Job or death in Philadelphia

Shumkova Lilia

"What if he is not local," I asked, signing the statement without reading.

"If this is his first offence, or if he is not local, we might never find out who he is. That is why it is really important for you to recall seeing him before."

The assailant had been a bit taller than me, physically fit, with skin the color of a strong coffee brew. I've seen at least a dozen guys like him every day.

"Go, look at him again. Maybe it will help." The sergeant took me to the room with a glass wall, through which I could see my attacker talking to a cop. The diamond hunter was wearing blue jeans, a white t-shirt, and the nicest facial expression.

The sergeant picked up the receiver and listened to it for a couple of minutes, then turned to me with a sad smile.

"He says that he never attacked you. He says that he wanted to take a cab, and approached you, and you attacked him and hit him in his face. He says that you ripped off your earrings when the police car showed up."

"What?" I choked on my own saliva. "Wait. I was standing there, next to my car, having coffee. Then I opened the car door, he pushed me inside, smashed my face against the steering wheel, ripped off my earrings and took off. Now, he's saying that I attacked him? This is the most blatant lie I have ever heard in my life. What about the cop in the car? He saw…"

"He saw you jumping inside the cab and trying to drive away," the detective said.

"What about the guy I ran over? Maybe he saw something?" I was grabbing at the last straw, and the detective knew it.

"Maybe," Sergeant McAfee said, looking at me with fatherly compassion. "A very slight possibility. But we can't talk to him right now. He's got a brain concussion and right now he's sleeping in the hospital."

For lunch, I got a cup of weak coffee and a doughnut. Then Sergeant McAfee took me to the City Courthouse. We waited for half an hour for the judge to call my name. The judge, enormous in his black robes, observed me through his round glasses, then moved his glasses to the tip of his nose and observed me from above them.

"Okay, what do we have here? Rachel Rydal. Thirty-five years old. Physical assault on a man, disobeying a police order to stop and get out of the car, an attempt to escape from the police, in the process of which another man was hit and run over and was injured. What is this, ma'am?"

"I don't know," I said. "The black guy pushed me inside the cab and ripped off my earrings."

"Do you work?"

"Yes. I drive a cab." Hot tears ran down my face as freely as if the judge had just opened a faucet.

"Where are those earrings?" the judge asked. The sergeant produced a plastic bag with my jewelry. "Where did you get them?"

"They were my wedding present."

"Are you married?"

"No, your Honor. Divorced. One child."

The judge snorted, flipping through my case pages. "Okay, Ms. Rydal. Bail is set at nine hundred ninety-nine dollars. Find a lawyer, will you?"

Being unable to produce a thousand dollars, I was locked up in a cell at the police station for the night and had another weak coffee and a glazed doughnut for dinner. I needed to get out of jail while I could get through the doors. One permitted phone call was used to call my friend Kathy, who drove all the way from Montgomery County to pick up Iris to stay with her, until she gets money to bail me out. The idea of calling my parents never even entered my mind, since my dad had a serious heart condition, and I wouldn't be able to explain to him how just a brief involuntary encounter with another human being turned me from a nice, reliable, hard-working woman into a criminal.

Exhausted, I instantly fell asleep, and woke up in the morning to the voice of a police officer calling my name. For a moment, I couldn't recall what day it was and where all my furniture had gone.

"Rachel Rydal, you have somebody waiting for you." The young, handsome cop opened the cell door. I stepped out into a hallway while he was fastening handcuffs on my wrists and asked him if Kathy had paid the bail.

"They will give you all the information," the cop said, ushering me into yet another hallway. "You will get to meet your victim."

"My who…?" Well, excuse me, but it's me who was the victim. This was my role. I'd been a victim of circumstances, of my husband's treachery, of the sexual revolution, and a downsizing economy. And, if I victimized somebody, it was me, myself and I.

The police officer opened the door in front of me, and I stepped into a reception room with two men in gray suits standing there looking at me. The younger man was wearing dark sunglasses, as if he was hiding his face. It was he who said, "Ms. Rydal. Your bail is paid. Don't worry about anything. This is your lawyer, Joseph Madnick."

The older man with the huge shoulders and skinny legs nodded, scanning me over with a sour facial expression. Obviously, he didn't like the sight of me, an innocent woman, standing with my hands cuffed.

CHAPTER 2

"Where is your partner, son?" the man hoarsely asked a cop standing behind me. "She might be a homicidal maniac for all we know."

A what? And this was my lawyer?

"Listen," I straightened my back, feeling like a queen being tormented by a liberal member of a Parliament. "What do you want from me? I can't afford a lawyer. Don't you get it?"

"You don't have to pay a dime," the younger guy said. "Joe will take your case pro bono. He has some community hours to do this year. Don't you, Joe?"

"Thanks, but no, thanks." With hands tied behind my back, I could just shake my head in disagreement.

"Let me introduce myself first." The younger guy wasn't taking `no' for an answer. "My name is Alexander Davidoff."

"Davidoff? Like vodka, eh?"

"Davidoff is an old, noble Russian family." The guy stared me down indignantly. "My great-grand-grandfather was a poet and a musketeer. He fought against Napoleon and won."

An overwhelming respect made me actually smile at him. I knew Napoleon was a brand of expensive French cognac. That was quite a heritage. Probably, his predecessor had sued the liquor company and won it. For a second, I wondered about all the money the family got. No wonder his great-grandson looked like a prince. Maybe it was his hobby to bail out women?

"Well," I said. "Why would you care to pay my bail for me?"

"Because," he replied, taking off his sunglasses and revealing black bruises around his eyes. "I'm the guy you hit with the car yesterday when I was rushing to help you. I saw everything that happened, and I think that…"