A faint, pleasant release of warm air dripped from the ventilation cover at the top of the wall of the jail cell, consistent and low, like the absent humming of a man at work. This exhalation would continue for approximately five minutes, then disappear for thirty, then the five again, and so on. In between, air circulation continued throughout San Francisco Central Station, on every floor, ostensibly in five-minute huffs, just like right here, on the cell floor. How many floors was that? Do the math. Five? Six?
And how many men and women had stayed on this floor, in a cell, for a night, or a day, or longer? Thousands? Tens of thousands? One would expect their history to linger. One would expect their many presences to make imprints on the cement walls, the steel bars, or in the reflective metal that passed as mirrors over the sink-toilet all-in-ones. Instead, the floor was quiet, as empty as the void of the cosmos. Each wooden bench and each foam cot without handler or indentation. Each cell without a nucleus, minus the one with the man in the corner. A black man, his face used to bad news, the stubble on his cheeks and neck fresh and uncomfortable, dressed in a green button-up he’d procured at a Gap without trying it on, in slacks with an origin he couldn’t recall, in shoes he’d been gifted by Central Station’s lost and found. This was Moses Dillard.
His cell door was wide open, mysteriously, but Moses had walked through enough open doors in his lifetime to know some were better off shut. In point of fact, open doors had a lot to do with how he’d happened into this situation. He had merely been a hobbyist specializing in antique firearms. Innocent. But looking back now, perhaps there were some business exchanges Moses should not have made. Looking back, maybe Moses should’ve turned one way instead of the other with a customer or two. Entertaining the notion for a moment, he might have fancied himself too much of a cowboy when he thought it wise to interfere with the activities of his customers, namely La Mitad and his “good friend” Charles Hattaran.
Oh, what the inspector didn’t know.
But as the ventilation croaked to a close, Moses likewise snuffed out all the shoulda-woulda-couldas. Mankind evolved to prepare for the future, not the past. A clear conscience and a purity of spirit was the order of the day. Moses was no criminal. Father Time would see to that. And if he could falsify some evidence or concoct an alibi or convince someone to play witness, he might yet prove it. At the risk of being presumptuous, Moses thought as he ran his fingers up the open cell door, it appeared that this was precisely what someone wanted him to do.
“Daddy’s home now,” he said, consumed in a vision of tomorrow. He’d be in San Jose, in his Willow Glen neighborhood, the city’s “local treasure” so said the sign coming into the area. He’d be just outside the two-story tract house he used to live in with his wife Christine and daughter Violet. He’d be hugging Violet, his knees sunk into the front yard, wet still from her sprinkler. “Daddy’s home now, darling. Daddy’s home now, and he’s not going one … gosh … darn … place … elsewhere.” Her little hands would be wrapped over his arms, clinging to his shoulder blades like they were handlebars. Her forehead would roll off his forehead. He’d feel her happy breath and marvel again at how he could be partly responsible for the existence of another.
But to begin with, he had to get there. He recalled an old piece of advice he had adopted from a friend a long time ago. Leap before you look.
His first step into the adjoining hall and his second step brought him neither relief nor panic, even when he saw the next open cell door all the way at the end of the long gray walk, leading to the stairwell. It stood to reason it would be open, too, after all. If there was one cell door, chances were likely there were many. Do the math.
Moses puttered along passing cell after cell. The corner surveillance cameras threatened him with their glazed lenses, but he’d decided to call their bluffs. Anyway, if he was going to be caught, either here or at the stairwell, he’d already worked out the angles.
“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” he’d say to whatever officer he’d run into. “The doors—all open! It was imperative I find someone of authority, such as yourself, who might rectify this. Who might close things up again. Thank you for your service. Yes, I’ll follow you down. No, there’s no need for the cuff mechanisms. Well, all right.”
What choice did he have? Stay in the cell? Pft. Someone very clearly wanted him out of it. Whoever it was, they were attempting to handle his escape with a delicate hand: i.e., they weren’t performing the escape attempt in person; i.e., they couldn’t even tell Moses that he or she was involved; i.e., this wasn’t happening out of the goodness of someone’s heart. Moses alive, well, and on the loose was good business for someone. If Moses chose not to escape, then that meant this someone was going to be quite upset with him. (Understatement of the year, no?)
On second thought, maybe Moses couldn’t risk being caught after all.
He’d reached the second cell door now. The one with the stairwell, leading upwards. He chanced a glance into the heavens and was met with the piss-yellow fluorescent tube six or seven floors up. He heard nothing.
Wait.
