I stood and smashed the muscatel bottle against the steps.
“Joe Foy,” I said with cold fury in my voice. Then I unzipped my fly and began to take a leak on the lawn. Provocative. The cruiser pulled in beside me before I had finished and a Mill River cop in a handsome tan uniform got out and walked toward me. He wore a campaign hat tilted forward over the bridge of his nose like a Marine DI. “Hold it right there, mister,” he said.
I giggled. “Am holding it right there, officer.” I lurched a little and smothered a belch.
The cop was in front of me now. “Zip it up,” he snapped. “There’s women and children here.”
I zipped my fly about halfway. “Women and children first,” I said.
“You got some ID on you?” the cop said.
I fumbled at my hip pocket and then at my other hip pocket and then at my side pockets. I looked at the cop, squinting to bring him in focus.
“I wish to report a stolen wallet,” I said, speaking the words carefully like a man trying not to be drunk.
“Okay,” the cop said, “walk over to the car.” He took my arm and I went with him.
“Hands on top,” he said. “Legs apart. You’ve probably done this before.” He tapped the inside of my good ankle with his foot to force my stance out a little wider. Then he gave me a fast shakedown.
“What’s your name,” he said when he was through.
“I stop standing like this?” I said. I was resting my forehead against the roof of his car.
“Yeah. You can straighten up.”
I stayed as I was and didn’t say anything. “I asked you your name,” the cop said.
“I want lawyer,” I said.
“Who’s your lawyer?”
I rolled along the car until I had turned and was facing the cop. He was about twenty-five, nice tan. Clear blue eyes. I frowned at him.
“Sleepy,” I said. And I began to slide down the side of the car toward the ground. The cop grabbed me under the arms.
“No,” he said. “Not here. Come on, you can spend the night with us, and we’ll see in the morning.”
I let him put me in the car and drive me to the station. At twenty-two minutes to five by the clock in the station house I was in front of a cell in the Mill River jail. Booked for public drunkenness and urinating in a public place. Listed for the moment as John Doe. There was a porcelain toilet in the corner with no seat, there was a sink, and there was a concrete shelf with a mattress on it, no pillow, and a brown military blanket folded at the foot. The arresting officer opened the door to the second cell. The first was empty. There were two more beyond.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “I wanna see other guests.” I lurched past him and saw Hawk in the fourth cell, lying on his bed, his hands behind his head.
“Hey, Rastus,” I said. “You gonna play sad fucking harmonica when the warden comes?”
Hawk looked at me with no expression. “Maybe play a tune on your head, white belly,” he said.
“Come on, come on,” the young cop said. He took the back of my shirt in his hand and shoved me into my cell. “Sleep it off,” he said, “and don’t fuck around with the nigger.”
He went out and locked the cell and left me alone. Who said I couldn’t get arrested.
CHAPTER 4
I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE ZONKED, AND I HADN’T slept in two days, and my great escape plan didn’t go into effect until after midnight, so I made a pillow out of the blanket and lay on the cot and went to sleep.
When I woke up it was late. I had no watch and there was no clock in view from the cell, but there was the heavy silence that comes at two in the morning. Whatever hour, it was late enough.
I took my cast off quietly and took the gun out of the left foot. I stood and felt uneven with one shoe on and one shoe off, so I kicked off my right shoe and moved across the cell barefoot. With my shirttails out and the automatic tucked in my belt, in front under my shirt, I leaned against the bars of my cell and said loudly, “Hey, Rastus.”
Hawk said from two cells down, “You talking to me, motherfucker?”
“Any other jigaboos down there,” I said, “might be named Rastus?”
“You and me is all that’s in here, whitey.”
“Good, what time is it?”
“You wake me up to ask what time is it?”
“Niggers sleep?” I said.
“You be sleeping the big sleep, motherfucker, I get hold of your pale ass.”
“You trying to sleep, Rastus?” I picked up my shoe and began to rattle it over the bars, the way a kid will drag a stick along a picket fence. “How’s that sound, a little jungle rhythm for you, Rastus.”
“I play some rhythm on you, you honkie bastard,” Hawk said.
I began to bang with the heel of the shoe on the bars and sing loudly, “‘Bongo, bongo, bongo, I don’t want to leave the Congo, Oh no, no, no, no, no! Bingle, bangle, bungle, I’m so happy in the jungle I refuse to go.’ ”
