The Jealous Kind (Holland Family Saga #2) - James Lee Burke Page 0,53
bar loaded with fifty-pound plates notched on the stanchions above the leather-padded bench, the memorabilia hanging on the walls. As my eyes adjusted to the poor lighting, I saw the methodical thoroughness the vandal or vandals had used in destroying everything that daily reassured Krauser who he was.
They had broken the glass out of the frames on the walls, then cut and shredded the citations and photos and military decorations inside them, reducing them to confetti and miniaturizing Krauser’s life. They had used pliers or vise grips to mutilate Krauser’s medals for valor and his combat infantryman badge. The Confederate battle flag hung in strips from the wall, each strip tied in a bow. The lamp made from a German helmet was upside down on the floor, propped against the wall. Hopkins tipped it with the point of his shoe. A rivulet of yellow liquid ran onto the concrete. The white-handled Nazi dagger with the incised gold SS lightning bolts was gone.
No one spoke. The air-conditioning unit in the window was dripping with moisture, its motor throbbing. As much as I disliked Krauser, I felt sorry for him.
“What would make y’all do something like this?” Hopkins said. “That man served his country. That’s how y’all pay him back?”
“We never did anything to that motherfucker,” Saber said.
“What do you call this?” Hopkins said.
“You’re asking me?” Saber said.
“That’s his Purple Heart by your foot. Yes, I’m asking you.”
“I hung my swizzle stick through a hole in the ceiling above his biology class. I put a dead frog inside his coleslaw. But you want my opinion on this mess here?”
“We’re burning to know,” Hopkins said.
A sound came out of Saber that was like air wheezing from a slow leak in a basketball. He was trying to hold it in, his face splitting; his knees started to buckle, his suppressed laughter shaking his chest, his tear ducts kicking into overdrive.
“What do I call it?” he said. “What do I call it? What do you think, man? It’s a fucking masterpiece.”
I NEVER KNEW THAT jails were loud. The Harris County jail boomed with noise of all kinds: people yelling down corridors and out windows, cell doors slamming, radios blaring, cleaning buckets grating on concrete, a dozen court-bound men coming down a steel spiral staircase on a wrist chain, a lunatic banging a tin tray outside the food slot of an isolation unit. The level of cacophony never grew or decreased in volume; the building seemed to subsume it the way a storm does; you could actually feel the noise if you pressed your palm against the wall, as if the building had a vascular system.
There were eight of us inside a rectangular cell that had four iron bunks hinged and suspended from the walls on chains. The toilet seat was gone, the bowl striped with tea-colored stains. Our compatriots were a drunk who’d started a fight at the blood bank, a handbill passer accused of window peeping, a check writer who had been out of jail six days before he wrote another bad check, a four-time loser picked up for parole violation, and two bare-chested Mexican car thieves whose torsos were wrapped with knife scars and jailhouse art. They all seemed to know one another or have friends in common, and to accept the system for what it was and not argue with either their surroundings or their fate.
I was allowed one phone call. I called my father’s office. He was out and I had to leave the message with a secretary, knowing the embarrassment it would bring him. At four o’clock a trusty in white cotton pants and a white T-shirt with HARRIS COUNTY PRISON stenciled on the back stopped a food cart at the bars and handed a tray through the food slot with eight baloney sandwiches and eight tin cups of Kool-Aid.
“When’s the bondsman come around?” Saber said.
“You got to go to arraignment first.”
“When’s arraignment?”
“In the morning.”
“I’m not planning on being here in the morning.”
“We got Cream of Wheat and sausage and coffee for breakfast. It’s pretty good.”
The trusty pushed the cart down the corridor.
“Come back here!” Saber shouted. “Hey, I’m talking to you!” He pressed his head to the bars, then gripped them with both hands and tried to shake them.
“Relax,” one of the Mexicans said. “You got to be cool. Don’t be shouting at the trusties. They’ll spit in your food.”
“I got news for them. I ain’t eating it.”
“That ain’t smart,” the Mexican said. “You got to get in step,