The Bonfire of the Vanities (60 page)

They were sticking the microphones between Killian and Martin and between Martin and Goldberg. Sherman tried to keep his head up, but one of the microphones hit him in the chin. He kept flinching. Every time he looked down, he could see the white Styrofoam peanuts on his jacket and his pants.

“Hey, Sherman! Fuckhead! How you like this cocktail party!”

Such abuse! It was coming from photographers. Anything to try to make him look their way, but—such abuse! such filth! There was nothing too vile to abuse him with! He was now…theirs! Their creature! He had been thrown to them! They could do what they wanted! He hated them—but he felt so
ashamed
. The rain was running into his eyes. He couldn’t do anything about it. His shirt was soaked. They were no longer moving forward as before. The little metal door was no more than twenty-five feet away. A line of men was jammed up in front of them. They weren’t reporters or photographers or cameramen. Some of them were uniformed policemen. Some of them seemed to be Latins, young men mostly. Then there were some white…derelicts…winos…but, no, they wore badges. They were policemen. They were all standing in the rain. They were soaking wet. Martin and Goldberg were now pressing up against the Latinos and the policemen, with Killian and Sherman in close behind them. Goldberg and Killian still had Sherman’s elbows. The reporters and cameramen were still coming at him from the sides and from behind.

“Sherman! Hey! Give us a statement!”

“Just one shot!”

“Hey, Sherman! Why’dja hit him?”

“…Park Avenue!…”

“…intentionally!…”

Martin turned and said to Goldberg, “Jesus Christ, they just busted that social club up on 167th. There’s twelve fucking spaced-out carambas in line waiting to get into Central Booking!”

“Beautiful,” said Goldberg.

“Look,” said Killian, “you gotta get him inside a there. Talk to Crowther, if you have to, but get him in there.”

Martin shoved his way out of the mob, and in no time he was back.

“No go,” said Martin, with an apologetic shake of the head. “He says this one’s gotta be by the book. He’s gotta wait on line.”

“This is very wrong,” said Killian.

Martin arched his eyebrows. (I know, I know, but what can I do?)

“Sherman! How about a statement!”

“Sherman! Hey, cuntface!”

“
All right!
” It was Killian, yelling. “You want a statement? Mr. McCoy’s not gonna make a statement. I’m his attorney, and I’m gonna make a statement.”

More pushing and jostling. The microphones and cameras now converged on Killian.

Sherman stood just behind him. Killian let go of Sherman’s elbow, but Goldberg still had the other one.

Somebody yelled, “What’s your name?”

“Thomas Killian.”

“Howdaya spell it?”

“K-I-L-L-I-A-N. Okay? This is a
circus arrest
! My client has been ready at all times to appear before a grand jury to confront the charges brought against him. Instead, this circus arrest has been staged in complete violation of an agreement between the district attorney and my client.”

“What was he doing in the Bronx?”

“That’s the statement, and that’s the whole statement.”

“Are you saying he’s innocent?”

“Mr. McCoy denies these charges completely, and this outrageous circus arrest shoulda never been allowed.”

The shoulders of Killian’s suit were drenched. The rain had gone through Sherman’s shirt, and he could feel the water on his skin.

“
¡Mira! ¡Mira!
” One of the Latins kept saying this word
¡Mira!

Sherman stood there with his shoulders drenched and bowed. He could feel the sopping jacket weighing down on his wrists. Over Killian’s shoulder he could see a thicket of microphones. He could hear the cameras whining away. The horrible fire in their faces! He wanted to die. He had never really wanted to die before, although, like many other souls, he had toyed with the feeling. Now he truly wanted God or Death to deliver him. That was how dreadful the feeling was, and that feeling was, in fact, a scalding shame.

“Sherman!”

“Fuckface!”

“
¡Mira! ¡Mira!
”

And then he was dead, so dead he couldn’t even die. He didn’t even possess the willpower to fall down. The reporters and cameramen and photographers—such vile abuse!—still here, not three feet away!—they were the maggots and the flies, and he was the dead beast they had found to crawl over and root into.

