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

I clutched my cell-made blackjack at all times. Somebody was going to die by my hand—after two weeks it didn't much matter who.

* * *

I had eaten eighty-three nauseating meals when, while I was asleep, four riot-geared officers came into my cell and shackled me. I fumbled my blackjack because the sudden light from outside my crypt-like cell blinded and disoriented me.

I yelled at my captors, demanding they tell me where they were taking me, but no one answered. Now and then someone hit me, but those were just love taps compared to what they could have done.

They deposited me in a pretty big room, attaching my bonds to steel eyes that were anchored to the floor. I sat at the butt end of a long table. The fluorescent light burned my eyes and gave me a headache. I wondered if someone was going to come in there and kill me. I knew that this was still America and that people who worked for the law did not execute without the will of the courts, but I was no longer sure of that knowledge. They might execute me because they knew I had become an unrepentant murderer behind their prison walls.

"Mr. Oliver," a woman said.

I looked in the direction the voice came from and was amazed to see that she had made it into the room without my notice. Behind her stood a hale black man uniformed in a blue that was new to me. I hadn't heard them come in. Sounds had taken on new meanings in my head, and I couldn't be sure of what I heard.

I yelled a word at her that I had never used before, or since. The man in the blue suit rushed forward and slapped me…pretty hard.

I strained every muscle trying to break my restraints, but prison chains are designed to be greater than human sinew.

"Mr. Oliver," the woman said again.

She was fair-skinned, tall, and slender, with salt-and-pepper hair and a pants suit that was muted navy. She wore glasses. The lenses glittered, obscuring her eyes.

"What?"

"I am Underwarden Nichols and I am here to inform you that you are being released."

"What?"

"As soon as Lieutenant Shale and I leave, the men that brought you here will remove your bonds, take you to a place where you can shower and shave, and then give you clothes and some money. From there on your life is your own."

"What about—what about the charges?"

"They've been dropped."

"What about my wife, my life?"

"I know nothing about your personal dealings, Mr. Oliver, only that you are to be released."

* * *

I saw my face for the first time in months in the polished steel mirror next to the small shower where I cleaned up. Shaving revealed the vicious gaping scar down the right side of my face. They didn't always offer stitches at Rikers.

* * *

When I got off the bus at the Port Authority on Forty-Second Street I stopped and looked around, realizing how hollow the word freedom really was.

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.