“Farrell going to come down here?” I said.
“Somebody will,” Quirk said. “Say the stuff about Cheryl Anne Rankin again.”
“All I got is her picture in the track kitchen. Looks just like Olivia Nelson did in her high school graduation picture. Looks like she’d grow into that portrait in the living room in twenty-five years.”
“You think they’re old pictures?”
“Yeah. And the woman who says she’s Cheryl Anne’s mother is probably around seventy.”
It was bright and hot outside the hotel window. The trees across the street seemed to hang lower than usual, and their leaves were motionless. The blue Buick pulled up as I was looking at the trees, and swung in and parked in front of the hotel. A cruiser pulled up behind it and then another one. The shield on the side said Alton County Sheriff. Uniformed deputies began to unload. They spread out around the hotel, trying to be inconspicuous. A couple headed around back in case I made a dash through the kitchen.
“You thinking she could be the victim?” Quirk said.
“She looks too much like the victim to ignore,” I said. “But right now I got another problem.”
“Yeah?”
“I think I’m going to get busted by the Alton County Sheriff’s Department,” I said, and described the arrivals. There was a knock on the door.
“Here they are,” I said. “Tell whoever comes down to see if I’m in jail.”
“I’ll come down,” Quirk said.
I hung up and took my gun out of my holster and laid it down on the bedside table with the muzzle facing away from the door. Then I opened the door and smiled at the cop who had her hair done in Batesburg.
chapter twenty-two
THEY DIDN’T BOOK me. They just took my belongings, including my gun, and stuck me in a cell by myself, in the Alton County Courthouse. Nobody said anything much. But the deputies hovered close and looked as alert as they were able to, until I was locked up. Then everybody departed and I was alone in a cell about 8 by 10 feet in the cellar of the courthouse. There were no windows and only a single light in the ceiling of my cell, and one in the corridor outside. There was a toilet in the corner of the room, and a concrete bunk built out from the wall. On the bunk was a thin, bare mattress, a pillow, and a wool blanket that looked like it might once have been worn by a plow mule.
I lay on the bunk and propped the pillow under my head and looked at the ceiling for a while. There was no noise in the cell block. Either Alton County was a low-crime zone or the other prisoners were somewhere else. The arrest wasn’t legal. I hadn’t been charged with anything, I hadn’t appeared before any magistrate, I’d not been given access to counsel. I hadn’t been read my rights, probably because at the moment I didn’t have any. They probably hoped that when they came, I’d resist, which would give them a charge. But I didn’t. I went without a word. There was no point in asking. They wouldn’t tell me. It was quite possible they didn’t know. But I’d done something to motivate somebody to something, and maybe it was something stupid.
I ran over my all-time, all-seen team again: Koufax, Campanella, Musial, Robinson, Smith, Schmidt, Williams, DiMaggio, Mays. No one was out of position except Mays, and certainly Willie could play right field. And I’d have Red Barber broadcast the game. And Red Smith write about it.
The lights went out silently. The darkness was absolute. No trickle of light from anywhere until, eventually, as my eyes adjusted, I could see the hint of light from under the door to the cell block at the end of the corridor.
My basketball team was easy for the first four: Bird, Russell, Magic Johnson, and Jordan. But who’d be the other forward? Should I choose Wilt and play Russell at power forward? It seemed a cop-out. Maybe Bob Pettit. Or DeBusschere, or make Bird the power forward and play Elgin Baylor. How about Julius?
I wondered if anyone was going to give me supper, and decided that they weren’t. They wanted me to be isolated and hungry and in the dark down here while my resolve atrophied. I groped to the sink next to the toilet and ran the water. There was only a cold-water faucet. I drank some from my cupped hand and began to walk back and forth in the cell, feeling for the bars and wall at first, and then, coming to know the size, keeping a hand slightly out, but walking and stopping and turning at the right time by the floor plan in my head.
I remembered the first woman I’d slept with. Her name was Lily, and I remembered her naked body in detail as explicit as if I had seen her yesterday. That was sort of interesting, so I began to remember the other women I’d slept with and found I could remember all of them exactly: how they looked, how they acted, what they said, what they liked, what they wore, and how they undressed. Some had liked me a lot, some were lost in a private fantasy and I was a vehicle for its expression, some had just liked lovemaking, all of them had been fun.
I thought about Susan. She was the most fun.
I thought about football, and whether Joe Montana would finally replace Unitas. Jim Brown was eternal, and certainly Jim Parker. Sarah could sing, and Mel Torme, and Dave McKenna was the piano player, and The Four Seasons, in New York, for that one meal, and Sokol Blosser Pinot Noir, and Catamount beer, and German shorthaired pointers, and Ali maybe was the best heavyweight, though Ray Robinson was, of course, the best ever, any weight, and Krug champagne, and Faulkner, and Vermeer, and Stan Kenton and Mike Royko, and fitful sleep.
chapter twenty-three
I HEARD THEM coming and was sitting on the bunk when the lights went on and six of them carne into my cell. Four of them were big Alton, County Deputies with nightsticks, two of them were in suits. My friend with the hairdo and the almond-shaped eyes was not with them. All six were men.
A guy in a three-piece, blue pinstripe suit said, “On your feet, asshole.”
Bust in suddenly, after hours of isolation, while I’m still asleep, scare me witless, and ask me questions. It was not a brand-new approach. I sat on the edge of my bunk with my hands relaxed in my lap and looked at him. His vest gapped at the waist, leaving two inches of badly tucked-in shirt showing over the belt line.
“On your fucking feet,” he said.
