Most inmates housed in Arpaio’s jail system are unsentenced. They’re supposed to be presumed innocent until found guilty, yet the conditions in the jail system are far worse than those in the prison system where sentenced inmates are housed.

Despite all of the adverse publicity and investigations, Arpaio is still in charge. He’s had two books published and starred in the TV shows Smile . . . You’re Under Arrest! and Inmate Idol.

The stock quotes flickering on the computer screen lost all importance as I rushed to the peephole. It was blacked out. Boots thudded up the outdoor stairs to our Scottsdale apartment.

Wearing only boxer shorts, I ran to the bedroom. ‘Claudia, wake up! It’s the cops!’

‘Tempe Police Department! Open the door!’

Claudia scrambled from the California king. ‘What should we do?’ she asked, anxiously fixing her pink pyjamas.

‘Open the door!’

We searched each other’s faces.

‘Better open it,’ I said, but before I could make it to the door – boom! – it leapt off its hinges.

Big men in black fatigues and ballistic armour blitzed through the doorframe, aiming guns at us. Afraid of being shot, I froze. I gaped as they proceeded to convert my living room into a scene from a war movie.

‘Tempe Police Department! Get on the fucking ground now!’

‘Police! Police! On your bellies now!’

‘Hands above your heads!’

‘Don’t fucking move!’

As I dropped to the floor they fell upon me. There was a beating in my chest as if I had more than one heart. Crushed by hands, elbows, knees and boots, I could barely breathe. Cold steel snapped around my wrists. I was hoisted like a puppet onto my feet. As they yanked Claudia up by the cuffs, she pinched her eyes shut; when she opened them, tears spilled out.

‘I’m Detective Reid,’ said a tall burly man with thick dark hair and an intimidating presence. ‘English Shaun, you’re a big name from the rave scene. I’m sure this raid will vindicate the charges.’ There was a self-satisfied edge in his voice, as if he were savouring a moment of triumph.

Dazed by shock, I fumbled around for an appropriate response. ‘There’s nothing illegal in here.’

He smirked knowingly, then read my Miranda and consular rights.

I wanted to put my arms around Claudia to stop her trembling. ‘Don’t worry, love. Everything’s going to be all right,’ I said, trying to hide my fear.

‘Don’t fucking talk to her! You’re going outside!’ Detective Reid took a dirty T-shirt from the hamper and slapped it on my shoulder. ‘Take this with you!’

‘I’m exercising my right to remain silent, love!’ I kept yelling as they pushed me out of the apartment.

‘Shut the fuck up!’ Detective Reid growled.

‘We told you not to fucking talk to her!’

Yelling over each other, they shoved me down the stairs. They briefly removed my cuffs, so I could slip the T-shirt on.

‘Stand by the stairs and keep fucking quiet!’ Detective Reid left me guarded by a policeman.

The heat of the sun rising over the Sonoran Desert soon engulfed me. Detective Reid escorted Claudia out and locked her in the back of a white Crown Victoria. It sped off with my girlfriend of one and a half years. Police in state uniforms, federal uniforms and plain clothes swarmed our place. Every so often, Detective Reid and a short bespectacled lady conferred. Neighbours assembled, fascinated. Sweat trickled from my armpits and crotch. I thought about Claudia. What will they do to her? Will she be charged?

Detective Reid stomped down the stairs, scowling. ‘Tell us where the drugs are, Attwood. It’ll make things much easier for you in the long run. They in the safe?’

‘In the safe’s just a coin collection and stuff like my birth certificate.’

‘You’re full of shit, Attwood! Where’s the key for the safe? You might as well just give the drugs up at this point.’

‘The key’s on my key chain, but it needs a combination as well as a key.’

‘What drugs are in it?’

‘None.’

‘Don’t play games with us, Attwood. Don’t force me to call a locksmith.’

‘I’m telling the truth.’

‘We’ll soon see about that.’ He sounded desperate.

I was about to volunteer the combination, but he pulled out a cell phone and dialled a locksmith.

‘Get in the back of that car over there,’ said an officer in a dark-blue uniform, 40-something, with a rugged face. He looked the type who liked to take a detour on the way to the police station to teach certain criminals a lesson. New to manoeuvring in handcuffs, I fell sideways onto the back seat. I straightened myself up, and he threw a pair of jeans on my lap. He got in the car, mouthed a stick of gum and turned on 98 KUPD Arizona’s Real Rock. He bobbed his head to the music as he drove. Every now and then he looked over his shoulder, and I saw two tiny distorted images of me on the lenses of his reflective aviator sunglasses.

‘Looks like we’re gonna be waiting outside,’ he said, parking by Tempe police station.

Sealed in the Crown Victoria, I knew my life would never be the same after today. Cuffed, cramped, sweaty, I asked myself, How did I end up here?

When raving began in England, I went to a club in Manchester called the Thunderdome and tried Ecstasy and speed for the first time. Before drugs, I didn’t dance, but on Ecstasy and speed I couldn’t stop dancing, smiling and hugging people I didn’t know. Studying hard on the weekdays, I lived to rave every weekend with a friend from my hometown, Wild Man. Every time I took drugs, I told myself, I can quit whenever I want. I can party and still function. I’ll never get addicted. I was oblivious to the downside.

