Marc Schuster

Mr. Cardinas Alleges

     Mr. Cardinas wears a dirty tee-shirtand cutoff blue jeans. I offer him a glass of ice water, a sodaperhaps, because someone stole our air conditioners overnight,but he declines, eyes on the floor, tracing the outlines his feetleave on the putty-colored carpet.

     "Thanks for meeting withus, Mr. Cardinas," I say, scratching notes in a yellow legalpad: Fernando Cardinas, age 36, naturalization status: greencard. I scribble a series of question marks after greencard to cover my ass and extend a hand to him. He shakes withoutraising his eyes. I wheel the swivel chair out from behind mydesk and take a seat next to him. Our knees nearly touch, graypolyester blend on dark flesh. "I’m going to ask yousome questions, Mr. Cardinas. I want you to take your time andanswer those questions to the best of your knowledge. Do you understand,Mr. Cardinas?"

     He nods. I turn to a clean page.We begin.

     When I ask Mr. Cardinas the natureof his grievance, he shifts his weight and drags his feet acrossthe carpet. His shorts bunch up in the crotch, so he pulls themloose. I draw three lines with my pen to keep the ink flowingwhile Mr. Cardinas ponders my question. Back home, I imagine,the mailman’s dropping off a load of mail from Delaware andMinnesota and other states whose tax laws encourage what amountsto postal terrorism, and I wonder what I’ll be having fordinner tonight. There’s half a meatloaf in the freezer, andI have some peppered cold cuts left over from my sister’sgraduation. Eyeing the silent immigrant, I count the days betweenthen and now and decide to smell the meat before committing toanything.

     "Mr. Cardinas," I sayagain, thinking maybe I’ll order some Chinese. Our fieldmanual tells us never to use big words like nature andgrievance, but I like to give people the benefit of thedoubt. "Why did you come to us today?"

     "To get some respect,"Mr. Cardinas says as if this much were self-evident.

     I’ve seen where he lives,or places just like it, visited fieldworkers under cover of nightwhile farmers patrolled their land with Dobermans and shotguns,hunting for trespassers and stray liberals. Sometimes I imaginegetting caught and pleading with angry farmers to set me freewhile they blast gaping holes through my body and bury meknee-deep in the dry, brown earth beneath mounds of cow dung andother fertilizers.

     "I respect you, Mr. Cardinas,"I say.

     His breath is loud. He breathesthrough his mouth, thick lips nearly quivering as he waits foran actual question. Men like Mr. Cardinas usually eye me withcontempt, exposing the silver blades of butterfly knives whileI say things like Hola! Me llamo David and remind themof their civil rights in broken Spanish. Their wives offer meears of corn or blueberries they’ve stolen from the fields.Their children sleep on thin mattresses laid down on dirt floors,murmuring words they’ve heard on the radio.

     "Who doesn’t respectyou, Mr. Cardinas?"

     That’s another thing theytell us in the field manual. Repeat your client’s name oftenand correctly. Doing so not only engenders a sense of rapportwith the client, but builds the client’s confidence as well.A confident client is a forthcoming client, and a forthcomingclient can often mark the difference between winning and losinga case.

     "The man," Mr. Cardinassays after a moment’s consideration.

     Part of me wants to explain toMr. Cardinas the difficulty of prosecuting the nebulous man onequally nebulous charges of disrespect, but the field manual warnsagainst it. A more fruitful approach, it suggests, is to probefor specifics, asking such key questions as who? what? when?and where? Professionals—though which professionalsthe manual does not make quite clear—frequently refer tothese questions as The Four W’s.

     "And by the man, Mr. Cardinas,you mean?"

     "Farmers. Cops. Everyone."

     I pour myself a glass of waterand offer one to Mr. Cardinas. He declines again. I write policeon my legal pad, black ink on yellow paper, because the fieldmanual tells us to always go after the big fish first. Mr.Cardinas alleges, I scribble above it, again to cover my ass.

     "How did the police disrespectyou, Mr. Cardinas?" I ask. Two naked children hold handson the side of my drinking glass, belly-buttons and pinhead nipplesbeing their only sexual organs. The caption below them reads loveis…, and the girl clutches a fistful of daisies. Sweatrolls off their pink, hairless skin and onto my lap.

     We play a game here in the office,a kind of lottery to see who can amass the most hopeless casesby the end of any given week. In the three months since they welcomedme aboard, I’ve gotten very good at this game. On Monday,I drew a crack whore who was suing her former employers for disabilitybenefits and a working mother who hadn’t paid her incometax in seven years. As far as this round is concerned, Mr. Cardinasis just the icing on the cake.

