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  Turner hung his head, staring at the tabletop, not looking at Stan. DeSadier, however, looked straight at him.

  “Hey, blood, you say my last name perfectly: dee—sah—dee—ay,” DeSadier said. “That’s very cool. You impress me.” The prisoner pulled on his chains while he spoke. “A French brother with the same name discovered Chi-town, ya know. I think I’m related to him. Yeah. That’s right, I’m goddamn Chicago royalty is what I am. So? Where’s my fuckin’ chambermaid?”

  DeSadier laughed aloud at his own remark. Turner still remained silent, unmoving.

  “For your information, Mister DeSadier, his name was DuSable, and I don’t think you’re related to him. And I don’t think you’re royalty, either. As a matter of fact, I’d say your more like merde.”

  Knowing DeSadier had no idea what the word meant, Stan waited a moment before he went on. “That’s French for shit.”

  DeSadier jumped up from his chair and lunged at the prosecutor, but the tight chains yanked him back like an angry dog on a short leash. The guards rushed in and grabbed him, forcing him back into his seat.

  “Hey, can’t you see us black brothers don’t want your red Injun asses in here?” DeSadier cackled, angrily thrusting his shoulders away from the big guard’s grip. “Can’t you see we’s havin’ ourselves a revival meeting?”

  Although he attempted to look unshaken by DeSadier’s chain-thwarted leap, Stan had unknowingly pushed himself back several feet from the table. He straightened his suit, pulled his shirt cuffs down, and regained his composure.

  After he rechecked their chains, the smaller guard glanced at the prisoners and nodded to his partner. Then both left the room, closing the door behind them again.

  “You have a right to an attorney. Do you know that?” Stan continued, adjusting his tie and pulling his chair back up to his side of the table.

  Neither responded, both staring away in silence.

  “Okay. If that’s the way you want to play it. We can make this easy or we can make this hard. Which do you prefer?” Stan knew his question was rhetorical. He hoped these two weren’t smart enough to realize he was biding his time. If he didn’t charge them soon, a federal defender might spring them, or at the very least their own lawyers would begin to look for them in an attempt to get them back to Illinois.

  Once again, no answer from either. Stan decided to plod on.

  “Right now, you’re both looking at several counts of conspiracy in the commission of proposed felonies, breaking both federal and state statutes. If you’re found guilty, you’re looking at spending a lot of time in prison. Do you both understand that?”

  Turner slowly lifted up his head. His unpatched eye gazed into Stan’s. Stan could feel the hatred and contempt in the man, honed from spending more than twenty years of his life behind bars. Still, Turner didn’t speak.

  “We’ve done time before, we’ll do it again. Even if it’s in an Injun jail,” DeSadier said, spitting on the floor.

  “I don’t think you should be so cavalier about this, Mister DeSadier.”

  Once more, Stan could see the puzzled look on the boastful man’s face.

  “Cavalier. That’s a French word again, Mister DeSadier. But I’m sure you knew that.”

  “Yeah, I knows that. Just because you’re some Uncle Tom don’t mean you’re smarter than me, nigger.”

  “I assure you, Mister DeSadier. I’m no Uncle Tom. And I ain’t your nigger. I’m an officer of the court now. You may have gotten away with murder in your past, but this time I promise I will see you two go down. Straight down to hell.”

  Stan had put his career on the line. Even a first-year law student would understand the legal ramifications of the line this prosecutor had crossed by visiting the two men without their counsel present. And his clear threat was not only immediate grounds for disbarment but also risked the suppression of any statements the incarcerated men might make in future charges leveled against them.

  Turner still hadn’t spoken, but with Stan’s last threat he began a more intense scrutiny of the attorney, sitting four feet away. Turner’s gaze made Stan feel uneasy. Sensing Turner’s one eye scan him from mid-torso to the top of his balding head, to distract himself Stan looked down and rifled through a manila folder.

  “I see, Mister DeSadier, you’re on parole—”

  “How long you think you gonna play this game, Mister Prosecutor?” Turner interrupted.

  Stan looked up at him, but didn’t respond to his question.

  “You think you’re so smart? Think you know a lot about me and my fool here?” Turner said, twisting his head toward DeSadier.

