COURTING DISASTER

by Leigh Lundin

Late one Sunday, I had been remodeling an apartment off Orlando’s South Trail which has, to put it delicately, a colorful reputation for hookers and strip clubs. Working for me was a neighborhood kid, a reprobate Jinx who has a way of attracting disasters. A little after nine that night, we wrapped up and stopped a little further up the trail for a late night sandwich before heading home.

In the restaurant, we watched a girl signing to another, her hands talking ASL, American sign language. I know only a few sign words, but the Jinx knew several, probably acquired when he was a guest of juvie lockup, signaling down the cell block.

As we drove away from the restaurant, the Jinx spotted the girl and her friends, rolled down his window and signed to them.

Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Cops immediately pulled me over.

Their first question was, “Are you white boys slumming down here for prostitutes?”

I was indignant.

It didn’t occur to me until much, much later that what the cops saw was two white guys on the South Trail, one leaning out a car window, signaling to black girls on a street corner. I might laugh later, but I wasn’t then.

The male cop asked me if I’d ever been arrested. I said no.

The female cop asked the Jinx kid, and he started rattling off felonies like they were Chamber of Commerce awards. I clasped my forehead and tried to sink into the car seat.

The cop took my ID and cocked an eyebrow at me. “How long you been driving with a suspended license?”

Again I was indignant. “It’s not suspended.”

“Yes, it is.”

“No, it isn’t!”

“Yes, it is.”

I felt childish. “What’s it suspended for?”

“Financial irresponsibility,” he said.

Damn! How did they know? Homeland Security’s invasive but I didn’t know they were that invasive.

I said, “What does that mean, financial irresponsibility?”

“Usually it means you didn’t pay child support.”

“I don’t have any children.”

“You sure? Ninety percent of the time that’s what it is, else you didn’t pay your insurance.”

“I certainly did. Why don’t you check.” I showed him my insurance card.

“Doesn’t matter. Tallahassee says pull your license, we got to pull it. You figure it out afterwards.”

He did and I did. It wasted a day and a half, but I finally learned that the problem went back to an accident I’d had the previous year. The records failed to mention either party had insurance, and the state bureaucrats concluded I owed the other driver for damage to her car and she owed me for injuries. The state had suspended my driver’s license, her driver’s license and her car tags (what Florida calls license plates).

Terrific. I phoned the woman and warned her that her licenses were suspended.

That afternoon, I persuaded my insurance company to fax the state that I had continuous full coverage and nobody owed anyone anything. That left me the privilege of re-buying a new driver’s license. In Florida, that takes a couple of weeks because our state is so overloaded.You can’t walk in and expect to be served, rather you are supposed to make an appointment at least ten days out.

When I was stopped, the cop explained I could plead guilty and simply mail in the ticket with a check for the fine. Since I wasn’t guilty, I gathered the supporting documents and mailed them in to the court. Whew. What a waste of time.

Ennnnhhh! I wasn’t nearly finished. In the mail, I received a notice from the state that my license was suspended again. What the hell for this time?

I phoned the clerk of court and was told: “If you’re guilty, you don’t have to go to court, you can just pay your fine through the mail. But if you’re NOT GUILTY, you must go to court.”

What? What kind of sense does that make? It you’re guilty, you skate by mailing a check; but take time off from employment and it can easily cost more to be innocent.

Another half day off from work, and I had to pay tolls and pay to park in the courthouse garage. Inside, I ended up in a queue, where I felt like Arlo Guthrie, standing behind a gang of badass mother-rapers and father-rapers, as they unloaded their knives and nun-chucks into trays before passing through metal detectors.

Behind me, a biker chick rushed in. A piece of chain, so tightly cranked around her upper arm that it bit deeply into her flesh, set off the metal detector. Fortunately, she wore a black leather vest so tiny and revealing, she couldn’t possibly be carrying weapons. 38s, maybe, but no guns.

I ended up in a room with the father-rapers who apparently had the bad taste to lose their licenses too. Even more intimidating were the courtroom guards. They looked like they lifted engine block free weights and got their protein from mad cow tartare.

The guards ordered us to fill out the forms in the back of the room. All the forms were pleas marked either GUILTY or NOLO CONTENDRE. I asked one of the guards about a form for NOT GUILTY. He looked at me like I should be handed over to Homeland Security. “We ain’t got no NOT GUILTY forms.”

