Chapter 11. Mad Max - The Crime (Pt. 1)

Bed-rest… Adrienne had been sent home after the oxygen mask was taken off the open wound on her hip. Max was in jail, and, if he was ever to get out, Nick had put a restraining order on him. Her protests were ignored at first. Nick had insisted on nursing her and she was so doped up on oxycotin that she let him. This generous offering was primarily a ruse to give him full access to the house, but he wasn’t there much, and she often had to struggle out of bed to get to the kitchen or to the toilet. She was weak and so fucked up that whenever she did venture down the stairs, she could barely make it back up to her bed. She asked Nick a couple of times about her purse and empty wallet, but he changed the subject or told her about a deal he’s made that would be good for them both. Most of her days she slept and let all Nick’s manipulations and lies rest too. She wasn’t going to give up, but right then, she needed to rest.

Max was resting too, in County jail. His life was looking like an old country song, “I’m in the Jailhouse Now.” He tried to decipher the confusion… thoughts ran wild… “Pardon me, Hank Williams, but I don’t want to be in one of your songs at this moment, eh?” Max thought he had broken that cycle when he got sober but there he was, thinking “Surely, I ought to be able to get out on O.R. first thing in the morning… no outstanding warrants or fines… living pretty clean too… oh yeh, on probation for that Rod Goldbrick incident... what does all this have to do with a cosmic plan?”

He sat on his bunk after lights-out, once all the noise of the concrete and steel settled down , when a familiar calm came over Max . He was at peace and it felt as though a hand was on his shoulder. He turned to look but no one was there. So, he sat with his back to the wall of the cell… Hell, he was given a private cell, isolation they call it, and he waited there while his mind leafed through old catechism stories… thinking again, “Would an angel appear before me, shake my cage, and unlock it?” The gentle hand on his shoulder assured him it could, and he fell into a peaceful sleep.

The next morning Max still had the feeling of that hand on him and everything became clear... all this shit. He didn’t know how it would turn out or what motives and powers were behind it but he knew for sure that he was to play an important part in some sort of cosmic drama. It was a cosmic drama that made perfectly clear what his next step would be. He hadn’t known such clarity since that day in the hooch with Kuka a decade before.

Max slept, and every night a dream of a Kachina Jaguar... sometimes with Kuka’s face... danced around him singing a chant... his friend, Jimbo, flying... riding an eagle that was holding a snake, “You will be back in the tall grass with a bird dog.”

Max scratched out with pencil on a pad provided by one of the Correctional Officers: “Bird Dog? What.... Harry Baker? Baker, Baker... Adrienne Baker? Nick Baker? ‘Shit! Gotta ask her about... shit!’”

Correctional Officer Ramos stopped in passing Max’s cell, “You goin’ bug-shit in there, Max?”

“Naw, just thinking out loud.” He was so wrapped up in thought about these impossible connections that he hardly acknowledged the guard before he asked, “Say, anyone get a sniff for when I might get cut loose.”

Ramos shrugged, “How would I know?”

“Yeh, sorry,” Max went back to his note pad, “just wondering.”

About a week later he was awakened at three in the morning, “McGee, roll it up, you’re goin’ home.”

“What… Someone bailed me out?”

“I don’t know… just roll it up!”

He suited-up down in Property and taken up to the lobby where he signed an agreement... the restraining order... to stay five-hundred yards from Adrienne, or her house... and then he escorted out the door.

Three in the morning: What the hell? He didn’t like the feel of it. He noticed that Richards parked at the far end of the parking lot. Just for the hell of it he walked over to the squad car. When Richards opened his window, Max asked, “Don’t suppose you could give me a ride into town… eh?”

“I don’t think so, punk. You know you’ve been snitched out by your junkie friends.” Richards rolled up his window and drove away.

The cab finally arrived; Max’s sponsor, Jimbo, behind the wheel. They’d been on the road for a good five minutes before Jimbo asked, “So, what did that cunt do to get you in jail this time, Max?”

At that moment Max had a newfound distaste for the “C” word… especially when applied to Adrienne. Before he knew what words were coming out of his mouth, he was ordering Jimbo, “Drop the ‘C’ word, Jimbo.”

“Yeh, yeh, okay,” Jimbo grinned, pleased at this change in attitude. “It was on the front page of the News Suppress… but I wanted to hear your side.”

“I can’t believe it Jimbo, but, back there in my cell, a calm came over me and I felt a hand…” Max gave Jimbo all the details without embellishment.

“The Hand of Gawd, eh?” Jimbo had a similar experience. “Yeh, I’ve told about my last drunk. I was out of it when they put the paddles to my chest.”

