The Stony Lonesome: It Gets Worse?

It was a bad day. A monumentally unpleasant, seriously discommoding, entirely disagreeable sort of day. In the Bad Day annals of the Bad Day pantheon, it occupied an honored spot on a tasteful display, dramatically backlit and emphasized with ominous music. If hella sucked and it was barely 9am.

Before I get too florid in describing the ugliness of this day, I will say that with respect to those experiencing truly catastrophic or cataclysmic days -- victims of natural disasters, or ISIS, or incompetent surgeons, falling safes, what have you -- it was hot soup and biscuits. Nobody died, all relevant limbs remained attached, and like everything else, it was a question of perspective. For me, a grievously wretched day, for the Ukiah Police Department, or at least the segment thereof that shattered the piece of my morning (and my door jam) by bursting in uninvited and raising all manner of ruckus, shouting and knocking things over, it was a productive and satisfying morning. For the good people of Ukiah, a small step was made in restoring order and tranquility.

It began like most days in my life at that period, With me waking in a state of pain and confusion. I opened my eyes and lay there staring at the ceiling for 10 minutes or so, wondering whether it would take less energy and therefore engender less pain to incline my head 45 degrees to look at the bedside clock or to lift my arm in order to see my watch. I chose to tilt my head and immediately regretted it, the processes in my brain regulating environmental perception were sluggish and distorted and the room took a corresponding leap upward as my eyes tracked down. Like slot machine reels, the rooms spun and jittered and gradually fell into place. 8:05am. Yeesh. I was torn between a desire to go back to sleep, a bone deep need for the necessary chemicals to restore me to homeostasis, and a civic minded urge to go hurl my worthless, drug addicted ass off the nearest precipice. In other words, a very typical day.

In situations like this, I find it does not pay to immediately plug a pipe in your mouth or needle in your arm. It's best to get up and move around and try to gain a little natural equilibrium before applying the old clang-honk-tweet. Have some coffee, maybe eat a little something if that's possible (it often isn't), enjoy tobacco products. I got up, discovered we were out of both coffee and my preferred tobacco product (Skoal Wintergreen), and so dispatched Christine to the store to remedy the shortage on the strength of the argument that our apartment there on South Dora was 30 yards from the police station and I had a PAL (Parolee At Large) warrant. She agreed and I sat down with throbbing head and roiling guts to await her return.

The window was open to the kind of beautiful, chirpy spring day that makes regular folk glad to be alive and nightcrawling creeps like me want to scuttle under a rock. Birds sang, happy dogs and their owners high-stepped happily down the sidewalk, and a phalanx of police vehicles pulled up to the curb — wait, what? Before I could begin to formulate a plan, they descended upon and began to belabor the door. They pounded and shouted, "Police Department! Parole warrant! Open up!" I leapt from my chair and froze there on the carpet in an attitude of ninja-like readiness but utterly unable to act. Commands flowed from my mind -- Flush the dope! Jump out the window! Hide! -- but the signals scrambled and got entangled with one another on the way to my limbs resulting in paralysis. Eventually the chaps outside decided to stop mucking about and get proactive and the door exploded inward with a terrific bang. A flood of armed and armored officers poured in and pounced and my thoughts as I went down under the assembled weight of the Ukiah PD's tactical squad were, really? All this for little old me?

Thoroughly subdued and securely manacled, I sat on the couch while the assembled officers ransacked the place. They hooted gleefully and high-fived every time they found anything drug-related or (apparently) stolen, filling evidence bags with the detritus of my degenerate lifestyle and slapping stickers on the various consumer electronic products as if it were somehow suspect to have six laptops in the bathroom.

Christine returned from the store, taking in the splintered doorjam and milling stormtroopers without a word. "Who are you?" one of them asked.

"I'm Christine and this is my apartment. Who are you?"

"Were you aware that you were harboring a fugitive?"

"What's a fugitive?" she asked, setting two cups of coffee on the table. "What's harboring?"

One of Christine's strategies to deal with stressful situations is to become obtuse to the point of stupefaction.

"Your boyfriend here is a wanted felon in possession of narcotics and stolen property. That makes it your problem, too."

"Well, he told me he was a cowboy."

I jump in here and assured the cops that everything illegal in the place was mine and that Christine had no knowledge of my status or any of my extralegal activities. Her 5150 history was known to one of the officers on the scene and so they decided not to pursue any charges against her.

I sat there for quite some time while the officers conferred, made phone calls, and consulted their clipboards, and the reigning flatfoot very decently allowed Christine to feed me some sips of coffee and plug a dip into my lip. I was beginning to feel a little more human, although the enormity of the situation and the reality of my ugly foreseeable future began to creep into my thoughts and give me a serious case of the what-the-fuck-is-the-matter-with-yous. For some odd reason, these moments of clarity usually don't occur until post-critical moment. The reality of prison -- only yesterday so vague and nebulous! -- looms, the filth and clamor and squalor of San Quentin coalesces like magic. This is despair, utter, existential, thoroughgoing hopelessness and the worst part is knowing you're trapped in a cycle of your own making, engendering fates like this one and it's all preventable. This life is no picnic.

