Hard Time (4 page)

I knew he was right, but I still couldn’t stop my personal use. The woman who encouraged me to sober up was Claudia. I met her at a friend’s apartment. She mocked me for being a raver – which I couldn’t help but admire, not to mention the desire it kindled – so I asked her out. She said no – further inflaming my desire – so I obtained her number and pursued her for months. It paid off. I won the heart of one of the most caring people I’d ever met. Thanks to her, I’d mostly quit partying, returned to online stock trading, enrolled in Scottsdale Community College to study Spanish and put the English Shaun persona behind me. She didn’t approve of my raver friends, so I didn’t let them know where we lived. As my mind started to clear, I grew more afraid of the consequences of hanging out with the people I used to lead. Knowing the police were onto me, I mostly stayed at home on my computer. We were saving up to start new lives in LA, where she wanted to be an actress and I planned to do a Masters in finance. But there was no chance of any of that happening now.

‘Bring him in,’ someone radioed.

The driver parked by a mobile police unit. He uncuffed me, told me to put my jeans on and escorted me to a man sat at a desk.

‘Fill this out.’

NAME, DATE OF BIRTH, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, HOME ADDRESS, OCCUPATION, WORK ADDRESS . . .

‘I’m exercising my right to remain silent,’ I said.

‘You must fill this out or else we’ll book you in as a John Doe, and you don’t want that.’

I complied and was escorted into the police station. ‘What about my right to make a call?’ I asked, desperate to notify Ray the attorney.

‘Not now. Straight to a cell.’

He deposited me in a small cell. Clean and air-conditioned. It had two bunks and a stainless-steel toilet with a built-on water fountain. The smell of bleach rose from the recently mopped floor.

The police put Cody, the head of my security team, in the cell opposite. Close to average height and weight, he wasn’t intimidating. I’d put him in charge due to his knack for staying sober while the rest of us were high. I’d initially disliked this quirky character who sported a blond crew cut and preppy clothes. But he proved to be trustworthy and a methodical smuggler. That’s how he became my right-hand man.

I rushed to the front of the cell. We exchanged nervous smiles, like children caught smoking.

‘Where they get you?’ Cody asked.

‘Knocked my door down. And you?’ I asked.

‘You gotta hear this.’

‘What?’

‘I was out and about, taking care of bills and shit, driving from place to place, and I noticed a helicopter above me. I watched it for a while and it didn’t go away. So I drove to the other side of town, and there it was, still above me. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought of
Goodfellas
, how the helicopter was above him every time he looked out of his car. No matter where I went, it stayed with me, but I still wasn’t 100 per cent sure. So, to see if I was just sketching, I decided to speed back over to the other side of town. I get on the freeway and head east. I’m in the fast lane. I notice the helicopter’s still above me, to the side. I’m cruising along wishing the helicopter would go off in another direction, and I notice a bunch of cop motorcycles in the traffic behind me. I slowed down, expecting them to overtake me, but they surrounded my car – four of them! – and signalled for me to get off the freeway. There was nothing I could do. I pulled off, parked and they arrested me.’

‘Helicopters and biker cops! My God! At least my arrest wasn’t as dramatic as yours. SWAT knocked our door down, yelled and pointed big guns at us. Tell you what, they sure spent some money on these arrests. Not a good sign. They catch you with anything?’

‘Nothing for them to catch me with.’

‘Same here. They tore my pad apart looking for drugs. Took my computer and everything. We should be able to get bonded out when they don’t find anything,’ I said, hoping it to be true.

The sound of jingling keys and approaching footsteps halted our conversation. My cell door clinked open, and in came DJ Spinelli. A short man with a round, friendly face who’d played techno at my raves.

‘You too!’ I said. ‘How’d they get you?’

‘I was ambushed!’ he said.

‘What?’ Cody said.

‘I had to get a real job to pay the bills. Today was my first day at work raising money for the Republican Party.’

‘Republican Party!’ I said, and we all laughed.

‘So I’m at work, and I receive a call from a cop saying my place has been burglarised and I need to return home immediately. I explained the situation to my new boss, and he gave me permission to leave. I’m driving home, and the same cop calls my cell phone: “Where you at? You heading home?” I told him I was and hung up. Then he called two more times. He was antsy. I should have known something was wrong. When I got home, I was arrested.’

