before a speech, to bring him up to speed on the office.
"How about Mac? Did we hear anything?"
Eugenia reads the message. " 'Be cross the street all morning.' " Observing, no doubt, watching some of the newer deputies do their stuff during the morning call in the Central Branch.
I ask Eugenia to set back the charging conference half an hour; then I head over to the courthouse to find Mac. On the second floor, the Central Branch session is held. The branch courts are where arrested persons make their first formal court appearance to set bail, where misdemeanors are tried and preliminary evidentiary hearings are held in felony cases. An assignment to one of the branches is usually the second or third stopping-off place for a deputy, after time in Appeals or the Complaint and Warrant Section. I worked this courtroom for nineteen months before I was sent to Felony Review, and I try to come back as little as possible. It is here that crime always seemed most real, the air quivering with a struggling agony at the brink of finding voice.
In the hallway outside two enormous central courtrooms, there is a churning mass, like my imaginings of the crushed poor in the steerage bowels of the old oceangoing vessels. Mothers and girlfriends and brothers are here weeping and crying out over the young men detained in the granite lockup that abuts the courtroom. Lawyers of a kind move about hustling clients in the subverted tones of scalpers, while the state defenders shout out the names of persons whom they have never met and whom they will be defending in a moment. The prosecutors are shouting, too, searching for each of the arresting officers on a dozen cases, hoping to enhance the slender knowledge provided by police reports prepared in a deliberately elliptical fashion, the better to hinder cross-examination.
Inside the vaulted courtroom, with its red marble pillars and oaken buttresses and straight-backed pews, the tumult continues, a persistent din. Situated closer to the front so they will not fail to hear their cases called, prosecutors and defense lawyers haggle amiably over prospective plea bargains. Beside the judge's bench, six or seven attorneys are clustered around the docket clerk, handing in appearance forms, examining court files, and urging the clerk to pass their case forward to be called next. The cops, most of them, are lined up in pairs against the grimy walls — many of them in from the 12-to-8 shift for the bail hearings on their nighttime collars — sipping coffee and rolling on the balls of their feet to keep themselves awake. And far to one side of the courtroom, there is a continuing clamor from the lockup, where defendants in custody await their appearance, one or two of them inevitably shouting obscenities at the bailiffs or their attorneys, complaining about the cramped conditions back there and the indecent odors from the commode. The rest moan occasionally or bang on the bars.
Now at the dead end of the morning call, the streetwalkers in their halter tops and shorts are being arraigned, tried, fined, and sent back out on the street in time for sleep and another night's work. Usually they are represented in groups by two or three lawyers, but every now and then a pimp, to economize, will take on the assignment himself. That is occurring right now as some jerk in a flamingo-colored suit goes on about police brutality.
Mac takes me into the cloakroom, where no coats are hung. No visitor would be so cavalier as to leave a valuable garment unguarded in this company. The room is completely empty, except for a court reporter's shorthand typewriter and a huge dining-room chandelier in a plastic bag which is evidence, undoubtedly, in a case that is going to be called.
She asks me what is up.
"Tell me what Carolyn Polhemus was doing with a B file," I say.
"I had no idea that Carolyn was interested in crimes above the waist," says Mac. An old line. She beams up from her wheelchair, everybody's favorite
"How about Mac? Did we hear anything?"
Eugenia reads the message. " 'Be cross the street all morning.' " Observing, no doubt, watching some of the newer deputies do their stuff during the morning call in the Central Branch.
I ask Eugenia to set back the charging conference half an hour; then I head over to the courthouse to find Mac. On the second floor, the Central Branch session is held. The branch courts are where arrested persons make their first formal court appearance to set bail, where misdemeanors are tried and preliminary evidentiary hearings are held in felony cases. An assignment to one of the branches is usually the second or third stopping-off place for a deputy, after time in Appeals or the Complaint and Warrant Section. I worked this courtroom for nineteen months before I was sent to Felony Review, and I try to come back as little as possible. It is here that crime always seemed most real, the air quivering with a struggling agony at the brink of finding voice.
In the hallway outside two enormous central courtrooms, there is a churning mass, like my imaginings of the crushed poor in the steerage bowels of the old oceangoing vessels. Mothers and girlfriends and brothers are here weeping and crying out over the young men detained in the granite lockup that abuts the courtroom. Lawyers of a kind move about hustling clients in the subverted tones of scalpers, while the state defenders shout out the names of persons whom they have never met and whom they will be defending in a moment. The prosecutors are shouting, too, searching for each of the arresting officers on a dozen cases, hoping to enhance the slender knowledge provided by police reports prepared in a deliberately elliptical fashion, the better to hinder cross-examination.
Inside the vaulted courtroom, with its red marble pillars and oaken buttresses and straight-backed pews, the tumult continues, a persistent din. Situated closer to the front so they will not fail to hear their cases called, prosecutors and defense lawyers haggle amiably over prospective plea bargains. Beside the judge's bench, six or seven attorneys are clustered around the docket clerk, handing in appearance forms, examining court files, and urging the clerk to pass their case forward to be called next. The cops, most of them, are lined up in pairs against the grimy walls — many of them in from the 12-to-8 shift for the bail hearings on their nighttime collars — sipping coffee and rolling on the balls of their feet to keep themselves awake. And far to one side of the courtroom, there is a continuing clamor from the lockup, where defendants in custody await their appearance, one or two of them inevitably shouting obscenities at the bailiffs or their attorneys, complaining about the cramped conditions back there and the indecent odors from the commode. The rest moan occasionally or bang on the bars.
Now at the dead end of the morning call, the streetwalkers in their halter tops and shorts are being arraigned, tried, fined, and sent back out on the street in time for sleep and another night's work. Usually they are represented in groups by two or three lawyers, but every now and then a pimp, to economize, will take on the assignment himself. That is occurring right now as some jerk in a flamingo-colored suit goes on about police brutality.
Mac takes me into the cloakroom, where no coats are hung. No visitor would be so cavalier as to leave a valuable garment unguarded in this company. The room is completely empty, except for a court reporter's shorthand typewriter and a huge dining-room chandelier in a plastic bag which is evidence, undoubtedly, in a case that is going to be called.
She asks me what is up.
"Tell me what Carolyn Polhemus was doing with a B file," I say.
"I had no idea that Carolyn was interested in crimes above the waist," says Mac. An old line. She beams up from her wheelchair, everybody's favorite
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