If you’ve ever taken ketamine, you’ll be familiar with the K-hole, a dark cavern that follows the dreamy high. On a normal day, it can turn folks in on themselves, force them to cast a critical eye over their lives, but stuck in jail with the prospect of a long prison stretch ahead of me, my K-hole ran deep.
I followed it down, feeling every inch the failure I was. I was in the holding cell with four hard-luck, tough-life, broken souls, and we kept our distance from each other. This wasn’t a losers’ social mixer. It was a human trash can, where society’s waste was held until it could be processed, hidden from view, recycled into model citizens, and released—or consigned to the heap forever. I couldn’t believe I’d ended up here again. And for something so stupid: defending my hunk of junk car.
I’d been given a second chance at life when I’d made parole, but here I was right back in the slammer for doing something that stupid.
Getting high with Jim had seemed a good idea at the time, but now the happy K-dream had well and truly worn off, and as I looked at the grubby, sweaty men in the cell with me, the full weight of my mistake hit me. Would I have fought for that junker sober? No way. They could have towed the car and the house too. Four years ago, I’d never have been seen dead in either.
And here I was, facing a hard ten, at risk of losing the only good thing I had. I was a terrible father, but my thirteen-year-old girl, Skye, was a great daughter, and she brightened every moment I spent with her. She was more than I deserved, and she deserved better than this. Deep in my K-hole, the thought of being separated from her again brought a tear to my eye. But I wasn’t going to cry. Not here, in this place with these men.
Mitch’s math made me sick. I knew from bitter experience how bad ten years in federal prison would be. If I had money, I could have hired one of those Monopoly lawyers who can magic up a get-out-of-jail card. One of those slick, sharp-suited, forked-tongued attorneys who were always lunching with the mayor, had the DA on speed dial, and could get a billionaire standing over a body with a smoking gun compensation from the city for the inconvenience of an arrest.
Money would have gotten me out of this place, too, with its grimy walls covered in carved graffiti, smelling of bleach and piss and misery. Money would solve all my problems, but I didn’t have a bean and didn’t know anyone who did either. Least not anyone I could ask for a loan. So, my life was mapped out. A transfer to county jail, some fights, threats of sexual violence, until I settled somewhere in the pecking order, a long wait for the formality of a trial that would deprive me of freedom for too many years. Rare visits from Skye, under the disapproving eye of her mother, Toni, until teenage life would prove too much of a draw and even my daughter would forget about me.
When I first came to Los Angeles seven years ago, I was handsome, successful, married. Someone told me LA is known as the City of Angels because every inhabitant gets their own heavenly guardian who watches out for them. Mine must have taken a wicked strong dislike to me or something, because true enough, I had a little over two decent years before I lost everything.
I was stirred from self-pity by one of the cops banging on the cage.
“Collard,” he said. “Get up. You made bail.”
I didn’t move, thinking this was some twisted joke.
“Come on.” He didn’t bother hiding his impatience. “Unless you want to stay here.”
I sat up and looked around in disbelief. Who the heck had sprung me? Was my guardian angel back after so many years away?
I got off the hard bench and went to the cage door, which buzzed open. This couldn’t really be happening, could it? I put my hand against the wall. It felt real enough. No dreamlike qualities whatsoever.
“Who sprung me?” I asked as the cop stood aside and let me pass.
He shrugged. “No clue.”
He took me to the custody desk, a surprisingly mundane place considering how many people tasted free air here for the very last time.
High with the euphoria of good luck, I said as much to the desk sergeant who handled my release paperwork. He sat on a stool behind a high counter. Jaded, he pursed his wrinkled lips and gave me a perfunctory nod.
“You know who posted my bail?” I asked.
“You got that many friends?” he cracked.
“I didn’t think I had any. Least none who could front this kind of dough.”
He sighed and checked the computer next to him.
“Syd Ryder,” he said after a moment. “He’s a bondsman. Works out of an office couple of blocks down Broadway. Someone must have given him security.”
I signed for my stuff and went outside in a hurry, just in case there had been a mistake. I stood in front of the Pharaoh’s monument, baking in the June sun, and looked up and down Broadway. I could see plenty of signs for bail bonds to the south, past 77th Street, but couldn’t pick out anything that identified Syd Ryder. My luck really must have been turning, because my phone still had a little juice. I found him on Google and pinpointed his office two blocks south of my location. It was too hot to walk, so I made a call.
The voice that answered was as rough as an armadillo’s hide. “Ryder Bail Bonds.”
“Syd Ryder?” I asked.
“Who is this?”
“Peyton Collard.”
“Oh. Mr. Lucky.”
“Yeah. I want to know who posted my bail.”
“No can do, Mr. Lucky,” Ryder said. “Client demanded they remain anonymous.”
“Was it my ex-wife?”
“I doubt it. You ain’t that lucky, Mr. Lucky.”
I guessed from his response my savior was a woman. A real-life beautiful guardian angel.
“Don’t I have a right to know?”
“You have a right to jack shit, Mr. Lucky.” I heard him take a draw of a cigarette, and there was a pause as he held in the smoke and then exhaled. “Go live your life. Someone gave you a second chance. At least until trial.”
He took another drag of smoke.
“Make sure you show. I hate leaving the office to hunt the stupid. Always puts me in a head-crackingly bad mood.”
He hung up and left me standing on the sidewalk outside the regional police headquarters, wondering why anyone would have paid to spring a deadbeat from jail.