The Last Innocent Man

Stahlheimer stopped the tape and played it back. David took a pad out of his attache case and wrote the date, the time, and “Jessie May Garza” at the top. Monica leaned over and said something to the girl which he did not catch. Jessie crossed her fat forearms on the table and rested her head on them. She looked bored.

“Okay,” Stahlheimer said.

“Jessie,” David started, “I represent Tony Seals, one of three boys who you claim tried to kill you several weeks ago. The purpose of this interview is for me to find out what happened and, more specifically, what part Tony…You know him as T.S., don’t you?”

She nodded.

“You’ll have to talk, Jessie, so it goes on the tape,” Monica said.

“Yes. T.S. It meant ‘Tough Shit,’ he said. I never even knowed it meant Tony.”

“Okay. I’ll say ‘T.S.,’ then.”

“It don’t make no difference to me.”

“Now, Jessie, I don’t know what impression you have of lawyers from TV or the movies, but I’m no Perry Mason and I’m not trying to trick you here. The purpose of this talk is to find out what happened, and if I ask a question you don’t understand or if you say something you want to change, ask me to explain the question or just say you want to change what you said. Okay?”

The girl said nothing.

“Why don’t you just start at the beginning.”

Jessie sat up, then slouched back in the chair.

“Like, when?” she asked.

“Well, when did you first meet T.S., Sticks, and Zachariah?”

“I don’t know. It was at Granny’s. Whenever I started living there. Because Zack was there already, you know, and then T.S. and Sticks moved in about a week after I got there.”

“Who is Granny?”

“I don’t know her last name. I heard someone call her Terry once.”

“What does Granny have going on over at her place?”

“Well, it’s where a bunch of people used to crash. There was always guys who worked the carnivals when they came through. Then she used to let people fix up speed, and she used to do acid and everything, and then everything changed because Zack and Sticks OD’d. All of them came damn close to OD’ing on pure heroin and, let’s see, and so like, so like her old man’s in the Navy or used to be, and she changed old mans. This guy Norman is now her new old man.”

“Is he young?”

“Oh, he’s about twenty-three.”

“But she’s quite a bit older, isn’t she?”

Jessie laughed sarcastically.

“Like a hundred.”

“She liked having young boys like T.S. and Sticks around?”

“Yeah. She dug it.”

“Did she go with Zack for a while?”

“No. She brought Zack into the house to bring him off the needle from speed ’cause he was gettin’ to the point where he needed speed all the time.”

“Were you guys speeding quite a bit the night it happened?”

“I hadn’t took speed for almost two weeks ’cause the last time I did, I overacted on it.”

“What about Sticks and Zack?”

“No. Like I said, they quit speed and chemicals altogether ’cause they almost OD’d.”

“And T.S.?”

“Man, like he was constantly fucked up. Yeah, he was doin’ speed and acid. But I don’t know what he was into that night specifically, except for pot, ’cause we was all smoking that.”

“Well, did he seem awake and aware that night or what? How did he look?”

“I guess he was stoned. We all were, a little.”

“When you say ‘stoned,’ what do you mean? Can you describe how T.S. looked?”

“Well, he was talking slow and his pupils were big and he was dreamy. I don’t really remember that much. I remember in the car, going up to the park, I was in the backseat with T.S. and he was tripping out, you know, like gazing off in his own little world. My problem remembering is I took some downers before we left and I slept through most of the ride.”

“Why did you go out there?”

“Around two that afternoon Zack tells me how there are pounds buried out by the park in a place he knows and how they’re gonna get it that night. So I asked if I could go.”

“Were Sticks and T.S. around when he said this?”

“Oh, yeah. Sticks was teasin’ and sayin’ how they shouldn’t take me, but Zack said I could come.”

“And T.S.?”

“He didn’t say nothin’ I can remember.”

“Okay, what happened when you got to the park?”

“Well, it took a while. I remember Sticks was driving, but Zack had to take over because Sticks was tired and got lost. Then, when we got to the place where Zack said it was, we didn’t find it right away.

“We parked the car and Sticks crawled into the backseat to sleep. Then me and Zack and T.S. went into the woods a ways until we came to the railroad tracks. There was one shovel, which Zack carried, and T.S. had a flashlight. I remember about four trains goin’ by, because Zack would say to turn off the flashlight when they came, so no one would see us.

“Anyway, we walked up and down the tracks and every so often Zack would say he thought this was it. Then he’d change his mind. Finally he said this was it at a spot about twenty feet from the tracks, and we started digging.”

“Did you dig, too?”

The girl looked directly at David and smiled, as if amused by some private joke.