  “Who you callin’ a fool, fool?” DeSadier snapped. “Don’t be dissin’ me in front of this Tom!”

  “Don’t you see what the man’s doin’? Don’t you see the game he playin’? Don’t you know who this man is?”

  “Watchew talkin’ about, Poke?”

  “Yes, Mister Turner. Why don’t you inform us both just what it is you’re getting at?” Stan said.

  “I never forget a face, Tom. Work twice as hard at it, seein’ as I got me only one eye,” Turner replied, running his tongue across his puffy lips. Each time his lips parted, a gold front tooth glistened.

  Stan rested his arms on the table and folded his hands together. As Turner stared at him, Stan didn’t realize he had started pulling on each his fingers, cracking all of his knuckles.

  “This where you been all this time? Out here in the sunshine? Playin’ golf, I’ll bet. You a big golfer now, Tom? Think you’re Tiger Woods?”

  “What the fuck you talkin’ about, Poke?” asked DeSadier.

  “Take a good look at Tom, here, Bobby D. Take a real good look at him.”

  DeSadier looked at Stan as the attorney propped his elbows on the table and clasped his hands together, then pointed across at Stan with cuffed wrists. “All’s I see is an Uncle Tom workin’ on keepin’ two brothers in a fuckin’ Injun jail is all I see,” DeSadier said.

  “That’s why you’s a fool, Bobby D. Hadn’t been for you screwin’ up, we’d be back in Chi-town right now, sniffin’ taint, and poppin’ cherry till dawn.”

  “What the fuck you talkin’ ‘bout?”

  “Take a look at this man, fool. Look deep into his eyes, Bobby D. You know who this is? This is the little mo’ fo’ from Thirty-Ninth Street. He’s alive and well and a big time lawyer in Arizona.”

  “No mothafuckin’ way!”

  “Ain’t that right, Mister Prosecutor? Ain’t you our little squealer?” Turner asked.

  Stan didn’t reply, not biting on Turner’s lure.

  “You got to be kiddin’ me. James motherfuckin’ Overstreet? It’s really you?” DeSadier shook his head as Stan looked straight at him. “Wait till we tell Pick you’s still alive and where you been hidin’ all this time.”

  “Shut the fuck up, fool!” Turner shouted.

  “No, please, gentlemen, please. Keep talking. It’s fascinating what one can learn from such educated men as the two of you.” Stan’s sarcasm went over their heads.

  “I tole Pick the day after he whacked that old Jew I shoulda’ done a little Fred Astaire on your face and beat your little nigger ass, but he said you’d never go to the poe-leese,” Turner said. “Said you’d know better than that. That fool Pick’s a fool, too.”

  “Well, it’s just too bad Pick will never find out. Will he now?” Stan said. Grabbing his papers, he turned an about-face and stepped the four paces to the door, knocking for the guards to release him from the room. As he waited, he could feel the shackled men’s burning stares at his back.

  When the guards opened the door, Stan moved aside as they entered the room.

  “I want a fuckin’ lawyer!” Turner shouted. “Gimme my phone call!”

  CHAPTER 28

  By the time Stan reached his vehicle, perspiration had soaked through his starched white shirt and onto the lining of his gray, three-piece suit. He paused for a moment before he got into his Acura, placed
his palms on the car’s sunbaked black roof, and took a deep breath. He didn’t know how long he could keep Turner and DeSadier in Police Chief Jimmy Nejo’s jail. But that was precisely why Stan had arranged for his longtime Indian pal to pick these two up and transport them to his reservation’s lockup. Stan knew that because the reservation is a sovereign nation, the tribal police could do anything they wanted. Questions would be asked, but answers weren’t guaranteed when something took place on the rez.

  Before he left the Gila Reservation Police Station, he had asked his longtime friend, Jimmy, to keep the two out of sight. “Keep them isolated for their own protection,” was they way Stan had phrased it.

  “Veteran’s Day tomorrow, ya know. I’m takin’ a long weekend. Gotta march in the parade and all. So, I’m shuttin’ off my phone. Nobody’ll be able to get a hold of me,” Jimmy told him. “You’re right, too, this place can get a little rough, ‘specially for tough guys like these two from Chicago. Salt River and Fort McDowell Rez jails are full, so I might have to send ‘em up to the Yavapai Rez Jail, to keep ‘em safe and all for you, ya know.”

