Excerpt from Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosley, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The guards didn't have anyone clean my cell.

It was in that stink that I became a murderer-in-waiting. The next time Mink passed my cell door he leaned forward, pretending to get a whiff of me. He miscalculated by five inches and I got him. Before the clown-man knew it, I had him in the chokehold I'd used against many of his peers. I'd kill him and anybody else who even thought about putting a hand on me. I'd be in prison for the rest of my life, but everybody from Mink's friends to the warden would know better than to ever get within reach again.

The guards got to us before I could kill the ugly, piss-slinging convict. They had to open the door to pry me loose from my victim. Then the peacekeepers and I had one helluva fight. I never knew what it was like to be pummeled with a truncheon; you don't feel the blows through the rage, but that night the bone bruises hurt like hell.

Just a few days and I'd switched allegiances from cop to criminal. I thought that was the worst thing…but I was wrong.

* * *

The next afternoon, when I had grown accustomed to the smell of piss in my clothes, a group of four guards approached my cell wearing head-to-toe riot gear. Someone hit the switch to pop the door open and they rushed me, pinning me to the floor and chaining my wrists and forearms around the waist and to the leg irons on my ankles. Then they dragged me down one hall after another until I was tossed into a room so small that three men wouldn't have been able to play blackjack at the miniature metal table that was soldered to the floor.

I was chained in a metal chair to the table and the floor. Many a suspect had been tethered before me like that while I interrogated them. I had never really understood how they felt or how anyone could expect someone to have any kind of revelatory conversation while being hog-tied in that manner.

I struggled against my bonds, but the pain from the previous day's bruises was too great and I had to stop.

When I quit moving, time congealed around me like amber over a mosquito that had taken a small misstep. I could hear my breaths and feel the pulse in my temples. It was in that moment I understood the phrase serving time. I was that servant.

Just as I gave up hope, a tall and, some say, handsome Irishman walked into the room.

"Gladstone," I uttered. It might have been a psalm.

"You look like shit, your highness."

"And I smell like piss."

"I wasn't gonna mention that," he said, taking the metal chair across the table from mine. "They called and told me that you put a convict in the hospital along with three guards to keep him company. You broke one dude's nose and another guy's jaw."

The grin on my face was involuntary. I could see my pain reflected in Gladstone's eyes.

"What's wrong with you, Joe?"

"It's like a crazy house in here, Glad. I been beat, cut, and showered in piss. And no one even gives a damn."

Dispatch Sergeant Gladstone Palmer was lean and mean, six foot one (two inches on me), with a mouth that was always smiling or getting ready to do so. He stared at me and shook his head.

"It's a shame, boyo," he said. "They turned on you like a pack of dogs."

"Who signed the papers on the girl?" I asked.

"It was an e-mail from the chief of Ds, but when I called his office they said that they never sent it."

"I didn't force that woman."

"It would help if your dick wasn't so big and black. Just looking at her look at it, you could imagine how scared she was."

"What about the rest of the video?"

"The only camera was in the living room. That's all it showed."

I remembered then that she wanted to go up to the bed after the first movement of our tragic opera. It was a plan.

Excerpted from Down the River unto the Sea by Walter Mosley. Copyright © 2018 by Walter Mosley. Excerpted by permission of Mulholland. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.