The most telling environmental detail for Willy, however, wasn't the harsh lighting or the antiseptic odors or the constant presence of mostly overweight people in uniform. It was the sounds of incarceration-the constant slamming of heavy metal doors, far and near, the harsh buzzing of electronic locks, and the nonstop chatter of people on portable radios, usually asking for some door or another to be sprung open on screeching hinges. That hard-edged, piercing, brain-grating symphony gnawed at him like a rat chewing a wire behind a wall, and was made all the more insidious by the steady, upbeat, dismissive laughter and bantering among the correctional officers.
For a man who didn't like being boxed in by people, routine, or impenetrable walls, the cumulative effect of all this began taking its toll. By the time it was his turn to be interviewed by the booking officer, Willy Kunkle's only thought was to keep his mouth shut.
"What's your name?"
Willy stared at the counter between them.
"What's you name, bud?"
Again, he kept silent.
The officer didn't react as the cop on the roof had. He simply sighed, looked over to his partner, said, "You deal with him," and beckoned to the next prisoner in line, reinforcing how little Willy's choices mattered to his eighthour day.
And so it went throughout the entire procedure. Various people with various tasks asked him the questions assigned to them, got nothing for their pains, and simply passed him down the line. He was photographed, logged in as a John Doe, electronically fingerprinted on an AFIS machine, checked out for any injuries, strip-searched with a thoroughness even he found impressive, told to sit on a magnetic chair sensitized to any metal objects hidden in any body cavity, and finally relegated to a cell in the quarantine section reserved for the ill, the mad, the truly filthy, and the otherwise unclassifiable. For the time being, until the police could find out who he was, he would sit there, alone and thinking, trying to pitch the cool logic of the puzzle pieces he'd discovered so far against the personal demons that were nestling in the hard, bland, tiled walls of his cell. Joe Gunther got the phone call the next day, sitting at his desk in Brattleboro. As soon as he recognized the nasal New York accent on the other line, he knew, if not the nature of the call, at least its subject.
"This is Officer Denise Williams of the New York City Department of Correction. We have a man in holding down here who seems to be one of your detectives."
"Is his name Kunkle?"
Williams's voice, which up to then had sounded half asleep, perked up with interest. "You know we got him?"
"I knew he was in New York. Not that he'd been locked up. What're the charges?"
"Disorderly conduct, obstructing governmental administration, and resisting arrest."
Gunther winced at the bureauspeak aspect of the second charge, thinking Willy had made a career out of that one. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"That's not my job, but from what I heard, he was in an after-hours bar."
"Drinking?" he asked in alarm.
There was a pause. "Well…it is a bar."
"He's a recovering alcoholic-hasn't touched a drop in years."
"Oh." There was a slight ruffling of papers in the background. "There's nothing about drunk and disorderly here, but if he was on police business, we don't know about it and he's not talking. Hasn't said a single word since we arrested him. We only found out about him 'cause the fingerprint machine kicked back his ID."
Gunther mulled that over for a moment before asking, "Why was he arrested in the first place?"
"It was a sweep. Looks like just a wrong-place, wrong-time kind of thing, but I don't really know. I was just told to contact you."
"What happens now?"
"Not much. As soon as we found out who he was, he was arraigned and moved upstairs. I'm not exactly sure, but he might be on Rikers already, waiting for his case to be heard. Anyhow, if he's not there now, he will be. You want to find out, here's the name and number you should contact." She rattled off the information in rapid fire, forcing Gunther to ask her to repeat it.
He hung up the phone and looked across the small room. Sammie Martens was staring at him, a piece of paper frozen in her hand.
"What's he done?" she asked.
"Nothing much. He was picked up in a sweep at an illegal bar. They're minor charges, but it doesn't sound like they're cutting him any slack. He's on Rikers right now, from what it sounds."
She put the paper down on her desk slowly, as if it were a thin sheet of ice. "A bar. What's it mean?"
"For his career? Don't know yet. Getting caught in a sweep is no big deal. He might have had a good excuse. It doesn't sound like he was drinking, so maybe he was running something down. But they mentioned flight and resisting arrest. Those might be problems. It wouldn't take much for our bosses to fire him, he's made himself so popular."
Sammie sensed a weariness in Gunther's voice, and understood-even if she wasn't much good at it herself- that there came a time when making allowances for someone wasn't in anyone's best interests any longer.
But she knew in her gut that this was not that time. Unfortunately, it also wasn't her choice to make.
Gunther was watching her with a small smile on his face.
"What?" she asked.
"Don't worry," he told her. "We'll make a quick field trip. Find out what he's been up to." Willy Kunkle lay on his bed, his head propped up against a bunched-up pillow, staring at the ceiling. No longer alone in a small, dark cell, he was now someplace he considered far worse: in a huge barracks-style room, well lit with two opposing walls of windows, amid a serried legion of beds just like his own, each the tiny domain of an inmate just like himself. There were dozens and dozens of men here, bored, frustrated, restless, and full of the nervous need to talk, shout, throw things at one another, and get the ire of the few COs, or correctional officers, who watched them from a control booth at the head of the room.
He was on Rikers Island, which, with some nineteen thousand inmates, was touted as the largest penal colony in the world, depending on whom you believed. Mostly consisting of landfill, Rikers had over four hundred acres and hosted eleven different jails housing men, women, and juveniles. The facilities came in every conceivable shape, from open dorms like Willy's, for people accused of lesser crimes, to twenty-three-hour-per-day isolation cells designed for the truly out-of-control. All but a small percentage of these people were in fact inhabitants of a legal twilight zone, charged but not yet convicted of crimes that had yet to be adjudicated by New York's overworked, understaffed, around-the-clock court system. Some people had been living on the island for years, awaiting trial.
"Kunkle? You got a visitor."
He took his eyes off the ceiling and looked into the face of a tall, muscular Latino CO. "Who is it?"
The CO smiled broadly and quickly glanced over his shoulder. "Hey, Frank, he talks. English and everything."
Frank's distant voice floated overhead. "He tell you to get stuffed?"
The CO merely laughed and tapped Willy on his shoulder. "Come on. Get up."
Willy rose and turned to be cuffed, a gesture that had become second nature by now. He was then steered by the CO through a series of doors and long corridors, all ammonia-clean and shiny bright, feeling like a tiny particle in an industrialized intestinal tract, until he was finally delivered to a windowless beige room with a linoleum floor, filled with cramped glass-partitioned cubicles.