“Something like that.... yeh, that was a good one Jimbo. I told you about Kuka before. I gotta tell you. She came to me in dreams... and you did too.”

“Awe, c’mon, Max. Don’t go psychedelic, Dorothy back from OZ, on me.”

“No, Jimbo, she was a Jaguar Kachina singing... ‘You’ll be back in the tall grass... the tall grass with a bird dog... back with the Bird Dog’.”

Jimbo tried to change the subject by assuring Max, “Most of us didn’t think you did it and you still have your shift on the roster at the cab company,” and ending a subject that gave him the creeps, he added, “Knock off that Kachina talk or they’ll all think you lost it.”

 “Jimbo, Jimbo. Man, I know there's a cosmic dance going down here and we’re in the middle of it.” Max felt like he ought to convince his best friend and sponsor. “You are too, Jimbo. In the dream... riding an eagle with a snake.”

“We ain’t the center of the universe, Max.” Jimbo scowled, “You know where that bullshit takes you.”

“Yeh, maybe you’re right...” Max had to admit, “But there was this peace and clarity in knowing.”

“Peace and clarity is okay, but I suggest you lay off the peyote visions, eh?” Jimbo laughed, adding, “The eagle and snake, like on the Mexican flag?”

“I have to check and see if the city’s pulled my license,” Max would’ve been surprised if they hadn’t. It was routine to pull a cabbie’s license when arrested for any misdemeanor... let alone a felony, like assault and battery on a woman... one that put her in a hospital, seriously fucked up.

“I’m sure you can still dispatch if they did… you got everyone in the office backing your action, Jackson.” Jimbo had one eye on his rearview mirror.

Max saw this, “What are you seeing?”

“Don’t look now, but a cop’s tailing us.”

“I bet it’s Richards,” Max assured Jimbo. Jimbo was sometimes still paranoid from all the pot he’d smoked the past three decades before he got sober and he needed to know he wasn’t imagining things. Max looked back over his shoulder... it was Richards. He was following the cab, making no attempt to make his presence unknown, so Max waved.

“Damn it Max, I said don’t look back!”

Max smirked, “You’ll be getting to know him. I think he is beginning to be our good friend.”

“Is that the cop who wants some sugar from Frenchy?” Jimbo asked.

Richards parked at the end of the cul-de-sac after Jimbo parked in the driveway at Max’s place.

“I’m grateful Jimbo. How much do I owe the company for my bail?” Max asked. It was his turn to change the subject.

Jimbo hesitated before he answered, “Naw… Sue didn’t bail you out. She’s too tight with the cash to do that.”

“Well then, have you heard anything about Adrienne’s condition?” Max wondered. Adrienne might’ve done it.

Jimbo asked, “Say, you ain’t still in love with that bitch after all the shit she’s chucked your way?”  As Max opened the car door, he asked again, “Well, are you?”

Max sat back down a few minutes and let Jimbo say some more. After all, he was more than an old drinking buddy, he was Max’s sponsor too.

Jimbo’s tone turned apologetic, “Y’know, maybe you’re right. You got some karma with that chick. She comes all the way to Santa Barbara… across an ocean and the whole damned continent to hook up with you. It's cosmic… that’s what it is, damned karma.... and you were with Nick’s dad in Nicaragua before you ever met them!”

Max tried to sleep but couldn’t nod out while thinking of Adrienne… of Ryan... of the Bird Dog and the Kachina... goddamned Richards out there and wondering what those damned S.O.B.’s were up to. The clarity he’d experienced in the jail cell clouded up once more.

Adrienne didn’t bail Max out. All charges had simply been dropped. The DA saw no chance for a conviction once Adrienne became able to communicate through her own lawyer. No one was charged with her beating either. It was damned unusual for charges of spousal abuse or assault against any woman dismissed so easily. The State usually pursues charges even if the victim doesn’t want to. Max was curious about this lapse and suspected it to be a covert corruption of the justice system. He seriously wanted to know, but decided it was best to leave it be. Serenity Prayer... “The things I cannot change.”

It was precisely that; the powerlessness over it all that bugged Max the most. He was damned if he was going to do nothing about her beating, but hadn’t he just spent a week in jail without an apology or a howdy-do from the law? He already knew that the justice system rarely, if ever, apologizes for its mistakes. Once they sink their teeth into you, no matter whether you are guilty as charged or as innocent as the baby Jesus, an ambitious prosecutor will comb the books to hit you with anything to get a conviction… unless you have connections and Max honestly thought that he didn’t have any.