Small Town

“That’s exactly what they should do,” Winters said, “if only out of good sportsmanship and a love of the arts. Mr. Creighton is a writer, Your Honor, and a respected one with a good critical reputation and an international readership. Unfortunately, our society doesn’t always reward an artist commensurate with his talent, and—”

The assistant DA, a deceptively soft-faced blonde, sighed theatrically. “Mr. Winters’s client is charged with strangling a woman, not splitting an infinitive. His talent or lack thereof—”

“His talent is unquestioned, Your Honor.”

“He’s charged with a capital offense,” the judge pointed out. “High bail is hardly unusual in such circumstances.”

“Excessive bail is punishment in advance, Your Honor. Mr. Creighton has no criminal record whatsoever, and his roots in the community make it clear he’s no flight risk.”

Fabrizzio said, “Roots in the community? The man doesn’t have a job, he doesn’t own property, he’s unmarried, he lives alone...”

“He has children whom he sees regularly,” Winters countered. “He’s on the faculty of an important local university. Furthermore, Ms. Fabrizzio might want to note the distinction between unemployment and self-employment, should she one day leave the comforting embrace of the district attorney’s office. Your Honor, jobs come and go, as do relationships, but my client has something more, something nobody would walk away from. The man is the statutory tenant of a rent-controlled apartment on one of the best blocks in the West Village. Does Ms. Fabrizzio honestly think...”

Laughter drowned out the rest of the sentence, and the judge let it build for a moment before he used his gavel. “A rent-controlled apartment,” he said. “All right, Mr. Winters. Your point is taken. If your client can come up with fifty thousand dollars, he can go back and stare at his bargain-priced walls.”

And he was staring at them now. He didn’t know what else to do.

It beat staring at the walls of a cell. That’s where they’d put him when they arrested him, and that’s where they stowed him again after the arraignment, after Winters had done such a skillful job of getting his bail reduced to a tenth of what the prosecution had been demanding. The lawyer had been beaming in triumph, but bail might as well have been five million dollars as far as he was concerned, or five hundred million, because $50,000 was four times what he’d had in the bank, checking and savings accounts combined, the day his callers turned out to be cops instead of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

Of course you didn’t have to come up with the whole amount, you could make use of a bail bondsman, but you had to have some cash, and he’d already written out a check for ten grand to Maury Winters as a retainer, and had rushed to move money from savings to checking to cover it. Because it wouldn’t do to bounce a check to your attorney, would it?

Winters had wanted to know whom he could call to post bond, and he’d been unable to come up with a name. His publishers? Jesus, it had been hard enough to get the cheap bastards to spring for airfare and pocket money for that book-and-author luncheon in Kansas City. Posting bail for a writer with dwindling sales seemed out of the question.

His agent? Roz was a pit bull in negotiations, a mother hen when the words wouldn’t come, but she wasn’t rolling in cash herself. She’d set up shop three years ago, when they’d cut her loose after a merger. Until then she’d been his editor — they let him go, too — and it had seemed sensible enough to go with her, and his former agents didn’t break down and weep when he told them he was leaving. Roz had made some sales for him since then, and she always returned his calls, but he didn’t know that her fifteen percent commission bought him a Get Out of Jail Free card.

His friends? You made a list, Winters had told him, and you worked your way down it and made the calls, and you got a few dollars here and a few dollars there, and yes, it was marginally humiliating, but so was Rikers Island, and, you should pardon the expression, making a few phone calls wouldn’t get you fucked in the ass.

Except it might, he thought. Metaphorically, anyway.

He’d begun making the list, but before he could finish it or start calling any of the names on it, he was out of jail. His ex-wife, the once and once again Karin Frechette (Karin Frechette-Creighton-Frechette, he’d called her, when she’d informed him she had decided to return to her maiden name), had put up her equity in the Montclair house as surety for his bond.

“Well, of course,” she’d said, when he called to thank her. “How could I leave you in a jail cell?”

The conversation was a difficult one. He’d asked about the kids, whom he didn’t see as often as his lawyer had suggested, and she said she didn’t think they really knew what was going on. “But I suppose they will,” she said, “before this is over. I just wish it would get cleared up in a hurry.”

“You’re not the only one.”