The police station is dangerous green, quaking paranoia leaking from pores. Coffee machine dictatorship as I see Ernie sweating it out at the city desk, preparing to identify a body. We nod to each other but passionless custodians of public power echo megalomaniacal mistreads down forgotten corduroy roads. I am ushered to a desk in a room where rats in cubicles type angry renunciations in dried out computer terminal shorthand. And it occurs to me, vultures circle for a reason.

“Now this is not a lie detector test,” the detective, Swearingen, tells me over black coffee rotten fruit. “You will not be graded on accuracy. We are merely here to provide a framework. You can be misled as we all are. The intention is to bring down the top, you see?” and he makes the pyramid with his two hands.
Cockroaches crawl over unwashed windows and I realize the sun didn’t go down, the earth spun around.
“Now, look,” Swearingen continues around a mouthful of purple filled donut. “We have almost all the information we need. We have eyewitnesses and we have circumstantial evidence. What we don’t have is facts. Facts can be a tricky thing, don’t you think?”

The H is beginning to wear off and I realize that drunken boozers think they’re prizefighters, that I’ll be locked in a cage with these animals, left to face withdrawal on my own. My only recourse is to get a doctor in to see me. I have to convince this man of my inherent need.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Swearingen goes on, picking up my mood. “You think that this is formality in the large scheme of things. That the real struggle is with the come down. Well isn’t that what you wanted?”
I stare at him.
“Or had you had something else in mind? I want to know what you were thinking, Josh. I want to know if you envisioned grimy crawling on the floor in filth, vomitous, broken joint exhaustion. Or if you imagined great golden copulations in the sky. Which was it? Where did you think your life was leading?”
I mumble weakly that I never imagined my life going anywhere.
“That’s just it,” the detective says with a smile. “Did you get that?” he asks the officer typing up the report. “Subject admits that he has no cognizant sense of future. That’ll be nice on the file.”

I look around the room, angry virulent climate of a hostile culture. Ernie is being led away by his shackles, a lollipop held in his hand.
“That one of yours?” Swearingen asks, motioning towards Ernie. “Looks like you two share an inside joke.”
He reaches under the desk and pulls out a Bible. “Now let’s think about this for a minute. If I ask you to place your hand on this book, you are committing to tell the truth under penalty of damnation.” He pushes the Bible towards me and asks, “How sincere are you, Josh?”

I tell him that I do not believe in the Bible. This satisfies him in some obscure way and he asks that this statement be added to the report also.
“But going back to jokes,” he says, “I’ve got one for you. What happens to the junkie with the hot dose? He dies. What happens to the junkie that lies to the cops? He dies. What happens to the junkie that stays out of jail? He dies. What happens to the junkie that works for the cops? He dies. Do you see what I’m saying?”
I offer, “That’s not a joke, it’s a theme.”
This turns Swearingen’s face to stone. “Stop typing,” he instructs the officer. “This guy’s going up to the roof with me.

I struggle with my handcuffs but can’t free even a quarter inch of myself. On the roof, the sun is finally fully gone. There is a bird attacking a dead rat’s corpse in the far corner and Swearingen drags me towards it.
“Now what I was saying with the jokes, Josh,” he tells me as we watch the bird devour bits of the dead rat, “is that life has only one punchline. Let me tell you a story about coming off the street. You see, I was once like you. A head, no mind or memory, existing on borrowed sensory perception. I had it boiled down to the few acts necessary. I didn’t sleep in a cardboard box like some of you guys, but I was there at the time. I was down on your level.”
He lifts his wallet from his pocket and flashes his badge at me. “This saved me, see. It gave me something to hope for. There’s hope for you too.”

By now he’s leading me towards the edge of the roof, a dead fish hand clamped on one of my wrists. All the time, he’s going on with his marvelous rap, “Shooting fish in a barrel. Shooting, you see, is reserved for those with a serious habit. No one injects until they have to. My first shot of morphine, I believed I was a civil rights activist in the south. I bounced up, could have been going shopping for all I knew. You ever felt that pressure in your chest, that one that says to get out now? What am I saying, sure you have. I’ve seen your marks. You don’t get a habit like that just turning the paper. I can take you in right now but I’m not gonna. I want to put you to work for me.”

We’re at the edge of the roof and he has me step up onto the brick ledge, hand still clamping my wrist. “Now then,” he says, “are you gonna jump or am I gonna push you?”
I let the silence hang between us, too proud or ashamed to answer the question.
“That would be something, wouldn’t it?” he asks, peering over the edge at the street below. “Becoming a pusher after I’ve gotten this far in the force. I’m not gonna push you and you’re not gonna jump, Josh. I was testing your mettle. Ice water in your veins, no doubt about it. I’m gonna cut you a deal.”
He pulls me off the ledge and pushes me down on my ass. He begins to pace back and forth.

“Thing like this,” he’s saying softly to himself, “gotta offer the guy something. But then I’ve got my side to think about. Can’t just turn and go, not anymore. But he could be useful. Oh yes, he could be useful. Let’s give him time to think. Solitary, five days. Sweat the junk out.”
He turns to me and, though I’ve only heard about half of what he said and none of it made sense, he asks, “So what do you say? Sound fair to you?”
I just stare at him and he starts laughing. I tentatively join his laughing, at which point he immediately stops and says, “That’s enough out of you, junkie. That counts as your phone call.”
Then he leads me back into the building, walking over crushed glass, until we’re in a basement holding cell with a single bare bulb lighting the cage.

“Don’t let the bed bugs bite,” he says, pointing at a centipede that’s crawling up the wall. “Two fisted tyrant, right?”
“I think I’m just gonna nod out here,” I reply.
“Of course,” he says in a motherly tone. “You do whatever you have to. You sweat the stuff out and we’ll work out an arrangement.”
“Would it be possible,” I question, “for me to see my doctor?”
“Your doctor’s burned,” he answers quickly. “Leaving the business. Too many painkiller scripts, liquid morphine and so forth, until he couldn’t get it accepted at the pharmacies. Somebody saw red and broke both his arms. He’s away to Europe, maybe. Could be China. Nobody knows anything. I’m sorry to be the one to tell you.”
“Then another doctor, maybe?” I ask, really beginning to sweat.
“Doctors don’t come in if they don’t know a patient. You can make an appointment on the outside. But first you’re going to hear me out.”
I sit back, bracing myself for more attacks, but he merely turns and walks away.
The idea that he’s going to come at me again when I’m off the H and sober fills me with terror.