The Inmate Reception Center smelled overwhelmingly of industrial disinfectant and body odor. The ducts were working overtime, doing their best to diffuse a lingering trace of spent pepper spray. Beneath a splotch of blood where someone had tried to put a fist through the cold concrete, Evan sat on a bright orange chair seemingly molded for maximum discomfort. The aftermath of the booze, soaking into his addled brain, made his head feel as though it had been molded for maximum discomfort, too. He’d been waiting for nearly forty-five minutes while sheriff’s deputies shuffled other arrestees through the system.
Happy hour was crowded at Twin Towers Booking.
In fact, every hour was crowded at Twin Towers, the world’s largest jail.
There were forty-five hundred inmates jammed into a space running at 150-percent capacity.
Evan closed his eyes, breathed the stale scent of riled men, felt the heat from countless trapped bodies. Someone was sobbing and someone was screaming and someone was singing. Singing badly.
He’d already been processed by the baggy-eyed civilian employee with caked-on foundation. He’d stood at the counter hiccupping while she reviewed the probable-cause statement. It had been sent through the bulletproof glass in a transaction drawer along with a time-delay, self-destroying license with his face and Paytsar Hovsepian’s information, ingeniously engineered by Melinda Truong. “Open container, drunk in public.” She glanced up at the young cop by Evan’s side, chewed the inside of her cheek. “Barfed on your boots?”
The cop said, “Yes, ma’am.”
“Sounds like a charmer.”
Evan had given her a loose-handed salute, and she’d smiled wryly in response.
His training had taught him to find quiet where he could, even in the most stressful of circumstances. He kept his eyes closed and breathed. His task right now, in this moment, was to do nothing but occupy his body. The charcoal pills had done their job, ameliorating the effects of the tequila, but the acrid taste of eighty-proof bile remained in his mouth. The light-headedness held on, wobbly shapes floating behind his eyelids.
A beefy deputy rapped him gently on the shoulder, and he opened his eyes. “Patser Hovsepian?”
Evan corrected him with a crisp accent. “Paytsar.”
“Great,” the deputy said, “okay. We’ll be sure to get it perfect before you take the stage at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.” He flicked two fingers the size of breakfast sausages. “Come with me.”
Evan followed him into the booking room. Stations were set up three deep, sullen men being shuttled through like cattle. A jocker inked with the Aryan Brotherhood clover and trip sixes caught Evan’s eye and flicked his tongue at him lewdly. Ignoring him, Evan looked around, assessing any loose items he might be able to palm and sneak in. A stapler on a desk in the corner. Pen tucked into a clipboard. A computer mouse.
His plan only covered getting in and—ideally—getting back out. He couldn’t know in advance what the precise conditions in the jail would be. When it came to protecting himself and eliminating Benjamin Bedrosov, he had to improvise.
Predictably, any obvious tools or weapons were well out of reach.
The deputy gave Evan a prod, reminding him that he no longer controlled where his body went and what it was allowed to do. He complied readily, not willing to escalate to a situation that increased the odds of a blow to the head.
“Stand over here. Back up. Smile for the birdie.”
Above the stalk of a skinny tripod, a tiny digital camera peered at him like the head of an exotic insect. Evan flashed A-OK signs against his chest, one circle up and one upside down. Armenian Power.
“Hey, dipshit. You sure you want that to be the look the judge sees at arraignment?”
Evan winked at him. There would be no judge, no arraignment. And Joey would have the digital photo wiped from the system within minutes of Evan’s departure. Or—if things went badly—he’d be dead and none of this would matter.
The deputy sighed. “Your funeral.”
The flash hit Evan, burning his eyes. He cringed away drunkenly. The alcohol leaching through the charcoal and the light sensitivity from his concussion made it easy to play the role.
“Hey,” the deputy said. “You okay?”
Evan nodded. The deputy moved him to a bench bolted to the concrete floor. Before him was an electronic fingerprint scanner. The deputy collapsed into a computer station on the far side with an arthritic groan and said, “All ten on the glass.”
Evan pressed his hands onto the wide plate, felt the heat rising through the fingertip adhesives as the light-emitting diodes rolled underneath. The deputy’s monitor was tilted, granting Evan a slanted view of the CLETS database, waiting to spit out Paytsar Hovsepian’s criminal history once the scan results registered.
Evan waited for the impressions laid into the fingerprint films to work.
But the onscreen timer kept spinning. The deputy knocked the side of the monitor in frustration. The false prints wouldn’t register.
