DR07 - Dixie City Jam Read Online Free PDF Page A

political
reasons, enjoy talking
about country club jails. But any jail anywhere is a bad place to be.
Anyone who thinks otherwise has never been in one.
    Imagine an environment where the lights never go off and you
defecate in full view of others on a toilet seat streaked with other
people's urine, where you never quite fall asleep, where you are
surrounded by the sounds of clanging iron, irrational voices resonating
down stone corridors, a count-man or irritated turnkey whanging his
baton off steel bars, or the muffled and tormented cries of an
eighteen-year-old fish being gang-raped behind a shower wall.
    Perhaps even a worse characteristic of jail is the denial of
any identity you might have had before you stepped inside a piece of
geography where time can sometimes be measured in five-minute
increments that seem borne right out of Dante's ninth ring. Here you
quickly learn that the personal violation of your
self
is considered as insignificant and ongoing an occurrence as routine
body cavity searches, as the spraying of your genitals for crab lice,
or as a wolf telling the server in the chow line to spit in your food,
until you no longer think of yourself as an exception to the rules of
jailhouse romance'.
    Batist spent the night in the tank and wasn't booked until the
next morning. I sat on a wood chair in a waiting area next to a squad
room and a row of glassed-in offices, one of which was Nate Baxter's.
Through a doorway at the back of the squad room I could see the holding
tank where Batist was still being held, though he had already been
fingerprinted and photographed.
    I had been waiting an hour and a half to see Nate Baxter. Then
Sergeant Lucinda Bergeron walked past me, in navy blue slacks, a
starched white short-sleeve shirt, and a lacquered black gunbelt with a
leather pouch for handcuffs. She carried a clipboard in her hand, and
if she noticed me, her face didn't show it.
    'Excuse me, Sergeant,' I said.
    She stopped and looked at me but said nothing. Her eyes were
turquoise and elongated, like an Oriental's, and her cheekbones were
rouged high up on her face.
    'Could I talk with you a minute?' I asked.
    'What is it?'
    'I'm Dave Robicheaux. You left a message for me with Cletus
Purcel.'
    'Yes?'
    'I came in and filed a report with Sergeant Motley yesterday.'
    She looked at me, her face as still and expressionless as a
picture painted upon the air.
    'I was at Calucci's Bar,' I said. 'You asked me to come in and
file a statement.'
    'I understood you. What can I help you with?' she said.
    'I have a friend back there in the tank. The black man, Batist
Perry. He's already been booked.'
    'What do you want from me?'
    'How about getting him moved into a holding cell?'
    'You'll have to talk to the officer in charge.'
    'That's what I've been trying to do. For an hour and a half.'
    'I can't help you. I'm sorry.'
    She walked away to her desk, which was located in the squad
room, among the uniformed officers, rather than in an enclosed office.
Ten minutes later Baxter stepped out of his office door, studying some
papers in his hand, then glanced in my direction and beckoned to me
with one finger.
    While I sat down across from him, he tipped his cigarette
ashes in an ashtray and continued to concentrate on the papers on his
desk blotter. He looked rested and fresh, in a sky blue sports coat and
a crinkling shirt that was the color of tin.
    'You're really charging Batist with murder?' I said.
    'That decision comes down from the prosecutor's office,
Robicheaux. You know that.'
    'The man's never been in trouble. Not in his whole life. Not
even for a misdemeanor. What's the matter with you?'
    'Well, he's in trouble now. In a big way.' He leaned forward
and tipped his ashes into his ashtray, cocking his eyebrows at me.
    'I don't think you have a case, Nate. I think this is all
smoke.'
    'His prints are on the door at the crime scene.'
    'That's impossible.'
    'Tell that to our fingerprint man. Does this look like smoke
to you?' He