Potboiler

“I was just complimenting you on your fine grasp of narrative structure,” Canola said.

He allowed himself to be questioned for several more hours before asking for an attorney.

“Why do you need an attorney?”

“Am I under arrest?”

The detectives looked at each other.

“Because if not,” Pfefferkorn said, “I’d like to go.”

“All right,” Canola said agreeably.

He stood up.

Sockdolager stood up.

Pfefferkorn stood up.

“Arthur Pfefferkorn,” Sockdolager said, “you’re under arrest.”

55.

Not wanting to frighten his daughter over what would surely turn out to be a giant misunderstanding, he used his call to phone his agent. Nobody answered, though, and after further processing he was shown to a cell occupied by a young gang member covered in tattoos.

“What about my phone call?” Pfefferkorn said to the guard.

“Ain’t my fault,” the guard said.

“But—”

The door slammed shut.

Pfefferkorn stood agape.

“Don worry, ese,” the gang member said. “You get use to it.”

Pfefferkorn avoided looking at his cellmate as he climbed up to the empty top bunk. He had a notion that it was unwise to stare at people in jail. They might take it the wrong way. He lay down and tried to think. His arraignment was scheduled for the morning. Where did that leave him for now? Locked up like some common criminal? What about bail? What about parole? What about time off for good behavior? He didn’t know how any of this worked. He had never been arrested before. Of course he hadn’t. He was a law-abiding citizen. He tossed and turned with indignation. Then he thought about Carlotta and his anger became anguish. Anything might be happening to her. If the police believed they had solved the case by arresting him, they were bringing her that much closer to death—if she wasn’t dead already. Time was slipping away. He felt as though he was buried up to his neck in sand. He moaned.

“Ese. Chill out.”

Pfefferkorn clenched his fists to keep still.

A little later, a buzzer sounded.

“Chow time,” the gang member said.

The dining room walls reverberated hellishly with the noise of men eating and talking. Pfefferkorn took his tray and sat alone, slumped, his arms crossed over his chest. He needed to make that call.

“Not hungry?”

Pfefferkorn’s heart contracted unpleasantly as his cellmate sat down across from him.

“So, ese, what you do?”

Pfefferkorn frowned. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“No.”

“Then why you here?”

“I’m being accused of a crime I didn’t commit,” Pfefferkorn said.

The gang member laughed. “Hey, what a coincidence. Me too.”

He flexed one forearm, causing the Virgin Mary to shimmy lewdly. Gothic lettering spanned the hollow of his throat.

“Ese,” the gang member said, “you lookin at something?”

Pfefferkorn averted his eyes again. “No.”

The chow room clattered and boomed.

“You know what that means?” the gang member said.

Pfefferkorn nodded.

“Okay then,” the gang member said. He stood. “Eat up.”

56.

“Pfefferkorn. Derecho. Let’s go.”

“Rise and shine, ese.”

Pfefferkorn stirred. He felt god-awful. He’d spent most of the night awake. Rarely did the other inmates cease hollering and stomping, and anyway, he was too wound up from imagining Carlotta in various states of peril. He had nodded off shortly before daybreak. The color of the light told him it wasn’t much later than that now.

“Move it.”

Pfefferkorn and his cellmate stood in the corridor, facing the wall. The guards patted them down and escorted them out of the cell block toward the elevator.

“No talking,” a guard said, although nobody had said anything.

A van was waiting to transfer them to the central courthouse. They were shackled to their seats. The engine started and the van crept toward the security gate. The driver flashed a badge. The arm went up. They pulled onto the streets of downtown Los Angeles.

Pfefferkorn was immersed in one kind of anxiety, enough so that at first he did not realize the van had pulled onto the freeway. When he did notice, he was not in sufficient possession of his faculties to be surprised. Only after they exited the freeway and started driving uphill did it occur to him that they should have arrived at their destination some time ago, and a second kind of anxiety came to the fore. He couldn’t tell where they were, because the van’s back windows were blacked out, and the grate protecting the driver made it hard to see through the windshield. He glanced at his cellmate. The man appeared perfectly at ease. Pfefferkorn didn’t like it.

“Are we almost there?” he called.

Nobody answered.

The road got bumpy. Pfefferkorn glanced at his cellmate’s shackles. He reasoned that whatever was happening had to be happening to his cellmate as well—hence their common state of shackledness. He tried to make this make him feel better. It didn’t work.

The van pulled over. The driver got out and came around to open the back door. A blast of unfiltered sunlight caused Pfefferkorn to squint. What he saw did not compute. Instead of a parking lot or an urban street, there was barren hillside and a dirt road.

“Where are we,” he said.