Witch Hunt(4)

All the cops were going to see was a man who got drunk off his ass and killed a woman.
But if I ran, if I resisted—like the burn of adrenaline in my veins wanted me to do—they were going to see a man who had killed a woman and was fighting them. It’d be as good as digging myself a nice, deep grave.
I had to cooperate. That was what Suzy said. “Cooperate with the police; we’ll be there shortly.” Like I had any other option.
Then my door was getting kicked open, there were hands forcing me to the floor, and I was handcuffed.
And mostly, I was just thinking that I was definitely never drinking tequila again.






 
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CHAPTER THREE

The police station kind of smelled like piss. You know, ammonia. That chemical in urine that seemed to be impossible to scrub away once the puddle went dry. I could smell bleach, too—someone trying to clean up someone else’s mess.
Seemed like that was going to be a theme for the week.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been there. When Domingo got picked up for tagging in high school, that was where they had brought him: 77th Street Community Police Station. They were cool guys. They knew the neighborhood, they knew the kids, they knew who belonged and who didn’t. I didn’t know any of them by name anymore—it had been a long time since Domingo had gotten into that kind of trouble—but the cops walking me through the front door had the same honest faces that the old guys did.
They marched me past some desks that looked a lot like mine. The desks were covered in paperwork and staffed by exhausted men just trying to make the world a better place, when the world didn’t want to be made any better. They were underfunded and overscheduled and stressed out, just like I was.
But I wasn’t on the desk side of things now. The paperwork wasn’t my problem now. What had happened at my apartment—that was someone else’s bureaucratic nightmare.
The holding cell had a bench and a toilet and a barred window. The one next door had a couple of gang bangers that looked like they had won a fight. The right side of one guy’s face was purple, and the other one was bleeding through the bandages on his ribs. Whatever had happened to them, they were in good enough shape to be in jail. That meant they’d won.
The cops were polite about putting me in the holding cell and locking the door behind me. No manhandling or anything, just took off the cuffs and sat me down.
“I need a phone call,” I said.
One of my escorts said, “We’ll see what we can do.”
I wish I’d told them in the car that I worked for the FBI—the currently accepted cover story for OPA agents—because I was hesitant to say it after having met my two new roommates. I mean, I was an intimidating guy. I benched twice my body weight, my body fat was less than ten percent, and I looked like a freaking tank in gray sweat pants. But two gang members with stylized crosses on their throats and “SUR 13” on their foreheads weren’t going to be hot on chilling in a holding cell with a Fed. The next couple hours of my life would be easier if I kept my cover story to myself.
Once the cops were gone, there was nothing to do but read these guys’ life stories inked into their skin. I didn’t know human gang signs well. Give me a witch wearing chains of crystals and medallions, I could tell you his coven affiliation, status in the witching community, and even his favorite spells to cast. But a sad-looking Jesus, some elaborate crosses, eighteens and thirteens—I had no clue.
They didn’t think much of my staring. They stared back. Hard.
I wished I’d brought my last strength poultice with me when I’d gotten arrested.
I didn’t belong in jail. I wasn’t this guy. I wasn’t the one with the tats bleeding from an alleyway knife fight. Even when I’d gotten caught up in trouble with Domingo, it’d been property crime. Not this violent crap.
Bloody Face started cajoling me in Spanish. Whatever he was saying, it was probably offensive. I wouldn’t know. When my grandmother, who we called Abuelita, had come from San Salvador two generations back, she made sure all her kids spoke English. My parents, aunts, and uncles had never spoken Spanish, so I definitely didn’t. But I still had the looks, and these guys weren’t the first to think they could talk with me in “our” native language.#p#分页标题#e#
It was easy to tune out words I didn’t understand. It faded into the background of distant voices. I stretched out on the bench, folded my hands over my chest, focused on the window.