Down Solo (5 page)

After Jimmy dropped the gun, the cops relaxed a bit and handcuffed us. They got paramedics out to handle Jimmy’s chest wound and strap him on a gurney, then they took us away separately.

My wrists are chained together, ankles chained together, my shackles chained to the guy next to me, and I’m watching out the window as we roll toward downtown on Highway 10. There’s an odor I don’t even want to guess about. The bus slows down as the traffic congeals. A convertible comes down the on-ramp and into the lane next to us. The driver is a blond with a ponytail and mirrored shades. She’s chewing gum and moving to music that’s blasting from the car stereo, one slender arm resting along the back of the passenger seat. She’s wearing a skimpy halter top over what’s got to be ten thousand dollars’ worth of silicone.

The biker-type in the seat ahead of me yells, “Hey, mamacita, you know what I got for you?” He’s got long greasy hair and a full beard, and now he’s standing with his crotch pressed up to the window, arching his back and flicking his tongue in and out of his open mouth.

“What a fuckin’ asshole,” I say, to no one in particular.

“S’matter, man, you don’t like chicks?” It’s the guy I’m manacled to, a heavily muscled Mexican with a pointy little goatee. “’Cause if you don’ like chicks, man, you goin’ to the right place.”

Go fuck yourself
is what I want to say, but I stop myself. A series of X’s and 0’s alternate on the guy’s knuckles, and his biceps stretch the sleeves of his tee shirt. I turn my attention out the window to the road below.

The blond looks up at us and waves her fingers. A bubble grows out of her mouth and then pops and disappears. The entire right side of the bus is lined with manacled prisoners staring down at her.

“ALL RIGHT, IN YOUR SEATS!” a sheriff in the front of the bus yells at us from behind a Plexiglas barrier. Traffic loosens up and the convertible shoots ahead of us with a peeling of tires.

There are more lowlifes on the bus than I’ve ever seen in one place, except maybe Hernando’s Bar out in Venice, and they’re in top form today. One of them yells out from across the aisle, “Hey sheriff, oink oink, is that a shotgun or are you just happy to see me?” The officer just stands there, stone-faced, staring straight down the aisle.

Now we’re past the downtown interchange, heading out into the industrial flatlands, beyond the traffic, picking up speed, hurtling through the crappy landscape on our way to the county jail.

We arrive and they order us out of the bus and into a single-line formation on the tarmac. From there we’re marched to the back entrance of the jail building and into a holding cell, where another sheriff orders us to stand in a circle with our backs to the walls. On our way in, a deputy takes off our shackles.

A huge black guard enters with a clipboard in his hands. “All right all you model citizens,” he yells. “Listen up. Welcome back, as I’m sure most of you have been here before. If you follow directions, everything will proceed smoothly. If you do not follow directions, you will find yourselves in deeper shit than you are already in. Got it? Good. Now, I want each of you to remove all your clothing and place it in a nice little pile at your feet. NOW.”

I start to take off my shirt. They took my watch and wallet, along with my cell phone and keys, when they booked me at the Marina substation. They must have the geologist’s reports, too. Tanya’s got to be flipping out. I take off my socks and shoes and wait, looking around at the others. The same odor that permeated the bus has followed them into this cell.

“YOU,” barks the officer. “Remove your clothes. All of them.”

I take off my jeans and undershorts, roll my other things into the jeans, and lay the resulting bundle at my feet like everyone else. They’re all finished except for the guy to my right, who’s still fooling with the button of his pants. His clothes are filthy, and his face is entirely covered with hair, except for the sunburned nose and cheeks. His wild black eyes stare defiantly at the deputy. The officer glares back, smacking his nightstick into his palm.

A new deputy enters the enclosure, a wiry little guy with big ears and an Adams apple the size of a walnut. He puts on a pair of surgical gloves.

“Listen up!” The big deputy yells. “I want you girls to turn around and face the walls, spread your feet apart, bend over and grab your ankles.”

I do as I’m told. It’s an interesting view, looking around the room upside down. The skinny cop starts making the rounds.He gets to me and our eyes meet. “What are you lookin’ at?” he asks. He pulls on one of the gloves and releases it with a big snapping sound.

I tell him, “Nothing, sir.”

“That’s good,” the skinny cop says, and he goes on to the next guy.

“Hey, Ed, come here and check this out.”

The big cop comes over to see what’s going on. He looks down at the guy with the hairy face.

“Oh my God, that’s shit,” he says.

The bearded guy cackles, “What’d you expect, man, ice cream?” and everyone in the room cracks up.

Except for the deputies.

The black cop yells, “SHUT THE FUCK UP. Now, stand up, turn around, and pick up your bundles.”

