Felony Tank Read online

  Felony Tank

  by Malcolm Braly

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Doug stepped off the bus broke and hungry. His last cash had dwindled on the trip across the desert, and when his ticket ran out in the drab southwestern city of Ardilla he couldn’t even remember why he’d wanted to come here. It was night when the bus pulled in and the city seemed strange, stunted and dirty. In the depot where people were meeting each other, there was no one to meet him. No one to know he was here or worry if he wasn’t.

  He walked around a couple embracing and found his own face in the mirror of a cigarette machine. His hair was messed, rumpled from sleeping curled in the bus seat. Automatically he reached for his comb, but found he’d lost it. He was always losing combs. He’d never realized how hard it was to keep going from one day to the next. Though he now admitted his old man had kept things pieced together somehow, he still couldn’t find any warmth in his memories of him. Even broke and hungry he was glad to be away.

  There was nothing to do in the depot. His luggage was in his pockets, and he didn’t have as much as a dime to put in the popcorn machine. He stared at an Indian woman in a beaded dress until she caught him, and, blushing, he hurried out.

  The wind hit and he paused in the shelter of the doorway to turn his collar up. A newspaper rack was chained to an eyebolt set in the wall. He tried to pull it lose, but it was solid. There was probably a couple of dollars in dimes in the rack, but with the glass doors behind him and the blue of the depot neon lighting the pavement, there was no way he could get it.

  He put his hands into his pockets, hunching against the cold, and the wind whipped his hair over his eyes. He was seventeen years old, tall, but still half-formed. Dressed in cords, run-over white shoes, two sweaters and a lumberman’s jacket. The cords were the same ones he’d been wearing the day he didn’t go home from high school. Instead he’d sailed his books one by one into Sullivan’s Gorge and walked out to the highway. A week later he found a job in southern Oregon setting chokers for a logging crew. The first day he knew the job was too much for him, and they knew it too, but they let him work a week. He left in the night, taking besides his wages a hunting knife, a jacket, and a pair of boots.

  The boots were too small and by the time he reached Sacramento, California, his toenails were turning purple and beginning to come loose. For the boots, and two bits extra, he’d bought the white shoes in a Goodwill Store.

  In all the time since he’d run off, he hadn’t known anyone to talk to who hadn’t called him “kid.”

  Once, before he became so roadworn, he’d gone to a dance hoping to pick up a girl. His dancing was barely passable, and he’d stood around for an hour, patting his foot to the music, trying to work up his nerve. Finally he asked a girl who hadn’t been on the floor twice the whole evening. She turned him down.

  He was so embarrassed his hands felt swollen. As he started away he heard a girl laugh and he was sure it was at him. He found himself on the street wondering bitterly if he were funny looking. But he knew it wasn’t that. He was too goddam young. He ran until he couldn’t hear the music anymore.

  After that he saw the suggestion of laughter in every girl’s face, and he couldn’t work up guts enough to even smile at them.

  The wind blew an empty cigarette package into the doorway. It whirled and settled with a scratching sound. Doug heard the door open. A thick man in a big hat stopped beside him, and looked both ways on the sidewalk. His face was heavy and placid. Doug was beginning to move away when he heard:

  “You live around town, son?”

  He turned back uneasily. This couldn’t be anything good.

  “Yes,” he lied. His voice surprised him by sounding calm.

  The man settled his coat. “Pretty nippy,” he announced, and then as if it were part of the same thought he went on: “I guess you probably still live with your folks?”

  “Yes—sir.” Doug’s anxiety betrayed him into adding the “sir.” He’d almost made up his mind the man was a cop, not a queer. The last time a cop had stopped him, he’d spent three days in a juvenile hall.

  “They going to pick you up?”

  “Oh, no—no, I guess I’ll walk home.”

  He hated standing here, bobbing his head like a puppet, just because someone wanted to mind his business. The cop—he was sure now—turned and looked him full in the face. Doug could see the whites of his eyes in the shadow of his hat brim, but he couldn’t read their expression.