  Stan smiled at Jimmy’s clear understanding of the situation.

  Jimmy grinned back at him, then continued with a shrug. “Plus, that Yavapai jail’s so far out on the rez their phones rarely work up there.”

  Stan got into his car and drove off the Gila Reservation, but his mind wouldn’t stop dwelling on his confrontation with Turner and DeSadier. Meeting them face-to-face for the first time in over thirty years brought back a rush of painful and unbearable emotions. He felt confused, wondering how he would explain his unethical—if not outright unlawful—interaction with them, especially to Andrew Thomas. He’d been way out-of-bounds, talking alone to Turner and DeSadier without counsel at their side. Disbarment for such an action was probably the minimal consequence; a significant fine and even jail time were distinct possibilities if he ended up with a contempt ruling.

  At this point, Stan didn’t care.

  As he felt the sweat ooze from his pores, he realized he felt the same way he always did when he woke up from a recurring nightmare he had in childhood. The dream had always been the same:

  James stood on one perfectly round, brilliant white flat rock along the edge of Lake Michigan. Ahead of him lay about thirteen more identical rocks out in the water. On the last sat his seventh-grade teacher, Miss Burns. But the stone she sat on would magically turn into a green lily pad. With legs hunched behind her, she looked like a frog, darting her tongue out, trying to catch flies.

  “No, Miss Burns! You’re not really a frog. I just think you look like one with your hair pulled back and your big, brown eyes that open so wide when you talk.”

  He’d shout these words to her, but she’d never reply, his small voice absorbed by the waves crashing up against the shore.

  I’ve got to tell her she’s not a frog!

  At that very moment each time in the dream, he would mysteriously be transported into the audience of “The Grand Prize Game” on the popular Bozo’s Circus show. It was his favorite television program and he and Clayton would watch it every day at noon when they went home for lunch from school.

  “One boy! One girl!” Ringmaster Uncle Ned would bellow, holding up a single finger on each hand to the TV and studio audience who anxiously waited for the “magic arrows” as Ned called them, to land on one of them. That was how you were picked to play Bozo’s Grand Prize Game.

  Randomly generated arrows would repetitively flash on-and-off across the TV screen while the camera scanned the studio audience. Only those viewing at home could see the white, magic arrows. But, when they stopped flashing, Ringmaster Ned somehow knew whom the magic arrows landed upon. He was a grown-up after all, so that made perfect sense to James, he would think.

  Then, to the boy’s amazement, the magic arrows landed on him.

  Uncle Ned would cry, “The magic arrows have landed on a boy! Come on down!”

  In the dream, James would come down from the studio audience and stand next to Uncle Ned.

  “What’s your name, young fella?” Ned would call out.

  “Ja … Ja … Ja …” James had never stuttered before in his life but suddenly he couldn’t speak his name.

  “What was that, pardner?” Ringmaster Ned would prompt him again, microphone gripped firmly in his fat, adult hand, sticking it right below James’s mumbling mouth.

  “Ja … Ja … Ja … no … no … it’s …”

  “I’m sure you’re nervous. Don’t worry, son. Let’s go over to the Bozo Drum and see who you’re playing for at home today!” Ned would bellow.

  The star of the show, Bozo the Clown, would then enter from behind a curtain, pushing in a huge wire basket on wheels as he strode before the cameras. The drum overflowed with postcards sent in by boys and girls from all over the country.

  “Spin the Bozo Drum real good!” Ned would scream, as the clown turned a big handle, whirling the metal basket round and round. As Bozo cranked and cranked the Bozo Drum, James would watch it spin and spin and spin and morph into a Chicago Park District garbage can, just like the wire basket the Oakwood Rangers had trapped him in that day in the park. Bozo would stop turning the Bozo Drum when the basket metamorphosis was complete. Garbage spilled from inside, mixed in with all of the postcards.

  “Reach in there and pull out a card, Ja!” Bozo would scream his first words. “We need a boy’s name!”

