skyfort

Today’s soundtrack:
It’s gonna be rougher, it’s gonna be tougher
And I won’t be the one who’s gonna suffer

Today at 1:22pm: chewing slowly



I’m minding my own business in the low end of fifth gear when a minivan blows past me in the left lane. He’s doing at least ninety, ZOOOOOMM. He disappears around a bend and becomes like one of those pretty girls you see on the six-train: Never to be seen again.

Two minutes later I’ve got a State Trooper on my ass, filling the rearview mirror with his angrily flashing blue-and-reds. I keep waiting for him to swerve around me and tag the minivan, but after a moment it becomes clear I’m the one in the crosshairs.

I sigh, and smoke comes out, because I’m smoking, and pull the car towards the shoulder. God bless New Jersey State Troopers.

Then I make my mistake.

I go to ditch the cigarette--probably not a good idea to blow smoke in the cop’s face, I figure--but I don’t want to chuck it out the window like I normally do, so I try to drop it in the can of iced tea in the cup holder. Nervous, I make something of a spaz of myself trying to get it into the hole.

The cop parks behind me diagonally. Weird. Positions the car in such a way that when he opens his door, the car is shielding him...from me. Then he gets out, hand on his gun, and creeps around to the right side of my car, doing some crazy Pink Panther moves while checking my shit out.

He slides up on the right super-cautiously, moving as if he’s shuffling along a ledge, and I can’t see his gun arm. This is making me fucking nervous. Petrified I’m gonna sneeze and get a hail of 9mm slugs instead of a “Ga’bless you.” I keep my hands at nine and three, suddenly understanding my frantic fumbling with the cigarette might have made it look like I was “doing something.”

While one of the cop's fingers is on the trigger, another finger’s got a ring on it, and he raps it against the passenger side window. I power the window down. “Good afternoon, officer.”

“License and registration,” he barks. All business, huh, Buford.

Still can’t see his gun arm. I take my seatbelt off slowly and demonstratively, then carefully pull my wallet out of my back pocket. After handing it over I open the glove compartment verrrrrrry slowwwwwwly and pull my registration out, glad I’m not storing large ziplocs filled with powdered sugar in there.

“Sit tight,” he says, and heads back to his car with my papers. God I wish I had a set of tits. I shut the car off and make the face one makes after spilling coffee down the front of one’s shirt.

The cop sits in his car for what feels like forever. I swear he’s playing chess or reading Tolstoy back there.

A checkmate or a Chekov later he returns, holding that awful rectangular piece of paper that means you’re getting a ticket. “I got you doing 87 in a 65,” he says, handing me the papers.

“Bullshit, you got nuttin’,” I say. (Well those weren’t the exact words I used, it might have been more like “Yes, sir.”)

“And I’m gonna cut you a break: I’m only gonna write you up for the speeding,” he says.

Now I’m confused. “Uh...did I do something else wrong, officer?”

Now he looks confused. “No,” he says, and returns to his cruiser.

What the hell was that! I think he thought I was smoking up.

I wasn’t doing 87 in a 65, but I know once a cop writes you a ticket, that’s that. There’s a time and place to argue these things, but it ain’t by the side of the road on Interstate 80.

That was three months ago, on my way to Toronto. Last week was the resolution.

A week after being ticketed I wrote a letter to the Municipal Court in [Bumscrew], New Jersey, requesting a trial. I got two letters in return: One was an official-looking declaration of my court date; the second was from a law firm in the [Bumscrew] area. Said they caught wind I’d been ticketed, wanted to represent me. I don’t like lawyers, and I like talking to them even less, but I dialed the number on the letterhead.

“I can get it down to nine miles over the limit,” said McLawyer. “Without a doubt.”

“That’ll still put points on my license, which means my insurance will go up,” I said.

“There’s a chance I can get it dismissed, but I can’t promise anything.”

“How much do you charge?”

“Well, it’s normally $600, but I’ll give you the reduced rate of $450.”

Fucking lawyers--four-fifty! What am I, a crack dealer? “Uh...I think I’m gonna try to defend myself.” Maybe I can adapt Hapkido towards some legal applications.

“Suit yourself,” said McLawyer, and I could picture him shrugging. “Give us a call if you change your mind.” He hung up and crawled back into his cave.

