smugness of a bully in his face.
“Help me, mistah,” the beaten man begged. “Tell’em t’lemme outta here.”
“Come on, Rawlins,” Sanchez said at my back.
“What’s that?” the lanky bully said.
The beaten man cringed at the crackling sound of his tormentor’s voice.
The bully sat up. He had the name Jones stitched over the left breast of his prison shirt but I doubted that that was his name.
“Get back over here, Felix,” Jones said. And then, “I’ma count to three. One …”
Felix looked up at me.
“… two …”
Felix flinched and went, on his knees, to Jones’s feet. Jones looked across the cell, through the grating, and smiled at me. He was also missing a few teeth.
Jones stepped out of his shoes.
“Get the fuck up in yo’ motherfuckin’ bed an’ spit-shine my goddam motherfuckin’ shoes,” he said. When Felix didn’t move fast enough Jones bent down and socked him on the ear.
“Don’t hit me again!” Felix shouted.
“Then get up in that bed an’ shine’em. An’ you better not get no blood on the motherfuckers.” To make the job harder Jones punched Felix in the nose, bringing blood and tears.
Jones had his back to us.
He talked to Felix but the words were meant for me.
“You think that man gonna help you? That what you think, Felix? Well, just as soon as they gone I’ma whip yo’ ass good. I’ma give you such a ass-kickin’ you gonna wish you had kep’it quiet. An’ that man bettah hope I never catch his punk ass out in the street. He bettah hope not.”
“Come on, Rawlins,” Sanchez said. “We’ll report it to the guard.”
THROUGH THE NEXT CELL DOOR portal we saw two guards. They stood behind yet another barred doorway. They flipped a switch and we came through the first door.
Both men were beefy and balding. One squinted while the other had rosy cheeks. They took Sanchez’s badge through the bars and set it down on a table behind them.
Neither one had said a word.
“Well?” Sanchez asked.
The one on the left squinted at his partner’s bright cheeks.
I was thinking about Felix, wondering if his shouts could be heard through steel.
“What are you trying to pull, son?” Squinty asked back.
There was a steel door behind me, a steel door in front of me, and for some reason I couldn’t catch a deep breath.
“You better get back to your cells, boys, until we can check this out,” said the red-cheeked man. “Pop the locks of seventeen and twenty-four, Ron.”
A spasm went up my spine but Sanchez held still. He stared at the men. Ron finally blinked and reached for the keys. He got them as far as the lock and then stopped.
“You sure you belong here, Pancho?” he asked.
His partner snickered and then they both laughed.
Ron unlocked the door and swung it open. My breath was waiting for me across the threshold.
Applecheeks was clapping Sanchez on the back.
“Just a joke, amigo,” he was saying.
“There’s a fight going on in one of the cells back there,” Sanchez replied. “One of them is getting beaten up pretty bad.”
“Oh,” the cop said. “Two niggers?”
“I think somebody could get hurt,” Sanchez said with emphasis.
The policeman turned to his partner and asked, “What time is it, Bob?”
Bob had to hold his wristwatch at arm’s length to read the dial. “Three-fifteen.”
“Oh. I’ll tell you what, amigo,” the cop called Ron said to Sanchez. “It’s only half an hour until the next shift comes in. If we have to charge somebody it’ll take an hour at least. But we’ll tell the next shift when they get here.”
There was nothing left to say and so we left Felix to his fate.
We went down another long hall that actually went from one building to another. The next building was the old police station. The halls became more slender with woodwork around the doors. We took a staircase up two flights and then down another hall. In this passage sunlight shone in through open doors and illuminated the frosted windows of closed ones. At the far end was our destination. The brass plate on the door said “Captain Josiah Fogherty.”
