Chapter 10. Mad Max - Crime & Banishment

From that day in September the year before; when Max rolled out of bed, fell to his knees and surrendered to something omniscient for guidance, he was aware that his life was under new management. He didn’t know what that would entail, he’d begun the task of, not only doing the next right thing, but tapping into the intuition of what that might be. He was one of the rare ones who knew, without being told, that he would have to make amends to the people he had harmed, short-changed, lied to, and otherwise stepped on, throughout those dark years of his drinking and drug use. The first that came to mind was the abandonment and neglect of his daughter, Ariel, and the rest followed. He wanted to do it all right away, but it became clear to him that it would be vanity to start this herculean task without some sort of guarantee that he wouldn’t be inclined to repeat the same mistakes. Mistakes, ha! he thought, a mistake is something accidental… very few of Max’s crimes and misdemeanors were anywhere near that category. He’d made dozens of conscious, albeit chaotic, life decisions, but they weren’t mistakes at all.

He went to AA meetings and listened to what others did. Knowing it wouldn’t be enough to just say, I’m sorry, he had to get serious about digging deeply into the causes and conditions… the fears that governed his actions. He dreamed of having someone like a priest he could relate his innermost thoughts about these secrets and somehow knew that he would be able to handle them better if he did. He hadn’t thought of how much of his past haunted him until his friend, Jimbo noted, “Max, how can you say you ain’t afraid of nothin’? You fuckin’ sleep with that damned radio on all night to talk shows… UFO’s and shit.” That was how he decided to ask his friend to sponsor him.

Max knew Jimbo was right. It was how he managed to fend off the dark dreams… the cold sweats… the terror… the guilt and shame. Nightmares that had Jaguars lurking in the jungles of Central America and snakes in the high grasses of the Everglades. There were too many to explain to a sponsor, but he tried the best he could. There were felony crimes... abuses of neglect... abandonments, and a forest that hid the trees until he was awakened once more. There was no Hollywood option of checking into a celebrity spin-dry and coming out the other side with a book or movie deal. If he came out of it able to look his daughter in the eye, it would be more than enough.

Still obsessed with Adrienne, and unable to imagine life without her, he came running whenever she called. He was fully aware of how pathetic this obeisance was, but he couldn’t help himself. He was at home on lunch break when she called. He heard the lower register of heroin in her voice. His spirit was nearly crushed.

Crushed was the best word for it. Hell, his heart stuck so in the throat he felt he could have vomited it out. This was the first real test of his new-found sobriety. Sure, she’d banned him from her bed, and then got herself tangled-up with any low-life she could, and this puzzled him… hurt him deeply, but what was worse was that she kept him around… like her personal eunuch. He wanted to murder whoever it was in her bed, banging her, and fixing her with junk. Then, when she showed him her abscess, his hopes were completely smashed. She nearly died and that was the closest he’d ever gotten to going back to drinking.

The liquor store was only a block away. Sitting on the couch…. thinking… “My credit’s still good at Willy’s.” He struggled with the whys, and the hows, and the what-the-fuck’s of it all, “What am I supposed to do?”

Homer jumped up on his lap and calmed him a few minutes. Jimbo had left a pack of smokes on his last visit. Max kept it in his desk drawer for whenever his friend came back. Max had quit smoking before he got sober and was glad to not have to struggle with smoking as well as drinking. However, he sat there on the couch and decided to have a smoke and to think about it before going to Willy’s.

All the old hands at sobriety say you’re supposed to call your sponsor, help a newcomer, or work the Steps when tempted to drink, but he chose to smoke a cigarette. It was his way to slap back at GAWD. Though, not so sure of his motives, he prayed, “Please help me,” as he lit one up. Immediately, before the smoke filled his lungs, he knew that he had awakened a tobacco monster and had merely traded addictions. Still, it was a better option for him than drinking.

As Max smoked the cigarette, there was a knock on the door. Having nothing to hide, regardless, he felt more than a little bit concerned when he saw a uniformed cop standing on the porch. He opened it and asked, “Can I help you?”

The officer had a notepad out, “Max McGee?”

“Yes.”

“You dropped off Mrs. Nicholas Baker at the emergency room today?”

“Uh? Oh, Adrienne, yes?” Max thought of a cop from back in his drinking days… Unsure, but he might be the rookie from way back when Beatrice… Maybe it isn’t him, Max thought. Then, when the cop hefted his chest, he read the name-tag, Dan Richards.