‘Crafty bastards,’ Cody said.

‘Come out, Attwood!’ A young policeman escorted me to a room full of electronic equipment.

‘Mug shot. Get against that wall,’ he said.

‘Is this good?’ I was in no mood to smile at a camera.

‘Where’s that accent from?’

‘England.’

‘I’m from England, too. Which part?’

‘Widnes, Cheshire.’

‘Rugby-league town, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘How’d you end up in here?’

‘They knocked my door down.’

‘If they knocked your door down, you must be in a lot of trouble. Stay still right there.’ He took my photograph. ‘Well, nice to have met you. Good luck with your charges. Maybe they’ll ship you back to England.’

If only, I thought.

‘Get in the strip-search room,’ said a large African American.

The room was tiny, cold, bare.

‘Take everything off.’

I undressed. The day’s events had retracted my penis, which I shielded with my hands to minimise my embarrassment.

‘Now raise your arms. Good. Open your mouth. Raise your tongue. Good. Lift your nutsack. Good. Pull your foreskin back.’

‘What?’

‘Pull your foreskin back. You could have drugs in there.’

The request was too much for my penis. It wanted to hide inside my body and die of shame. Reluctantly, I drew back my foreskin.

‘Good. Now turn around. Bend over and spread ’em.’

Spreading, I felt humiliated and vulnerable. I told myself it was no different from the mooning I’d done as a child. Just when I thought the worst was over, he said, ‘Spread ’em wider.’ It was beyond mooning now. More of a visual raping. ‘Good. Let me see the bottoms of your feet.’

Relieved the strip search was over, I was escorted back to my cell and served a hot meal. Salisbury steak. Mash. Gravy.

It was night-time when two transportation officers carrying boxes of steel restraints extracted us from our cells to take us to Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s jail system, where new arrestees were housed. They cuffed my hands and tethered the cuffs to my torso with a belly chain. The heavy leg cuffs cut into my ankles, and I could only shuffle out of the jail.

‘Watch your heads getting into the van!’

I bundled myself into the van, surprised to see more of my party friends, including Wild Man, Misty, Melissa, Boo and Wild Woman. Galvanised by the day’s events, everyone tried to talk at once.

‘Where’s Claudia?’ I asked.

‘They let her go,’ said Wild Woman – who had emigrated from my hometown to be with Wild Man. She was in her 40s, blonde and tiny, but tougher than most men. Armed with a bar stool during a pub fight, she’d put multiple people in hospital. We’d nicknamed her and Wild Man the Wild Ones.

‘Thank God for that,’ I said.

‘I was outside the room they were questioning her in,’ Wild Man said. ‘She was crying ’cause they said they’d found some prescription pills without prescriptions in your apartment, and she was facing some very serious charges. So I yelled, “Serious fucking charges my arse,” and they tried getting crazy with me. Daft pig bastards.’

‘What’s gonna happen to us?’ asked Melissa.

‘Our attorney friend probably knows we’ve been arrested by now,’ I said, hoping he had. ‘He’ll be doing all he can to find out what’s going on. Any of you get caught with drugs?’

They all answered no except for Melissa.

‘If they didn’t find any drugs,’ I said, ‘I don’t see how they can hold us for very long.’

‘Where they taking us?’ Cody asked.

‘The Horseshoe,’ Wild Man said. ‘We’ll be stuck in filthy holding cells for days while they process us.’

‘Why they call it The Horseshoe?’ Cody asked.

‘’Cause you go in at one end and work your way round the cells in a horseshoe shape,’ Wild Man said. ‘They kept me in there for almost a week one time ’cause I wouldn’t tell them me name.’

The van parked in a subterranean lot. A transportation officer allowed the women out first. The 30 or so male arrestees waiting to go inside the jail stopped heckling the prostitutes in the line and focused on my female friends.

‘Ooh, babies!’

‘Nice ass!’

‘Show us your titties!’

‘Come and play with the bad boys!’

‘This way, honey!’

‘With those boobs, I’m surprised you ain’t got two black eyes!’

Shuffling towards the men, the women cowered. The last woman out of the van was Wild Woman.

