entrance receding from him, farther and farther.
Then he was finally jerking the door open and catching a mouthful of moist night air, and as he took the first step outside to the safety of darkness there was this incredibly loud roar, like a cannon going off underneath him.
His ass and legs were on fire. It felt like a bucket of nails that had been heated to white-hot intensity in burning oil had been blasted onto him. All the air was instantaneously sucked out of his lungs, the force of the blow was so strong and unexpected.
His mind went black and he pitched face forward, slamming in a heap onto the sidewalk.
T HE MARSHALS AND THEIR prisoner were on schedule. They had called ahead every half hour, giving a progress report. Everything had gone smoothly, no screwups.
They flashed their IDs at the gate. The guard in charge, a sergeant who had been sent down for the express purpose of helping facilitate this transfer, radioed upstairs to the main check-in floor.
“I got the two marshals and their charge from Durban State here.”
“Copy that. Send them in.”
The sergeant pressed the button that swung the gate open and they drove down into the basement underneath the jail, passing through two more locked gates. The second gate didn’t start to open until the first gate had slammed shut, the echo reverberating loudly in the hot stillness.
Dwayne looked out the windows. He had been here before, he knew the drill. Same way it had been every other time he’d been taken into a lockup, jail, or prison.
The jail was huge, and it was old. A WPA project, built in 1935 at the height of the depression, it had been obsolete for decades. It felt more like a prison than a jail. The form was essentially that of a wheel; a center core extended from the basement to the roof, divided into floors two stories high. Each level was its own command center, where deputies’ lockers, information counters, and administrative were contained. Radiating out like spokes were the two-tiered cellblocks that housed the inmates. In the center of each cellblock was a corridor onto which all the cells opened.
The marshals parked the car by the reinforced metal entrance door and unlocked the back door and helped their prisoner out. They showed their badges once again through the small barred window that was next to the entrance door. Then they unbuckled their automatics and took them out of the holsters that rode low on their hips and passed them through to the officer, who put them in a small secure locker and locked it. The jail deputy swung the door open so they could enter.
The door clanged shut behind them with solid authoritative finality. Dwayne raised his shackled hands in the lead marshal’s face.
“Soon,” he was told.
They rode up on the elevator to the third floor. The elevator creaked slowly in fits and jerks. The doors wheezed open and the marshals led their prisoner into the two-story rotunda that was the central booking area.
The place was busy with activity. Over two dozen men and a few women were seated on the benches, waiting to go through the procession and enter the system. They had all gotten to this sorry place for the same old reasons—get fucked up on drugs and liquor, act out festering grudges that have been building up. Or they committed straightforward serious crimes, nighttime is the right time. Domestic violence. Gang shit. Drug deals—more drug stuff than everything else put together. Most of the women, like those slouching on the scarred wooden benches, bored, numbed-out expressions on their overly made-up faces, were in for prostitution. Blow jobs in cars, not two-thousand-dollar nights in high-priced hotel rooms. A smattering of the male arrestees, openly gay, lounged together on their own bench, away from the others.
The half dozen deputies on duty stopped what they were doing and turned to look as Dwayne, wearing his penitentiary-issued clothes and metal chain on his person, walked out of the elevator
Then he was finally jerking the door open and catching a mouthful of moist night air, and as he took the first step outside to the safety of darkness there was this incredibly loud roar, like a cannon going off underneath him.
His ass and legs were on fire. It felt like a bucket of nails that had been heated to white-hot intensity in burning oil had been blasted onto him. All the air was instantaneously sucked out of his lungs, the force of the blow was so strong and unexpected.
His mind went black and he pitched face forward, slamming in a heap onto the sidewalk.
T HE MARSHALS AND THEIR prisoner were on schedule. They had called ahead every half hour, giving a progress report. Everything had gone smoothly, no screwups.
They flashed their IDs at the gate. The guard in charge, a sergeant who had been sent down for the express purpose of helping facilitate this transfer, radioed upstairs to the main check-in floor.
“I got the two marshals and their charge from Durban State here.”
“Copy that. Send them in.”
The sergeant pressed the button that swung the gate open and they drove down into the basement underneath the jail, passing through two more locked gates. The second gate didn’t start to open until the first gate had slammed shut, the echo reverberating loudly in the hot stillness.
Dwayne looked out the windows. He had been here before, he knew the drill. Same way it had been every other time he’d been taken into a lockup, jail, or prison.
The jail was huge, and it was old. A WPA project, built in 1935 at the height of the depression, it had been obsolete for decades. It felt more like a prison than a jail. The form was essentially that of a wheel; a center core extended from the basement to the roof, divided into floors two stories high. Each level was its own command center, where deputies’ lockers, information counters, and administrative were contained. Radiating out like spokes were the two-tiered cellblocks that housed the inmates. In the center of each cellblock was a corridor onto which all the cells opened.
The marshals parked the car by the reinforced metal entrance door and unlocked the back door and helped their prisoner out. They showed their badges once again through the small barred window that was next to the entrance door. Then they unbuckled their automatics and took them out of the holsters that rode low on their hips and passed them through to the officer, who put them in a small secure locker and locked it. The jail deputy swung the door open so they could enter.
The door clanged shut behind them with solid authoritative finality. Dwayne raised his shackled hands in the lead marshal’s face.
“Soon,” he was told.
They rode up on the elevator to the third floor. The elevator creaked slowly in fits and jerks. The doors wheezed open and the marshals led their prisoner into the two-story rotunda that was the central booking area.
The place was busy with activity. Over two dozen men and a few women were seated on the benches, waiting to go through the procession and enter the system. They had all gotten to this sorry place for the same old reasons—get fucked up on drugs and liquor, act out festering grudges that have been building up. Or they committed straightforward serious crimes, nighttime is the right time. Domestic violence. Gang shit. Drug deals—more drug stuff than everything else put together. Most of the women, like those slouching on the scarred wooden benches, bored, numbed-out expressions on their overly made-up faces, were in for prostitution. Blow jobs in cars, not two-thousand-dollar nights in high-priced hotel rooms. A smattering of the male arrestees, openly gay, lounged together on their own bench, away from the others.
The half dozen deputies on duty stopped what they were doing and turned to look as Dwayne, wearing his penitentiary-issued clothes and metal chain on his person, walked out of the elevator
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