So on Google I type “How to fight a speeding ticket” and a bunch of pages come up. It’s amazing how Google has all the answers. This role used to be supplied by religion. If you had a question about the proper way to conduct your life, you’d look it up in the good book. Now you type random questions into browsers and answers come back faster than Hail Mary’s.

On the day of the trial I gave myself two hours to get there, even though Mapquest pegged it at one. On Route 80 I was careful not to speed. It was raining out and the roads were slick. I saw several speedtraps along the way and hoped my officer was busy setting one of them; my fellow web citizens say that if the cop doesn’t show up in court, your ticket gets dismissed.

I got to [Bumscrew] at 1pm, a full hour early, and scoped out the town. It looked a lot like the town Rambo gets dropped off at in the beginning of First Blood. Far as I can tell the entire ‘burg has only got one chowhouse, a deli of some sort. I park in front, behind a pickup truck that probably has a pistol in the glovebox.

Inside the chowhouse there’s a small counter with five stools, diner-style, two of which are taken by your average blue-collar American guys. One older, one younger. Type of cats who wear trucker hats because they actually drive trucks.

Behind the counter is, I shit you not, a gum-snapping blond waitress. Like a younger version of Flo from Mel’s Diner.

I take a seat and Li’l Flo ignores me for a good three minutes, jawboning with truckers 1 and 2. This treatment is like diarrhea: I don’t like it, but it’s happened to me enough times that I know what I’m in for.

Eventually she looks my way and I order a sandwich.

“Well, I guess they don’t care what kinda people they let in here,” I hear the older guy say, and I turn my head slowly to the left.

He’s not talking to me but is instead jokingly greeting a friend of his who’d just walked in, a hapless-looking guy in a flannel shirt and a dazed expression.

“Hey, whaddaya say, Joe,” says the new guy.

“Whaddaya need, Lou?” says the waitress, instantly.

“Ham sandwich,” he says, and something tells me it’ll be ready before mine.

I get to the courthouse ten minutes early. It’s a small one-story building, as white as the people milling around in the lobby. An elderly court official points me towards a sign-up sheet sitting on a counter.

“Have a seat in the courtroom,” he says, after I’d signed. “I’ll explain the process in a minute.” He directs me to a set of double doors.

Inside the courtroom, I get two visual shocks: One, there are a good forty other defendants waiting in here. Two, about three-fourths of them are black or Latino. From this you could conclude that either

a) blacks and Latinos speed more than anyone else,
b) blacks and Latinos make up the majority of traffic that passes through this small, heavily-white town and are hence represented here in proportional numbers, or
c) something else.

I take a seat in the back row. The interior of the courtroom is painted institutional white. The blinds are closed and there’s no clocks, like in a casino. You have no sense of the outside world.

“Okay everyone, let me explain how it works,” says the elderly court official, addressing the room. “Each of you will have a chance to discuss your case with the prosecutor. In most cases the prosecutor will offer you a plea bargain so we can save everyone the trouble of having an actual trial. Payment will be by cash or check only. If you need directions to an ATM, ask the cashier at the window in the lobby.

“When the judge calls your name, all you have to do is approach the bench and say ‘Yes, Your Honor’ and he tells you the fine, then that’s it. Pretty simple.

“The order is first-come first-served, unless there are any attorneys present. The cases with attorneys will go first, in case the attorneys have other matters they have to attend to.

“If everything goes smoothly, all of you will get to go home before 4:30pm. I’ll call the first five names to see the prosecutor.” He reads five names off the sign-up sheet. Mine isn’t one of them.

As the five walk out through the double doors, I catch a glimpse of a familiar-looking guy with a bushy mustache entering the lobby. The court official greets him respectfully and I’m pretty sure it’s my State Trooper. Shit, my goose is cooked.

Five minutes later. “All rise,” says the court official. Everyone stands as a door in back of the courtroom opens and the judge flows in. He’s wearing black robes and has...a bushy mustache. Turns out the guy I’d thought was my State Trooper is in fact the judge. I reach into my bag for my glasses.

The first case is a Latino guy who’s hired a lawyer and is accompanied by a friend.

“My client doesn’t speak any English,” the lawyer tells the judge. “He’s brought a friend who speaks a little.”

The judge sighs. His face, behind the bushy mustache, is stern but not unkind. He’s fiftyish, with hair that dun-colored shade that happens when red goes grey.

“Zbcvb sdknjg akfjna,” says the judge, uttering complete gibberish. Everyone in the room is blinking. The defendant and his buddy look at each other, and you can almost see the question marks above their heads.