We march single-file out of the cell and into a hallway. About thirty yards down the hall they tell us to stop and line up against the wall. One at a time, we approach a window. I get to it and hand over my bundle to yet another deputy. In exchange he gives me a rolled-up jumpsuit and a white towel.

Now they escort us to a row of showers, columns placed every five feet along a tiled depression. Each column has four showerheads on it and a tray with bits of soap.

The big deputy picks up a black hose that snakes to a metal tank. The hose has a fine spray attachment that blasts a mist of delousing solution at us. Then he barks, “You’ve got one minute.” He turns to the bearded guy and says, “Clean it good, Ice-Cream Ass,” and flicks a switch. All the showers turn on at once and there’s a mad scrambling for position. I put my new bundle on the floor and head for the only available shower.

I step under the spray and close my eyes and something knocks me up against the wall. I look back at my spot, which is now occupied by the guy with the X’s and O’s on his knuckles. I move in on the guy and shoulder him out of the position.

“Motherfocker, you want to fock with me?” The guy’s face is pocked and he has tattoos all over his arms and chest.

I check him out, naked with his tattoos and his muscles and his little silver earring, and point to his groin. “Hey, check it out, size counts. Bummer for your girlfriend. Give me a fuckin’ break.” People around us start laughing. I see the big cop coming over, so I turn my back and soap up my armpits. The hissing of the shower stops abruptly, leaving the room in silence except for the dripping of the nozzles and the sound of bare feet padding across the tiles.

I turn around to see the gangbanger up against the wall with the big cop’s baton between his shoulder blades. Another deputy comes and takes the guy away. I dry off and put on the jumpsuit. It’s too small—the pant legs end at my shins—but it’s good to be covered up. We march down the hall to a stairway and deposit our towels in a bin on the way.

We line up at the entrance to a room as big as a basketball court, full of men in jumpsuits. A deputy hands me a new towel and a mat like a gymnastics pad but the size of a single bed. The huge room is filled with steel-framed bunk beds. In the corridors between the closely spaced bunks, inmates are playing cards, gathered in groups, or just sitting and watching the general commotion. I drag my mat around, looking for an empty spot, and notice a small black man with dreadlocks holding a bulging file envelope and chanting, “Ey, mon, condee, smokes, brush ya teeth.”

It’s Daniel, my taxi driver.

I say, “What are you doing here?”

He grins, beautiful, big white teeth, and says, “You never called me. Looks like you could use some help.” No accent at all. He winks.

I say, “Help me find a spot and I’ll do business with you later. Maybe in a corner where it’s not so noisy, and . . .”

“And where de brothers don’ hang together, is dot what you want to seh?”

“Just keep me away from the gangbangers, that’s all.”

“Mebbe you want de penthouse suite,” the guy says. “Come on.”

I follow him to the far corner of the room. It’s quieter; the inmates look older and keep to themselves or converse in pairs. A top bunk has no mattress on it. I hoist mine up and position it on the frame.

“Okay, thanks, Daniel. This is good.”

Someone from a nearby bunk makes a hand gesture that gets Daniel’s attention. As he ambles off to ply his wares, I launch myself up to my new home and fold my towel into a pillow. I nod at my neighbor, a skeletal little Asian man with silver hair flowing to his shoulders, who inclines his head so slightly I’m not even sure it’s a response.

There’s nothing to do but check out. I feel tired anyway. I lay my head on the makeshift pillow and stare up at the holes in the soundproof tiles above. The general din condenses into a faraway buzz and then gets swallowed by sleep.

I’m deep in a dream when the bunk moves. I was driving a car, but couldn’t reach the brake pedal because I was in the back seat, reaching around the driver’s side headrest to steer. Through the windshield I could see a thousand brake lights all go on at once. When the bed moves, I open my eyes. Sitting over me, perched right next to my shoulder and looking down at me, is the guy with the tattoos. I prop myself up on my elbows.

“You don’ fock with a man like that,” the guy says. I wonder if I can get my thumb into the guy’s eye socket fast enough, and decide probably not.

Just to mess with him, I say, “If you wanted my shower, you should have asked politely.”

“Oh, you gonna be cute with me, huh? Huh? Fockin’ ponk. I think you need to learn some respect.”

I look up at the guy, his thick arms and his pointy little beard, and say, “Why don’t you decide exactly how far you want to go with this, right now, and then go for it?” I sit up, and now I’m facing the guy. We’re inches apart. You have to look the really crazy ones right in the eye.

Years ago, some cocaine-crazed giant came up to the table where I was sitting with some friends in a blues club out in the Valley. The guy put the point of a Buck knife to my throat and said, “Put your drink down and your hands on your knees.” Instead, I lifted the glass to my mouth and took a swallow. The guy was clearly batshit crazy, looked like he weighed three hundred pounds. “Put your drink down and then put your hands on your knees,” the guy repeated, and I took another swig of my JD. After a beat, the guy said, “Hey, man, I thought you were somebody else,” and then lumbered away.