A sense of genuine dread descended on Evan, tightening his jaw. All it would take was a momentary computer glitch. The deputy would wipe down his fingerprints, discover the adhesives. And Orphan X, the country’s most wanted former government asset, would no longer have to be hunted and taken down. He’d already have put himself behind bars, delivered himself with a bow. Right on the eve of his retirement.
The deputy tugged a few tissues from a box and swiveled his chair toward Evan.
The computer dinged, accepting the scan.
The deputy turned away and stuffed the tissues back into the box.
Evan eased out a breath through his locked teeth.
The CLETS interface brought up Hovsepian’s prior conviction from high school. The decades-old booking photo showed a dull-eyed kid washed pale from adrenaline, a tangle of hair falling over his stoned eyes.
Evan’s appearance was close enough, especially given that it had been nineteen years since the picture was taken.
The deputy didn’t even bother looking. “You can take your hands off the scanner already.”
Evan had been so tense he’d frozen in place. As he withdrew his fingers, he felt the film on his left pinkie tug.
The adhesive peeled free and clung to the glass plate.
Transparent yet in full sight, it remained curled up from the scanner like a contact lens.
Evan forced himself not to look at it. He set his hands on the table casually. The deputy turned and rested his elbows on either side of the scanner. His breath fluttered the pinkie adhesive.
“All your possessions on the table,” he said.
Evan took out his driver’s license, a few crumpled singles, and some coins. He dropped the change about six inches above the table, trying to make it look unintentional. A nickel rolled off the edge, and the deputy leaned to catch it.
As he dipped to the side, Evan swept his hand across the fingerprint scanner, the gummy adhesive clinging to his knuckle and peeling free. Annoyed, the deputy set the nickel back down atop the sad pile of cash. “Okay. So. Two dollars and seventeen cents. Gearing up for a big night on the town, were you?”
Pretending to cough, Evan brought his fist to his mouth. Slipped the film inside. Swallowed.
Only a momentary relief. If he wanted to leave no trace behind, he’d lost the use of his pinkie finger for the duration.
He wasn’t sure what the optimal conditions were to enter jail but he imagined that they didn’t involve a concussion and a nonoperational finger.
The deputy swiveled back to the computer, logging the few items into the property-management system. He shoved a clipboard at Evan. “Review that this is all your stuff and sign.”
Evan unclipped the two-page form and took his time reading it, scrutinizing each line of text, rubbing his eyes as if hungover. He flipped back to the first page again. Then back. The whole time he was careful to hold out his pinkie like a Jane Austen heroine.
“It ain’t signing away your firstborn, high roller,” the deputy finally said. “It’s less than three bucks.”
Evan slotted the pages back into the clipboard and signed Paytsar’s name. Lowering his hand to his side, he returned the clipboard.
The deputy snapped his fingers. “Nice try.”
“Oh,” Evan said, “sorry.”
He gave back the pen.
But kept the staple that he’d managed to pry free from the form. He straightened it with his thumbnail and squeezed it lengthwise between his ring and index fingers.
Another deputy had appeared behind him, tapping him on the side of the neck with the butt of a hefty Maglite. “The jail sergeant signed off for you to come with me, sweet cheeks. You’ve got a history of drug use. Which means it’s time for your cavity search.”
Evan grimaced.
“I leave that to Horace,” the beefy deputy said. “He’s got a stronger stomach than me.”
Horace led Evan to a box of a room with a concrete bench. He held the flashlight like a baton, fist curled around the thick metal base. Evan’s neck still throbbed from the love tap.
“Strip,” Horace said.
Evan undressed, keeping his back turned as if in shyness. When he removed his sock, he shoved the staple through the tough, callused skin of his heel just beneath the surface.
“Turn around,” Horace said.
As Evan rose, a blue fishnet bag hit him in the chest.
“Put your shit in here.”
Evan obliged.
Horace clicked on the Maglite and adjusted his grip, clenching it up near the lens. At the slightest provocation, he could snap his hand forward and bring the metal shaft to bear. “Open your mouth. Tongue up. To the side. Other side.”
Evan obeyed.
“Now turn around. Bend over. Spread.”
After a moment Evan heard the light click off behind him.
“If you’re lucky,” Horace said, “you won’t have to do that again. Now get dressed.”