Richards, uh-huh, it was him. Checking for familiarity, he quipped, “Time flies, eh?”

Ignoring the quip, Richards plowed into the purpose of his call, “Do you mind telling me why you left the ER before the police arrived?” he was surly.

Detectives are usually in plain clothes. Richards was in uniform. It was a sure thing the man hadn’t been promoted to detective? Max knew that much and wondered what this cop was about.

“Yes, she called while I was on break and I had to get back to work.”

“Turn around and put your hands behind your back,” Richards sneered towards the new guy off the porch that Max hadn’t noticed before. “This one is trouble… T-R-O-U… bull!” He was an old hand now with his own rookie in tow.

The rookie put a hand on the hilt of his gun… just in case.

Max had thought that Adrienne would have told the police what had happened and never thought that he’d be a suspect… unless something worse had come about that she couldn’t talk. Concerned, he asked, “Is Adrienne okay?”

Of all the times Max had to go to jail he, thought, I truly need another smoke now. Damnit, they don’t allow smoking at all in the Santa Barbara Police holding cells and certainly not in County. He would’ve confessed to anything for a smoke. His thoughts ran all over the place… He wondered what Adrienne had told the police and then smelled the scent of Nick’s B.S. on it. What the hell, Max knew he was innocent but, what if… what if? What then?

He was kept in a holding cell where the powers-that-be had him cooling-off; cooling-off with goose-bumps forming on his shivering arms under a light short-sleeved shirt. It was a long wait... maybe an hour. Where there are no clocks, fifteen minutes can seem like an hour. He was led to an interview room. His heart skipped a beat when he recognized it was detective Ryan who opened the door to peek in.

Ryan’s face lit up too but, voice modulated, said, “Mr. McGee, what the hell… I haven’t seen you in a while.” He entered the room plopping down a thick file on the Spartan table between them. He was almost jovial.

Max emulated a young Dustin Hoffman’s from The Graduate, “Under these circumstances, I can’t say that I’m all that pleased to see you again, detective Ryan,” but was glad to see the detective nonetheless. It’s hard to explain it, but any familiar face can give a guy hope under these circumstances; even if the familiar face was that of the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada himself.

“Let me get a warmer shirt for you and some coffee for us. I’ll be right back,” leaving the file on the table, Ryan went towards the door.

“I ain’t goin’ nowhere.” Max tried to sound nonchalant.

Ryan left without comment and was gone for something like a half hour. Not only does time stretch as mentioned before but it’s a tactic… It would be wrong to say time means nothing to jailers. Time is a power play to let the suspect know who’s in-charge of time and, by implication, who’s in-charge of you. Right back can mean any hour or day. While Max was waiting, he flipped open a corner of the file… enough to see that the report on the top had Richards’ name on it. He looked up at the ceiling and smiled for the camera’s sake.

Balancing two Styrofoam cups of coffee, Ryan came back into the room with a long-sleeved flannel shirt he threw across the table at Max, “See here, Mr. McGee, we seem to have a problem…”

“What do you mean, we?” Max took a sip of the bitter brew, “don’t you mean, me, I have a problem. Or is it, we, we have no cream or sugar?”

“Why don’t you just tell me your version of what happened and…”

“All due respect, sir, police station coffee sucks.” Max’s lips burned from the coffee,

“This ain’t Starbucks. I can tell you now that the courts will go easier on you if you cooperate,” Ryan said casually as he thumbed through the report.

“Aren’t you going to read me my rights? I know the routine, detective. Would it do any good to talk?”

Max suspected, by the detective’s tone, that anything said was going to be used against him, in or out, of a court of law. It didn’t matter a whit whether his Miranda rights were read. If he refused to say anything they’d be able to avow he was uncooperative and, if he did talk… well, it too would be held against him.

Regardless, Max explained, “I took a break and went home for lunch. I didn’t have much time.”

Ryan folded his arms and leaned back in his chair… “Did you stop by Mrs. Baker’s house then?”

The mind wanders when it ought to be focused. Max wondered how far Ryan could balance his chair without falling and gave up trying to figure out anything else, “I had no plans to see her. I just had time to get home, wolf down a ham sandwich, and get back in the hack …”

“Then, are you saying you didn’t go to Mrs. Baker’s house?”

He’d already said too much but it no longer mattered, “No, I went there alright… I got a phone call. She was hurting.”

“How did you know she was hurting?”

“Listen, maybe you want to get this interview over and read me my rights?”