From inside the van, Wild Man watched his fiancée. Other than an eyebrow reacting – one shot up and stayed up, while the other didn’t budge – he seemed unperturbed. But I knew that particular eyebrow formation meant he was about to do something in character with his name.

In a Liverpudlian brogue that sounded as if she were hawking phlegm, Wild Woman scolded the men, who responded by turning up the volume of their chant, ‘Show us yer boobs!’

‘Get out of the van!’ a transportation officer yelled.

Wild Man stooped out, stopped on the top step and unfurled the physique of a bear. He cocked his head back, targeting the men over his Viking’s beard. ‘If you don’t pack it in and leave my woman alone, I’ll have any of you when we get inside those cells.’ He nodded at The Horseshoe and grinned. ‘If you think I won’t, just keep it up and see what happens.’ Wild Man laughed in a way that said he really knew how to hurt someone. That shut up most of the men.

‘Any pain, bleeding, fever, skin problems, lice, scabies, open sores?’

‘No,’ I said into the speak holes of a Plexiglas window in the crowded pre-intake room at the Madison Street jail.

The old lady fired more screening questions and grimaced at my answers as if my voice pained her. The Tempe transportation officers removed our chains and left us in the custody of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies.

‘Take your shoes off, put your hands up against the wall and spread your legs!’ yelled a drill sergeant of a guard in the admissions’ hallway.

Guards patted us down, examined our shoes and confiscated our shoelaces.

‘Step through there,’ yelled a female, pointing at a walk-through metal detector.

On both sides of the corridor, the inmates in the intake holding cells were banging on the Plexiglas windows. Outside the cells, the guards were shouting surnames, slamming doors and cursing the inmates.

‘You, this way!’ a guard yelled at me.

I walked by a Mexican woman in a black restraint chair. Limbs shackled. Chest strapped. The drool string dangling from her chin swung like a pendulum as she wriggled in the tilted-back seat. When a guard hid her head in a spit hood, she howled like a cat on fire.

‘I’m Attwood.’

‘Get in there!’ The guard pointed at one of the first holding cells in The Horseshoe.

My heart pistoned as I entered a cell containing dozens of men, most of them huddled on the floor in a variety of uncomfortable positions. Swastikas and gang graffiti – South Side Posse Bloods, Aryan Brotherhood, South Side Phoeniquera – loomed down from the walls. I gagged on the plague-like fug.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, pushing through the men clustered around the door yelling at the guards. At either side of the room, rows of men on steel double bunks formed shelves of humans. Manoeuvring over the patchwork of limbs and bodies, I found a space with a urinous odour by the toilet. Resting against the filthy back wall, I slid down. I was congratulating myself on finding a place to sit until I noticed insects shaped like almonds darting on the floor. Cockroaches! I flicked one off my sneaker and rose fast. I brushed the surrounding ranks of them away with my feet. Some of them scaled the ankles of a hobo sleeping under the nearest bunk and disappeared into his trousers. I’d never been surrounded by so many people and felt so lonely. Everyone looked agitated, and I soon lapsed into the same state. Every five minutes or so, the cell door swung open and a guard ordered someone in or out. Desperate for relief from the suffocating atmosphere, I hoped my name would be called next.

‘Fuck you! Get up!’ said an old hobo, rising unsteadily. His face belonged on a shrunken head in a jar. He slurred a string of insults, the top of his grimy beard sinking into his mouth as he spoke.

Grumbling, his rival rose. The cell hushed, as if the curtains had opened for a violent comedy show. His rival swung, missed and fell on a gang member.

‘Don’t fucking fall on me, you drunk-ass motherfucker,’ the gangbanger said, pushing one hobo into the other.

Ranting, the hobos fell as one, tied together by their own bluster until they twisted apart.

The disappointment in the lack of bloodshed was palpable until a black man roused by the antics of the hobos yelled, ‘Why you look at me?’ at the man sitting next to him.

‘What’re you talking about?’ the man said, sidling away.

‘He’s a crazy Cuban,’ someone said.

On his feet now, the Cuban ranged the room like a time bomb. Watching him confront people, I feared I’d be the one he’d explode on. He was gravitating towards me when the door opened.

‘Attwood, get out here! Stand over there!’ a guard yelled, pointing at a ledge down the corridor.

‘Sign here,’ said a woman behind a Plexiglas window.