     My notes read Mr. Cardinasalleges police stole $300 when my supervisor pokes his headinto the office asking for a minute of my time. His name is Keith,and his teeth are perfect. Mr. Cardinas shrugs, mumbling in Spanish.I ask if it can wait, but Keith insists.

     "Do you like folk music,David?" he asks in the hallway. The words drift out of hismouth in long, southern syllables—tired, lazy. I tell himI don’t know anything about folk, but he invites me intohis office anyway. A framed license plate hangs on the wall—KLA-487.His first car was a ’78 Nova that he drove from Houston toNew Jersey in the summer of 1984—without air conditioning,he sometimes brags. "But I’ll bet you play an instrument."

     "Not since high school."

     "You don’t say. I playthe banjo, myself, David. I find it very relaxing. Not many peopleplay the banjo these days. It’s what you might call a lostart."

     "My client’s waitingfor me, Keith."

     "There was a time when thebanjo was the most popular instrument in America," Keithsays wistfully. The cooler in the corner of his office goes glug,glug, glug as he fills a paper cone with water. He takes asip, fills it again and sits down, motioning for me to do thesame. "Nowadays folks just make jokes about it."

     When I take a seat in front ofhis desk, Keith eyes me up and down, probing for sympathy. Hischeeks are sharp and angular like the man in the old Arrow Collarads, and his lips turn invisible when he licks them. I nod slightly,and he grins.

     "What do you call a hundredbanjos at the bottom of the ocean, David?"

     "A good start, Keith. Theymake the same joke about us."

     "Right, right," absently.He finishes the water and places the cup upside-down on his dayplanner. His days are all blank except for a dental appointmentand a haircut. "I wonder why."

     I make a show of looking overmy note on Mr. Cardinas, but Keith doesn’t notice. His fingershave begun to fiddle with a wooden biplane he keeps to amuse himselfwhen the days turn slow, twirling the balsa propeller until hegets bored and puts it down again.

     "David," he says, "Ireally need your help with something."

     "Anything, Keith. You nameit."

     Ominous words flash through myhead: Midlife Crisis. Corporate Downsizing. Prostate Cancer.

     He waters the fern on his desk.

     "The thing of it is, David,"Keith says, "I have this dream. Not the funny kind, you know,like you get when you take too much cough medicine, but the realkind. The kind people sing about. The kind you might call impossible.An aspiration, if you will. Do you know the kind of dreamI’m talking about, David?"

     When I was a boy, my dad usedto tell me that there were two kinds of people in the world: thekind who dream and the kind who work. The kind who dream, he toldme, think they can change the world. The kind who work die young.My dad worked in a paper mill and died of a heart attack whenI was sixteen. The way Keith’s going, he’ll probablylive forever, so I nod stupidly and ask what his dream is.

     "I want to be a singer,"he says bluntly, and I bite my lip. "But not just asinger. I want to write songs, too. Like Dylan and Springsteen.Like Gordon Lightfoot. I need to express myself, David. My innerself. The real me. It’s in my blood. I can feel it."

     "Good for you, Keith."My brain invents random tragedies like tidal waves and thalidomidebabies to keep me from laughing as the hole in my lip deepens."I’m sure I speak for everyone in the office when Isay you have our full support."

     "Thank you, David. I appreciatethat. Really, I do. But I was hoping you’d give this heresong I wrote a little bit of a listen-to. You know, let me knowwhat you think of it. Make a few suggestions maybe. I’m alwaysopen to suggestions."

     "I really hate to keep Mr.Cardinas waiting," I say, struggling to free myself likea dinosaur caught in a prehistoric tar pit. In a million years,I imagine, museum curators will tell children on grammar-schoolfield trips that I had sunken into an intense malaise while Keithwas speaking, and it was that very same malaise that kept me perfectlypreserved me for the ages.

     Mayonnaise? the childrenwill ask.

     "It’ll only take aminute, David. I promise."

     He gives me a second to crack,and I break down, saying, "Let’s have it."

     Keith smiles and tells me it’sa song about Cesar Chavez. "I left my banjo at home,"he says, "but I have a pretty good ear." Slapping histhigh, he starts to sing: Fields and factories, gas stations,too! Down-trodden immigrants, who will fight for you? Cesar Chavez!Cesar Chavez! Cesar Chavez, that’s who! The other versesget lost in the cynical radio static of my subconscious, and Itell him I like the way it rhymes.

     "I knew you’d likeit," Keith says, and I leave before I wet myself. In thehallway, a woman in thick makeup sucks oxygen from a tank on wheels.