“Mr. McGee, we have enough to hold you in jail for more than a few days.” Ryan thumbed through the files, “You’ve already been tagged with a restraining order. We have enough of your past on record to throw the book at you. Do you want to cooperate or not? Tell me now, because I’d just as soon get home to dinner.” He slammed the file shut.

“She called me at home and she was hurting. I could tell she was hurting because she could hardly talk.” Max’s eyes fixed on the pack of smokes in Ryan’s shirt pocket…Chesterfields, non-filtered.

Ryan pulled the pack of cigarettes out of his jacket … lit one, passed it to Max, and tipped back on his chair again.

“Thanks, man,” pulling on the smoke and letting the harshness of the vapors smack his lungs, he coughed, “that’s the best smoke I’ve ever had. I mean it.”

Ryan watched Max take the drag and leaned back again in his chair some more, “So, you’re telling me you didn’t beat the crap out of her too?”

Max wasn’t sure what to think… was he getting set up? Or could Ryan lean back one more degree before falling on his ass.

“Do what, smash her face up or inject her butt with tar?” he was getting tired of it… “Tell me, Ryan, is she going to be okay?”

“You tell me, McGee, you know what you did…” Ryan opened the file again, “the last time we had a talk… the Bea Brinker case… it turned out that the judge thought you hadn’t done anything criminal… lack of judgment were his words, I recall.”

Not remembering that far back or seeing Ryan there… “You were there in court?” Max’s mind abruptly changed focus and was no longer concerned about the physics of Ryan’s chair.

“Yes, I thought we had enough on you for something… maybe not spousal abuse… maybe something like creating a disturbance… anything… the DA doesn’t care to lose cases. His wiener shrinks, and it pisses him off.”

“Sorry to disappoint him,” Max observed the veins popping out on Ryan’s neck… “Maybe you should loosen your tie.”

“Don’t get smart with me, asshole. This time we have a clear-cut case of bodily injury. Mr. Baker saw you on the way up the hill on your motorcycle as he was leaving. And, guess what, wise-ass? When he left home he says Adrienne was okay…”

“That asshole lied. I went up there in my cab. Do you honestly believe she could’ve ridden all the way to Cottage on a bike?”

“Whatever,” Ryan had checked with the E.R. receptionist. Ryan had also sensed that Richard’s report was bullshit. He already knew Max was telling the truth.

“So, does this mean you will read me my rights and tuck me in for the night?” Max resigned, knowing by then that there was no chance of going home this day.

“Just tell me what happened and stop wasting my time,” Ryan was gleaning what he could to file of what little Nicky had been up to.

“I went up there… her face was bashed in and one eye was swollen shut…. She was weak and with a fever… I didn’t know why… I thought it was from the beating she’d just taken but then she showed me the abscess on her hip. I connected the dots and took her to the E.R. in my cab… not my motorcycle.”

 Ryan rocked forward planting both elbows on the table with a thud, “Why did you leave the E.R.?”

“I had to get back to work…” no longer playing the role, Max wanted Ryan to believe him, “Time is money in a cab, after all… so I took off thinking she would explain what happened.”

“According to this report she did tell officer Richards what happened.”

“He was the rookie with you on the Bea Brinker case, eh?” The imp in Max couldn’t help but to grin, thinking of the tomato soup spilled on the table that the rookie had mistaken for blood way back when he had been falsely accused of rape and spousal abuse.

“And it ain’t lookin’ good for you.” Ryan continued, pulling out the Miranda card to read it even though he’d recited it thousands of time before.

“Could I ask one more question before you go, Ryan?”

“Go ahead, Mick, make it a good one.”

Calling Max, Mick, pissed him off. It could be considered the “M” word to some Irish… akin to using the “N” word. “Ryan’s an Irish name, we ought to be pals… you’re a Mick too, eh … like kin, y’know?” Max thought Ryan wasn’t going to be a friend of any kind so, as they glared at each other, he asked, “What kind of pull did Nicky’s daddy-o have over you, Pal? …eh?”

Ryan just stood up and had another officer put cuffs on Max to haul his sorry ass back to a holding cell. But before they parted paths Ryan said, “Get it straight, we ain’t pals. Keep asking those kinds of questions and you will be in deeper shit than you are now.”

Max had to comment, “There’s a lot of shit in this toilet, detective. A lotta brown water to navigate mate.”

Max had no clue as to how close to the mark he’d hit willy-nilly.