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The moment came. I made him miss a left and as he followed with his right I grabbed his forearm. It was like holding onto steel cable.
Before I could move, Doyle pulled his forearm up and lifted me straight into the air. With a very warm smile, like he was very pleased with me, he said, “You really are very good, Billy.”
Then he brought his other hand within six inches of my face. “Very good,” he said. He moved the fist. That’s all I remember.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The drunk tank has a sound all its own. It’s a combination of low moaning, like you might find in the waiting room in hell, and the raspy gargle of a TB ward that’s part choking and part snore. There’s the occasional scream or bellow and, just to make things perfect, the odd snatch of song here and there.
The drunk tank has a smell, too. Oh, boy, does it have a smell. If you take fifty or sixty incontinent, unwashed alcoholics who have been living in
sewers and dumpsters and cram them into a space the size of an average living room, you get a smell that’s hard to mistake. It’s hard to take, too.
It was the smell that clued me in. The noise might just have been the sound track from some of the dreams I’d been having lately. But my dreams hadn’t been coming with a scratch-and-sniff card.
I opened my eyes—or one eye, anyway. The left one seemed stuck. I wet a finger and worked around the lashes. I held the finger up to my eye; dried blood.
I looked around the room with my one eye. I felt like Popeye after a bender. The cell was packed with bodies. Most of them looked like they’d been found in the dumpsters behind really cheap cafeterias.
Over in one corner was a small sink and a toilet with no seat. I managed to stand up and work my way across the floor to the sink. I felt a little dizzy. My face was throbbing, and something was wrong with one of my back teeth. The right sleeve had been torn off my shirt. My watch was gone, and my wallet and shoes.
I bent over the sink and turned on the tap. A rusty trickle came out into my hands and I used it to scrub at my eye. After a couple of minutes I got the eye open.
It wasn’t an improvement. None of the drunks got any prettier. The smell didn’t go away, either.
Over in the corner by the door I noticed a very large, very hairy white man. He was sitting with his back propped against the wall and glaring at me. I glared back.
“What the fuck are you looking at, fuckface?” he asked me politely. I couldn’t think of a clever answer so I turned away, back to the spot where I woke up.
I sat down again and put my head in my hands. I hadn’t expected to wake up in the drunk tank—I hadn’t expected to wake up at all. Why hadn’t Doyle killed me? What the hell was I doing here?
I remembered the last time I had thought that question—was it really just a day ago? With Nancy. I hadn’t called her. She would be mad. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see me anymore. Serve me right.
My head was hurting. I guess I should have been used to it, but I wasn’t. I felt as bad as if I really belonged here, sitting in the tank on a Saturday night.
Feet scuffed. I opened my eyes.
My new friend with the attitude was towering over me, glaring down at me with comic-opera fierceness. “I asked you a question, fuckface,” he said. He kicked at me, popping my knee with his foot.
It made me mad. My knee was one of the few places that didn’t hurt. Had I really sunk this low, that I was getting kicked around by a bully in the drunk tank?
I hit him in the balls and stood up as he doubled over in pain. I was ready to peg him again, but he was already falling gently to his knees, so I just stood there. “It’s Mister Fuckface to you,” I told him. I felt a little better. Maybe a superhuman racist could beat me up without working up a sweat, but I was still a terror with drunks—even big drunks.
I sat back down again. The bully didn’t move for quite a while. Then he sat up suddenly, looked at me, and scuttled away, back to his place, without taking his eyes off me. I didn’t feel so great about hitting him anymore.
I sat there feeling sorry for myself for one of the longest nights I can remember. Five or six times a couple of cops showed up and pushed somebody new through the door.
Sunday was even worse. If there is a place deader than the drunk tank on a Sunday I don’t want to know about it. The whole day plodded by at slow speed, every minute dragging out to a full half-hour.
I guess the smell stayed the same, but after the first night my senses went numb. The moans continued; the singing tapered off. Small blessings.
There was a battered clock behind a wire mesh over the main door. Every time the door opened, every eye capable of movement would swing to the door, glance up at the clock, and swing back again to whatever patch of wall they were staring at.
It was just after ten-thirty on Monday morning when Ed finally came for me.
He stood at the bars for a little too long, just looking at me. Then the famous Cheshire cat grin spread over his face. “Billy!” he said with real delight. “You lookin’ good!”
“I feel great, Ed. Come on in, have a seat.”
