The Launch

Chapter Twenty-Three

At last, I'm where I belong. All my pigeons have come home to roost. My bad deeds have caught up with me and here I am, rotting away in the slammer, hoosegow, big house or whatever. The Sudbury Police Station. JC and I were together in a holding cell with a guy called Mike who had gotten drunk and put his car in a ditch, which is against the law and also going to play havoc with his insurance rates. I told him it would be cheaper for him to just fix his own damage, never tell his insurance company about the accident and hope they don't pull a random spot check on his MVR. He nodded and then knelt down in the corner for another round of the dry heaves, which made me feel like retching, too.

JC just sat in the corner watching Mike convulsing and me pacing around inside the cell. He kept himself to himself for the most part. We each called our wives with our phone calls and then we waited around all night for something to happen. We had a toilet, a sink, two metal bunks and a bench along one wall. Our gray cement block and poured concrete floor was a classic institutional decor scheme. The smell was a mingling of gym locker room with undertones of ass. Mike must have flushed well, for there were no acidic vomit notes.

It was impossible to sleep, so we paced up and down, sat around, lay around and otherwise killed time with our ammunition of remorse. I was suffering from some kind of time-bending hysterical fatigue, where I was jittery and near comatose at the same time. I thought, was this what jail was always going to be like? Four walls and a mind pulsating with fear trapped inside an incarcerated body? Then I thought, serves my mind right for coming up with such a stupid, stupid plan.

Early this morning, Mike was taken out for an appearance before a judge, flashing me the thumbs-up on the way by. As the guard slammed the cell door shut behind him, I thought, that might have been the last insurance advice of my career.

It was a couple of hours later by the time they finally came to get us and I thought we would be going in to face the judge also, but we both got taken to separate little rooms. I'm hanging out by myself. Just me and my roosting pigeons, metaphorically speaking. I've been in here for about an hour now, which is fine with me, because at least I'm not looking at iron bars. The walls are bare and the only thing in the room is a table with four chairs around it. I'm sitting here wishing I had a deck of cards or something. There's no two-way mirror in the room, but there is a camera up in the top corner near the ceiling tiles. Maybe the architect of the Sudbury jail never watches Law & Order, because I'm pretty sure the cops love an audience when they sweat a perp.

Maybe this is their way of making me sweat, just sitting by myself, wondering what's going to happen. But I know what's going to happen. Court appearance, public defender, trial, Kingston Pen. There is no mystery and here is as good as any place to hang out for now. Although I guess I am wondering if there will be some kind of extradition hearing and a plan to take us back to New York for trial on kidnapping and extortion charges. Oh, the possibilities. Canadian court or American court? Black and white stripes or blue coveralls?

The initial terror and sick feeling during our arrest hardened into a crystalline mass in the pit of my stomach over several hours and the ensuing dread and fearful anticipation cooled over time also. All I'm left with is mild depression and a sense of resignation to my fate. I lost it all the moment we put Ray in the back seat of my Honda, so it's been gone for a long time now. I notice that my teeth feel like they're wearing little sweaters because I haven't brushed them in something like twenty-four hours or so. At least I still have my sense of humor, which is always a valuable thing for someone whose life sucks as much as mine.

Speaking of sucking, the door opens and I hear the footsteps of the next chapter of my fate coming through the doorway and I'm almost too tired to care. I look up to see whether it is a cop or my lawyer, but of all the people I didn't expect to see, looking so beautiful and teary-eyed that it breaks my heart in a single second and makes me choke down a sob as I jump up to hug her, my Jessica was the biggest and best surprise I could have ever had.