Saving Room for Dessert (6 page)

Reseta turned his attention to the boy crumpled half on the sidewalk, half on the steps. “How we doin’ here? Can you breathe
alright? You feelin’ any pins and needles anyplace, your arms or your legs, huh?”

“Uh-uh.”

“Okay. That’s good. Now let me see you move your fingers. Don’t move anything else, don’t try to roll over, just move your
fingers, that’s all I wanna see.”

The boy wiggled the fingers of his right hand. His left hand was under him and he told Reseta that.

“Okay. That’s good. Now if you can move your left hand without movin’ your neck, take it out slow and move your fingers on
that one, okay?”

Reseta switched on his radio again and said, “Where’s my 10–47, huh? C’mon, guys, my bleeder’s still down here, I’m not lettin’
him move till somebody else decides he doesn’t need a body board. Still bleedin’ from the nose and cheek. Awright, 10–22 that,
I hear the siren … and there he is, I see him now,”

The Mutual Aid ambulance, siren winding down, eased around the corner from Park and stopped in front of Reseta’s MU.

To the boy, he said, “Don’t move, you hear? You wait till they ask you questions, but you don’t try to move until they say
so, you understand? I wanna be sure you didn’t hurt your neck here, the way you went into these steps, okay? Just talk, don’t
move your head up and down like that—what’re you doin’, what’s wrong with you? You tryin’ to make me crazy? Don’t move I said.”

Three EMTs spilled out of the ambulance. Reseta briefed them and then got out of their way. He went to the tripper’s side
and lifted him to his feet by his right arm and led him to the MU, where he told him to put his hands on the roof and spread
his feet.

“Oh what, you think I’m holdin’?”

Reseta had started to pat him down but stopped and thought,
you think I’m holdin’?
What, am I in some kinda bad movie here?

“I told you shut up how many times now? You special ed maybe? Slow learner? Last time: shut up!”

Reseta continued his pat-down until he was satisfied the boy wasn’t holding any kind of weapon. He opened the back passenger
door and told him to get in, sit down, and put his hands on the back of the front seat and to keep them there.

Reseta leaned in and spoke very softly. “I’m gonna ask you some questions now, but before you answer ’em—”

“When you gonna read me my rights?”

I
am
in some kinda bad movie, Reseta thought. I’m standing here in the middle of a beautiful sunny afternoon with a kid probably
doesn’t even have hair on his balls, the kind of hairless prick likes to beat on people smaller than himself ’cause that’s
how he makes himself feel big.

Reseta flashed back to the days when he was this tripper’s age, when he was the kid who got his books thrown all over the
street, the one who got tripped, shoved from behind on the steps, the one whose homework got taken off him and who, after
the smart-asses copied it, had to watch while they laughed and tore his up and threw it down a storm drain. It was smart-ass
pricks like this tripper who made him want to be a cop when he grew up, made him dream about having his own mobile unit just
like this one here, so he could put pricks like this one here in the backseat, take them for a ride to someplace where nobody
was, maybe cuff them to a fence, maybe go to work on their hands and shins with his baton, ask them how they liked feeling
helpless, friendless, small.

Reseta put his craziest face on, his wildest eyes, and glared at the tripper until he blinked and swallowed. “Whattaya think?
You ready to answer my questions now?”

“Yes.” Tripper’s voice was suddenly quivery.

“What’s your name?”

“Joseph.”

“Joseph what?”

“Maguire.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“Maguire, huh? Irish, right, huh?”

“So what?”

Reseta had to step back, take a breath, count to ten. Because all he had to do was hear the word
Irish
, and a wagon full of bad memories suddenly appeared behind him, full of Guinnan brothers taunting and tormenting him. Little
dago boy, scrawny little wop, macaroni arms, spaghetti legs, guinea head, garlic head—those were just the names he could bring
himself to tell his mother when she asked him why his shirt pockets were ripped or why he had to have another new tablet or
why his nose was bloody or his elbow raw or his knees scraped and his pants torn. He couldn’t tell his mother what they said
about her husband, that he didn’t have a dick and balls, he had a pepperoni and a couple heads of garlic and that she didn’t
have tits, nah, what she had was fuckin’ eggplants, all saggy and purple, that’s what they used to say, laughing with their
heads back, all three brothers, like they were the funniest people God put on this earth. But when he was in Nam, when the
VC and the NVA Regulars were trying to kill him and he couldn’t figure out any other reason why he should be trying to kill
them, he found his thoughts turning more and more to the Guinnan brothers and the more he thought of them the less doubt he
had about why he should be shooting at people whose country he was in, people who had done nothing to him.

