Chapter 4
“OH MY GOD!” Amaya screams as she opens the back door to my cab. She’s just gotten out of her own taxi. Maybe the last one she’ll ever take after seeing this. She curses under her breath in Sinhalese.
I couldn’t muster the words to tell her everything on the phone. I merely said something bad happened and that I needed a lawyer quickly, like I was a very shady criminal defendant on an episode of Law I swear I didn’t.” How original, I think, but it is the truth.
Amaya looks at me and must see a super-freaked-out girl in front of her, because her face instantly softens.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to grill you. It’s sort of second nature—me trying to get to the bottom of whatever crazy situation I’ve been dealt.”
This is a crazy situation. There is a dead body in the back of my taxicab.
The man was alive when I picked him up and dead on arrival?
Who else could have done it? I can’t think about anything right now other than the dead man in my back seat.
The feel of the dried blood on my hands.
The gut-turning dread. This is a circumstance where a normal person would probably cry, but I have a rule about crying in public. Don’t do it.
Amaya puts a hand on my shoulder and says with enough sincerity I can almost believe it, “You’re going to be okay. I’m here.”
The tension in my shoulders releases just slightly, before a fresh wave of dread washes over me. Someone is dead. I have broken the most basic duty of my job—get my passengers to their destination safely. It isn’t a complicated mandate.
I look at Amaya and wait for her to walk away. Why would she help me? This isn’t her problem.
“Okay. Okay. Calm down.” Is she saying that to me or to herself? Both would be valid. “The first thing that we need to do is to call the police. You should have called when you saw him initially.”
“I was panicked, scared, I don’t know.” As the ability to think clearly starts to come back to me, I realize the delay will cast further suspicion on me. I already have the means and opportunity. If this were a podcast, I’d be the prime suspect.
“It’s okay. Panicked and scared, it’s totally normal.
” Again, I’m not sure if she’s saying that to me or herself.
“Second, after I call the police, I will go to the precinct with you. At some point, they will separate us to process you. You will go through central booking. They will ask details about yourself. You must not, and let me repeat, you must not talk about any of this. You can give them your name, basic details, but don’t say anything about this,” Amaya says, gesturing toward the dead body.
“I…I didn’t do anything. Not saying anything is going to make me look even more suspicious, won’t it?” The people who lawyered up on my podcasts always ended up being guilty of something.
“I know it seems like you can tell the truth, but given the situation, they probably won’t believe you. They will arrest you no matter what you say. And, as you’ve probably heard, anything you say will be used against you. You have an attorney. You don’t need to say anything.”
If anyone looked at the podcasts I listen to, they’d be convinced I’d know how to get away with the perfect murder and assume I’d just botched it really, really badly this time.
I look so obviously guilty I might as well have googled “how to murder a passenger in a moving taxi” for the police to find in my search history.
I’ll take Amaya’s advice and won’t talk to the police. I push down the sinking feeling that it makes me look so guilty, and it heightens my anxiety even more. I focus on the fact that someone is in my corner. And this someone clearly knows what she is doing.
“I’ve got to call the police. They will arrest you.
I hope they won’t be rough with you since I’m here to witness, but they don’t particularly like public defenders either.
They will process you, and I will see you when you’re ready for your court arraignment.
I’ll explain more of how this all works then.
” Amaya sounds flustered. She is talking fast and buttoning and unbuttoning her coat over and over again.
She seems nervous, the opposite of all the smarmy defense attorneys on my legal shows.
Amaya takes out her phone and explains the situation to a probably bewildered police officer on the other end.
As I watch her speak into the phone, I think about donning that blond wig I bought when I dressed up as Courtney Love one Halloween (with not a single person guessing my outfit!) and heading out of town.
Immediately, a memory surfaces of my brother telling me I have to face my problems rather than run away from them.
Ever the responsible and practical older brother.
Most irritatingly, his almost unfailingly correct advice always bubbles up when I want to hear it the least.
I’ve never been in serious legal trouble before.
I did get busted once for smoking a joint with Alex before weed was legalized.
Despite the cops rolling their eyes about me proclaiming it was my first time, it was in fact my first time.
Thank God for Alex’s charms, because they didn’t end up arresting us, in what I originally thought was a phenomenal stroke of luck, but then realized also may have had something to do with the fact we were smoking in his brand-new Mercedes outside his Upper East Side penthouse.
I always remember what my parents said to me about behaving as an immigrant in this country.
My parents remind me, not infrequently, that I will be the first to be targeted and have the most to lose.
I’m lost in spiraling thoughts when Amaya gets off the phone and walks back to me. Do I detect nervousness in her eyes?
“They’ll be here very soon.”
“My parents. Will you call them? If you could just…”
“I understand. I have Sri Lankan parents too. I’ll be as careful as I can and do whatever I can to calm their nerves. I’ll try not to worry them, but, Siriwathi, this is bad. This is really bad.”
I nod as the sirens in the distance get louder.