The Sisterhood - Michael Palmer [76]
Then he remembered. It was at summer camp. He was eleven—no, twelve—years old. A sudden stomach cramp while swimming far from the raft. In an instant he was on the bottom, pain strangling his gut and water forcing its way into his lungs. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the pain and the terror had vanished. In their place, the same detached peace. He was dying—then and now—helpless and dying.
The sergeant’s radish cheeks puffed in a grin. “Glad to see you’re feelin’ better,” he said. “The night boys were worried. Said you weren’t even able to hold a dime, much less make the phone call they tried to give you.” When David didn’t answer, he added, “You are feelin’ better, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah, I’m okay, thanks,” David said distantly, still testing his body and his feelings for pain. “Wh … where am I, anyway?”
“District One,” the man answered. He looked at David with renewed concern. “You’re in the jail at District One in Boston. Do you understand that?” David nodded. “We have to go now. You’ve got to go to court. The judge and the people at the court will help you. Don’t you worry.”
David watched with bemused curiosity as the policeman clicked a handcuff on his right wrist and led him out of the cell. He smiled politely at the black, silver-haired prisoner who was snapped into the other cuff. Calmly, fuguelike, he focused on the manacled hands—black and white—and followed them into the back seat of a squad car.
“Name’s Lyons,” the black man said as the car pulled away. “Reggie Lyons.” His wise face held countless thin lines, etched by years of hard living, and several thicker ones, clearly carved by more tangible items.
“David. I’m David,” he answered.
“You ain’t never been this route before, David, have you?” Lyons asked. David shrugged, looked out the window, and shook his head. “Well, you is in for a treat. The tank at Suffolk is the worst, man. I mean the pits.” David stared at a motorcycle cruising next to them and nodded. “Hey, you all right? Well, it don’t matter much one way or tuther. Crazy’s prob’ly better. You just stick close to ol’ Reggie. He’ll take care of you.”
The tank was, in fact, a cage. The holding room for prisoners awaiting court appearances. Twenty men, all “presumed innocent” were packed inside—rapists, drunks, vagrants, murderers, flashers. Around the outside, half a dozen lawyers were vying to be heard over one another and over the din inside. “Perkins, which one of you is Perkins? …” “Frankly, Arnold, I don’t give a flying fuck if the kid is guilty or innocent. He either cops the first charge and saves us a trial or he ends up going down for both and spending three to five in Walpole …” “Look, kid, I know what you’ve seen on Perry Mason, but that just ain’t the way it works. Today we don’t talk guilty or not guilty. Today we talk money. If you have some or can get some, we bail you out. Otherwise you wait for your trial in Charles Street. Nobody cares about your story today. This is just for bail. Understand? Just for bail …”
David wedged himself in one corner of the tank and stared through the chain link at a high window that was opaque with grime. Bit by bit, reality—and the terror—was returning. He thought about the hospital. The operating rooms would already be on their second cases of the day.
“Hey, David, you got a lawyer?” Reggie Lyons stood next to him, leaning against the cage. A cigarette, wrinkled and bent, popped up and down at the corner of his mouth as he spoke.
“Ah, no, Reggie, I don’t,” David said absently. “At least, not that I know of.” An uncomfortable pressure grew beneath his breast bone. He tried to remember when he had last eaten. When he had last run by the river. He looked about the cage, awareness growing every second and with it an abysmal despair.
“Shelton? David Shelton. Which one of you is Shelton?” The bailiff was a dumpy man in his late fifties.