And when he came home from Vietnam? Only Teddy Guinnan—the youngest one, the one who’d been in his class at St. Malachy’s
Elementary and later at Rocksburg High—was still living at home with his parents. So Reseta bought an eggplant and let it
get so squishy rotten he had to surround it with plastic wrap to hold it together. And when Teddy Guinnan came staggering
up the street that night, drunk as usual, Reseta stepped out from beside his mother’s house, unwrapped the front of the foul
purplish mess, tapped Teddy on the shoulder, kicked him in the nuts when he turned around, and then shoved that rotten eggplant
in his face, as hard as he could up his nose and in his mouth, and then watched him squirm on the sidewalk clawing at his
face and gasping for breath and groaning. And then Reseta leaned down and said, “There’s a little bit of my mother’s milk
for you, you piece a Irish shit.…”

Joseph Maguire had summoned up some reserve of defiance and was trying his best to lock on to Reseta’s gaze, but he started
to tremble in spite of his best effort to brass it out, suddenly trembling violently as though he were wet and cold even though
it was sunny and in the high 60s.

“Where you live, Joseph? Wanna give me the address?”

“No,” the boy said, his whole head shaking, but especially his lower jaw and lip.

“Okay, I’m sure somebody in the school has it.”

“One twenty-three Elm Street,” he blurted out. “In Maplewood.”

“Ohhhh, Maplewood. That’s where a lotta doctors live, huh, right? Your father a doctor, Joseph?”

“Yeah. And my mother’s a lawyer.”

“Oh. Impressive. She Irish too?”

“Yeah. So what? Why you keep askin’ me that?”

“Doctor father, lawyer mother, wow. And both Irish. A winning combination. I have no doubt you’ll be in the U.S. Senate before
you’re forty. Put your hands behind you.”

“What for?”

“What for? I’m gonna put my handcuffs on you, Joseph. ’Cause I’m arresting you. And then I’m gonna take you down the station
and book your little Irish behind. Then I’m gonna take you down the juvey center and file a petition against you for assault
and aggravated assault. In case your mommy hasn’t explained this to you, that second one’s a felony. And whenever I make an
arrest I have to follow department procedure to restrain the arrestee, which means I have to put cuffs on you, so I can take
you to the station in safety. And after I book you, then of course you’ll be allowed to call your lawyer, or in this case,
your mommy.”

The boy put his hands behind him but suddenly stiffened his legs, shoving his back against the seat. Reseta quickly grabbed
the boy’s lower lip, twisted, and pulled. The boy instantly came away from the seat, his eyes filling with tears.

“Last warnin’, kid. Don’t do anything like that again, you hear me? ’Cause if you think that hurt, that was nothin’. If you
understand me, just nod your head, don’t say nothin’, okay?”

The boy struggled to stop his tears. He nodded, his lower lip quivering.

Reseta put the cuffs on, then shut the back door, went to the front seat and got a nylon leg restraint out of his gear bag.
Then he went back, opened the rear door and said, “Alright, Joseph, do exactly what I say. Put your feet and knees together
and swing your legs out.”

“What’s that for?”

“Gonna say it once more. Pay attention. Put your feet and knees together and swing your legs out.”

“You gonna hit me with that? You can’t hit me, you ain’t allowed.”

“Oh believe me, Joseph, nothin’ I would love more than to give you the beatin’ you deserve, but what I’m tryin’ to do is restrain
your legs with this strap so, number one, you don’t hurt yourself or, number two, you don’t damage any part of this vehicle
on the way to the station. Now we gonna do this easy or hard—which?”

“Why you have to do that?”

