Free Brass Rainbow by Michael Collins

would hold back on his fists: he was sure the drug charge would hold up, and I would tell all soon; or he had orders from higher up that they were interested in me.
    I thought about both possibilities for a long time. I didn’t sleep much. No one came near me. The off-key whistling went on. Other men complained. Men coughed. It was a long night.
    They got us up early, let us scratch and dab water in our eyes, fed us, and marched us to the paddy wagon. The wagon drove us through a gray dawn city in bitter cold. We hunched, and hawked, and spat, and coughed. (Even one night in jail and you begin to think not as “I” but as “we.”)
    At Centre Street we were herded into Headquarters fast as if they were afraid that our collection of drunks, bums, and petty crooks was planning a daring escape with the aid of gunmen hidden behind every parked car. We waited in the bullpen behind the line-up stage. No one talked. For the detectives with us, the line-up was an annoying duty too early in the day. For us prisoners it was the final moment of hope; the last chance.
    Ninety percent of prisoners each day are small, habitual lawbreakers. Once arraigned and charged, they know the rest by heart. They can tell you the result of the trial, and the sentence, the instant they are charged before a judge. So it is the line-up they face uneasily. The line-up is where they can still hope for release, where maybe they will still walk away free for one more day. And as each name is called, they shuffle up the steps onto the stage, nervous and with hopeful eyes. For ninety-nine out of a hundred it is a feeble hope.
    My turn came, and Freedman pushed me up the four steps. I stood out under the bright lights with my head just reaching the five-foot-ten mark. It is an unnerving experience. You can never know what you look like to other people, and on that stage you know you look guilty of every crime there is.
    â€œThis specimen is Daniel Fortune,” the interrogating officer of the day announced.
    I recognized the voice. It was Captain Gazzo.

10
    G AZZO TALKED to the audience, “Fortune was picked up on a tip. He was under morphine, the tools around him. He …”
    I thought about that game they play on television: To Tell the Truth. It is the line-up made into amusement for the millions. Something is wrong with people who make the pain of the line-up into a parlor game. When a man is in the line-up, he is trying to save his existence. If he lies, it is because he is desperate, because he faces pain and the terror of a cell. On the TV show a man lies for applause and a prize. If he lies well, he feels important. It makes you wonder.
    â€œTell us about it, Fortune,” Grazzo said.
    I told them about the frame, and about my search for Weiss, but I left out Baron’s story about Weiss and the $25,000. I heard them breathing out there. Most of them were police, professional and detached, but some were ordinary citizens. The public. The gray monster. Not because they were mean or vicious, but because they don’t know, they are in the dark. They cannot know the pain of the single stranger up on the stage. That is not an accusation; it is a fact. We are all part of the gray monster until, by some stroke of chance, we are up there alone on the stage.
    â€œFortune has no history of junk,” Gazzo explained to the audience. “He’s got no yellow sheet. He’s a private detective, when he works at it. He’s also been a seaman, waiter, tourist guide, farmhand, laborer, actor, student, sometime journalist, and God knows what else. A middle-age roustabout. I doubt if he ever made enough to support even a small habit. How come you never work hard, Fortune?”
    â€œI never found the work, Captain.”
    I never found work worth doing for its own sake. The best I found is trying to solve other people’s problems. I’ve talked to people all over the world, and not many could ever tell me,