First Blood

'Listen I can't sit here all night while you two have it out with each other,' Dobzyn said. 'My wife is sick, and I was supposed to be home to cook dinner for the kids at five. I'm late already. Thirty days in jail or two hundred dollars fine. What'll it be, son?'

'Two hundred? Christ I just told you I don't have more than ten.'

'Then it's thirty-five days in jail,' Dobzyn said and rose out of his chair, unbuttoning his sweater. 'I was about to cancel the five days for vagrancy, but your attitude is intolerable. I have to go. I'm late.'

The air conditioner began to rattle more than it was humming, and Rambo could not tell if he was shivering from cold or rage. 'Hey, Dobzyn,' he said, catching him as he went by. 'I'm still waiting for you to ask me if I'm guilty of resisting arrest.'

9

The doors on both sides of the corridor were closed now. He passed the painters' scaffold near the end of the hall, heading for Teasle's office.

'No, this time you go this way,' Teasle said. He pointed to the last door on the right, a door with bars in a little window at the top, and reached with a key to unlock it before he saw that the door was already open a quarter-inch. Shaking his head disgustedly at that, he pushed the door the rest of the way open and motioned Rambo through to a stairwell with an iron banister and cement steps going down and fluorescent lights in the ceiling. As soon as Rambo was in, Teasle came through behind him, locking the door, and they walked down, their footsteps scraping on the cement stairs, echoing.

Rambo heard the spray before he reached the basement. The cement floor was wet and reflected the fluorescent lights, and down at the far end a thin policeman was hosing the floor of a cell, water running out between the bars and down a drain. When he saw Teasle and Rambo, he screwed the nozzle tight; the water flared out in a wide arc and abruptly stopped.

Teasle's voice echoed. 'Galt. Why is that upstairs door unlocked again?'

'Did I.? We don't have anymore prisoners. The last one just woke up, and I let him go.'

'It doesn't matter if we have prisoners or not. If you get in the habit of leaving it open when we're empty, then you might start forgetting to lock it when there's some-body down here. So I want the door locked regardless. I don't like to say this - it may be tough getting used to a new job and a new routine, but if you don't learn to be careful, I might have to look for somebody else.'

Rambo was as cold as he had been in Dobzyn's office, shivering. The lights in the ceiling were too close to his head; even so, the place seemed dark. Iron and cement. Christ, he should never have let Teasle bring him down. Walking across from the courthouse, he should have broken Teasle and escaped. Anything, even being on the run, was better than thirty-five days down here.

What the hell else did you expect? he told himself. You asked for this, didn't you? You wouldn't back off.

Damn right I wouldn't. And I still won't. Just because I'll be locked up, doesn't mean I'm finished. I'll fight this as far as it goes. By the time he's ready to let me out, he'll be fucking glad to be rid of me.

Sure you'll fight. Sure. What a laugh. Take a look at yourself. Already you're shaking. Already you know what this place reminds you of. Two days in that cramped cell and you'll be pissing down your pantlegs.

'You've got to understand I can't stay in there.' He could not stop himself. The wet. I can't stand being closed in where it's wet.' The hole, he was thinking, his scalp alive. The bamboo grate over the top. Water seeping through the dirt, the walls crumbling, the inches of slimy muck he had to try sleeping on.

Tell him, for God's sake.

Screw, you mean beg him.

Sure, now when it was too late, now the kid was coming around and trying to talk himself out of this. Teasle could not get over the needlessness of it all, how the kid had actually tried his damndest to work himself down here. 'Just be thankful it is wet,' he told the kid. 'That we hose everything down. We get weekend drunks in here, and come Mondays when we kick them out, they've been sick up the walls and all over the place.'

He glanced at the cells, and the water on the floor made them look clean, sparkling. 'You may be careless with that door upstairs Galt,' he told him. 'But you sure did a job on those cells. Do me a favor will you, go up and get some bedding and an outfit for this kid? You,' he told the kid, 'I guess the middle cell is fine. Go in, take off your boots, your pants, your jacket. Leave on your socks, your underwear, your sweat shirt. Take off any jewelry, any chain around your neck, any watch -. Galt, what are you looking at?'

'Nothing.'

'What about the gear I sent you for?'

'I was just looking. I'll get it.' He hurried up the stairs.

'Aren't you going to tell him again to lock the door?' the kid said.

'No need.'

Teasle listened to the rattle of the door being unlocked. He waited, then heard Galt lock the door after him. 'Start with the boots,' he told the kid.