“Because, my little son of a lawyer, City Council got tired of havin’ their vehicles in the shop because fellas like you get
to thinkin’ how much fun it is to kick the seats and the windows and the door handles, and things get broken and have to be
repaired, which takes the vehicle out of service. So the Safety Committee of City Council issued a policy directive that says
anytime a person’s in custody in police vehicles, officers shall, in addition to restraining their subjects hands, also restrain
their legs with the appropriate device, which the city bought for this purpose, and that’s what this strap is here. You satisfied
with that explanation, or would you like to read the policy directive yourself?”

What Reseta wouldn’t allow himself to say was that if he had to get in his briefcase to get that policy directive, when they
got back to the station he was also going to get his baton and whack his current arrestee across the shins so hard he wouldn’t
need to use a telephone to call his lawyer, she’d be able to hear him even if she worked in Pittsburgh.

“You know you ain’t allowed to hit me. My mother says you ain’t.”

Little prick’s a mind reader, Reseta thought. More likely, he’s taken this ride before.

Joseph Maguire continued to try to glare defiantly up at Reseta, but it wasn’t easy with tears on his cheeks and mucus bubbling
at his nose. After a moment he tried to rub his nose on his shoulder, then put his knees together and swung his legs out.
Reseta stood to the boy’s right, pushed against the boy’s right knee with his left hand and used his right hand to loop the
nylon strap over the boy’s Nikes and work it up his legs to above his knees, where he cinched the loop tight and told the
boy to swing his legs back in. Reseta then positioned the other end of the strap so the door could close on it, thus pinning
the boy’s thighs to the seat. As far as Reseta was concerned, these leg restraints were worth a hundred times the eleven bucks
apiece they cost the city.

“We better be goin’ to the station, you better not be takin’ me anyplace else,” the boy said when Reseta returned to the car
after checking with the EMTs and getting the victim’s name, age, address, home phone number, and his mother’s name.

“Must be true what they say about the luck of the Irish, Joseph. No thanks to you, that boy’s able to move all his extremities
and he’s not havin’ any trouble breathin’.”

“Where you takin’ me? It better be the station.”

Reseta got behind the wheel and started driving, easing slowly around the ambulance and making two left turns to head south
on Main toward City Hall.

“You know, Joseph, the more you talk the more you sound like you been in the backseat before, am I right?”

“Juvenile records are private.”

Juvenile records are private?
Reseta looked in the mirror at the jailhouse lawyer, all of maybe a hundred twenty pounds. “You’re right, Joseph, juvey records
are private. So are juvey proceedings. But who’d you think all those other people were the last time, huh?”

“What last time?”

“Hey, stonehead, all those adults who were in the room the last time you went through the system, who did you think they were?”

No answer.

“Suddenly can’t talk now, huh? You don’t remember those grownies standin’ around in Family Court? Or maybe you had your hearing
in front of a master, huh? If there was no judge in a robe, there had to be an acting judge. You don’t remember somebody called
a master?”

No answer.

“Don’t talk, that’s alright, I’ll talk. There had to be an assistant DA, a deputy sheriff probably, at least one cop testifyin’
about why he arrested you, a stenographer takin’ down every word everybody says—what, you think when it was your turn they
all went deaf, dumb, and blind? You think when you walk in there this time none of them’s gonna be allowed to read what happened
the last time? Or they won’t remember you? Mommy must not’ve explained that part, huh?”

The boy said nothing and pretended to look out the window.

“Still no answer? What am I gonna read, huh? Other assaults? Aggravated assaults? I get to read that stuff too, you know.
And look at you. Those Nikes you got on I bet cost more than all the clothes that kid was wearin’. Bet your parents make more
in one week than that kid’s parents make in a year. What’s his name? You even know his name?”

“Who cares?” the boy said with a sneer. “Misco-somethin’. He’s stupid, he smells, he falls down all the time, he’s a poster
boy for abortion.”

Reseta pulled into the lot beside City Hall, shut the MU off, and hustled around to open the passenger back door. He reached
down, grabbed the strap that had been held by the door and jerked up on it hard, sending Joseph Maguire sprawling onto his
left shoulder.

“Ow! Hey! That hurts!”

“Excuse me, my foot slipped. There’s some oil here or somethin. Did that hurt? I’m awfully sorry, won’t happen again, I promise.
Swing your legs out, so I can get this strap off, I know it’s uncomfortable. Then we can go inside, take care of the paperwork.
Won’t take long.”