Chickenhawk: Back in the World

“You are advised that anything you may say may be used as evidence against you. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney to be present during questioning,” the cop said. He added, shaking his head sadly, “You’re in big trouble, Mr. Mason.” The cop was a detective from the South Carolina State Police. Three other plainclothes cops sat around the table, staring. Yes. I was in big trouble. I nodded. My hands were crammed behind me, numb. I leaned against the back of the chair, but I couldn’t feel it with my fingers. We sat at a table in an office. The owner of the docks had come and unlocked the building so the cops would have a place to do some preliminary interrogation. They’d taken us into the office one at a time. John and Ireland had already been here. I wondered what they’d said.

“We know you were just a crew member,” said the detective. “Your buddy, Tillerman, said he was the captain; said you and Ireland were crew.”

I nodded. John had said that if we were caught, he’d tell them he was the captain. He wanted the responsibility. He figured it came with the job.

“You mind speaking up, Mr. Mason? We have to tape this.”

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“What’s right?”

“Tillerman was the captain.”

“Okay. Now.” The cop looked at his notebook. “Where’d you get the pot?”

I looked at the cop. “I don’t know.”

“Who’s your boss?”

“I told you. Tillerman was the captain.”

“I don’t mean him. Who’s he working for? Who’s the real boss?”

“I don’t know.”

The cop nodded, screwed his mouth up grimly, and leaned across the table. “Look, Mr. Mason. You’re in deep-shit trouble here. You’re looking at twenty-five years in prison. You know that?”

“Twenty-five years?”

“That’s right. Now, if I were you, I’d cooperate with us. We can’t guarantee anything, but we can tell the judge you cooperated. Could help you.”

I nodded.

“So where did you get the pot?”

“Look,” I said, “I don’t want you to get the wrong impression, sir. I really do want to cooperate with you. I don’t know much about this kind of thing, but I think it would be smart for me to have an attorney here.”

“Don’t be stupid, Mason!” the cop yelled. “You won’t have this opportunity again. This is your chance to help us out—and help yourself. Do it and I know it’ll be easier for you. Where’s the rest of the people—the shore team?”

Good question. Probably they were still trying to figure out what happened. I could see the shore team, Dave, Mitford, Wheely, Rangy Jane, all twenty of them, each of them fumbling around trying to find their asses with both hands and missing. “Like I said, I will definitely help you gentlemen. Just as soon as I have an attorney with me.”

The cop slapped the table. “That’s about the dumbest thing you could say, Mason. Now the judge’ll know you were uncooperative when you were arrested. We got you on tape. Goes into the arrest report. Makes you look bad, Mason. He’ll know you’re protecting criminals. And for what? Don’t you think for one minute we won’t find them, your buddies. We have a hundred men out there right now. We’ll find them. We’ll get them anyway, so you have nothing to lose, everything to gain. Where are they, these shore guys?”

I stared at the cop. I had no reason to protect Dave and the band of idiots who were supposed to have the creek under control, who were supposed to clear it for us. All it would’ve taken was a simple radio call, tell us the creek was being watched. No. Their last transmission said everything was clear. John had asked; I heard him when we got to the creek.

“Absolutely. All clear,” Dave had said.

I looked at the head cop, at the three other cops. Everybody was looking as mean and as grim as they could look, like cops are supposed to look when they’re trying to scare the shit out of you. They were all staring at me like I was on my way to death row. I felt like I was on my way to death row.

There was something more important than saving my ass. There was this thing: loyalty. I did the same thing in Vietnam. We were wrong to be there, but I fought the fight. It’s loyalty to the side you’re on. You pick sides, you play the game the best way you know how. When your team fumbles the ball, well, that’s the way it goes. Maybe you work it out after the game. You do nothing to help the other side. “You have my statement on your tape machine, sir.”

The cop shook his head. “Okay, Mason,” he said quietly. “You’ll never be able to say I didn’t give you a chance. You live with that?”

“I’ll have to.”

The cop stood up. “Okay. Let’s go.”

I stood up and walked out to the waiting room where John and Ireland and Chuck and Sam waited. They told me to sit in a chair across from John and Ireland. I sat. The cops went back into the office. I said, “Uh, Chuck.”

“Yeah, Robert?”

“Bob. Just call me Bob,” I said. “Look, Chuck. This fucking plastic piece of shit handcuff you snapped on me is killing my hands. I can’t feel a thing.”