A perfect square of folded jailhouse clothes rested on the concrete bench. White boxers made from a papery fabric. An undershirt flimsy enough that the color of his skin showed through. Gray cotton socks. Vans-style slip-ons with thin soles, clearly manufactured by the lowest bidder. Dark blue uppers and lowers, loose-fitting because jail took all shapes and sizes. The shirt had a pocket at the left breast.
Evan followed Horace out of the concrete box to the next station, where Horace handed him off to yet another deputy. “This here’s Willy. Please let him know anything he can do to make your stay more pleasant. Hypoallergenic bedding, mint on the pillow at turn-down service, maybe a yoga mat in case you need to do some light strength work.”
As Horace grinned and faded away, Willy shot out an exhale, bristling a broomlike mustache fringed brown with coffee stains. He didn’t wear a weapon, but a holstered Taser was one snap away. “I gotta classify you. Figure out who gets housed in which pod. We keep certain criminal elements together. So. State your affiliation.”
Evan said, “I ain’t no gang member.”
“Fine. I’ll just put you in with the Norteños. That should work out swell. Consider your cavity search a warm-up stretch.”
Evan fiddled with his hands. “Armenian Power,” he said.
“Shocking. Hovsepian.” Willy checked the monitor. “You got no priors with them, but I see your booking photo here. Nice look. I’m sure the judge’ll dig it at your arraignment.”
“Yeah,” Evan said. “I heard that one already.”
Willy gave him a droopy glare. “Arraignment ain’t till Monday. Sucks, that. Two nights in the can. You heard that one, too?”
Evan looked away.
“Gimme your left wrist,” Willy said. Evan complied, and the deputy fastened a bar-coded wristband on him, clasping it with plastic rivets. “You’ll be in 121 B-Pod with the other Armos. That’s here in Twin Towers, so consider yourself lucky. Old-school MCJ is bursting at the seams with prisoners trucked in from the overcrowded prisons—six, eight to a cell. We can thank the state budget, which seems to spring new leaks every quarter.”
Twin Towers had less brutal arrangements for the prisoners than Men’s Central, but its precast cells, bolted steel furniture, and pod structure were also expressly designed to eliminate any access to tools, implements, or loose items. Every last object in Twin Towers was locked down and kept track of.
“It ain’t exactly roomy here, but— Hey.” Willy snapped his fingers to get Evan’s attention. “I’m trying to help you out, punk-ass. I don’t care how many signs you throw, your drunk-in-public’s not gonna strike fear into the hearts of the motherfuckers on the other side of that wall.” He palmed his mouth, tugging his mustache down. “Ah, fuck it. Why do I bother? Get up.”
He steered Evan down the hall. Tile floors, endless windows. They passed the inmate property room, a vision from a dystopian future, part deep-freeze coat check and part grapevine. Thousands of blue fishnet bags hung from racks, filling the bay from floor to ceiling. All those worldly possessions suspended in time and space. Each blue sack matched a beating heart warehoused behind metal and concrete.
Evan’s bag dangled somewhere among them, a drop in the ocean.
At the end of the wall waited a cart loaded with supplies. Before Willy had to prompt him, Evan grabbed one item from each stack. Sheet, towel, soap, rubber toothbrush. With his thumbnail he tested the end of the toothbrush, but the rubber yielded under the pressure. Too soft to whittle into a shiv.
“We had a stabbing last week, which means no disposable razor,” Willy said. “If you stay longer, we will allow you to shave under supervision.”
Evan’s mouth had gone dry. He nodded, rasped a hand over his two-day growth. He’d purposefully gone without shaving today.
“We’d give you a TB test, but results take three days and you’ll be out by then. So: Try not to cough on anyone.”
Evan nodded. Willy shoved another clipboard at him. “Sign this.”
“What is it?”
“It says if you contract Hep C or AIDs, the county’s not liable.”
Evan forced down a swallow.
“Kidding. It says you haven’t requested that any prescription meds be supplied.”
Careful to keep his pinkie lifted, Evan signed. Gave back the clipboard.
“Nice try,” Willy said, and snapped his fingers.
Reluctantly, Evan handed over the pen.
Willy signaled to a guard in the control room. The electronic doors gave a bone-jarring clank and hissed open. Willy marched Evan into a mantrap, the door behind them sealing before the one ahead could release. They drew parallel to the guard window, Evan’s wristband bar code was scanned, and the door before him rumbled open.
“You’re in Cell 24,” Willy said. “Try’n play nice with the others.”
He prodded Evan forward, and the door slammed shut behind him, sealing him off from the world.