered a year ago during a series of burglaries in the ritzy residential township of Montclair that bags of food began showing up in the morning at the doorsteps of families in West Oakland. Lots of basic stuff: macaroni, bacon, bread, milk, vegies, and fruit. And always a bag of hard candy. Sweet had an alibi for the burglaries and denied care packages. That was Sweets, saint and sinner. Maybe mostly sinner, occasional saint.

“Saint Jean Lafitte,” I said.