In response to a radio call we all trooped outside and I stood on the stoop dressed only in boxers as a parade of police vehicles inched by, witnesses inside helping to secure my fate, passersby goggling at the sordid human drama personified by Me. Feeling like I always do at these times, like I'm trapped inside something bent on my destruction.

Once we wrapped up the lineup, I said my goodbyes to Christine and we rolled across the street for Stage II of the soul crushing debacle: The Interview. This is where a detective or detectives, depending upon the severity of the crime and dangerousness of the suspect (I didn't merit two until the bank episode), attempts through trickery, bullying, pleading, appeals to decency, flattery and soda pop to get you to rat on yourself and others. I have never been very helpful at these inquisitions and it's not because I don't feel remorse or that I shouldn't be held accountable. I do, and my natural inclination is to spill every bean in my pot because dammit, that shit gets heavy. It's because my notion of what a detective should be, my platonic detective, took shape during my formative years through intense and thorough perusal of crime fiction. A detective is Steve Carella or Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe or Lew Archer or Travis McGee or Hercule Poirrot. Not these lazy, bumbling, civil servants I keep encountering. It makes me resentful and obstinate to think that they can apply enough deductive skill to build a case against even a hopeless jackleg bungler like myself and must instead resort to the cheap tactics outlined above. How I would love to hear this in the interview room: "All right, Flynn. I took this pebble from your shoe that's a perfect match with the gravel at the crime scene. Not only that, but this matchbook we found in your pocket has the number of the dame associated with the victim written inside. Got something to tell us, chump?" At which point I'd realize I was outmatched and give up all.

My examiner came in after I cooled my heels for 20 minutes or so, a pleasant looking man in horn rims and a houndstooth jacket who reminded me of my junior high guidance counselor. He was holding a large canvas shopping bag, presumably filled with evidence, that he sat on the table. The first thing he pulled out took me by surprise. It was a framed photograph of my parents taken at a party in the early 1960s looking very glamorous and sophisticated. "Who is this?" he demanded.

"My parents," I said.

He looked at the picture, back at me, clearly unable to reconcile the attractive and successful couple with the sorry specimen scowling before him.

"You seem to have had some opportunities in life," he said. "Do you think it's reasonable that you behave this way?"

"Reasonable?" I shrugged. "I think it's reasonable to assume that Formica is made from ants."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Ants. Formic acid. Family Formicadae. Formica. It all makes sense, right?"

"All right, smart guy. Tell me about this stuff." He upended the bag on the table to reveal a pile of assorted shiny things.

I chuckled and shook my head. "Look, detective," I said. " I'm not sure you understand the nature of our relationship. I commit the crimes and try as best I can to elude capture. You and your associates are supposed to stop me -- good job on that count -- and amass enough evidence to convince a disinterested group that you've got the right guy which is the part I think you're fuzzy on. I am not going to do your job for you so you may as well pack that stuff up and take me over to Low Gap."

Judging from the whiteness of his knuckles as he gripped the table, I'm guessing this angered him some. Through clenched teeth he said, "I am going to get that evidence and I'm going to take a great deal of pleasure to watch you get the absolute maximum sentence possible." He was literally shaking with rage, but to his credit, he never touched me.

"Fine, I guess we're done here," I said.

He glared at me murderously for a long couple of beats, gathered up his booty, and left. Shortly after that, a couple of uniforms showed up to escort me to my new accommodations up Low Gap Road.

And that constant reader is a Bad Day. It didn't really end until three months later either. When I did finally hit the bricks again I showed up at the old place to see if Christine was still there. The door was open and I could see my old TV playing and Christine's same old couch upon which was a female form apparently napping, stretched out on her side with face to the cushion. I rapped on the door jam. "Surprise," I said, and this person who it turns out was not Christine at all leapt up and gave a little shriek. "Sorry, sorry, sorry," I said, holding up my hands and trying to appear nonthreatening. "I used to live here and I saw my old stuff and thought my girlfriend was still here."

"All this stuff was here when I moved in," she said. Typical Christine. Packed up only her clothes and moved on. Turned out the events of that morning and had rather spoiled the ambience of the place for her so she legged it out to Lucerne shortly after to stay with her dad. Once I'd located her we were strolling hand-in-hand down the strand of Clear Lake and she said to me, "You know, we've been together for five years and you've been in jail for three and a half of them."

"Never again, honey," I said, giving her hand a meaningful squeeze. "Never again."