Saying no would have been a mistake. A few years back, an inmate had complained to an ACLU monitor that no one in his pod had been allowed a shower in three or four weeks. He was beaten. His leg was broken. The ACLU got involved, but for all I knew, that inmate was still here awaiting trial.
“It happened as the detective said. I was clumsy.”
“Duly noted,” said the doctor.
“May I have an aspirin?”
Tandy nodded. “Give him an aspirin, Doc. Our farewell gift.”
Caine said, “Shut up, Tandy.”
I wanted to seriously hurt Tandy. I hoped I would live long enough to do it. Tandy and Ziegler waved bye-bye and slithered down the hallway.
Caine said to me, “Hang in, Jack. I’m working on one thing. Getting you out. I’ve never let you down before and I won’t now.”
A nurse took my vitals, then gave me a mental-status test, checking to see if I was crazy. Or had plans to hang myself. Or commit murder.
From there, I was taken into a large open room, stripped, and given a military-style physical. I grabbed my butt cheeks and coughed on command, let the guard do a cavity check.
I was declared good to go and escorted back to intake with a young sheriff-in-training who struck up a conversation with me. He said he was hoping to get out of here by five today. He was picking up his folks at the airport.
He took my watch, phone, wallet, belt, and shoelaces. My fingers were pressed onto an electronic ten- printer. I stood in front of a height chart holding a number to my chest. I turned to my left, turned to my right, as requested by the bored man with the camera.
I did what I was told, but I was swamped with a lot of feelings beginning with the letter D: depressed, demoralized, degraded.
All around me, people puked, screamed, threatened, spat, and seemed to be begging to be knocked around.
I wanted to shout, I’m not one of these guys. I’m innocent.
It would have been like shouting down a hole that went clear to the center of the earth.
And my morning was just beginning.
CHAPTER 58
I was walked through the building to the men’s jail, where I was strip-searched again and issued a “roll-up,” a pair of orange pants and matching shirt, and plastic shoes. Then I was given a prisoner’s tour of the facilities on the way to my cell.
The jail was made up of hundreds of two-tiered pods, each with dozens of holding cells, each pod meant to hold thirty men, but as I was walked past, I could see each pod was double booked and held more like fifty living, crying, coughing, desperate men.
My cell was the size of a walk-in closet, six by eight feet, with two narrow metal slabs and a stinking, clogged toilet.
I was the fourth man in that cell.
I sat on one of the slabs.
The overhead lights glared. There was no window, no way to tell the time, but it seemed to me that at least ten hours had gone by since Fescoe’s phone call to me at Private.
A rank-smelling man, somewhere between twenty and forty years old, sat on the bench next to me.
He said his name was Irwin, and he wanted to talk. He told me he’d been in holding for five days. He’d been caught with cocaine and a teenage girl in his car two blocks from a school. Still, Irwin, I thought, had less to worry about than I did.
He had a festering wound on his arm, another on his neck. He told me about the mystery-meat sandwich for lunch and the dinner burrito, the kind you get at gas stations.
I had missed both.
He asked if I had a good lawyer. I said I did, then I leaned back against the wall. I didn’t want to attract any kind of attention. I was drowning in a riptide of despair that didn’t make total sense to me.
I’d been through marine boot camp and then a war. I’d killed people. Friends had died. My parents had died. I’d been wounded in action. In fact, I’d died and been brought back to life. All of that.
And yet the one thing I couldn’t remember feeling before was an utter lack of hope.
Nothing I said mattered.
I had no access to anyone. No moves to make.
I was at the mercy of people who wanted me put away. Even Fescoe had let me down: confess or else.
Irwin moved to the other slab, and another unwashed desperado took his place next to me. He seemed like a decent guy. Had a couple of kids, a wife, had gotten into a bar fight. Said he hadn’t been able to make bail. He had a bad cough. Sounded like TB or maybe lung cancer.
I feigned sleep. I made a mental list of people who hated me. It was a long list of guys I’d busted, thwarted, fired, or exposed.
Tommy’s face kept coming to me, and then I was awakened out of a murky dream. The lights were all on. One of my cell mates was grunting on the can. But what had awakened me was the voice booming over the public- address system, naming which people would be bused to what court.
Irwin said, “This is what they do at four a.m. Like it? Court isn’t until nine.”
My name wasn’t mentioned.
They hadn’t called my name.
I closed my eyes, and sometime later a guard hit a buzzer and the door to my cell slid open. The guard said, “Jack Morgan? You need to get dressed for court.”
CHAPTER 59
Caine had enough clout to get me bumped to the front of the line, and I was transported from the jail to the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center on West Temple. I was brought into the holding cell outside the courtroom, chained to three other guys, one of whom was about eighteen years old and pale with fright.
There was air-conditioning.
It was a miracle. I thanked God.
I sat for hours as my fellow prisoners left and came back. And then I was separated from my cellies.
Caine came to meet me, put both arms around me, and held me in a hard hug. He whispered, “Remember who you are. Look alive.”
I smelled bad, like the unwashed men in my cell. I was wearing yesterday’s clothes and had numerous cuts and bruises and a day-old beard.
I said to my lawyer, “Okay. I think I can fake that.”
I followed Caine into the courtroom. It was paneled, civilized, but it still reminded me of old prints of Ellis Island, where refugees were processed after three weeks in the hold of a ship, not knowing what would become of them.
The judge was the Honorable Skinner Coffin. I’d never met him, but I knew who he was. He was in his fifties, reputed to be touchy and opinionated. Justine had once said that he excelled at “creative interpretation of the law.”
I didn’t know if that was good for me or bad.
While Judge Coffin was in conversation with his bailiff, I scanned the gallery. There was a low rumble of people whispering, shifting in their seats. Babies cried. I heard my name. I turned to see Robbie Pace, the new
