‘Yo. What’s going,’ one of them muttered to me as I walked past.
‘Good afternoon.’ I looked at both of them.
They turned away, not interested in someone they could not intimidate, and I pulled open the front door. Inside, the department was modest on the verge of depressing, and like virtually all other public facilities in the world, had profoundly outgrown its environment. Inside were Coke and snack machines, walls plastered with wanted posters and a portrait of an officer slain while responding to a call. I stopped at the duty post, where a young woman was shuffling through paperwork and chewing on her pen.
‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘I’m here to see Keith Pleasants.’
‘Are you on his guest list?’ Her contact lenses made her squint, and she wore pink braces on her teeth.
‘He asked me to come, so I should hope I am.’
She flipped pages in a loose-leaf binder, stopping when she got to the right one.
‘Your name.’
I told her as her finger moved down a page.
‘Here you are.’ She got up from her chair. ‘Come with me.’
She came around her desk and unlocked a door with bars in the window. Inside was a cramped processing area for fingerprints and mug shots, a banged-up metal desk manned by a heavyset deputy. Beyond was another heavy door with bars, and through it I could hear the noises of the jail.
‘You’re gonna have to leave your bag here,’ the deputy said to me. He got on his radio. ‘Can you get on over here?’
‘Ten-four. On my way,’ a woman answered back.
I set my pocketbook on the desk and dug my hands in the pockets of my coat. I was going to be searched and I did not like it.
‘We got a little room here where they meet with their lawyers,’ the deputy said, jabbing his thumb as if he were hitching a ride. ‘But some a these critters listen to ever word, and if that’s a problem, go upstairs. We got an area up there.’
‘I think upstairs might be better,’ I said as a female deputy, hefty with short frosted hair, came around the corner with her hand-held metal detector.
‘Arms out,’ she said to me. ‘Got anything metal in your pockets?’
‘No,’ I said as the detector snarled like a mechanical cat.
She tried it up and down one side and the other. It kept going off.
‘Let’s get rid of your coat.’
I draped it on the desk as she tried again. The detector continued to make its startling sound as she frowned and kept trying.
‘What about jewelry,’ she said.
I shook my head as I suddenly remembered I was wearing an underwire bra that I had no intention of announcing. She put down the detector and began to pat me down while the other deputy sat at his desk and watched slack-jawed, as if he were gawking at a dirty movie.
‘Okay,’ she said, satisfied that I was harmless. ‘Follow me.’
To get upstairs, we had to walk through the women’s side of the jail. Keys jangled as she unlocked a heavy metal door that loudly banged shut behind us. Inmates were young and hard in institutional denim, their cells scarcely big enough for an animal, with a white toilet, bed and sink. Women played solitaire, and leaned against their cages. They had hung their clothes from bars, and trash barrels were close and crammed with what they hadn’t wanted for dinner. The smell of old food made my stomach flop.
‘Hey mama.’
‘What we got here?’
‘A fine lady. Umm-umm-umm.’
‘Hubba-hubba-hubba!’
Hands came through bars, trying to touch me as I went past, and someone was making kissing sounds while other women emitted harsh, wounded outbursts that were supposed to be laughs.
‘Leave her in here. Just fifteen minutes. Ooohhh come to mama!’
‘I need cigarettes.’
‘Shut up, Wanda. You always needin’ something.’
‘Y’all quiet on down,’ the deputy said in a bored singsong as she unlocked another door.
I followed her upstairs and realized I was trembling. The room she put me in was cluttered and disorganized, as if it might have had a function in an earlier time. Cork boards were propped against a wall, a hand cart parked in a corner, and some sort of pamphlets and bulletins were scattered everywhere. I sat in a folding chair at a wooden table scarred with names and crude messages in ballpoint pen.