Killian’s so-called statement had distracted them only for a moment. Killian!—who supposedly had his connections and was going to make sure it was not an ordinary arrest! It was not an ordinary arrest. It was
death
. Every bit of honor, respect, dignity, that he, a creature named Sherman McCoy, might ever have possessed had been removed,
just like that
, and it was his dead soul that now stood here in the rain, in handcuffs, in the Bronx, outside a mean little metal door, at the end of a line of a dozen other prisoners. The maggots called him
Sherman
. They were right on top of him.

“Hey, Sherman!”

“How you gonna plead, Sherman!”

Sherman looked straight ahead. Killian and the two detectives, Martin and Goldberg, continued to try to shield Sherman from the maggots. A television cameraman closed in, a fat one. The camera came over his shoulder like a grenade launcher.

Goldberg wheeled toward the man and yelled, “Get that fucking thing outta my face!”

The cameraman retreated. How odd! How completely hopeless! Goldberg was now his protector. He was Goldberg’s creature, his animal. Goldberg and Martin had brought their animal in, and now they were determined to see that it was delivered.

Killian said to Martin, “This is not right. You guys gotta do something.”

Martin shrugged. Then Killian said in all seriousness, “My shoes are getting fucking ruined.”

“Mr. McCoy.”

Mr. McCoy
. Sherman turned his head. A tall pale man with long blond hair was at the forefront of a pack of reporters and cameramen.

“Peter Fallow of
The City Light
,” said the man. He had an English accent, an accent so blimpish it was like a parody of an English accent. Was he taunting him? “I’ve rung you up several times. I’d very much like to get your side of all this.”

Sherman turned away…Fallow, his obsessive tormentor in
The City Light…
No compunctions at all about walking up and introducing himself…of course not…his quarry was dead…He should have hated him, and yet he couldn’t, because he loathed himself so much more. He was dead even to himself.

Finally, all the prisoners arrested in the raid on the social club were inside the door, and Sherman, Killian, Martin, and Goldberg were just outside. “Okay, Counselor,” Martin said to Killian, “we’ll take it from here.”

Sherman looked beseechingly at Killian. (Surely you’re coming inside with me!) Killian said, “I’ll be upstairs when they bring you up for arraignment. Don’t worry about anything. Just remember, don’t make any statements, don’t talk about the case, not even to anybody in the pens, especially not to anybody in the pens.”

In the pens!
More shouting from beyond the door.

“How long will it take?” asked Sherman.

“I don’t know exactly. They got these guys ahead a you.” Then he said to Martin, “Look. Do the right thing. See if you can’t get him through fingerprinting ahead a that bunch. I mean, f’r Chrissake.”

“I’ll try,” said Martin, “but I already told you. For some reason they want this one step by step.”

“Yeah, but you owe us,” said Killian. “You owe us a lot—” He stopped. “Just do the right thing.”

All at once Goldberg was pulling Sherman in by the elbow. Martin was right behind him. Sherman turned to keep Killian in sight. Killian’s hat was so wet it looked black. His necktie and the shoulders of his suit were soaked.

“Don’t worry,” said Killian. “It’s gonna be all right.”

The way Killian said it, Sherman knew his own face must be a picture of pure despair. Then the door closed; no more Killian. Sherman was cut off from the world. He had thought he had no fear left, only despair. But he was afraid all over again. His heart began to pound. The door had closed, and he had disappeared into the world of Martin and Goldberg in the Bronx.

He was in a large low room broken up by cubicles, some of which had plate-glass windows, like the interior windows of a broadcast studio. There were no outside windows. A bright electric haze filled the room. People in uniform were moving about, but they were not all wearing the same sort of uniform. Two men with their hands manacled behind their backs stood in front of a high desk. Two young men in rags were standing beside them. One of the prisoners looked over his shoulder and saw Sherman and nudged the other, and he turned around and looked at Sherman, and they both laughed. Off to the side, Sherman could hear the cry he had heard outside, a man screaming, “
¡Mira! ¡Mira!
” There were some cackles and then the loud flatulent sound of someone having a bowel movement. A deep voice said, “Yaggh. Filthy.”

Another one said, “Okay, get ’em outta there. Hose it down.”

The two men in rags were bending over behind the two prisoners. Behind the desk was a huge policeman with an absolutely bald head, a big nose, and a prognathous jaw. He appeared to be sixty years old at least. The men in rags were removing the handcuffs from the two prisoners. One of the young men in rags had on a thermal vest over a torn black T-shirt. He wore sneakers and dirty camouflage pants, tight at the ankles. There was a badge, a police shield, on the thermal vest. Then Sherman could see the other had a badge, too. Another old policeman came up to the desk and said, “Hey, Angel, Albany’s down.”