     "Sorry about that, Mr. Cardinas,"I say, taking a seat next to him again. He hasn’t moved sinceI left, and I’m not sure he’s awake. "Let’sstart at the beginning. When did the police steal your money?"

     "When I was in jail."

     "And when was that?"

     "Yesterday."

     I take down the date and approximatetime. Mr. Cardinas doesn’t know the name of the arrestingofficer but remembers he was white. "Pink," he says,"like a dog’s asshole," and it’s shaping upto be a real hum-dinger of a case.

     "Why did the police arrestyou, Mr. Cardinas?"

     "Because they have no respect."

     It also comes out that Mr. Cardinaswas charged with drunk driving and reckless endangerment, bothtrumped-up charges that fall under the category of disrespectas far as Mr. Cardinas is concerned. A hot wind blows throughmy open window. The air outside is ripe with garbage and exhaustfumes from a passing truck. I consider closing the window butthink the better of it. The truck’s engine rattles and growsfaint in the distance, but the stench remains.

     "Had you been drinking whenthe police arrested you, Mr. Cardinas?"

     "I had a few beers. A coupleshots of whiskey."

     "How many shots, Mr. Cardinas?"

     "Half a bottle."

     "And then?"

     "I went to sleep."

     "So you weren’t driving."

     "I was asleep all day."

     "And where did the policefind you, Mr. Cardinas?"

     "At home."

     "Which is where?"

     "La Cruz Negra,"he says. "Crutchfield Farm."

     I’m trying to remember ifCrutchfield is the farm that blocked the entrance of Catholicpriests on Sunday mornings or the one that refused to installindoor plumbing in the laborers’ quarters when Keith’shead pops into my office again. He blushes and says, "I’msorry to bother you like this, David, but would you mind if Iforwarded my calls to your office? I’m stepping out for aminute, and I’d hate to make our clients talk to a machine.It’s rude, you know. And they’re not exactly used tothe technology."

     "To tell you the truth,Keith, I’m real busy with Mr. Cardinas here."

     "I understand." Heshuffles his feet in the doorway and grins. "I’m notexpecting any calls, though, so it shouldn’t bother you inthe least. I would ask Maria to take them, but she’s workingon a special project for me."

     "Let me guess," I say."Cesar Chavez."

     "I knew you’d understand,"Keith says, clicking his heels like a Gestapo officer before heleaves. A boy in yellow and green pajamas chases his sister throughthe hallway with a toy gun, and their mother yells at them tosit down. Her voice is rough and gravelly. They run through thehallway again, this time in the opposite direction, girl chasingboy, and the woman starts a hacking fit that lasts five minutes.

     "Sorry, Mr. Cardinas,"I say again. His fingers curl into fists at regular intervals.His tee-shirt is damp with sweat. "You’re sure you don’twant any water?" I ask, and the phone rings.

     "Legal Services," Isay into the receiver, "this is David speaking. How may Ihelp you?"

     "I have a question aboutmy little tax," a female voice says, and she proceeds toexplain in painful detail how it’s not really hers but herboyfriend’s little tax that she’s concerned about. Troubleis, she says, that he never got around to filing it and is nowin arrears to the tune of a couple thousand dollars plus penalties.When I ask exactly what she means by "little tax," sheanswers, "Not the big one, but the little one," andI forward her call to an attorney down the hall.

     "Let’s start at thevery beginning, Mr. Cardinas," I say, hanging up the phone.Another apology would be a slap in the face at this point. "Whatwere you doing before you started drinking?"

     "I was at the dentist."

     The interview stalls and startsmore than once before a clear picture begins to form: Mr. Cardinashad a toothache and went to the local dental clinic where a hygienistwith large breasts pulled a rotten tooth from his mouth in exchangefor a few ounces of marijuana, a detail I leave out of my notes.From there, he drove to a liquor store to purchase a six-packof beer and a bottle of whiskey. When he returned home, he drankthe beer and half the bottle of whiskey—"because mymouth hurt"—and went to sleep.

     "Had you been using anyother drugs that day, Mr. Cardinas?"

     "Only what the girl gaveme," Mr. Cardinas says. "Aspirin, I think. Maybe theother one."

     "Nothing illegal, Mr. Cardinas?No pot? No angel dust?"

     "No way. That stuff cloudsyour mind."

     A thin stream of mucous runsfrom his nose. He rubs it with his finger, sniffles, rubs hisfinger on the leg of his shorts. I take down the details withoutlooking at the paper. Mr. Cardinas sniffles again

     "You were drinking, Mr.Cardinas, but you weren’t driving. So why—aside fromtheir obvious lack of respect—did the police find it necessaryto track you down and arrest you?"