  “I did see you get off the bus, didn’t I?”

  When Doug nodded, the cop made a humorous noise and pointed with his toe at Doug’s shoes. “Ain’t many boys in this town wearing white shoes.”

  “We’re new here. We’re from California.”

  The cop chuckled. “Wouldn’t hurt you none if you kept that a secret. Meanwhile, if you ever get caught downtown and can’t get home, the Mission is two blocks down this way.” He pointed to the left. “They’ll fix you up for the night, and give you a chance to earn some breakfast. It’s a big white place.”

  The cop paused, watching him carefully, and Doug nodded again and said, “I’ll remember.”

  He knew enough to start in the direction pointed out to him, past a darkened barber shop and a men’s store featuring a window display of Stetson hats. He looked back at the first cross street, but the cop was standing in the middle of the sidewalk still watching him.

  He had to go up on the porch of the Mission, and while he was waiting he read the card under the night light.

  These things I command you,

  that ye love one another

  John 15:17

  Ring this bell any hour

  of the day or night.

  Doug didn’t feel any impulse to push the bell. He didn’t want to be taken care of. It burnt him that even a cop took one look and immediately started trying to tuck him into bed.

  After a moment he peered around the edge of the building, and the sidewalk was clear.

  Half an hour later he stood in the shadow of a billboard watching a small feed store. It stood a little apart from the other buildings on the block, and its rear was exposed in a dark alley.

  He ran quickly across the street and into the alley. He dropped beside a garbage can, full of excitement.

  In the back of the feed store he saw the dark sheen of glass. No bars. He was in luck.

  The only bad moment was after he’d put the rock through the window. It made a booming crack, and some of the glass fell outward and rattled on the pavement. He threw his jacket over the broken glass still caught in the frame, and levered himself through the window, his feet scrabbling on the smooth wood.

  Somewhere in the city chimes began to strike. It was just a little over an hour since he’d stepped off the bus.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The prowl car braked suddenly and fishtailed to a stop. Its siren groaned out. A long truck-and-trailer rolled by on the cross street. Huey swore bitterly.

  “Goddam nitwits.”

  They’d been chasing a speeding hotrod all the way in from the city limits, but the little car had stayed ahead of them easily, cutting corners square and close, and at the last moment scooting around the front of the approaching truck. Pete had almost flipped the prowl car to avoid a collision.

  When the truck had passed, the street ahead of them was empty. Those kids were probably blocks away by now, and that made Huey salty because he knew they were laughing at him.

  “Circle,” he told Pete. “Maybe we can pick them up.”

  Huey was a hunter, manhunter as it happened, but that was just an accident of time and place. Under other circumstances he would have hunted other things.

  Pete wound the car through the surrounding blocks as Huey watched for
the cut-down shape of the hotrod. He was a big man, dressed in the regulation deputy’s uniform except for high-heeled boots, which put him well over six-four. He was only twenty-five, but his mixture of sternness and anger made him seem much older.

  The streets were empty except for casual cars, and each time they turned into another quiet block Huey felt a fresh thrust of anger.

  “Try some alleys,” he directed. “Maybe they ducked in somewhere and turned their lights off.”

  He saw Pete shrug, and knew Pete would rather stop somewhere and have a cup of coffee. Well, that was too bad about him. If he didn’t want to do his job he ought to get off the force.

  The lights of the prowl car broke against the buildings and flooded along the alley walls.

  In the second block, Huey saw something glittering on the black asphalt.

  “Hold it!”

  He switched on his swivel spotlight and picked up the broken glass in the circle of light. He grunted, and ran the spotlight up the side of the building. One window glared with reflected light, the other was empty except for bits of glass around the edge like irregularly spaced teeth.

  Huey’s impressions organized themselves automatically, and he told Pete to stand guard over the broken window. “We might have something in there,” he said meaningfully.