  Hesitant to get too close to the basket, James would stretch his arm only far enough to get his hand just inside, turning his head away and closing his eyes. His hand pushed through the garbage until he was able to feel for a postcard and grab it from the trash. He quickly pulled it out and handed it to Uncle Ned, while the make-believe ringmaster deftly grabbed his reading glasses from his front vest pocket.

  “Why, this is a blank card! Try again, Ja!” Ned would yell.

  Resisting, James would do it again until he found another card, but this one would be blank, too.

  “Tee-hee! Let’s try that again, Ja!” the red-haired Bozo would scream.

  Rummaging through the garbage, James would pull another card, and another, and another. But all the cards would be blank.

  “Well I’llllllllll be!” cried Bozo. “Nobody in this world has got a name! I’ll fix that!” At this point in the recurring dream Bozo would always pull a huge baseball bat out from under his floppy clown suit and start banging it on the wire basket, saying, “The next card you pick out better have a kid’s name on it, Ja, or I’m going to make you pay! Tee-hee-tee-hee-hee—”

  At that very moment each time he had the dream, James would wake up, his pajamas drenched with sweat.

  CHAPTER 29

  As Stan drove back to his office on Interstate 10, his cell phone rang. Startled, he snapped back to reality, out of the semidaze of his haunting childhood nightmare. The cell continued ringing. He looked at the caller ID: his home phone number.

  I’ve got to get my shit together.

  Regaining his composure, he answered. “Hey, hon.”

  “Hi, babe. Whatcha doin’?”

  “Nothin’. Just workin’.”

  “Are you real busy?”

  “I’m always busy, Max, but what do you need?”

  “Would you come home right now?”

  “Now? You want me to come home now?” he asked, eyebrows rising. “Sure. What’s up? Did I forget we’re supposed to go somewhere tonight?”

  His wife’s voice cracked through the phone’s tiny receiver. “No, I just want you home, that’s all.”

  Only three thirty in the afternoon, Maxine’s request puzzled him. Why did she want him back home so early in the day, since he normally didn’t arrive home until well after six? Had this been ten years earlier, he would have thought his sexy wife was calling him home for a quick roll in the hay. But since the birth of the twins, their nooners had become few and far between, actually nonexistent, he thought, trying to recollect the last time they had an impromptu roll in
the hay like that.

  “Okay,” he said, glancing at his watch while trying to hold his cell in the crook of his neck. “It’ll take me about an hour. Maybe more. I’m pretty busy.”

  “An hour? Why can’t you come home right away? Where are you?”

  “I’m down at Gila River Jail.”

  “What are you doing down there?”

  “I told you, I’m working. What do you think I’m doing? Look. I’ll explain later, Max. See you in a bit. Love you. Bye.”

  As he drove toward home, his heart pumped out of control over what he had just done down at the Gila Jail. Although Stan knew no Arizona statute could overcome releasing suspected felons from an Indian reservation without the cooperation of the Indian police, it would only be matter of time before a sharp federal defense attorney or their own defense lawyer would get Turner and DeSadier out of Jimmy’s lockup. More pressing on his mind, though, was finding an explanation for the question Andrew Thomas was sure to ask when Chief Nejo told the County Attorney’s Office that they weren’t ready yet to return these guys back into the county sheriff’s custody.

  And on top of all this, Maxine wants me home? Now? For what?

  Worse yet, though, for Stan was the bigger worry of the possibility that the publicly elected Thomas would get another call from the Arizona governor’s office, asking for an update on the county’s arraignment of these two border smugglers. If Stan didn’t come up with a solution, and a quick one, then he knew a phone call would take place between Andy Thomas and the president of the Gila River Indian Reservation. At all costs, Stan wanted to avoid that from happening. He would have to stall Thomas for as long as he could. Meanwhile, Jimmy Nejo would play a human shell game with the two gang members from Chicago.

  Stan sped past traffic, heading north now on Phoenix’s Loop 101 toward his Scottsdale home. He worried what he would tell Maxine if she asked him to talk about the current case he was working on, as she normally did. He knew she would find a way to get to this subject especially since she now knew about his unusual visit down to the Gila Reservation Jail.