‘What am I signing for?’

‘Charges.’

‘Good. It’s about time I found out my charges.’ I signed and she slid me a form:

‘What’s all this mean?’ I asked, stunned by the size of the bond.

‘You need to go up there,’ she snapped.

‘Where?’

‘See the guard at that cell?’

‘Hold on. I’ve no clue what any of this means.’

‘What?’

‘These charges, and it says my bond’s $750,000 cash only.’

‘Lemme see.’

I gave it to her.

‘Must be a computer error,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that high. It’s probably seventy-five thousand.’

‘I hope so,’ I said, easing up a bit but still dazed by the big number.

‘Go over there. The next cell.’

Sweat and grime gnawed my skin as I urinated. I perched myself on the end of a top bunk. The cell filled quickly. The shock and bewilderment on the faces of the new arrivals abated as they shared arrest and crime stories heavy on police brutality.

A tiny Mexican entered, his dilated eyes darting haphazardly. Yelling, he banged on the Plexiglas at such a rate the other bangers stopped to admire his ability. Hyperventilating, he cupped his left pectoral and looked over his shoulder as if expecting an attack from the rear. He must have swallowed his drugs when the cops came, I thought.

A big bald man in a black T-shirt swaggered in, addressing the cell as if he knew us all. ‘I was on my way to Disneyland with my little daughter. They pulled me over for speeding. But giving me a speeding ticket woulda been too easy for this motherfucker. He ran my name, and a warrant came up. Thank fucking God I called her mom. He arrests me in front of my kid – now that’s fucking child abuse if you ask me! I’m supposed to be at my other kid’s birthday this weekend. I’ll be pissed if I miss her fucking birthday party. I hope this only takes two days. Awww fuck! I love my kids. Awww fuck!’

Then an even bigger man, whose beard lent him the aura of a pirate, came in and said to the bald man, ‘Hey, Chad, they’re gonna try and ship me back to New Mexico. They’ve got a body, but they can’t link me to it. They’ve got nothing on me. Motherfuckers!’

Much to my relief, Cody arrived. I climbed down and we hugged. We discussed our bonds.

Chad interrupted our conversation. ‘You’ve gotta cool accent, man. Did you say you’ve gotta $750,000 cash-only bond?’

‘Yes, but they said it’s a mistake,’ I said, turning to Cody for support.

‘Lemme see your paperwork.’

‘Here you go.’

‘That ain’t no mistake, buddy,’ Chad said.

‘What do you mean it’s not? She just told me it is.’ I went dizzy.

‘Conspiracy. Crime syndicate. Were you guys whacking people or what?’ Chad asked.

‘No. They raided my apartment. There were no drugs found or anything.’

‘Well, you’ve got drug charges.’

I’d been involved in drugs for so long, identifying which transactions they’d charged me for was as likely as raising $750,000.

From outside, Wild Man banged on the Plexiglas and mouthed, ‘What’s your bond?’

‘It says three-quarters of a mill! What’s yours?’ I yelled.

‘Half a fucking mill!’

His response torpedoed my plan to bond out. ‘Aw shit!’ I said, agonising over having to tell my parents. I knew the news would devastate them 5,000 miles away in England.

‘Get in this cell! Do you hear me?’ A guard grabbed Wild Man.

‘I’ve got it,’ Chad said. ‘You’re part of Sammy the Bull’s crew.’

‘I’m nothing to do with him,’ I said, not wanting to admit any criminal relationships. ‘I did throw raves years ago, though.’

‘That’s it then. Raves. Ecstasy,’ Chad said. ‘With a bond like that, you might be on the news tonight.’

‘I hope not,’ I said, fearing members of my family in Arizona would see me.

A guard slid a large plastic bag into the doorway. ‘Who’s hungry?’ The prisoners all shifted towards him at once, like ducks on a pond to someone with bread. He threw brown paper bags at them.

‘They’re Ladmo bags,’ Chad said. ‘Green-baloney sandwiches.’

Things such as food were far from my mind. Curious, I looked in the Ladmo bag. A grapefruit. Bread dotted with blue mould. Slices of processed cheese leaking an orange oil. Green baloney – slimy cuts of meat, iridescent but with an underlying greenish shine.