  He pulled the large flashlight out of its clamp above the windshield and stepped out of the car, drawing his revolver.

  The lock on the front door of the feed store was a common type, and the second master key Huey tried opened it. He swore silently when the door creaked, but standing dead still, he heard a flurry of movement in the dark store.

  Quickly he snapped the flash up in the direction of the noise, but it didn’t cross anything except wooden bins and burlap bags, slumped half full.

  “All right!” he shouted. “Stand up. You’re boxed in!”

  His hand was tense on the butt of his gun as he jerked the flashlight back and forth. But when he saw that his light wasn’t going to draw fire, he stepped inside, his boot heels hitting sharply on the wooden floor.

  “Come on,” he said more reasonably. “You can’t get out.”

  He paused, listening, but now there wasn’t a sound. The air was heavy with the smell of chicken mash, and some darker odor suggesting earth. His light moved over coils of garden hose and the clean blades of new shovels, past a revolving rack of seed packets and the segmented stacks of flowerpots.

  He figured the burglar must be crouching behind one of the counters. Switching the flash off, he tiptoed to the side, trying to work into a position from which he could see the whole store. He was still moving, testing his footing so the floor wouldn’t creak, when he caught the blur of a moving figure out of the corner of his eye. He spun and snapped a shot over his shoulder, feeling a sudden chilling elation when the figure dropped.

  The burglar had his head buried in his arms, but there was a tenseness in his huddled posture that caused Huey to stay on the alert. The man was conscious. With the toe of his boot Huey nudged him over, and when he saw the burglar’s face he shook his head angrily. It was just a boy, his expression icy with shock, his eyes glittering in the harsh beam of the flashlight.

  Huey dropped to one knee. “You hit, kid?”

  The boy’s throat worked and his mouth moved numbly for a moment. Then he said something.

  “What?” Huey asked quietly.

  “I don’t know.” It was just a whisper.

  Huey ran his hand under the boy’s jacket and felt carefully for blood, then checked his arms and legs. He’s not hit, he concluded, getting to his feet. Just scared. And suddenly Huey was angry again. He’d missed. Score 97 on the range and miss a shot like that.

  Steps sounded behind him, and Huey turned to see Pete in the doorway with his own gun drawn.

  Huey roared at him. “I thought I told you to watch that window!”

  Pete stepped inside. “I heard a shot.”

  “I don’t care if you heard a goddam cannon!”

  Pete ignored him and looked down at the boy. “Did you get him?” he asked.

  “Nah. I shot to scare him. It’s just a kid.”

  After Huey phoned the owner of the store, they took their prisoner directly to the county jail. In the prowl car Huey tried to question him, but the boy was still too shook up to talk—or he pretended to be. It was too dark to tell much about him, but Huey began to suspect that the kid’s show of terror might be mostly put on, an act, to gain sympathy or to make them careless so he could try to run again.

  The county courthouse sat like a square brick oven in a block of lawn and shrubbery. Huey saw a few lights in the county offices as the car circled around towards the back. The jail occupied the top two floors—floor and a half, really, since the felony section, built as a maximum security addition, was nothing but a bare concrete box sitting on the roof, five stories up and as isolated as the moon. When it was built, ten years before, the prisoners promptly named it the Penthouse.

  Huey felt satisfaction whenever he looked up at the Penthouse. He knew that many regarded it as an eyesore, but the men it held secure had made nastier eyesores—killings and rape, cuttings and just plain beatings, robbery and all kinds of stealing—and when Huey caught someone he knew the felony tank would make sure they stayed caught.

  The prowl car rolled down a concrete ramp and stopped in a large basement garage.

  “Let’s go,” he told the kid.

  The boy didn’t move, and Huey caught sight of his face, half hidden in the shadowed back seat, closed in that quiet hostility that Huey found so irritating.

  “Come on, move it!”

