much this place might look like the Tombs, it just didn’t smell right. And it was way too quiet. In prison there was always somebody screaming, somebody crying, somebody jonesing for a fix that wasn’t going to come any time soon.
That would be him, in a couple of hours. He needed his White Lady, his beautiful lady who made the world all soft and sweet. He didn’t know about the other eight people stuck in here with him, and he didn’t care. Life on the street was rough enough without caring about other people, and Daniel had jettisoned his emotional baggage early.
They fed him a couple of times, and once the lights went down low and he’d slept a little, but by the second day he was too sick to care about his breakfast. A lot of the others were just as bad off, and when one of them started screaming and wouldn’t stop, two guys in black almost-a-cop uniforms had come in and dragged her away pretty quickly. The rest of them sat, huddled in silent misery, waiting for the torture to end.
No lawyers, no bondsmen, no arraignment. This isn’t any bullpen I’ve ever been in. But I ain’t gonna be the one to say it. They’re probably watching everything. Whoever they are.
The word must have gone out to make up the numbers after the woman disappeared, because a little while after dinner—he’d forced himself to eat, but thrown up again almost instantly—they brought in someone new.
He was dressed better than they were, but still street. Daniel’s internal radar prickled instantly. He was pretty sure he knew what this guy was, and he was only hoping that the rest of his guess was right as well. The guy was holding. He could smell it. Nobody had searched Daniel when they brought him in. Why should they search any of the others?
He waited until the lights went out, when everyone was curled up in their bunks. There were twelve bunks—four sets of three tiers each—for nine people, which meant that nearly everyone could have his pick of places to sleep. The New Guy took what was left—a