The gangbanger’s eyes flicker for a moment, then shift to the old Asian man. “What are you lookin’ at, faggot?” the guy says. The old man stares impassively and says nothing. With the tattooed guy’s hostility deflected for a moment, I feel the heat dissipate. I watch him swagger away as if he’s just won a victory. I fade into sleep again.

In my new dream I’m in a room, the shadows are red, and my pulse in my ears multiplies into drums—congas and bongos and a deep bass that sounds like a whale gulping air. Someone else chimes in with a rattle that snakes its own way through the beat. It’s smoky and the room is crowded. I’m sitting across from a thin Hispanic man at the center of the crowd. He’s wearing a wrinkled black suit, a narrow tie, and a kufi cap with a mandala pattern. He raises his hand and the drumming stops. The room goes silent.

“We are gathered here tonight to bring our friend Charlie out of the darkness.” His voice is a memory, I know it intimately, its deep and precise tone filling the room. A brazier with a small flame sits between us, casting jumpy shadows on the walls; a stream of fragrant but acrid smoke curls to the ceiling.

“We imagine we are human beings, searching for a spiritual experience, but in fact we are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

The drumming resumes, quietly, but with a rock-steady pulse. A wiry, dreadlocked man with skin as black as Mindy’s fingernail polish steps into the inner circle with us and hands the man a cup. He sips from it and hands it to me. The drums tease their way forward, floating over the beat of the gulping whale, weaving a net that pulls me into the flame, up with the smoke, and through the roof. I hear the man say, “The spirit knows how to leave the body, heal the body . . .”

And I’m out, floating free, roaming under the dawn sky, unburdened by care or desire. There is a house far below me, the size of a postage stamp, in the middle of a field, cars and trucks parked haphazardly by the entrance.The field is divided neatly into squares, with rows of green divided by shining lines of water. An armadillo scurries out from under a bush; like a hawk, I swoop down to investigate. Its startled face turns up, then left and right. It can’t see me, but it curls up into a ball. It knows something is there.

There’s a clown standing in the field. I move toward it and see that it’s a scarecrow with a red rubber ball for a nose. Its face is covered with bees. Their buzzing gets louder until it becomes a maddening roar and they fly away, leaving, instead of a scarecrow, my face. My body is on a cross, I’m wearing a crown of thorns, and it suddenly sprouts roses in an explosion of red.

Now I’m back in the room, looking down on my body lying flat on the floor. Without a thought, I enter it. My body starts to shake. It has its very own earthquake, and panic overwhelms me. The man with the narrow tie leans over me, mouthing words I can’t make out. The pattern on his kufi moves from the center outward like a mad kaleidoscope. His hand shoots out and grabs my wrist. I try to pull away, but I’m paralyzed with dread. I close my eyes.
Help me. Dear God, please help me
.

My arm is being shaken now.

I open my eyes and see Daniel, his hand around my wrist. He grins, big white teeth and clear eyes under the wild dreadlocks. He lets go of my wrist and suddenly grows serious, sniffing the air as if trying to place an odor.

“You,” he says, pointing his finger at me, “been back to de room.”

“What room?”

“De room in Mexico, mon.” Daniel’s eyes narrow as he peers up at me.

“What room in Mexico? And how would you know about that?” The guy has to be crazy.

He shakes his head. “You really need to wake up. I bet you never looked at de card I gave you, right?”

He’s right. The card is still in my pocket, or in the packet the cops put my stuff in.

He winks and then says, “When you get out of here, you check out what’s on dat card, den come find me at Venice Beach, on de boardwalk, and I tell you much more. Right now, I got to go do business.” He starts to leave, then turns around.

“Good ting you come back from dat dream.” He looks back at me, serious for a moment, then throws back his head and laughs. “You a very lucky mon,” he says, and then walks away.

¤ ¤ ¤

A bell clangs and the huge room becomes the scene of a massive clutter of random movement that somehow resolves itself into two neat lines of blue-jumpsuited men. We stand heel to toe facing the doorway to the maze of inner hallways. A deputy gives the signal, and the line I’m in begins to move.

“Shoulders against the walls. Keep your hands at your sides. NO TALKING, ASSHOLE!” A crew-cut deputy with a bright red face and neck approaches the line and thrusts his face up into the face of a muscular black man several places in front of me.

The line stops moving. The deputy’s shirt outlines the V-shape from his waist to his armpits and is stretched taut across his back.

