Secret Adventures

1-800 Get Even-1

1-800 Get Even“Where to now, Reverend Jim?”

“This is your baby, Mr. Mac. I’m just here to help out.”

“I figured you’d say that, Rev. I was only asking to see if you had any ideas.”

The two men sat side by side on a bench along the Canal Walk, watching inline skaters and mamas pushing strollers in the warm afternoon sunshine.

Suddenly, they found themselves without an office and a home. The Feds showed up unexpectedly and they escaped with only seconds to spare.

“You’d think they’d applaud us, or at least look the other way,” Joshua muttered.

“Men are at their most noble when solving crimes of dubious morality, especially when it’s easy,” the minister observed.

Reverend James Fulsome, former heavyweight champion of the world in boxing, loomed over his companion, and Joshua McReynolds was not a small man. He stood six foot six and weighed two forty five, just like Big Bad John. Only about ten pounds of that number had given over to fat, so the Rev was still in pretty good shape for a man approaching 60. As he pondered their future, his mind wandered to their first encounter. Detective Joshua McReynolds quickly earned his way off the street beat and into the Special Victims Unit Of the Indianapolis Police Force. He seemed to have a knack for defusing shouting matches and outright fist-fighting before any serious injuries transpired. This made him a natural for the department that focused on crimes like r**e and s****l battery. Passions ran high among the people they were usually summoned to help. At least every week a call was rooted in alcoholism or drug abuse, emotional or mental illness. Sometimes the crimes were so depraved that someone in the department would transfer out after dealing with it. That also helped to grease Mac’s path.

After two years as a detective Joshua McReynolds was asked by the department to participate in public speaking engagements as an ongoing city-wide endeavor to educate the public about the scourge of battery and s****l abuse. The frequency of such crimes had skyrocketed, so the higher-ups figured the people needed to know exactly what behavior in this category constituted a crime. Where did the law draw the line between overheated argument and brutality? And if the line had been crossed what rights did the victims have? How could they protect themselves, prosecute at reasonable or low cost, and maybe even hide?

Run and hide was the one lesson too many victims learned too late. That was the first thing they should have done. Detective McReynolds told several stories of a woman who thought she could reform her man, so she stayed with him until one night he beat her to death.

James Fulsome was present at one such public forum. Detective McReynolds’ compassion, eloquence and sense of urgency impressed him, so he approached the younger man shortly after the meeting closed.

After cordialities the minister told the policeman, “My younger sister lived with a brute of a man. You’d never know by looking at him. He was scrawny and timid, like the kid who was always being picked on in school. But man, get him alone with a woman and all of a sudden he was a macho dude, a first class bully. Carla my sister wasn’t much to look at. She always fought a battle with her weight and her complexion never was very good, so any attention from a man was something to cherish at all costs. She could usually cover the bruises with make-up but there was no way she could cover the bumps. When we asked her how she got those bumps she would always say they had a fight and things got a little rough. She hit him as hard as he hit her, she insisted. The only thing is, we never saw any bumps or bruises on him, not even a scratch. When we started seeing burn marks on Carla we knew we had to do something. Actually, we needed to do something well before this, but now at least we had positive proof of sadism.”

“You want to assume the best in people,” McReynolds replied. “When you start assuming the worst it’s time to get out,” he added cryptically.

Seeing that the detective was willing to hear more, Fulsome continued. “We finally convinced Carla to come home with us. We told her that she should never be alone with that man again. She had to be strong. ‘He’ll call you and apologize and promise he’s changed. He might even cry. But he’ll never stop beating you without a lot of therapy and maybe even jail time.’ Carla acted like she understood. She swore she would follow our advice, and she did—for awhile. I even paid him a visit and told him, ‘You cannot hit a woman. Do you hear? It is unmanly! You cannot hit a woman!’ He said he understood—saw the error of his ways, but I didn’t believe him. And you know what? Neither did Carla. She just made a stupid mistake. She left a keepsake in the apartment they shared, an old locket from her grandmother. She figured the creep would be at work, and didn’t want to bother us with so simple an errand. So she went to the apartment herself and—you probably know the rest of the story.”

Mac nodded, “He came back, surprised her and beat her to death.”

“You got it. We had to close the casket because there was no reconstructing her face. She had sixteen broken bones, but she died from loss of blood. On the stand he cried to a jury about ‘the terrible thing I done.’ He truly loved my sister, he said, and the thought of losing her made something snap. The jury must have agreed to a point because they convicted him of first degree manslaughter and slapped him with a sentence of twelve years. He can get out after six on good behavior.”

“It’s an old story” Joshua replied. “The more civilized we try to be, the more savage becomes the criminal element. It’s like compassion and rehabilitation only go so far. At some point with some people a different law has to take over, to avenge the victim and, if possible, correct the perpetrator. Would you like to join me for a beer? I’ll tell you my story.”

Reverend Fulsome sensed his own frustration in the other man, an ever dwindling trust in the legal system. When he disclosed his profession to the detective at Morty’s Tavern, the former beat cop looked at him thoughtfully. “So how many times should a person turn the other cheek, Reverend?”