“Zbcvb sdknjg akfjna,” says the judge, louder, and I realize he’s speaking in horribly-inflected Spanish.

“Sen-your Jimenez, tee-yennis trays bill-etos. Comprenday?” says the judge. The defendant nods. The judge then handles the entire proceedings in Spanish, which I actually thought was pretty cool of him, even if he was mangling it. At least he was reaching out.

As the cases wear on, I begin to see how it works. It seems everybody gets their ticket reduced to Unsafe Driving, which is a zero-points violation. And the judge reads everyone the same fine: “Sixty-three dollars for the violation, $33 court fee, $250 dollar surcharge. Next.”

This courtroom is making money hand over fist. Each person is paying an average of $350 dollars and I saw at least ten people go up there. $3,500 for the first hour, not too shabby.

After two hours the courtroom is getting emptier and emptier, and they finally call my name to see the prosecutor. I go outside the double doors and am directed to the back of a line. There’s fifteen people in front of me waiting to see the prosecutor! Why don’t they just let us wait in the courtroom, where we can at least sit?

After an hour on the prosecutor’s line, I understand why they make us wait out here. I think they want to wear us down, so by the time we get to the prosecutor we’ll be dying to take the plea and we’ll pay our $350 without blinking.

But not me. I am the monkeywrench.

There’s at least one other New Yorker in the hall, an Italian-American lady who’s as voluble as she is dissatisfied. The line for the prosecutor’s office is right by the cashier’s window, and I can hear the woman grumbling as she pays.

“Here,” she says, forking over her cash. “Here, take it. I hate this. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. I hate that I’m giving you guys my money. You like this?” she asks the cashier.

The cashier says nothing.

“‘Cause I hate it,” says the woman.

“Have a nice day,” says the cashier.

“A nice day? Yeah, I’m gonna have a great day,” she snaps. “You people.”

Finally it’s my turn. The prosecutor ushers me into what looks like an interrogation room. There’s a plain table, chairs on either side, and two hard-ass lookin’ State Troopers with crew cuts sitting at the table. Both of them look at me like they want to kick my ass.

The prosecutor himself looks much like what you’d expect a prosecutor to look like: A kind of angry, overworked James Lipton. Beady eyes and a mean expression. “Mr. Noe,” he says, looking at my papers. “How fast do you think you were going?”

“I wasn’t speeding,” I say. “The Trooper tagged the wrong car. There was a minivan--”

“That’s not the question I asked,” says the prosecutor, and the only way he could’ve delivered this in a more nasty way would be if he preceded it by slapping me across the forehead with his penis.

“Seventy-five,” I say, rubbing my forehead.

“Just because your speedometer said seventy-five doesn’t mean you were going seventy-five.”

“Well, I understand there’s also a margin of error with radar--”

The prosecutor holds his hand up in a talk-to-the-hand kind of way. He’s looking over my papers and seems confused.

The air in the room changes. I smell something like an advantage as the prosecutor slides my file over to the Troopers.

“Connolly?” says one of the Troopers, reading my file. “Never heard of him.”

“I know a Connolly, but he’s all the way down by the shore,” says the other Trooper. “Can’t be him.”

“Where’d you get this ticket?” says the prosecutor, clearly disgusted with me.

“[Bumscrew,]” I say.

“Let’s run the badge number through the computer,” says one of the Troopers.

“Mr. Noe, we have to check something. Wait outside,” says the prosecutor, dismissively. I do as told.

Out on the line, people are continuing to bitch.

“I can’t believe this,” says one.

“Three-hundred and fifty dollars,” says another.

“It doesn’t matter how fast you were going, everyone gets a ‘reduced,’” says another. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense,” says a fourth. “It’s all about money.”

Fifteen minutes later the prosecutor calls me back in. The State Troopers are gone.

“Alright, listen,” he says. “Here’s what I’m going to do for you. I’m going to offer you a lower penalty.”

“Is the State Trooper who wrote me the ticket here?” I ask.

“Look, I’m trying to help you,” he says, and his nose grows about three inches. “I’m trying to save you the trouble of having to come all the way back out here.” Six inches. “We can work this out.” Nine inches. You could hang a stack of dry cleaning off of his nose.

“I think I’d like to go to trial.”