“You wanna fuck with me?” The deputy, who’s about five foot eight, looks up at the inmate, who stands at about my height of just over six feet. Both men’s muscles twitch as they stare at each other. The black man’s fingers extend stiffly, as if he’s straining to avoid making a fist.

There’s a restless shuffling from the line; people want to see what is happening but don’t want to make themselves conspicuous. The inmate, still holding the deputy’s gaze, says, “Nope. Don’t wanna fuck with nobody.”

The deputy backs off and says, “Good. That’s good.” Then he hollers, “Let’s move. Next guy that talks misses tonight’s gourmet dinner.” The line moves briskly down the corridor, silent except for the padding of feet and the swishing of sleeves against the dull yellow wall.

¤ ¤ ¤

“Watchoo want, man, the cow turd loaf, or the pigshit sausage?” A huge biker with a beard to his chest and a net over his hair gestures toward two stainless steel pans full of equally unappealing choices. I point to the meatloaf. The biker scoops up a square with his spatula and dumps it on a plate.

“Enjoy.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I tell him, and go to the next counter. Here, I’m given what looks like mashed potatoes and a pile of shriveled peas. I pick an orange from a bowl, and a plastic cup, spoon, and fork from the next cart, and follow the man in front of me to a table.

There are about forty identical tables in the room, each with two rows of seven inmates facing each other. An enormous mural covers one wall—an underwater scene with whales and jellyfish, oddly serene as a backdrop to the roomful of dining criminals. When my table fills up, a trustee appears with two plastic pitchers of pale liquid that he sets down at the end of the table. A sudden clamor goes up: “Juice down.” “Juice down!” “Hey, mothafuckah, juice down.”

I prod the colorless square of alleged meat on my plate. For some reason the idea of eating appeals to me.

The pitcher arrives, nearly empty. I put it up to my face and sniff—Hawaiian Punch.

“Yo, mothafuckah, get yo’ fuckin’ Jew beak outta there. Juice down, man.” It’s the big guy who had the showdown with the guard. Probably still pissed off. I fill my glass and pass the pitcher to my right. Towering over the end of the table is the biker who served my meatloaf. The huge bearded man looks down at me, shaking his head in reproof. When the empty pitchers reach the end of the table, the man places them in a plastic tub on a rolling cart and goes on to the next group, still shaking his head.

¤ ¤ ¤

After dinner, I doze on my bunk, thinking about Mindy and trying to ignore the rumbling in my belly. I can feel the food moving through me in a lump. When it finally gets to be too much, I drop to the floor and walk down the corridor between the rows of bunks, past the open area where the brothers sit on hard benches, and toward the latrine section.

This is my second day as a deceased person, and I haven’t sat on a toilet yet. There are eight stainless steel toilets lining a six-foot-high wall, perpendicular to which are eight urinals. Men sit on each of the toilets, bare to the ankles with their jumpsuits carefully undone and rolled down in such a way as to not touch the floor, which is wet throughout the section. The men look out expressionlessly over the common area.

There are two empty seats in a row. I choose the one at the end, unbutton my coveralls, and sit down, feeling slightly less conspicuous in the corner. I close my eyes and try to picture the process of food moving through my system. Something tells me that the meatloaf and peas might come out still meatloaf and peas.

I hear rustling and grunting noises coming from my left. Someone sits heavily and breaks wind like an M-80 in a trashcan. I open my eyes and look over: It’s the biker from the mess hall. The man is a naked mountain of billowing white flesh, his huge belly pouring out over his lap as he hunches forward.

He turns his head and looks at me. With the net off, his hair spills wildly over his face and down his back. “Hey, fish, how’d you like your cow-turd patty?” He chuckles and farts again.

I shrug. I really don’t feel like conversing at the moment.

“Hey, man, I saw you and that jig with the big muscles in the mess hall. You know you can’t let the niggers fuck with you that way.” I notice a tattoo on the guy’s arm. A blond-maned Conan the Barbarian type skewers a caricature of a black man with the sharp end of a flagpole. Above the stars and stripes are the words “Aryan Nation” in an ornate script. “You hang with us and jigs’ll leave you alone, that’s fer damn fuckin’ sure.”

I say, “I’m not hangin’ with anybody, man. I’m outta here.” Which I have no idea is true. I guess I’ll get arraigned tomorrow, but I can’t afford a lawyer.

“Yeah, well, next time then. You come check us out next time.”

“There won’t be any next time,” I say.

The bearded guy says, “Yeah, right, and I’m here ’cause they got the wrong fuckin’ guy. Hey, you’re not really a fuckin’ Jew, are you?”

I look at the biker, his hairy face and the mad-dog gleam in his eye, and say, “What’s the matter, you don’t like them either?”

The biker looks away, grunts, and voids his bowels in a wet explosion. “Fuckin’ jail food.”