  They took the elevator up to the booking office on the fourth floor, where the sergeant on duty turned out to be Al Haines. Al was levered back in a swivel chair looking like he hadn’t moved for about six months, and he didn’t get up when they came in.

  “What you got?” he asked, yawning.

  “Burglar,” Huey answered tightly. He didn’t like laxness. “Let’s book him. We gotta get back on the road.”

  Turning towards the door that led out into the lower jail, Huey saw the sullen trusty they called Slim. He was leaning against the frame, scratching his cheek, taking everything in. Al usually had someone around to talk to, but Huey figured he could have picked almost anyone and done better. Slim was silent, leaden-eyed and obviously hostile. Lazy to boot.

  Huey remembered him well. A man who should have gone to state prison for robbery, but somehow managed to get off with a county jail sentence. And it seemed like every time Huey came into the jail he saw Slim standing around with a broom in his hand—not that he was about to use it—and if you said anything to him he could squeeze a world of insolence into a simple yes or no. Huey promised himself that if he ever caught Slim around town he’d give him something substantial to sneer about—something like a broken leg.

  “Looks like one for the juvenile tank.” That was Al Haines, up off his tail and fumbling with the charge book.

  “Maybe not,” Huey said sharply. “We caught him inside. And he tried to run on me.”

  “Got a little rabbit blood, huh, kid?” Al asked. He wasn’t looking for an answer.

  Huey turned and deliberately studied the boy in the light to fix his face, along with a lot of others, in his memory.

  The kid was bigger than he had seemed at first. Five-eleven maybe and he’d go about a hundred and sixty-five pounds. He didn’t seem to be paying any attention to what they were doing to him. He stood hunched over the handcuffs, staring defiantly at the floor. Filthy cords and worn-out shoes. Those shoes had seen a lot of walking. He had about ten pounds of hair and it must have been months since it was cut. Road kid, Huey concluded. Stealing his way across the country. His mouth was young and his upper lip was just beginning to darken with fuzz, but there was something in the set of his brows that suggested maturity. A forced maturity, but still one that needed to be dealt with.

  Huey gave his opinion. “I think we better l
ock him up tight.”

  “How old are you, kid?” Al asked.

  The boy hesitated and rubbed his wrist so the chain on the handcuffs clinked softly.

  “I’m eighteen.”

  Al shrugged. “Well, I guess he goes into the Penthouse.” He studied the boy a moment longer, then advised, not unkindly, “You watch yourself up there, kid.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  That was a fool thing to say, Doug told himself bitterly. He watched the cell door open and stop with a sharp “clang.”

  There wasn’t a man in sight, but Doug could sense the congested life locked up all around him. He hesitated in front of the open door, but then he saw the jailer outside the tank motioning for him to shake it up. He took a deep breath and slipped into the cell. The door slammed shut behind him.

  There were four bunks, two on each side, an upper and a lower. Three of them were full, the heavy figures muffled in their blankets, but the lower right was empty. Doug slipped into it, still holding his blanket roll. He wanted to get out of sight because he couldn’t see how the men in the cell could still be asleep after the noise the door had made.

  He thought he knew why he’d lied about his age. He was sick of being called “kid”—it was just another way for people to tell him they didn’t think he was much of anything. Kid. Besides, he didn’t want to go to another juvenile tank, where he’d be up to his neck in probation officers trying to find out where he lived, who his parents were and all the rest of it.

  That was how he felt standing in the booking room. But when they’d taken him upstairs and he’d seen the cold gray metal of the felony tank and heard the cell door banging shut, he’d been scared. Like a little kid he had wanted to shout: I take it back!

  He was still scared, huddled on the bare mattress. The cell seemed too quiet, as if it were waiting for something, and even though he couldn’t see them, he was intensely conscious of the presence of the other three men. Somewhere out in the tank a small light made crazy shadows in the cell, and there was the whisper of heavy breathing. Somewhere a man groaned, and metal thudded with a soft hollowness.