The Voting Machine

True Confessions

I remember the first time I thought I was going to die. I was barely thirteen and Flytrap had me running dime bags down at Echo Park. The place was different back then, no bearded bros working on laptops, no white girls with tattoos on their arms, no Starbucks up the street on West Sunset Boulevard. Back then, the park lawns were rotten with junkies, the walls of the bathrooms were covered in graffiti. Every now and then, they'd find a dead body drifting in the lake.

One afternoon a pair of cops snatched us like a couple of rag dolls and threw us in the back of their squad car. At first I thought they'd just take us to the station and call our parents. But then I saw Flytrap scare and I knew something was off. My friend wouldn't worry about getting taken to the station. But he would worry about getting picked up by dirty cops for selling dope on someone else's turf.

The officers dragged us into an old train yard south of downtown. They tossed us on the gravel and proceeded to kick the shit out of us. The heels of their shoes hammered at my ribs until skin broke and bones cracked. Then they pulled out batons and started swatting us from behind. Pain throbbed in places I had never felt before. I was on my hands and knees, moaning like a dog, my eyes stinging with blood, dirt and tears. My limbs gave out and I collapsed on the gravel, flat as a pancake. And just when it seemed I couldn't take it any longer, I was floating in the air, hovering like a cloud, gazing down at the pathetic victim I'd become. Watching my assailants from my vantage in the sky, I felt a strange liberation.

You may have my body but you don't have my soul.

***

I was naked and shivering when the FBI agents pulled the hood off. I was hanging from my arms, strapped to an overhead pipe running along the ceiling. We were trapped in a concrete box with four moldy, walls. The stench of sewage was smothering. I tried to inhale but the air wouldn't enter. It was like my lungs were clenched shut in a vise.

"Taking a deep breath won't work," Polk explained. She still had Nate's blood splattered on her sleeves. "You need to take slow sips. Otherwise, you suffocate from your own weight. You'll kill yourself eventually but you still have plenty of time before that happens."

Another prisoner wriggled on the floor underneath me. He was tied and naked like me, a hood still covering his head. This was even scarier than the time I got my ass whooped by Five-O. I'd never heard about the FBI doing something like this but then again there were so many things I didn't know.

Decatur was bent down on one knee beside the other prisoner. He was tearing open a cardboard box full of energy drinks, the type of item you might see on the supply shelves at Dollar Delight. He removed six tall cans from the box and lined them up against the wall next to a plastic, yellow bucket. It was only a day since the agents brought me to the North Vegas office for questioning. A blonde white guy and a pretty black woman, both photogenic enough to be a pair of local TV news casters. I imagined that they'd both led charmed lives of some sort, starring in high school sports, winning scholarships, making it into elite careers in law enforcement. And now they had a choice assignment, the chance to interrogate a genuine domestic terrorist.

"The quicker you confess, the quicker we get you down from there and you start breathing normal again," Polk said. "You need to understand that we know you killed them. We are one hundred percent certain. Chang and Weisbein were shot with a Glock semi-automatic, the one Teresa gave you. She received it from Chang. You are probably already aware they were in a relationship. The casings from the crime scene match the weapon to records on file. There's zero doubt."

I struggled to speak, battling my body to suck in air and spit it out again. "I don't have a gun."

"We know that. You got rid of the gun. We recovered it from the flood tunnel underneath Rainbow Avenue. It's missing two rounds. Your fingerprints are all over it."

My temples throbbed and I rolled my neck back and forth. She was bluffing. There was no way they could've found the gun in that tunnel.

"Show it to me," I whispered.

She punched me hard in the ribs, the same spot where the cops kicked me all those years ago. My stomach burned with pain until I threw up blood on the floor below. She cursed as she stepped back. Now she had the blood of two people splattered on her pants suit. Decatur tapped her shoulder and whispered something in her ear.

I remembered something Flytrap once told me about being in custody. "You gotta remember how they gonna try to play you, Temo. They'll beat you and scare you. They'll say they got all this evidence and shout you down if you try to deny it. That's 'cause all they want is your confession. Once they have your confession, they good to go."