The Third Twin - Ken Follett [79]
Porky took another step back and sat down hard on the toilet, covering his eyes with his hands.
Steve put both hands behind Porky’s neck, pulled his head forward, and kneed him in the face. Blood spurted from Porky’s mouth. Steve grabbed him by the shirt, yanked him off the toilet seat, and dropped him on the floor. He was about to kick him, when sanity began to return. He hesitated, staring down at Porky bleeding on the floor, and the red mist of rage cleared. “Oh, no,” he said. “What have I done?”
The gate of the cell flew open and two cops burst in, brandishing nightsticks.
Steve held up his hands in front of him.
“Just calm down,” said one of the cops.
“I’m calm, now,” Steve said.
The cops handcuffed him and took him out of the cell. One punched him in the stomach, hard. He doubled over, gasping. “That’s just in case you were thinking of starting any more trouble,” the cop said.
He heard the sound of the cell door crashing shut and the voice of Spike the turnkey in his habitual humorous mood. “You need medical attention, Porky?” Spike said. “ ’Cause there’s a veterinarian on East Baltimore Street.” He cackled at his own joke.
Steve straightened up, recovering from the punch. It still hurt but he could breathe. He looked through the bars at Porky. He was sitting upright, rubbing his eyes. Through bleeding lips he replied to Spike, “Fuck you, asshole.”
Steve was relieved: Porky was not badly hurt.
Spike said: “It was time to pull you out of there anyway, college boy. These gentlemen have come to take you to court.” He consulted a sheet of paper. “Let’s see, who else is for the Northern District Court? Mr. Robert Sandilands, known as Sniff.…” He got three other men out of cells and chained them all together with Steve. Then the two cops took them to the parking garage and put them on a bus.
Steve hoped he would never have to go back to that place.
It was still dark outside. Steve guessed it must be around six A.M. Courts did not start work until nine or ten o’clock in the morning, so he would have a long wait. They drove through the city for fifteen or twenty minutes then entered a garage door in a court building. They got off the bus and went down into the basement.
There were eight barred pens around a central open area. Each pen had a bench and a toilet, but they were larger than the cells at police headquarters, and all four prisoners were put in a pen that already had six men in it. Their chains were removed and dumped on a table in the middle of the room. There were several turnkeys, presided over by a tall black woman with a sergeant’s uniform and a mean expression.
Over the next hour another thirty or more prisoners arrived. They were accommodated twelve to a pen. There were shouts and whistles when a small group of women were brought in. They were put in a pen at the far end of the room.
After that nothing much happened for several hours. Breakfast was brought, but Steve once again refused food; he could not get used to the idea of eating in the toilet. Some prisoners talked noisily, most remained sullen and quiet. Many looked hung over. The banter between prisoners and guards was not quite as foul as it had been in the last place, and Steve wondered idly if that was because there was a woman in charge.
Jails were nothing like what they showed on TV, he reflected. Television shows and movies made prisons seem like low-grade hotels: they never showed the unscreened toilets, the verbal abuse, or the beatings given to those who misbehaved.
Today might be his last day in jail. If he had believed in God he would have prayed with all his heart.
He figured it was about midday when they began taking prisoners out of the cells.
Steve was in the second batch. They were handcuffed again and ten men were chained together. Then they went up to the court.
The courtroom was like a Methodist chapel. The walls were painted green up to a black line at waist level and then cream above that. There was a green carpet on the floor and nine rows of blond wood benches like