Baloney consists of various low-grade meats, fat, flavourings, preservatives and colourants. Sheriff Joe Arpaio introduced it in an attempt to get the cost of feeding each inmate down to 40 cents a day. Green baloney is unfit for commercial sale due to oxidation, and it was often delivered to the jail in bags labelled ‘Not For Human Consumption’. Stolen by inmates, some of these bags surfaced in the offices of attorneys suing Arpaio. The term Ladmo bag came from the children’s television programme
The Wallace and Ladmo Show
. Ladmo distributed paper bags to children with food and toy gifts. The bags had a surprise element and became skimpier over time, hence the analogy.

In a hurry to distance myself from the rank smell, I off-loaded my Ladmo bag on the men casting around for leftovers. Attempting to refresh my mouth, I ate the grapefruit.

‘Attwood! Come on! Hurry up!’ yelled a female guard.

‘Right here!’ I scrambled to my feet, relieved to be on the move again.

‘Go and see her in that room in the corner.’

The room was full of electronic equipment, like a photocopy store.

‘Who’re you?’ a woman asked.

‘Attwood.’

‘Wash your hands and come here.’ I resented her talking to me as if I were a piece of property. She grabbed my arm, spread my fingers onto a scanner and rolled each finger. Each print surfaced on a screen with the words: PRINT SUCCESSFUL. She printed the various sections of my hand. ‘You’re done with me. See her.’

‘Put this ink on your hands!’ yelled another female. ‘Good. Now gimme your hand.’ She grabbed my hand, separated and pressed my fingers down. ‘Relax! Relax! What’s wrong with you?’ Her attitude made me seethe inside. She pushed my hand onto the inkpad and then my palm onto the print card.

‘Wipe the ink off your hands with this.’ At arm’s length, she gave me a paper towel. It disintegrated immediately, so I had to wipe my hands on my jeans. ‘See him next,’ she said.

‘Stand on that line. Look up at the camera. OK. Good.’

The camera flashed.

‘Put your head in there,’ he said, pointing at a metal box.

I didn’t like the look of the metal box. ‘I’m not going to get radiation from this, am I?’

‘No. It just takes a picture. Put your eye up against that part.’ He pushed a button and my retina appeared on a screen.

In the next cell, I again perched on the end of a top bunk. I felt safer up there, above the mass of testy men, cockroaches and drunken hobos. An ache soon spread throughout my body. It must have been the small hours because I was exhausted from sleep deprivation – almost a day since my arrest.

‘Everyone pee who needs to pee! You’re going to court!’ a female yelled.

The sleepy group rose and formed a line for the toilet. Men aired their hopes of getting their bonds reduced, raising mine.

The guard yelled names to the tune of urine splashing, water flushing and bursts of flatulence.

‘Attwood!’

Thirsting for fresh air, I stepped into the corridor.

‘Go sit in that booth, Attwood!’

A lady in a booth slid out a form. The young woman hovering behind her was the one who had conferred with Detective Reid outside my Scottsdale apartment on the day of the raid. She had timid mousy features and curly brown hair.

On the form, I put the Tucson address where I had lived with my ex-wife Amy, as I was using this for my green-card application. Sensing something underhand, I listed the Scottsdale apartment as a second home. I explained I had two addresses, and the lady insisted a note had been made on the computer. The woman behind her snickered, and walked away. I felt uneasy.

‘Finished? Go through that door into the courtroom!’ a guard yelled.

Joining the fatigued captives on rows of plastic chairs in the large white courtroom, I gulped down the cool air. Over to my right, sitting at a desk by the bar, was the familiar woman from the raid. Her presence gave me a bad feeling. Everyone was waiting for the judge. I clung to the possibility of him reducing my bond.

The clerk of the court was sat at a desk next to the judge’s bench. She stood up, cleared her throat and said, ‘When your name is called, line up at this desk, and the judge will call you one at a time. He will ask you some questions, and when he is finished with you, you will step to the desk at the other side of the judge’s bench where you will sign your court papers. You will then proceed back to your seat. Does everybody understand?’

There were a few murmurs of assent. The judge entered.

‘All rise. Judge Powischer’s court is now in session.’

Judge Powischer trundled to his bench like an overweight clergyman. His face was grotesquely impassive, as if he were under the influence of a dental anaesthetic heavy on cocaine.