One of the detectives said he was in surgery, and Lester turned his wedding ring twice on his finger. He’d washed his hands but there was still dried blood in the tiny cracks of his palms. He thought of Kathy, her red Bonneville in the backyard when a patrol car got there. He looked up. “I’d like to call my wife.”
Lieutenant Alvarez was writing something on a pad of paper, and he stepped forward as quickly as if someone had just insulted him. “You’ll get your two calls at intake, Burdon.”
Lester had felt an impulse to look away, but didn’t. Alvarez shook his head like even this, this eye contact, was way out of line, and he told two deputies to arrest him and take him across the street to the new holding facility, a short walk usually, but now it was long, Lester as handcuffed and bare-chested as a wino, a deputy at each arm, his face down. Inside they uncuffed him and Lester gave them what they wanted, his wallet, car keys, and wedding ring. One of the arresting deputies told him to hold his arms out and he gave Lester a pat search, his hands heavy and careful. The intake officer had broad shoulders, short red hair, and a small white scar on his chin. He sat behind glass and put Lester’s keys and ring in a manila envelope, counted the cash in his wallet, then had Lester sign a form in two places, Lester thinking of Kathy being there when a patrol car pulled up, everything going as completely wrong as it could. He heard himself ask to make a call, but again, his voice was subdued, muffled somehow. The intake officer looked right at Lester but didn’t answer him, just dropped his personal possessions into a box Lester couldn’t see.
The deputies disappeared and one from the holding facility took their place, a short Chicano with a neck as wide as his jaw. He escorted Lester to a part of the procedure he’d never had to stay around for, to a fluorescent-lit room with no windows, a Filipino woman there in a white lab coat. She was small and dark and pretty, her hair held back with a red-and-purple pelican barrette, and Lester wished he at least had his shirt on. She wore white protective gloves. She wiped alcohol on the inside of Lester’s forearm, then pressed a round TB skin pop into it, pulling it away just as quickly. She told him to sit down and she leaned against a counter covered with jars of cotton swabs, held a clipboard, and asked the Chicano jailhouse deputy Lester’s name.
“Lester Veector Burdone.” The deputy’s accent was East Palo Alto barrio. Now the pretty nurse was asking Lester questions of his medical history, his body since he was a boy, his sexual relations since he was a man. Had he ever tested positive for HIV? She looked at him then, directly in the face, and it left Lester feeling he had something to lie about when he didn’t. He answered no and then he was in the photo and fingerprints room standing against a wall in front of the Edicon machine, the technician telling him to look straight ahead at the blinking green light, Lester feeling he was being x-rayed, that this computer graphic of his face, this jailhouse mugshot, was really him, the true Lester.
The Chicano deputy called him over to the Identex and began rolling Lester’s fingertips one by one onto the computer pad. It felt strange to have each finger guided like that, like someone was helping him to dress or feed himself, and as the Chicano officer finished, then escorted Lester down a bright corridor, Lester felt something was about to begin that wouldn’t end for a long time. He knew the schedule for bail; he knew there wouldn’t be any for kidnapping. That meant he’d be here until a hearing. And that could take months. Sometimes over a year. He felt queasy, his mouth suddenly full of tacky saliva. He thought of Carol, saw her in the kitchen dicing onions at a counter. He imagined the kids, both of them drawing with crayons on the floor of Bethany’s room, and again he saw the colonel’s son drop heavily to the sidewalk, blood pulsing from two wounds, and he felt afraid.
The deputy led him around a corner and opened a door for him. It was a small room with a desk and telephone, its white cinder-block walls freshly painted.
“Two calls on the county, Burdone. Five minutes.”
The door was reinforced glass, and the Chicano officer stood on the other side, his arms folded, glancing in at Lester every few seconds. Lester picked up the receiver but didn’t know the colonel’s number. He dialed information, hoping that wouldn’t count as one of his two calls, then he was ringing the Behrani residence, a brand-new listing. His throat felt thick and dry. The phone began to ring and he remembered Kathy as he’d left her, standing in the hallway of her stolen house in shorts and a Fisherman’s Wharf T-shirt, her hair slightly unkempt around her face he’d kissed before leaving. By tonight, he’d imagined the two of them driving north in a rented car, maybe giddy for having just gotten away by a hair. Now he just wanted to hear her voice, a bit husky and unsure of itself. He just wanted to hear her say his name. But the phone kept ringing and no one was picking it up. A patrol car might have gotten there already, but he didn’t think so. Maybe Kathy and the colonel’s wife weren’t in the house, but outside. He pictured them sitting up on that new widow’s walk, waiting.
The deputy tapped on the glass and pointed at his watch. Lester let the phone ring four more times, then hung up. He hadn’t expected Kathy not to answer and now he felt as cut off from things as he could imagine. For a second, it was as if she had never existed and wasn’t real at all; what they had started together was an illusion, just a lovely rug thrown over a hole in the floor and now the rug was gone and Lester was falling into something that had been there all along and she had only come into his life to lead him to it. Cold spread through his bowels and his face grew hot. He glanced at the deputy’s dark profile, thought of Behrani screaming in Farsi inside the patrol car, the veins coming out in his forehead and neck. Maybe he’d called his wife from the hospital and Kathy had taken a chance with the Bonneville and driven there. That’s just what she would do. Lester dialed information again and was going to ask for the hospital’s main number when the deputy walked in and pressed the hang-up button.
“Two calls.”
“Two were information. I didn’t know the numbers.”
The deputy took the receiver, hung it up, and motioned for Lester to step back into the corridor. Lester felt a tightening heat deep in his middle and he wanted to hit the deputy in the mouth.
“Let’s go, Burdone.”
“It’s Burdon. Deputy Sheriff Burdon.”
The Chicano smiled, blinking his eyes as lazily as a lizard’s. “You’ll want to keep that to yourself around here, FTO. Now move.”
Lester walked with the deputy back down the corridor, his breathing shallow, the cinder-block walls a glossed eggshell white, not a blemish anywhere, no scuff marks or chipped holes from a leg iron, no graffiti, no dried spit and blood. A brand-new facility. He began to feel that edge again, all of his tissues clear and ready, his stomach a low fire.
Then he was in a small room with four or five others. Arrestees. All waiting for dressdown. The deputy told Lester to have a seat among a single row of steel chairs welded into two walls, facing each other. The Chicano handed Lester’s paperwork to a desk deputy, then left without a word. Across from Lester sat a long black kid, his skin the color of flan, his short hair freshly cut, his initials or his girlfriend’s shaved into his head. He wore a tank top, oversized jeans, and white Converse All-Stars untied. He kept picking at his nails, three gold rings on the fingers of his right hand, two on the left.
The others were young too, an Asian and a white kid who seemed to know each other, the white kid whispering to the Asian about a dead boy named Beef, the Asian leaning his head back against the wall, his eyes half closed in a waking nap, a small blue serpent etched beneath the corner of his left eye like a tear. Lester glanced at the man beside him. He was sitting sideways in his chair, his wide back hunched to the others, his hair dark and matted, and when he saw Lester he looked away quickly and Lester did too, a gush of heat letting go inside him. The man was Filipino, a small-deal bookmaker out of Daly City, and Lester couldn’t remember how or when their paths had crossed. For a moment he kept his face down, but then he thought he might appear weak so he raised his chin up again and sat back straight in the chair, his heartbeats lost somewhere inside his tongue.