Angels in Heaven

down a long, cement-floored corridor lined with cell doors that had closable
Judas windows in them at eye level and floor level, then up a flight of
concrete stairs, and back down a corridor identical to the first one, except
the numbers crudely painted on the doors were different. Our feet seemed to
make a lot of noise on the bare floor. As for the smell, well it wasn’t so bad,
just about twice as bad as what you get in a tannery or paper mill or
slaughterhouse. Hang on, Billy.
    Our escort stopped at the last door
on the left, peeked through the slit, said, “Only ten minutes,” then unlocked
the door and swung it open, and there, asleep on his back on a sort of cement
shelf that jutted out from the wall, was my blood brother Gray Wolf, or what
was left of him.
    While Benny and the guard watched
from outside the cell, I went over to Billy, which took about two steps, and
looked down at him in what light there was that streamed in from the small,
high-set window. Luckily my face was hidden from the guard, and he couldn’t see
how shocked I was.
    All Billy’s hair was gone and there
were scabby patches on his scalp. From the look of his sunken cheeks, he’d
probably lost some teeth too.
    His color was a whitish yellow. It
looked like he was easily down under a hundred pounds. His head was pillowed on
his bandaged hand; at least the bandage looked new and clean. He was dressed in
oversized gray cotton pants and a gray cotton shirt. His dirty feet were bare;
there was a pair of rubber sandals under his “bed.” I kept my face hidden from
the guard and gave Billy a gentle shake by one shoulder.
    “Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown. Wake up,
please.”
    He made a noise of complaint, rolled
over toward me, and opened his eyes. When they focused on me and began to
widen, I said quickly and loudly, “You don’t know me of course, Mr. Brown. My
name is Blackman, my associate over there by the door is Keith, we’re from the
U.S. Department of the Interior, and we have a few questions to put to you. It
won’t take a minute, I assure you, and then you can go back to sleep.”
    Billy struggled to an upright
position and rubbed his face with the hand that still had all its fingers. For
a moment he was too nonplussed to do anything but blink a few times, but then
he nodded and managed to get out, “Sure, anything.”
    “In case our escort does have the
command of languages he denied having, we will keep this short and
businesslike.” I officiously took out my memo pad and a pen.
    “Health.” I gave him a cursory
glance; he gave me the beginnings of a small, a very small smile.
“Satisfactory. Conditions of incarceration.” I gave the four-foot by eight-foot
shithole a cursory look, and a cursory look was all it took—all there was to
see was the ledge, one blanket, on which Billy was now sitting, a plastic
bucket with no lid, a spare shirt hung up on a splinter of wood wedged into a
crack in the wall, the crack in the wall, and my old Parker High Panther
teammate. “Satisfactory.” I made another tick on the memo pad.
    “Washing facilities?”
    “Cold shower once a week, regular,”
he said in a sort of a husky croak.
    “Exercise facilities?” He gave me
another small tightening of the lips.
    “Too much chlorine in the pool,” he
said, almost too low for me to hear.
    “Cuisine?”
    “Beans and rice,” he said in his
eerie croak. “On Sundays, rice and beans.”
    “Excellent,” I said, ticking off
another imaginary entry. “I’ve always found Mexican cooking delicious, myself.
Oh. Here. Compliments of the U.S. government.” I took out the candies, made an
inquiring gesture to the guard, who nodded that it was all right, and gave them
to Billy. He opened his mouth and pointed at where his teeth used to be. “Ah,”
I said, making another note. “Slight problem with cavities. Well, you can still
suck, I hope.” I handed over the caramels. Billy took them with his good hand,
looked at the box, then looked away and started to cry.
    “There, there, sir,” I said, patting
him comfortingly on the back. “Nothing lasts forever, you know. One of these
fine days you will be a free man again. Just remember our old Boy Scout motto:
Be mucho prepared.”
    Billy, his back still to me, nodded
vigorously several times. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say, so I
gave his back one more pat and we left him there, retracing our footsteps all
the way back to el parking and thanking everyone we met en route.