“Well, there’s a problem. What happened was, one of the girls in the back made a mistake. She wrote the wrong badge number down on your file, so the officer who wrote this ticket was not informed that today was your court date.”

“Doesn’t that mean my ticket just gets dismissed?”

The prosecutor looks at me like he can’t believe what I’d just said. “Did you hear what I just said?” he says, menacingly. “There was a clerical error. It’s not the Trooper’s fault--”

“Well it’s not my fault either,” I interrupt.

“JESUS,” the prosecutor says, and throws his pen at the file. He pushes back from the table, like he’s going to get up and punch me.

I feel like screaming “Fuck you” but figure I should be deferential, in hopes of swaying the prosecutor. “Look, I don’t mean to make you angry,” I say, putting on my best scared-kid face.

The prosecutor softens up at my lack of resistance, and wipes his eyes. “No, look, it’s just that I’ve been here all day, and...” He hardens up again, and stops short of an apology. “Never mind. You’ve got a right to a fair trial, I’ve got no problem with that. What do you want to do?”

“What are my options?”

“Well, you can take the plea, which I’d recommend. Or you can come all the way back here on another day and we can go to trial. It says here you live in New York. Takes a couple hours to get here, doesn’t it?”

“Wait, I can’t get a trial today?”

“If you push for a trial today, I will strongly recommend to the judge that we adjourn so we can get the right Trooper in here, and you’ll have to come back. And I will prosecute you to the fullest.”

I take deference, crumple it into a small ball and throw it out the window. “I’ll take my chances with the judge,” I say, secretly thrilled. I’ve always wanted to say that.

“Fine,” he says, clearly angry.

I got this motherfucker.

As I return to the courtroom, the judge is in the midst of castigating a young white man. I couldn’t see his face but he had a broad back, a couple earrings and a barber who wasn’t afraid to take risks.

“...you could have killed them. And you know what would happen if you had killed those kids?”

“No,” says the con (or pre-con).

“I’ll tell you what would happen. You’d get therapy and eventually you’d forget about it. But those kids, their parents would spend the rest of their lives tearing their hearts out.”

The pre-con says nothing.

“When you drink, you’re a weapon,” continues the judge. “If you’re gonna get behind the wheel like that then I might as well give you a loaded gun, because the results will be the same.

“I don’t want to put you away. But I have a duty to protect people like those kids. If you had kids, wouldn’t you want me to protect them?”

“Guess so,” says the pre-con.

“Listen to me,” says the judge. “I want you to be all right. I want you to get help. And I know, a lot of what I say is just air. A lot of it is just to make me feel better. But it’s my duty to say these things, and beyond that, I want you to be all right. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” says the pre-con. A bunch of complicated legal jargon I couldn’t understand then followed. I think the pre-con got ninety days in the clink.

I was the absolute last person to go before the judge. The end of the day. The courtroom is empty except for me and a court official sitting behind me.

“Mr. Noe,” the judge intones, somehow pronouncing my name correctly on the first try.

“Yes, Your Honor,” I say, approaching the bench.

The judge flips through some papers and looks puzzled. “‘Adjournment’...Susan, can you get Mr. [Prosecutor] in here?”

The prosecutor enters, stage left.

“Mr. [Prosecutor], it says you’re requesting adjournment. Why?” says the judge, looking at him expectantly.

“Judge, there was a clerical error. One of the girls in the back wrote the wrong badge number on the file, so Trooper [Buford] wasn’t informed that he was supposed to--”

“Well, that’s not Mr. Noe’s fault,” says the judge, clearly impatient. Oh, this is sooo good.

“Yes judge, but I strongly feel we should--”

“Mr. [Prosecutor], Mr. Noe has done everything he was supposed to. He took the day off work to come down here today, and he lives all the way in New York.”

“Yes judge, but--”

“He’s suffered enough. He’s been here all afternoon.” The judge turns to face me. “Mr. Noe, I’m dismissing your ticket.”

“Thank you, Your Honor,” I say.

“Fine, if that’s what you want to do, judge,” says the prosecutor snidely, turning on his heel and walking out of the courtroom. Unbelievable! The judge doesn’t bat an eye, though.

“You get home safe, Mr. Noe,” says the judge, arranging his papers.

“Yes, Your Honor,” I say.

I can’t believe it. I won.

I walk out of the courtroom elated, with a lasting legal-victory high. A new sensation for me. Encourtphins.