“That’s good, we’ll lock him up. Maybe he’ll talk then. You come along with us, too. We want you to identify the dead one.”

The city jail was but a few blocks away and all four of us walked there together. They took me inside and unlocked the handcuffs. A man at a desk asked my name and age. I was then taken out the back door, and across a yard into the jail building and locked in a cell with a solid iron door, in a remote corner of the building. They didn’t threaten to beat me up, and asked no more questions. A jailer came at noon with a trusty, who put a pan of very good stew, a tin cup of coffee, and half a loaf of bread in the cell.

I said to the jailer: “Mister, could I see a lawyer?”

He shut the door and locked it without answering me. The door wasn’t opened again till midnight. I was lying awake on a bunk fighting bedbugs in the dark. It seemed they were trying to eat me alive.

“Step out here, young man.”