“So what do I fill out?”

“You saying you ain’t guilty?” It seemed a novel concept to him.

“Right,” I said. “Not guilty.”

Nearby, the badasses snorted. I started feeling defensive.

“Well,” the guard said doubtfully, “I suppose you can try to tell that to the judge.” ‘Crock’ was the word I think he wanted to add.

After all the introductory intimidation, the judge turned out to be a very decent lady, bending over backwards to give even the lowest jerk a break… and she had many jerks to deal with.

One of the first up said, “See, judge, I ain’t saying I was doing nothing illegal or anything like that, but I was conversating to some dudes on the street, see. Things kind of got out of hand, and I expedited outa there in a car that I forgot wasn’t my own. The po-lice stopped me on the run. I tried to tell them it was a safety issue, that I didn’t want to get my ass shot off. … What? No, your honor, I ain’t saying it was a buy or anything like that. We was just… well, you might say we was street negotiating over some issues.”

A blonde girl was up next, better dressed than most in the room. She said, “A few weeks ago, I borrowed my sister’s license from her purse so I could go to a bar. I got stopped for speeding and showed my sister’s license to the cop. I didn’t know my stupid sister had reported it stolen, so see, it wasn’t really my fault.”

The third was a guy with an amazing canvas of body art. “See, your honorable, I was only inspecting Discount Pawn, you know what I mean, judge? Just evening window shopping. But this cop thinks I’m casing it ’cause it was closed. I tells him I’m checking out the store cause I want to buy my bitch a watch. He calls in on me and finds out I’m only four days out of the joint and I tells him that I aint’ had time to get me a driver’s license. He bad wants to arrest me for thinking I’m casing the place, but all he can do is nail me on a driver’s license. That’s not really fair, your honorable.”

The defendant ahead of me was the biker chick with the painful-looking chain around her bicep. The judge said, “Miss Nomad, you are charged with public intoxication. Your license and keys were taken at the scene to keep you from driving. You became abusive and were then arrested.”

The girl looked down at her boots and kind of whispered, “I don’t rightly remember.”

“Noooo, I reckon not, if you’re drunk at the time. You’ll have to do something about that drinking.”

One of the guards poked a guy who had fallen asleep.

Finally it was my turn. The judge said, “You are charged with Failure to Appear. You’ve lost your license twice in two months.” She was reading a thick file. “I see your passenger has quite a record: Possession, public fighting, um… public fighting, public fighting again, public intoxication, speeding, reckless driving, driving without a license, assaulting an officer, D’n’D, L’n’L, …”

Eying me with new respect, the badasses in the row ahead of me appeared impressed.

Me, I was getting a bad, bad headache. “Uh, judge, the passenger was just a neighborhood kid who happened to be doing work for me.”

“Says here you were stopped on suspicion of solicitation.” She raised an eyebrow toward me and the court went silent.

“Well, judge, …” I stumbled through an explanation about seeing the girls doing sign language and the Jinx signing back.

The badasses snickered, but when the judge started nodding, they glanced at each other, whipped out their messaging cell phones and started tapping in notes.

“And sir, the Financial Irresponsibility suspension?”

“I mailed in the documentation on that, judge. It was a mix-up, that was all.” Even to my ear, that sounded lame.

“I see. But you failed to appear in court.”

“Judge, if I were guilty and could mail in the fine, it seemed only fair I should be able to mail in proof I wasn’t guilty.”

Conclusions that sound sensible in the normal world have a way of sounding inane in court. At least the badasses withheld judgment, remaining poised to take notes.

“That’s not the way it works, Mister…” The judge continued reading for a moment. “Oh, I see. The officer marked that you didn’t have to appear. He shouldn’t have done that. Sir, I’ll waive the fine and dismiss the charges. Sign the documents before you leave the courthouse. Have a good day.”

There was a moment of a courtroom awe. The badasses started whispering, “Man, that sign language scam is ƒ’ing genius! Hey, dude, how’d you work that appearance thing again?”

The biker chick gave me a steamy “well, aren’t you something!” gaze, then lowered her eyes demurely. Somehow, my dashing Perry Mason defense had won her heart, a new definition of courting.

After I signed and collected papers from the clerk’s window, I turned and found the biker chick behind me again.

“You, umm,” her words kind of stumbled. “You, uh, want to get a drink or something? Y’all have to drive.”