A door opened. And shut. It was impossible to tell on which floor. Then there were footsteps. Maybe two. Maybe four. Maybe six. Maybe more. They tapped down the stairs, their echoes accumulating, the volume increasing, the proximity nearing. No voices. None. Footsteps. With purpose. Urgency. Immediacy. He considered running back to his cell, to his cot. Stupid, stupid, he thought, oh how stupid to think he’d escape, be let free, just like that, because now he understood: this was planned. A preemptive event. Here he was, “escaped” from his cell, caught on camera, soon to be neutralized by an officer, by two, batoned in the face, beaten, pulverized, left to die, concealed by a cover story of a prisoner escaped, leaving officers no recourse but to murder him. Stupid, stupid, stupid! Well, all right. Bring it on then. Murder him. End this! Go!
But just as quickly as the steps had arrived, they disappeared. A door opened. And shut. And the stairwell was silent again.
“That’s what I’m trying to explain,” he’d say to whomever designed his release. “I couldn’t leave. See those stairs? That’s as bad as the minefields in Cambodia, my friend. Worse. I go up those, a door opens, and then what? I’m dead. No, I’ve thought this through, and maybe you should have a little longer. There must have been a more effective route to, uh, what’s that? No. Not the corner. No, don’t make me look at the wall. Not the wall, friend. No, don’t use that. Don’t make me go that way … Well, all right.”
Moses took his first step into the ascent. Then another. And after the third, it became easy. Just a matter of blocking out the audience in his head and lasering his focus on the fluorescent light up top. He kept an eye out for notes or symbols or any kind of messaging system that might guide him along, courtesy of his mysterious benefactor. No such things existed.
He was twitchy and silent and sweaty, fit to crouch or scurry into a corner at the slightest note, even as his inner-monologue lullabied itself with pinky-swear promises to play off any encounter with practiced nonchalance. He’d stepped into enough shady establishments in his time to know that the best way to get out alive was to go in like you lived there. He kept onward.
He was on the fifth floor, though still deep within the station’s subterranean cave. The door to his left read, “Narcotics.” He kept onward.
He was on the fourth floor. The door to his left read, “Property Crimes.” He kept onward.
He was on the third floor. The door to his left read, “Homicide.” He kept onwa—
“You heard about Carson, right?” The door swung open, nearly colliding with Moses. It stayed open like that, right in front of him, his only protection between him and its handler, his voice high and sudden, as if channeling the soul of a rusty trumpet. “Eh? What was that?” The officer on the other side of the door waited for a response, seemingly. Then: “He’s with the Jamaican. He said there’s some shmo sniffing around. A shmo, you know. Nah. I can’t tell you who right now.” Then lower: “Not over this.” Then high again, the trumpet’s mute removed: “What’s that?”
Silence, again. The door swung five degrees this way and that in a slow rhythm, like the officer was debating whether to stay or go.
“I know that, I said. I know that. Wait a second,” said the voice. Then, to shut up his partner: “A-ba-ba-ba.”
The door swung wider. Moses silently stepped back with the door to remain concealed.
“Wait just one second.”
Moses was almost out of room, shoulders against the wall, the door narrowing in, like he was caught in a pie chart. He stilled his breath and felt a sudden urge to urinate, instantly reminded of playing hide-and-seek with Violet just one month prior, back then hidden behind the couch, but something told him the consequences of getting caught this time wouldn’t be fish sticks for dinner.
The voice on the other side of the door hummed inquisitively. Was he onto him? Did he catch a scent? A shadow? A reflection of the floor? Impossible. Right?
“Hey,” said the voice. To whom? To Moses?
“What’s that?” the voice asked again, and then he heard the faraway chatter of a different voice through a cell phone earpiece.
And finally, the door changed course, swinging back whence it came.
“He’s not gonna find out one damn iota of a thing. They’re taking him upstate, I can’t tell you exactly where.” Lower: “Not over this.” A little higher: “They’re going to handle the problem. You’ll see—”
The door shut.
Moses was alone again. He stepped carefully past the door and continued up the first steps to the next level.
That’s when the door opened. Again.
“Hold your horses.” Only ajar for now. The same officer, now visible. White. Brow and eyes like a pitbull, all swollen and beady, and a jaw like an old car bumper. Moses had seen this man before.
Moses shut his eyes. No. Maybe he hadn’t.
“I said wait!” said the pitbull.
Moses remained completely still, his foot in the air, dangling for a stairstep, eyes still shut. Waiting for his capture. Expecting to rue this moment. Anticipating the tackle into the stairs, ribcage crushed, face smooshed under boot. A Taser strike for good measure. Nerves gone electric-light-parade. Mind finally clear (but not like this, anything but this, he’d plead through the pain). Back to the cell. Dead by dinner time. Here it was. As expected. Have your way!
But the pitbull wasn’t speaking to Moses. Not yet.