     "Someone," Mr. Cardinassays slowly, "borrowed my car."

     He doesn’t know who forsure, and he doesn’t know when exactly, but Mr. Cardinashas a theory about who borrowed his car. A woman—known toMr. Cardinas only as the Santeria Woman—decided to teachhim a lesson or two for failing to pay the proper respect duea woman of faith. Lesson one: black-magic toothache. When thatdidn’t do the trick, she resorted to lesson two: grand theftauto.

     "Excuse me, David,"Keith says, grinning. "I hope I’m not interrupting.Did I get any calls?"

     "No, Keith."

     "None at all?"

     "Were you expecting any?"

     "No. But a fella likes toknow he’s needed. Have you been outside, David? It’sbeautiful out. The kind of day that makes a man glad to be alive.Kind of got my poetic juices flowing, if you know what I mean."

     He stands in the doorway, noddingwith his mouth open, alfalfa sprouts stuck in his perfect teeth.I tell myself that most Texans are probably decent, hard-workingpeople with an IQ well above that of the average carrot, but Ionly half believe it and wonder how many shotguns he owns.

     "You must be Mr. Rodriguez,"Keith says, extending his hand. He’s been dropping hintslately that he may be thinking of running for office—LaborParty, we imagine. "David here is one of our finest attorneys,Mr. Rodriguez, so don’t worry. You’re in good hands."

     Mr. Cardinas mumbles somethingthat ends in tu madre and looks the other way. Keith pullsa white handkerchief from his front pocket and dry-wipes his fingersvigorously. Replacing the hanky, he hums a few bars of his CesarChavez song and retreats into the hallway. "Why hello, Maria,"I hear him say. "How’s that special project coming along?"

     "Let’s go over thisone more time, Mr. Cardinas." I look at my notes and rubmy forehead. "The Santeria Woman borrowed your car, led thepolice on a wild goose chase, parked the car exactly where youleft it, then told the police where to find you."

     "Yes."

     "And you were drunk whenthe police came to arrest you because your mouth still hurt whenyou woke up, and you finished off the bottle of whiskey."

     "Yes."

     "Okay. One last question,Mr. Cardinas, then we can move on to the money issue. How didthe Santeria Woman start your car?"

     I pray that she broke in andhot-wired the engine—smashed the window, maybe, or crackedthe steering column, left even the slightest shred of evidencethat might support his theory.

     "With the key," Mr.Cardinas says. "I leave it in the switch."

     "The switch?" I ask.

     He holds out his fist and jigglesan imaginary key. My sister tells me it’s the same sign severelyretarded people make when they have to go to the bathroom.

     "The ignition, Mr. Cardinas?You leave your key in the ignition?"

     "Yes," he says. "Inthe switch. I don’t want to lose it."

     "Of course not."

     Reasonable doubt, I remindmyself and pour another glass of water. Keith hovers in the doorway,waiting for me to acknowledge his presence.

     "Yes, Keith?"

     "I hate to bother you again,David," Keith says, refusing to sweat, "but I was thinkingabout that matter we discussed earlier, you know, regarding theChavez case." He raises an eyebrow and tries to wink. Thelines on his forehead run deeper than I expect. "Would youmind if I picked your brain for just a second?"

     "I’m busy, Keith."

     Keith swings his left foot backand forth in the doorway. Mr. Cardinas rubs his nose. I sip mywater and wait for Keith to leave.

     "It won’t take a minute,David. And I’m sure Mr. Rodriguez won’t mind."

     "Go away, Keith."

     "You don’t mind, doyou Mr. Rodriguez?"

     "You ever been shot?"Mr. Cardinas asks without looking up.

     Keith smiles and makes a hastyexit. I thank Mr. Cardinas, and he tells me it’s no problem.He works with assholes, too.

     "Water?" I ask.

     "No," he says.

     I pour it anyway. Out in thehallway, a woman is telling her children to study hard so theycan wear nice suits and get good jobs like me and Keith some day.Someone coughs violently. Mr. Cardinas drags his feet across thecarpet. Keith hums his Cesar Chavez song.

     "Drink," I tell Mr.Cardinas. "We’re going to be here for a while."

     He takes the water, mumbles gracias,and drinks.

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     Marc Schuster received an M.A. in English from Villanova University before entering Temple's Ph.D. English program. His math skills are very poor, and he frequently resorts to removing his socks and shoes in order to compute tips at swanky restaurants. This behavior embarrasses his family greatly, but they get him back by splitting infinitives and dangling participles whenever they get a chance to

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