The cop thought for a moment You work for the Daily News?
You’re damn right, Sala replied.
The cop looked down at us and smiled wickedly. Tough guys, he said. Tough Yankee journalists.
No one said anything for a moment, then Yeamon asked again to use the phone. Look, he said. Nobody’s trying to be tough. You just beat the hell out of us and now we want a lawyer — is that too much to ask?
The cop smiled again. Okay, tough guys.
What the hell is this ‘tough guy’ business? Sala exclaimed. Where the Christ is a phone?
He started to get up and he was still in a crouch, halfway off the bench, when the cop stepped forward and gave him a savage rabbit punch on the neck. Sala dropped to his knees and the cop kicked him in the ribs. Three more cops burst into the room as if they’d been waiting for the signal. Two of them grabbed Yeamon, twisting his arms behind his back, and the other one knocked me off the bench and stood over me with his stick. I knew he wanted to hit me and I didn’t move, trying not to give him an excuse. After a long moment, the boss cop yelled, Okay, tough guys, let’s go. I was jerked off the floor and we were forced down the hall at a half-trot, our arms twisted painfully behind our backs.
At the end of the hall we came into a big room full of people and cops and a lot of desks — and there, sitting on a table in the middle of the room, was Moberg. He was writing in a notebook.
Moberg! I yelled, not caring if I was hit as long as I attracted his attention. Call Lotterman! Get a lawyer!
At the sound of Moberg’s name, Sala looked up and screamed with rage and pain: Swede! For Christ’s sake call somebody! We’re being killed!
We were pushed through the room at high speed and I had no more than a glimpse of Moberg before we were in another hallway. The cops paid no attention to our shouts; apparently they were used to people screaming desperately as they were led away to wherever we were being taken. My only hope was that Moberg had not been too drunk to recognize us.
We spent the next six hours in a tiny concrete cell with about twenty Puerto Ricans. We couldn’t sit down because they had pissed all over the floor, so we stood in the middle of the room, giving out cigarettes like representatives of the Red Cross. They were a dangerous-looking lot Some were drunk and others seemed crazy. I felt safe as long as we could supply them with cigarettes, but I wondered what would happen when we ran out.
The guard solved this problem for us, at a nickel a cigarette. Each time we wanted one for ourselves we had to buy twenty-one for every man in the cell. After two rounds, the guard sent out for a new carton. We figured out later that our stay in the cell cost us more than fifteen dollars, which Sala and I paid, since Yeamon had no money.
It seemed like we had been there for six years when the guard finally opened the door and beckoned us out. Sala could hardly walk and Yeamon and I were so tired that we had trouble supporting him. I had no idea where we were going. Probably to the dungeon, I thought. This is the way people disappear.
We went back through the building, along several hallways, and finally into a large courtroom. As we were shoved through the door, looking as dirty and disheveled as the most horrible bums in the cell we had just left, I looked around anxiously for some familiar face.
The courtroom was jammed and I looked for several minutes before I saw Moberg and Sanderson standing solemnly in one corner. I nodded to them and Moberg held up his fingers in a circle.
Thank God, said Sala. We’ve made contact.
Is that Sanderson? Yeamon asked.
Looks like it, I said, not having the faintest idea what it meant.