“I got it, all right?” said the pitbull. Moses finally opened one eye. Then the other. The pitbull was still faced the other direction, unaware of the proximity. The voice on the phone blasted away while the pitbull shook his head. Finally, he interrupted his caller. “I understand,” he said. “But the secret’s safe. Always has been. In perpetuity kind of thing …”
And on he went still, finally embarking down the stairsteps, headed the other direction. As he reached the pivot point, Moses ducked and made himself small against the wall. His mind hadn’t caught up yet, still expecting to be found, to be had, to be ruined. He found part of himself wanting to yelp, wanting to garner the pitbull’s attention, as if to correct fate, as if he deserved this. But then the pitbull was finally, totally out of sight.
“We’ll talk about this later,” said the voice, echoed and distant now.
The “Property Crimes” door on the floor below opened. And shut. And now even the voice was gone.
Moses finally exhaled and took in a deep breath like it was Gatorade, full with relief, but surprised by the nagging notion that he should’ve been caught.
He finally ascended and left the notion on the stairwell below, right where it belonged.
He arrived on the second floor. The door to his left read, “Scientific Investigation.” He passed it by, continuing around another loop of steps. He thought he heard the ventilation kick in, that calm whir, but that couldn’t be it. This was different. Slightly higher pitched. Tag-teamed with other whirs and other rumbles and beeps and horns. It sounded like a city street. He picked up his pace until he reached an emergency exit door. A sign nearby read that an alarm would be sounded should the entry bar be pressed. But someone had left the door ajar. And something was wedged at the foot of the sill to keep it that way. It was small, leather. A wallet.
Moses’s wallet.
He pressed the door open, careful to keep away from the entry bar, and picked his wallet up off the floor. Inside: his license, credit card, insurance … And cash. Lots of it. Not his. But apparently, he’d need it.
Beyond the open door was a narrow, dingy corridor. “Card Alley” said the sign, faintly, at the end, where it ran into Stockton Street. He could smell the aging architecture, the wet rock, the stench of dead cigarettes, the blast of car exhaust. He shut the door behind him.
He was free.
Really, truly.
The wallet went in his front pocket—he had never trusted the back. He trudged down the alley, careful to keep his mind completely vapid, else he might surrender to the suspicions lurking in reason. Almost to Stockton now. He thumbed at his shirt collar, remembered how it was distorted, remembered how it had been yanked several nights before, then he cast those memories aside, along with logic and reason and suspicions.
Moses was at Stockton Street. Vehicles cruised along headed north and south. He inhaled their speed and mentally returned to a space where he lived in a whole city, a whole world, and not just a jail cell. He had to re-clock his place in time—it was morning. He had to re-position his place in space—he was up north, in San Francisco. He had to re-train his body to take its natural, normal, true appearance:
That of an innocent human being.
And once the tonnage of his guilt was shucked off, Moses looked to his left. Freedom. It was still early enough that the foot traffic was low. A red bus connected to trolley poles moseyed in that direction, where Stockton hit Columbus at an odd angle.
He then looked to his right and immediately realized he was a yardstick away from two uniformed officers, conversing from the side of their mouths, facing the other side of the street, not yet keyed-in on Moses.
This was it. He could tell them who he was. And what happened. He could voluntarily return downstairs. It’d be pretty weird that he’d gotten this far before deciding to play nice, but it’d presumably score some points. Keep him safe. Make him innocent.
Or, he could turn left and run. Not run, exactly. Walk. Confidently. He had money. He had shoes. He had a direction. Honestly, that was more than he had before any of this funny business got started. The next step is never apparent until all the other possible steps are removed.
This was the step. Yes?
He was innocent. No?
There was the last time he’d decided to chance the other side of the street. The night after he spoke with La Mitad. The night he tried to find Charles Hattaran. The night he wandered into the Tenderloin. That damn night he found Charles. And then his murderer, and the gunfire, and then Moses ran, and …
Would he really do all that again?
Leap before your look. Gus Shulman’s long-lost mug flashed under his eyelids like he was really there—in the flesh—gone again only when Moses put the real world back in its rightful frame.
“Officers? Hi. My name is Moses Dillard. I don’t quite know how information is communicated through your department, but, minutes ago, I was located on the bottom story of your police station, sitting in a cell, and to my complete surprise, I found the cell door to be left, uh, open. Well, I wanted to correct this error and, truth be told, I could not find a single figure of authority to assist me all the way up the stairwell—I didn’t think to check the doors, and in hindsight, that seems silly, I agree—and all the way to right here. Well, I was going to take a turn around Stockton to the front desk, I was, and it seems you’ve made my responsibility a little easier. Gentlemen, I’d like to get back into my cell and to have this trouble, uh, extenuated. Now, what do you say? No, I’ll walk with you, see, I’m being cooperative. I’ll come quietly, kind of thing, right? No, no need for the cuff mechanisms. Well, all right.”
No.
That wouldn’t do.
Moses stepped up Stockton, headed north, putting the police behind him.
He was a free man.
An innocent man.
And pretty soon, he might even believe it.