"Who's on the bench this morning?"
"Judge Flowers."
"Oh boy."
"You want a lawyer with you?"
"No, not just yet. Thanks, anyway, Phil."
"You bet. Hang tough. It's going to be all right. Everybody's got a right to a hard night sometimes."
An old man with a wild, tobacco-stained beard sat down beside me on the iron bunk. He wore plastic cowboy boots, jeans that fit him like balloons, and a denim shirt cut off at the armpits.
"You ain't gonna eat your food?" he said.
"No. Go ahead."
"Thanks," he said, and began putting the dry eggs in his mouth with a plastic spoon. "The spiders starting to crawl around in your head?"
"Yep."
"Look down in my boot," he said. "The hack missed it when they shook me down. Take a snort. It'll swat them spiders right back into their nest."
I looked down at the pint bottle of whiskey inside his boot. I breathed deeply and ran my tongue over my cracked lips. My own breath was stronger than the smell of the drunk tank. It wouldn't be long before I would start sweating and shaking, maybe even going into the dry heaves. I wondered what I would look like in front of Judge Flowers, a notorious morning-court jurist who could put the fear of God into a drunk with his gavel.
"I'll pass right now, but I appreciate it, partner," I said.
"Suit yourself. Don't let them shake you up, though, son. I been up in front of this court so many times they don't even mess with me. The judge gives me thirty days and tells me to get out. That ain't nothing. We got them by the short hairs."
A half hour later, Sergeant Motley stood at the tank door with the guard. He smoked a cigar and looked on quietly while the guard turned the key in the lock. He wore his shirt lapels pressed back so the hair on his black barrel of a chest stuck out like wire.
"Come with us, Robicheaux," he said.
"Zoo visitors aren't allowed in until this afternoon," I said.
"Just come along," he said.
I walked between him and the guard to the far end of the jail corridor. A trusty was damp-mopping the floor, and our shoes left wet imprints where he had cleaned. Sunlight came through the windows high up on the c
orridor wall, and I could hear traffic out on the street. The guard turned the lock on an individual cell. Motley's weight made him breathe as though he had emphysema.
"I got you transferred to a holding cell," he said.
"What for?"
"You want somebody in that tank to make you?"
I stepped inside the cell, and the guard locked me in. Motley remained at the door, his cannonball head beaded with perspiration from the heat outside.
"What are you up to?" I asked.
"I've been in your shoes. I think they're putting a RotoRooter up your hole, and all you've got going for you is your own balls. That's okay, but after a while they get ground down to the size of marbles."
"I have a hard time buying this."
"Who asked you to? We never got along. But I'll tell you a story, Robicheaux. Everybody thinks I let those seven guys die in that elevator to save my own buns. I was responsible, all right, but not because I was afraid. I didn't have the key to the chain. I didn't have the fucking key. I climbed up out of the shaft to find somebody with a master. When we pried the doors open, they looked like smoked oysters in there. Whether you believe me or not, that's some hard shit to live with."
"Why don't you tell that to somebody?"