So I'm in the system: Shoelaces and belt stripped, I slump on the wooden bench with "Jose" and "Fuck this" carved in the wood; we are seven bodies rubbing and despising the closeness. After a short while, I say goodbye to Syringe and Justin; cops call my name, I step out, I'm recuffed, I am to be "processed" and then "lodged" in a precinct somewhere across Brooklyn where a body can slump more easily, in a less congested cell. In the peculiarly ill-starred circumstances of the night of Aug. 21, the "process" was farce.
I was put up against a wall for head shots, photos front and side, and then I was to be fingerprinted, but the computer was broken. "Identix," say the big letters above the screen. The Identix looks old and doomed, cannibalized from a '70s mainframe, but in fact it's the cutting edge of crime-fighting technology. The Identix TouchPrint 600 Live Scan Workstation, "the greatest invention since the two-way radio" (according to the literature), is a digital fingerprint scanner that with the speed of a fart fires off your prints to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System at the FBI, a "system that can race through fingerprints at a rate of 600 per second," and relays your data, the unmistakable soul of your palms, to a central database, uncovering who you really are, if you really are. Gone are those messy inkblot prints on index cards that expert eyes with magnifying glasses required two weeks to sort.
Advanced technology being what it is, tonight the Identix machines are dropping dead all across Brooklyn, going off-line, sending out "ERROR" messages, spontaneously rebooting as the cops sputter and curse and scratch their heads.
Orders come down: Find an Identix that works. Officers Moukazis and Pena, young cops, cuff me and walk me out of the 76th Precinct in my sloppy laceless boots, the beltless hanging pants. Moukazis resembled Radar from "M*A*S*H," quiet and stoop-shouldered with big, gentle, liquid eyes; a two-year rookie. Pena was Hispanic with a black mustache, squat and unspeaking but friendly when spoken to. They dropped me into the hard plastic backseats of the squad car, then sat down and ate pizza.
Thus began a four-hour odyssey, shuttling from precinct to precinct looking for that one Identix that would actually do its job. At the 78th Precinct, there was a drunk Russian in the cell next to mine. He told the officers: "My cock!" No one listened. The officers gathered like a tribe round the Identix, pushing buttons. "Suck my cock!" said the Russian, and the officers said, "This fuckin' machine!"
"I show you my cock, OK?" said the Russian.
The cops pecked dutifully and rebooted, and "You are beautiful -- for my cock!" echoed down the halls. When the Identix at the Seven-Eight decided permanently to shut down for the night and the cops started telling the screen "You fuh! You son-of-a-fuck!" officers Moukazis and Pena walked me out down the line of cells: I saw that the Russian had stripped naked; fat-roll folds hung over his crotch, obscuring his penis. Cops aren't paid enough for all the crap they put up with.
From the Seven-Eight to the streets, looking for that fabled Identix, Moukazis and Pena get lost. They really should know these streets; they are, after all, Brooklyn cops. "We, uh, only really know our precinct," Moukazis says, and you can't blame him; he lives in the suburbs.
"Hey," I finally speak up, "you guys want New York Ave. and Empire Boulevard, right? Turn around, this is wrong, you're going to Flatbush. About 10 blocks back you'll hit Empire ..." Then it's left here, right there, turn around, big dead-end sign, they ignore it; turn around once more, confusion, there's the precinct, wait make the right, MAKE THE RIGHT, Moukazis bottoms out the cruiser parking it on the sidewalk, we get out, again the long, slow slog with the laceless boots; the cop holds me firmly by the tricep.
Here the Identix was working (for the moment), but a bigger problem loomed: No one seemed to know how to use the machine. Officers gathered like clouds, stood around, sat in chairs, my fingers were grabbed, placed on a glass sheet that glowed red, the prints were scanned, all 10 fingers. But the prints could not be read; the Identix rejected the file.
"Christ," said Moukazis, who moved aside as others played with my fingers on the glass screen and others yawned. "Gettin' late," someone said. "Off in 27 minutes, and you guys can go fuck yourselves." It wasn't long until the Identix at the 71st -- it too sensing dawn -- went to sleep.
- - - - - - - - - - - -
I was at long last fingerprinted and lodged in a cell that had a toilet, a sink, a bench. Wet sleep on the bench, the night hot; took off my shirt and folded it to make a pillow; slept in twitches, a dreamless dead sleep; woke 20 minutes later. Then time began its long, slow, unbelievably long miniaturization, sitting in the shapes of flecked paint and riding around on cockroaches. Hours passed. There are kicks on the wall in the cell next door.
"Fuckin' let me out! Man, I fuckin' wasn't doin nothin' ... "
"Hey, asshole, I'm sleeping," another voice cries out. It's Syringe. I hear someone rapping Biggie Smalls -- Justin, the unbreakable wigga; no sleep till Jersey. So we all made it to the same hole. And the guy kicking the wall, I recognized his voice too: It was the Irish Guido. Back at the 76th, the Guido, a tall, good-looking construction foreman in his 20s, kept cornering himself in the 6-by-8 cell, unbuttoning his jeans and looking down his pants. "Jesus, aw God," he would whisper, dumping his hand into the pants to scratch like a cat.