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always do is open the drawers. Looking for clues. Not that any were necessary. It’s not like it’s hard to figure out the kind of person who would end up in this kind of place. Once you hit the ground, does it matter how many floors you fell?
    I put down my bag, shoved the port-a-bed back into its slot and got to work.
    The silverware drawer came out with a yank. Empty. A cabinet over the sink window hung by one hinge. For a second, I took in the view. A high fence separated my row of trailers from a trio of much nicer double-wides. My tin can was plopped on soiled dirt; grass grew between the trailers on the other side and a gravel pathway led from the road to each front door. Up the path to the first, a white guard walked behind a black couple—following as stately as the flower girl in a wedding. The convict was rail thin in prison denims, the woman in large sunglasses, tasseled red leather vest and Capri pants that clung to the dimpled pillars of her calves. They’d already started to split in the back.
    They disappeared around a corner. I eased open the overhead cabinet, releasing an avalanche of magazines. Fat glossies bounced off the throbbing egg on my head, a souvenir of Zell’s walker. I glanced down at a picture of a doe-eyed Asian girl in traction. She pouted from her hospital bed, in a neck brace, one arm and both legs in traction, a sliver of white bush-shmushing panties peeping out between them. I closed the magazine, but there she was again—the Japanese victim-girl—beaming and damaged, legs drilled with metal pins, one eye black, an arm in a sling, from the glossy, waterlogged cover of June 2004’s
Broken Dolls.
    I didn’t hear Rincin open the door. He tilted his head, glanced at the cover of the magazine, then straightened up and looked back at me. “Glad to see you’ve made yourself at home.”
    I waited for him to say “Gotcha!”
    When he didn’t I scooped a couple of magazines from the sink: back issues of
Moppets
and a well-thumbed
Clown Sex
catalogue. Rincin saw the things and raised his eyebrows. “Hey,” I said, “I didn’t bring these from home.”
    By way of reply he grabbed a copy of
Pony Girls
featuring a big-thighed brunette pulling a bald man in a two-wheeled carriage on the cover.
“Yippy-ki-yay!”
he said with no enthusiasm.
    “Moppets, clown whores and pony girls? No wonder the guy drank,” I said.
    “Naw.” Rincin started scooping up the porno. “He didn’t drink ’cause he was a perv, he drank ’cause he was a perv who liked the taste of Schlitz. Besides which, he was probably selling these inside.” He opened an
Ebony She-Male
and eyed the glossy contents appraisingly. “You could get five bucks a page for this out on the yard. Six if they’re cherry.”
    I didn’t ask what he planned to do with them. Maybe we each had something on each other. Maybe not.
    “By the way,” said the sergeant, indicating the splendor around us, “this is just temporary. They’re hooking up the power on a new box, just for you.”
    “Really? ’Cause I’ll miss this place.” I ran a hand over the mildewed counter. “Kidding! That sounds good.”
    “I don’t know about good, but it’s better than this pud hut. Meanwhile the warden wants to see you.”
    “Right now?” I don’t know why I was panicked.
    “Not till after I bleed my lizard,” he said, squeezing past me again. “Scuse me, the little boys’ is this a-way.”
    I didn’t want to stand there, so I stepped outside. His stream was so high-impact the snailback’s two good wheels vibrated. Then I looked up and realized it was a helicopter coming in for a landing. Rincin saw me watching the chopper when he stepped out behind me, plopping his hat back on. “Don’t worry, Dr. Drew, it’s probably a medevac. They’re not coming for you.”
    “Funny. But I’m not really Dr. Drew.”
    “I know that. But you do what he does, right?”
    “Oh, sure. Except I’m not a doctor. I don’t have my own TV and