“Beautiful,” said the man with the bald head. “We got this bunch, and the shift just started.”

Goldberg looked at Martin and rolled his eyes and smiled and then looked at Sherman. He still held Sherman by the elbow. Sherman looked down. Styrofoam peanuts! The Styrofoam packing peanuts he had picked up in the back seat of Martin’s car were all over the place. They were stuck to the wad of his jacket over his wrists. They were all over his tweed pants. His pants were wet, wrinkled, twisted shapelessly around his knees and his thighs, and the Styrofoam peanuts clung to them like vermin.

Goldberg said to Sherman, “You see that room in there?”

Sherman looked over into a room, through a large plate-glass window. There were filing cabinets and piles of paper. A big beige-and-gray apparatus took up the center of the room. Two policemen were staring at it.

“That’s the fax machine that sends the fingerprints to Albany,” said Goldberg. He said it in a pleasant sort of singsong, the way you would say something to a child who is frightened and confused. The very tone terrified Sherman. “About ten years ago,” said Goldberg, “some bright fellow got the idea—was it ten years ago, Marty?”

“I don’t know,” said Martin. “All I know is, it was a stupid fucking idea.”

“Anyway, somebody got the idea a putting all the fingerprints, for the whole fucking State a New York, in this one office in Albany…see…and then every one a the Central Bookings, they’re wired into Albany, and you send the prints to Albany on the computer, and you get back your report, and the suspect goes upstairs and gets arraigned…see…Only it’s a freakin’ logjam in Albany, especially when the machine goes down, like right now.”

Sherman couldn’t take in a thing Goldberg was saying, except that something had gone wrong and Goldberg thought he was going out of his way to be nice and explain it.

“Yeah,” Martin said to Sherman, “be thankful it’s 8:30 in the morning and not 4:30 in the fucking afternoon. If this was the fucking afternoon, you’d probably have to spend the night at the Bronx House of Detention or even Rikers.”

“Rikers Island?” asked Sherman. He was hoarse. He barely got the words out.

“Yeah,” said Martin, “when Albany goes down in the afternoon, forged-aboudit. You can’t spend the night in this place, so they take you over to Rikers. I’m telling you, you’re very fortunate.”

He was telling him he was very fortunate. Sherman was supposed to like them now! Inside here, they were his only friends! Sherman felt intensely frightened.

Somebody yelled out, “Who
died
in here, f’r Chrissake!”

The smell reached the desk.

“Now
that’s
disgusting,” said the bald man called Angel. He looked around. “Hose it down!”

Sherman followed his eyes. Off to the side, down a corridor, he could make out two cells. White tiles and bars; they seemed to be constructed of white brick tiles, like a public bathroom. Two policemen stood in front of one of them.

One of them yelled through the bars, “Whatsa matter with you!”

Sherman could feel the pressure of Goldberg’s huge hand on his elbow, steering him forward. He was in front of the desk, staring up at the Angel. Martin had a sheaf of papers in his hand.

The Angel said, “Name?”

Sherman tried to speak but couldn’t. His mouth was utterly dry. His tongue seemed stuck to the roof of his mouth.

“Name?”

“Sherman McCoy.” It was barely a whisper.

“Address?”

“816 Park Avenue. New York.” He added “New York” in the interest of being modest and obedient. He didn’t want to act as if he just assumed people here in the Bronx knew where Park Avenue was.

“Park Avenue, New York. Your age?”

“Thirty-eight.”

“Ever been arrested before?”

“No.”

“Hey, Angel,” Martin said. “Mr. McCoy here’s been very cooperative…and uh…whyn’t you let him sit out here somewheres insteada putting him in there with that buncha bats? The fucking so-called press out there, they gave him a hard enough time.”

A wave of profound, sentimental gratitude washed over Sherman. Even as he felt it, he knew it was irrational, but he felt it nonetheless.

The Angel puffed up his cheeks and stared off, as if ruminating. Then he said, “Can’t do it, Marty.” He closed his eyes and lifted his huge chin upward, as if to say, “The people upstairs.”