“It depends on the transgression. If we’re talking about a child who often lies to protect his own skin, then the answer is ‘a lot.’ If we’re talking about acts of brutality..."

“I’m going to resign from my position on the force,” Joshua interrupted. “I haven’t announced it yet, but I will soon.”

“Ah, I’m so sorry. Yours seems like the very temperament that the police department needs.’

“I’m afraid that is rapidly disappearing. No, it is all but gone. It’s not because of the nature and the frequency of the crimes I have to deal with. It’s because of flimsy laws, uninspired enforcement, over crowded prisons that spit out cons long before they should ever return to society..."

“I suspect that is the start of your story,” Fulsome observed, taking a sip of his beer.

“I know she was just a prostitute. And I know ‘just a prostitute’ is a cold way of putting it. These are the women who live on the edge. They have no hope, no way to better themselves. They’re always desperate for cash and they’ll do just about anything to get some. Most of them are drug addicts or alcoholics, wanting only enough to get that next fix or bottle so they can forget about their past and their present predicament. I say ‘only a prostitute’ because most people I know believe these women are so lost, so broken that they cannot be redeemed. They are frequently victimized by men, from not getting paid once they turned the trick to getting stabbed in the genital area by some sicko.

“The woman I’m speaking of, Darlanne Savoy—I never learned her real name, but I’m sure that’s not it—Darlanne was different from the rest. She had a little boy who was kind of sickly. He always seemed to require medical attention. Darlanne had no health insurance and she could not afford the bills on her meager pay as a supermarket cashier, so she turned to hooking when she had the chance. She was pretty, very desirable, the product of a broken home, including a sexually abusive stepfather. She wasn’t sure if little Jesse was her father’s son, or one of her early johns’. She eventually invested in safety measures once the money started coming in. A person of color like yourself, Darlanne took up with a rough but handsome white guy about twice her age, meaning he was in his late thirties. Like the man in your story, he started beating her for fun and stealing her money to feed his heroin habit. Finally, at wit’s end and fearful for the safety of her son, she did the one thing hookers the world over vow never to do.”

“She called the police.”

“She called the police—and I answered it. As a detective I didn’t usually work first response, but she sounded so level-headed, well-spoken, refined almost. I’m ashamed to say it now, but she sounded like someone worth helping. I’m not kidding when I say if she had found her Henry Higgins she could have been a movie star.”

Fulsome smiled at the reference to Pygmalion, the cockney “gutter-snipe” rescued from obscurity and trained in the social graces by her mentor Henry Higgins in the play by George Bernard Shaw. The look on McReynolds’ face told the minister that the detective ultimately wanted to fulfill such a role in Darlanne’s life.

“When I first saw her she had a swollen eye, a broken nose and a cracked lip. Her arms were badly bruised and a clump of hair had been pulled out of her scalp. Yet she spoke calmly, sensibly. She even blamed herself to a point as so many of them do, but not because she provoked him—because she should have read him better, been a better student of human nature. Suddenly, she didn’t trust herself anymore and wondered if she should continue hooking if she could be victimized so easily.

“She never tried to hide what she did. She said she did it for her son, and that she was determined he would have a better life than hers. I told her it was a dangerous business, the most dangerous business. No matter how much she tried to protect herself she was always vulnerable because her transactions were always in secret, which provided cover for predators. She said she knew that, didn’t plan to do it much longer.

“I ran a check on the perp and found he had three priors and two outstanding warrants for assaults on women. We picked him up, slapped his fanny in court and sent him off to jail for three years. That’s what they gave a man who had beaten three women beyond recognition—three years. It actually turned out to be a year and a half. By that time I had grown quite fond of Darlanne. We never dated per se, but I would meet her for coffee on occasion, lunch once in a while. I took the news that she was moving out of the city with mixed emotions. At first I was sorry that she would no longer be part of my life, but then I felt happy because at last someone was getting out. At last we were seeing a victory.

“That night the old boyfriend returned straight from prison. When she wouldn’t let him in, he finally broke the door down, poured gasoline on her and her son and lit them on fire. When we got there she was standing in the middle of her tiny apartment holding the boy and speaking words of comfort to him. They were charred from head to toe. The kid was still smoking, glued to her by liquefied flesh. They had no idea how badly burned they were. Their nerve endings had all been destroyed. She asked if she might hold her son as they wheeled her down the hallway to an ambulance. The last thing she said in this life she said to me: ‘thanks for coming.’ They were both dead before the ambulance reached the corner.

“We still haven’t found the guy, but I ask you, what punishment would be suitable for a man like this? I know the Constitution forbids ‘cruel and unusual punishment’, but does that mean we have to give him a warm place to sleep and three square meals a day for the rest of his life—and nothing else? When is the law so lenient that it becomes a joke, striking fear into the heart of no one? How is a vicious savage deterred from future acts of violence when he can watch cable TV and enjoy conjugal visits? It’s almost like ‘commit a crime and do the time.’ Why not? You’ll live better than most of the law abiding citizens on the face of the planet.”