The lawyer understood the gesture. Once again, a sudden slice of the nightmares that haunted his nights had lit up his mind like a flare. There had been this hill, a small hill near the Laotian border. He leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment to compose himself. The holographic image that had invaded his thoughts slowly dissipated.
“What you might want, Bernard,” continued Jesse in a stern but controlled voice, “and what you ask for are irrelevant here. In fact, you are irrelevant. Do you understand that? It’s not my job to help you or to care about your sorry ass. It’s not my job to worry about what you want. I can’t waste my time with menial garbage. My job is to try and beat this case. You’ve done your job, Bernard, and you’ve done it to the best of your very limited ability. You’ve succeeded in being arrested and charged with a hideous crime.”
“Irrelevant!” screamed Bernard. “Irrelevant? Whatever in hell that goddamn word means! You must’ve learned that big word in some white university on one of them affirmative-action scholarships that I couldn’t never get. You sure as hell didn’t learn to talk like a white man at no spic university.”
“Bernard, you couldn’t get a scholarship to pet obedience school. You certainly must enjoy being wrong,” said Jesse with a grin, “because you do it so often and so very well. As a matter of fact I went to a spic university. You’ve heard of Brown University, haven’t you? Everybody there is brown-skinned, the whole student body and faculty are as brown as mocha java. Even the buildings are brown. The school is named after Osawatomie John Brown and James Brown, the godfather of soul, the famous Brown brothers.”
Now Jesse sat nose to nose with the supreme being.
“After a couple of wonderful years at Brown,” continued Jesse, “I went down to Rice University in I Houston. It’s a school dedicated to the rice-growing regions of Asia and the Southern United States. A lot of Chinese and Thai students go there. But you must’ve known that!”
“Gook school,” muttered Bernard.
“Then I went to Morris Brown, a Jewish-Mexican school where I got a master’s degree in shtik—humor from the Catskills, with a minor in Mexican cooking. Are you following all of this, Bernard? When I’m done you can fill me in on your progress toward a GED. For my law degree I went to Cisco College down in Texas. The Cisco Kid started that school after he and Pancho broke up the act and the television show went off the air. Duncan Reynaldo and Leo Carillo were two of my favorite professors.”
“Ah, the Robin Hood of the Old West,” announced Dr. Wooden with a childish grin. “I myself went to Auburn. It is a school of great traditions. Since time immemorial they have hung a brown paper bag in front of the admissions office, and if your skin was lighter than that bag, you just couldn’t get in, no matter how good your grades were.” Dr. Wooden closed his eyes to better remember the happiest days of his life. “Before I lost all of my hair, I had the most beautiful three-finger wave you ever done seen.”
“Where did you go?” scowled Bernard as he turned to face Eddy, “a fucking Jap school?”
“As a matter of pertinent fact,” said Eddy Kazuso Oasa without changing expression, “I attended college at picturesque Peru State up in Nebraska. As you might expect, the student body is mostly Peruvian, though there are a few Bolivians and an Ecuadorian or two. At Peru State llamas and alpacas are allowed free run of the campus. and the dormitories. There is a full-scale replica of Macchu Picchu on the campus quad. Japanese students go to school there, then go down to Peru and get elected president. In fact, it will be my turn to be president of Peru in the year two thousand and four. I’m just working as an investigator for fun until I can get my hands on the keys to the presidential palace down in Lima. I can’t wait.”
Bernard stood up
“What you might want, Bernard,” continued Jesse in a stern but controlled voice, “and what you ask for are irrelevant here. In fact, you are irrelevant. Do you understand that? It’s not my job to help you or to care about your sorry ass. It’s not my job to worry about what you want. I can’t waste my time with menial garbage. My job is to try and beat this case. You’ve done your job, Bernard, and you’ve done it to the best of your very limited ability. You’ve succeeded in being arrested and charged with a hideous crime.”
“Irrelevant!” screamed Bernard. “Irrelevant? Whatever in hell that goddamn word means! You must’ve learned that big word in some white university on one of them affirmative-action scholarships that I couldn’t never get. You sure as hell didn’t learn to talk like a white man at no spic university.”
“Bernard, you couldn’t get a scholarship to pet obedience school. You certainly must enjoy being wrong,” said Jesse with a grin, “because you do it so often and so very well. As a matter of fact I went to a spic university. You’ve heard of Brown University, haven’t you? Everybody there is brown-skinned, the whole student body and faculty are as brown as mocha java. Even the buildings are brown. The school is named after Osawatomie John Brown and James Brown, the godfather of soul, the famous Brown brothers.”
Now Jesse sat nose to nose with the supreme being.
“After a couple of wonderful years at Brown,” continued Jesse, “I went down to Rice University in I Houston. It’s a school dedicated to the rice-growing regions of Asia and the Southern United States. A lot of Chinese and Thai students go there. But you must’ve known that!”
“Gook school,” muttered Bernard.
“Then I went to Morris Brown, a Jewish-Mexican school where I got a master’s degree in shtik—humor from the Catskills, with a minor in Mexican cooking. Are you following all of this, Bernard? When I’m done you can fill me in on your progress toward a GED. For my law degree I went to Cisco College down in Texas. The Cisco Kid started that school after he and Pancho broke up the act and the television show went off the air. Duncan Reynaldo and Leo Carillo were two of my favorite professors.”
“Ah, the Robin Hood of the Old West,” announced Dr. Wooden with a childish grin. “I myself went to Auburn. It is a school of great traditions. Since time immemorial they have hung a brown paper bag in front of the admissions office, and if your skin was lighter than that bag, you just couldn’t get in, no matter how good your grades were.” Dr. Wooden closed his eyes to better remember the happiest days of his life. “Before I lost all of my hair, I had the most beautiful three-finger wave you ever done seen.”
“Where did you go?” scowled Bernard as he turned to face Eddy, “a fucking Jap school?”
“As a matter of pertinent fact,” said Eddy Kazuso Oasa without changing expression, “I attended college at picturesque Peru State up in Nebraska. As you might expect, the student body is mostly Peruvian, though there are a few Bolivians and an Ecuadorian or two. At Peru State llamas and alpacas are allowed free run of the campus. and the dormitories. There is a full-scale replica of Macchu Picchu on the campus quad. Japanese students go to school there, then go down to Peru and get elected president. In fact, it will be my turn to be president of Peru in the year two thousand and four. I’m just working as an investigator for fun until I can get my hands on the keys to the presidential palace down in Lima. I can’t wait.”
Bernard stood up
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