Hap Collins, you are one walking, talking contradiction. I also decided I didn’t deserve execution after all. I probably just needed a spanking. Maybe someone could call me some names and send me home without my supper. I felt myself tremble as if something cold had crawled up my spine.
I watched some shadows advance down the hall. I heard some prisoners yelling and talking. Somewhere someone was watching a television. There was no television in my cell. Not even a deck of cards. Just the man without nookie, lying unconscious on the jailhouse floor.
After a while a big shadow came down the hall. It fell into the cell, and pretty soon there was a guy following it. He was one of the cops who had arrested us. He was a big guy with a belly that was teasing the buttons on his shirt. He was bareheaded and he didn’t have much hair. He stood at the door to my cell, looking through the bars. He stared down at my pal on the floor, said, “What happened to him?”
“Faintin’ spell,” I said. “Saw a mouse.”
“A mouse, huh?”
“It was a big mouse.”
20
They brought the three of us, wearing handcuffs, into an interrogation room that smelled strongly of Pine-Sol and too much mop soap and more than a sprinkle of urine. The floor was a little slick. A roach lay legs up in the corner.
There was a mirror on the wall, long and narrow, and I figured it was one of those see-through jobs where they could watch into the room from the other side. They couldn’t fool me. I had seen TV and movies. The mirror was smeared in places with fingerprints and nose prints, and some stains that were probably not worth knowing about. There was a single fat bulb hanging down from a frayed, dust-covered wire and the dust was so thick and dark it looked like fungus. I half expected the wire to snap and spray the room with sparks and set the place on fire. I saw a video camera in the top corner of the room on metal struts. Boogers were smeared on the wall, and some of them were big enough to use as bricks in construction. I had the uncomfortable feeling that one of the larger ones was looking at me.
They put us on one side of a long table with initials and fuck-you messages carved into it. I looked up. The camera was pointing right at us. I gave it a smile.
They had already talked to us separately, right before tossing us into our individual cells. Now they had us as a trio, the three of us sitting there in all our jail-suited glory, pink roses in a light green booger-dotted room. They brought us there and went away, and we sat alone for a moment, and then the door opened and two men came in. They were not in uniform.
I knew one of them. His name was Drake and he was a detective and we got along all right. We had had reason to meet before. I hadn’t shot anyone that time, and he knew Marvin, so he had been nice to me. I got off easy. I hit a man at a Dairy Queen because he hit his wife when she dropped his DQ Dude on the way to their table. I thought this was a bit excessive, even though Dudes are good and inexpensive if you go with the basket, French fries, and a drink. The wife got mad at me and I was the one that went to jail. As the old saying goes, no good deed goes unpunished.
Drake was whip-lean, black as straight coffee, with a soft-looking face and a boxer’s flat nose. His shirt was lime-colored. It matched the paint on the walls. He didn’t have on a tie. His top button was unbuttoned and his shirttail was pulled out. If he was trying to look any more casual he’d have come in his underwear carrying a teddy bear and a pacifier.
Drake knew Leonard too. Who didn’t? Brett he also knew of. I could understand that. A lot of men knew of her and wished they knew more of her.
I had no idea where Gadget was, or the two who had been in the front seat of the Caddy. I wondered if my cell mate was still napping. I wondered if the weenie dog was somewhere hidden, nibbling on his prize.
Drake had another cop with him. A pink-skinned, redheaded guy with freckles and fat lips. Kelso was his name. He was leaning in the corner of the room acting like he couldn’t believe what the human condition had come to.
Drake sat on one side of the table and we sat on the other. Brett in the middle. The chairs were shorter on our side of the table. It’s an old trick the cops use to make you feel less significant than the interrogator. We didn’t give a damn, though. We were tough enough to tear doughnuts in half.
Kelso kept his corner, turning his head to take us in with those disappointed eyes. Drake lit a cigarette and asked if we wanted cigarettes or coffee.
“Have you got those little flavored creamers?” Leonard asked.
“No,” Drake said.
“Any cookies?”
“Nothing like that,” Drake said. “Some coffee. Standard shitty creamer with some sugar packs. Or Sweet’N Low. But maybe we can bring in some caviar and nice crackers.”
“Could you?” Leonard said. “That would be damn nice.”
Drake made a point of ignoring Leonard. He looked at me and Brett. We asked for coffee. Drake nodded, turned to Kelso, said, “Is the camera on?”
He knew we knew how it worked, so he wasn’t trying to be cagey.
“Nope,” Kelso said.
“Good,” Drake said. “Leonard, you can go fuck yourself.”
“From your lips to God’s ear,” Leonard said.
“Go on, man,” Drake said to Kelso. “Get the coffee.”
Kelso left. I guess it was his day to be fetch bitch.
Drake looked us over. “So, you people have had quite a day. Enough dead to put a dent in the population. If only you could have set fire to downtown and shot a busload of orphans, it would have been perfect.”
“Hap ran over a yard gnome,” Brett said. “That damn sure ought to count for something.”
“Yep,” Leonard said. “It was a big day, and frankly, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m a little tuckered, and this pink outfit makes me feel like I’m in my jammies. But, just to let you know, I really feel humiliated. This suit, it’s got to be the right cure for evil. Wearing this, no one would ever stray again from the straight and narrow. You wouldn’t even catch me jackin’ off in the men’s room if I thought I’d have to wear this fucker again.”
“That’s a relief,” Drake said.
“Thought you’d want to know,” Leonard said.
Drake tapped his fingers on the desk, said, “You’re going to call it self-defense?”
“Our lawyer will,” I said. Of course, we didn’t have a lawyer yet, but I wanted to sound like a big-time experienced criminal.
I turned to Leonard, said, “I met a guy in my cell who wanted to fuck me. I knocked him out. Was that anti-gay?”
“Did you write any anti-gay graffiti on him or the wall?”
I shook my head.
“I think it’ll be all right,” he said.
“No talking amongst yourselves,” Drake said. “You know you did a bad thing, you three?”
“Yep,” Leonard said.
“What about those guys in the Caddy?” Brett asked.
“They’ll live,” Drake said.
“Gadget?” I asked.
“She’s under arrest.”
Kelso came back in, but he didn’t have our coffee. He leaned over and whispered in Drake’s ear.
“What?” Drake said.
Kelso nodded.
“Goddamn it,” Drake said.
Drake got up and went out. Leonard said, “What about that coffee?”
“Fuck the coffee,” Kelso said.
“That’s some kind of goddamn way for a public servant to talk,” Leonard said. “And you with the camera running.”
I kicked Leonard gently under the table.
“I saw that,” Kelso said. “And that’s good policy. You should shut the hell up. And the camera is still off, dick cheese. That way, I wanted to kick your ass it wouldn’t get recorded.”
Leonard just smiled. Even with handcuffs on, Leonard would be a load and he knew it, and I could tell Kelso knew it too.
Kelso glared at me, said, “The jailer said you hit your cell mate.”
“He didn’t buy the mouse story?”