out of our hands. Lovely system we got around here.”
Nobody moved. Green was close to me, breathing hard. Gregorius looked up at Dayton.”
“Whatcha waiting for, cream puff? An ice-cream cone maybe?”
Dayton almost choked. “You didn’t give me any orders, skipper.”
“Say sir to me, damn you! I’m skipper to sergeants and better. Not to you, kiddo. Not to you. Out.”
“Yes, sir.” Dayton walked quickly to the door and went but Gregorius heaved himself to his feet and moved to the window and stood with his back to the room.
“Come on, let’s drift,” Green muttered in my ear.
“Get him out of here before I kick his face in,” Gregorius said to the window.
Green went to the door and opened it. I started through. Gregorius barked suddenly: “Hold it! Shut that door!”
Green shut it and leaned his back to it.
“Come here, you!” Gregorius barked at me.
I didn’t move. I stood and looked at him. Green didn’t move either. There was a grim pause. Then very slowly Gregorius walked across the room and stood facing me toe to toe. He put his big hard hands in his pockets. He rocked on his heels.
“Never laid a glove on him,” he said under his breath, as if talking to himself. His eyes were remote and expressionless. His mouth worked convulsively.
Then he spat in my face.
He stepped back. “That will be all, thank you.”
He turned and went back to the window. Green opened the door again.
I went through it reaching for my handkerchief.
8
Cell No. 5 in the felony tank has two bunks, Pullman style, but the tank was not very full and I had the cell to myself. In the felony tank they treat you pretty well. You get two blankets, neither dirty nor clean, and a lumpy mattress two inches thick which goes over crisscrossed metal slats. There is a flush toilet, a washbasin, paper towels and gritty gray soap. The cellblock is clean and doesn’t smell of disinfectant. The trusties do the work. The supply of trusties is always ample.
The jail deputies look you over and they have wise eyes. Unless you are a drunk or a psycho or act like one you get to keep your matches and cigarettes. Until preliminary you wear your own clothes. After that you wear the jail denim, no tie, no belt, no shoelaces. You sit on the bunk and wait. There is nothing else to do.
In the drunk tank it is not so good. No bunk, no chair, no blankets, no nothing. You lie on the concrete floor. You sit on the toilet and vomit in your own lap. That is the depth of misery. I’ve seen it.
Although it was still daylight the lights were on in the ceiling. Inside the steel door of the cellblock was a basket of steel bars around the Judas window. The lights were controlled from outside the steel door. They went out at nine P.M. Nobody came through the door or said anything. You might be in the middle of a sentence in a newspaper or magazine. Without any sound of a click or any warning—darkness. And there you were until the summer dawn with nothing to do but sleep if you could, smoke if you had anything to smoke, and think if you had anything to think about that didn’t make you feel worse than not thinking at all.
In jail a man has no personality. He is a minor disposal problem and a few entries on reports. Nobody cares who loves or hates him, what he looks like, what he did with his life. Nobody reacts to him unless he gives trouble. Nobody abuses him. All that is asked of him is that he go quietly to right cell and remain quiet when he gets there. There nothing to fight against, nothing to be mad at. There are quiet men without animosity or sadism. All this stuff you read about men yelling and screaming, beating against the bars, running spoons along them, guards rushing in with clubs—all that is for the big house. A good jail is one of the quietest places in the world. You could walk through the average cellblock at night and look in through the bars and see a huddle of brown blanket, or a head of hair, or a pair of eyes looking at nothing. You might hear a snore. Once in a long while you might hear a nightmare. The life in a jail is in suspension, without purpose or meaning. In another cell you might see a man who cannot sleep or even try to sleep. He is sitting on the edge of his bunk doing nothing. He looks at you or you look at him. He says nothing and you say nothing. There is nothing to communicate.
In the corner of the cellblock there may be a second steel door that leads to the show-up box. One of its walls is wire mesh painted black. On the back wall are ruled lines for height. Overhead are floodlights. You go in there in the morning as a rule, just before the night captain goes off duty. You stand against the measuring lines and the lights glare at you and there is no light behind the wire mesh. But plenty of people are out there: cops, detectives, citizens who have been robbed or assaulted or swindled or kicked out of their cars at gun point or conned out of their life savings. You don’t see or hear them. You hear the voice of the night captain. You receive him loud and clear. He puts you through your paces as if you were a performing dog. He is tired and cynical and competent. He is the stage manager of a play that has had the longest run in history, but it no longer interests him.
“All right you. Stand straight. Pull your belly in. Pull your chin in. Keep your shoulders back. Hold your head level. Look straight front. Turn left. Turn right. Face front again and hold your hands out. Palms up. Palms down. Pull your sleeves back. No visible scars. Hair dark brown, some gray. Eyes brown. Height six feet, one half inch. Weight about one ninety. Name, Philip Marlowe. Occupation private detective. Well, well, nice to see you, Marlowe. That’s all. Next man.”
Much obliged, Captain. Thanks for the time. You forgot to have me open my mouth. I have some nice inlays and one very high-class porcelain jacket crown. Eighty-seven dollars worth of porcelain jacket crown. You forgot to look inside my nose too, Captain. A lot of scar tissue in there for you. Septum operation and was that guy a butcher! Two hours of it in those days. I hear they do it in twenty minutes now. I got it playing football, Captain, a slight miscalculation in an attempt to block a punt. I blocked the guy’s foot instead—after he kicked the ball. Fifteen yards penalty, and that’s about how much stiff bloody tape they pulled out of my nose an inch at a time the day after the operation. I’m not bragging, Captain. I’m just telling you. It’s the little things that count.
On the third day a deputy unlocked my cell in the middle of the morning.
“Your lawyer’s here. Kill the butt—and not on the floor.” I flushed it down the toilet. He took me to the
