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admit any criminal relationships. ‘I did throw raves years ago, though.’
    ‘That’s it then. Raves. Ecstasy,’ Chad said. ‘With a bond like that, you might be on the news tonight.’
    ‘I hope not,’ I said, fearing members of my family in Arizona would see me.
    A guard slid a large plastic bag into the doorway. ‘Who’s hungry?’ The prisoners all shifted towards him at once, like ducks on a pond to someone with bread. He threw brown paper bags at them.
    ‘They’re Ladmo bags,’ Chad said. ‘Green-baloney sandwiches.’
    Things such as food were far from my mind. Curious, I looked in the Ladmo bag. A grapefruit. Bread dotted with blue mould. Slices of processed cheese leaking an orange oil. Green baloney – slimy cuts of meat, iridescent but with an underlying greenish shine.
    Baloney consists of various low-grade meats, fat, flavourings, preservatives and colourants. Sheriff Joe Arpaio introduced it in an attempt to get the cost of feeding each inmate down to 40 cents a day. Green baloney is unfit for commercial sale due to oxidation, and it was often delivered to the jail in bags labelled ‘Not For Human Consumption’. Stolen by inmates, some of these bags surfaced in the offices of attorneys suing Arpaio. The term Ladmo bag came from the children’s television programme The Wallace and Ladmo Show . Ladmo distributed paper bags to children with food and toy gifts. The bags had a surprise element and became skimpier over time, hence the analogy.
    In a hurry to distance myself from the rank smell, I off-loaded my Ladmo bag on the men casting around for leftovers. Attempting to refresh my mouth, I ate the grapefruit.
    ‘Attwood! Come on! Hurry up!’ yelled a female guard.
    ‘Right here!’ I scrambled to my feet, relieved to be on the move again.
    ‘Go and see her in that room in the corner.’
    The room was full of electronic equipment, like a photocopy store.
    ‘Who’re you?’ a woman asked.
    ‘Attwood.’
    ‘Wash your hands and come here.’ I resented her talking to me as if I were a piece of property. She grabbed my arm, spread my fingers onto a scanner and rolled each finger. Each print surfaced on a screen with the words: PRINT SUCCESSFUL. She printed the various sections of my hand. ‘You’re done with me. See her.’
    ‘Put this ink on your hands!’ yelled another female. ‘Good. Now gimme your hand.’ She grabbed my hand, separated and pressed my fingers down. ‘Relax! Relax! What’s wrong with you?’ Her attitude made me seethe inside. She pushed my hand onto the inkpad and then my palm onto the print card.
    ‘Wipe the ink off your hands with this.’ At arm’s length, she gave me a paper towel. It disintegrated immediately, so I had to wipe my hands on my jeans. ‘See him next,’ she said.
    ‘Stand on that line. Look up at the camera. OK. Good.’
    The camera flashed.
    ‘Put your head in there,’ he said, pointing at a metal box.
    I didn’t like the look of the metal box. ‘I’m not going to get radiation from this, am I?’
    ‘No. It just takes a picture. Put your eye up against that part.’ He pushed a button and my retina appeared on a screen.
    In the next cell, I again perched on the end of a top bunk. I felt safer up there, above the mass of testy men, cockroaches and drunken hobos. An ache soon spread throughout my body. It must have been the small hours because I was exhausted from sleep deprivation – almost a day since my arrest.
    ‘Everyone pee who needs to pee! You’re going to court!’ a female yelled.
    The sleepy group rose and formed a line for the toilet. Men aired their hopes of getting their bonds reduced, raising mine.
    The guard yelled names to the tune of urine splashing, water flushing and bursts of flatulence.
    ‘Attwood!’
    Thirsting for fresh air, I stepped into the corridor.
    ‘Go sit in that booth, Attwood!’
    A lady in a booth slid out a form. The young woman hovering behind her was the one who had conferred with Detective Reid