The Bum's Rush Read Online Free PDF Page B

don't have to take that," Gogolac declared.
    "What you have to do, Detective, is provide me
access to private consultation with my clients. Singly--together--
balls-ass naked, if we feel like it. Am I making myself clear, or
should we mayhaps get a supervisor down here? Why don't you call the
great Sanders himself? Tell him I'm down here and you refuse to let me
speak with my clients. Trust me, Sparky, he'll come down here and
strangle you with your own sac. If any," he added as an afterthought.
    The Seattle law enforcement community viewed Jed
James as a worst-case scenario come true. It was rumored that Norm
Sanders, the DA, had expressly forbidden the utterance of Jed's name
within the confines of his departmental offices and had decreed that
Jed be referred to as simply "that man." Jed's ten years as the ACLU's
chief litigator in New York had given him a political stance only
slightly to the right of Ho Chi Minh and an exaggerated, abusive
oratory style seldom seen this far west. No cause was too unpopular. No
infringement too slight. To my knowledge, if you counted appeals, he
was undefeated.
    He strode into the room and closed the door. The
overhead lights were reflected on his freckled pate. He wore a blue
blazer and gray slacks, no tie, no socks. He nodded at Selena.
    "Evening, Leo," he said amiably, sitting on the table next to me. "You want to tell me about it?"
    I kept it short and sweet. When I'd finished, he
left without a word. Twenty minutes and he was back. This time he
addressed Selena.
    "You're going to have to give them a name."
    "You didn't even tell them your name?" I asked. 
    "You told me not to tell 'em nothin'. I told 'em
nothin'. 'Sides that, they're a bunch of assholes. 'Specially that bull
dyke they kept leavin' me with. Kept tellin' me about how you was
spillin' your guts over here. How nobody cared about what happened to
an old drunk like me. How I was gonna take the whole fall 'cause you
was a guy with connections."
    "Where has this woman been all our lives?" Jed asked.
    "Kind of makes you wonder, don't it?" I agreed.
    "What's your name?" Jed asked.
    She scowled and folded her arms.
    Jed persisted. "No matter what I do, they won't
turn you loose until you give them a name they can link to a social
security number."
    "Social security my ass," she muttered.
    She folded her arms tighter and looked from Jed to me and back.
    "Selena Dunlap," she said finally. "Selena Dunlap. Five-four-one, eight-two, six-threesix-seven."
    Jed headed for the door. "An hour," he said over his shoulder.
    Twenty minutes later, the uniform who'd brought me
the" phone came in and took the cuffs off both of us. He was back in
another five with two Styrofoam cups of industrial waste coffee, which
we left untouched on the table. Selena had wandered over to the bench
at the far end of the room and was shuffling and smoothing the remnants
of yesterday's Seattle Times. When I got sick of watching the steam
rise off the coffee, I wandered over and sat down next to her. Her
prominent cheekbones were flushed, seemingly about to break through the
skin.
    "We'll be out of here soon," I said.
    "Good," she said. "This place is gettin' me down, man.
    I'm no good cooped up. I get all goofy if I don't
got some room to get around in. Makes me feel... weird ... you know ...
weird."
    "When Jed says an hour, he means an hour. Maybe a half hour to go now."
    "They treat ya like shit in here," she announced
out of the blue. "Like I'm not even a person or somethin'. Just because
I'm on the streets like I got no rights or nothin'. Like I'm some kinda
goddamn animal." She was moving like she was knitting in a rocker.
    I tried to calm her. "Soon," I said. "We'll be out of here soon."
    Her eyes were full of water. She picked up the Arts
section of an old Sunday Times and held it in front of my face. A color
picture of the late Lukkas Terry filled the center of the page, the boy
next door with purple hair. "That's my boy, you know," she said,
rattling