Even though I sat some of my finals coming down off Ecstasy – with techno beeps and beats resounding in my brain – I scored a 2:1 with honours. Wearing a mortarboard cap over my short Mohawk and a ceremonial robe with what looked like a superhero’s cape, I strutted into the Philharmonic Hall in Liverpool. Receiving my BA in Business Studies, I – the first in my family to go to university – soaked up the admiration from my parents: an insurance salesman and teacher from a chemical-manufacturing town called Widnes.

Long before my graduation, I set my career sights on finance. I’d been following the stock market since age 14 and at 16 had doubled my grandmother’s money in British Telecom. I read hundreds of books on the subject. Historical accounts of legendary stock-market operators made the hair on my arms stand up, made my spirit feel at one with the likes of Jesse ‘the Boy Plunger’ Livermore and promoted visions of my own future financial greatness. After university, I applied to be an investment analyst in London. Convinced I’d be hired on the spot because of my passion for the stock market, I ended up going through months of gruelling interviews. Each job rejection crushed my optimism.

Casting around for work elsewhere, I thought of my aunt Sue in America. She lived in Phoenix, Arizona, where she’d earned a reputation for being one of the toughest insurance adjusters in the Wild West. She said Phoenix was booming, and from previous visits during my teens – that involved her slightly altering the date of birth in my passport so I was allowed in bars, and her introducing me to people in said bars as Paul McCartney’s nephew – I knew I could go a long way there with just my English accent. My parents supported my decision to emigrate, and in 1991 my mum waved me off from Runcorn train station. ‘My whole life is in that case,’ I told her. I was sad to leave but excited by the prospect of conquering Wall Street. I planned to make my first million within five years.

I touched down in Phoenix with a six-month traveller’s visa and only student credit cards to survive on. My aunt Sue showed me how to obtain a Social Security number and forge an H-1B work visa using a simple printing set from an office-products store. ‘It’s fuck or be fucked in the business world,’ she said, and coached me on what to say to prospective employers. I felt nervous bluffing about my status in the country at job interviews, but getting a job as a commission-only stockbroker was all the proof I needed that it paid to bend the rules.

For the first few months, I cold-called from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. for no pay, walked to work and lived off cheese on toast and bananas. When my credit cards reached their limits, I feared I’d have to return to England. Seeing I was getting nowhere, the three hardy stockbrokers I shared a table with schooled me in the art of poaching other brokers’ clients. Things started to improve.

Stretching their advice beyond its intended limits, I had the idea to dumpster dive for sales leads. In Fashion Square Mall’s busy parking lot, I sat in the car of another rookie stockbroker, reconnoitring the dumpster used by our rival, First American Biltmore Securities. When no one was looking, we hurried to the dumpster. Wearing rubber gloves and armed with box cutters, we extracted bags of garbage. Each bag we sliced open assaulted us with the odour of coffee-soaked paperwork and leftovers putrefying in the desert heat. We examined the contents, found nothing and threw back bag after bag. We almost gave up. But then we found a bag full of client account statements and correspondence. We took the bag back to my apartment and split the leads. Starting with those investors who’d written letters of complaint, we opened new accounts. One transferred his six-figure portfolio to me.

After breaking the record for the most new accounts opened, my commissions started to climb. Convinced the meaning of life was making money, I had become a piranha among the sharks.

Five years later, I was the top producer in the office, grossing more than $500,000 a year. I had my own secretary and cold callers. I won awards and was sent to luxury hotels and skiing in Colorado. But I’d worked so hard I had what the stockbrokers called BOBS: Burnt Out Broker Syndrome. To counter my stress, I returned to partying on the weekends like I’d done at university.

The first time I took Ecstasy in America was at the Silver Dollar Club, a gay bar frequented by ravers in Phoenix’s run-down warehouse district. Hovering around the bar, I waited for my high to arrive. It took about 30 minutes for my knees to buckle. The sides of my head tingled as a warmth inched in. The warmth swept my face, the nape of my neck and travelled down my spine. My diaphragm and chest moved in harmony as my breathing slowed down. Each exhale released more tension. I grew hot but relaxed. Unable to stop smiling, I drifted over to the dance floor in the dark room. The dancers on a platform grabbed my arms and pulled me up. Inhibitions gone, I moved effortlessly to the music. I closed my eyes, and allowed the music to move me. I seemed to float. Rush after rush swept my body like electricity. Are you ready? came the vocals. Jump everybody jump everybody jump . . . I leapt from platform to platform. When DJ Sandra Collins played Prodigy’s ‘Charly’, I thought I was at an English rave. I danced my way to the front of the main stage, dripping sweat, hands in the air, eyeballs rolling towards heaven, hugging the strangers around me, grinning at the throng of freaks below. I felt right at home.

Tired of being a worker ant, I salted money away into tech stocks, and retired from stockbroking in 1997. With no office to attend or boss to answer to, I thought I could make a living out of partying. It began with house parties that went on for days, fuelled by drugs I bought for all of my friends.

I still remember how nervous I felt the first time I bought 20 Ecstasy pills in America. I had to wait in my parked car outside an apartment in Tempe while a Native American high on Special K went inside with my $400. Stuck to the seat by my sweat, I was sure Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agents were about to jump out of nowhere with guns and surround my vehicle. I was also worried about the Native American running off with my money, or the people he was dealing with pulling a gun on him. Even when he returned with 20 Eurodollar Ecstasy pills, I drove away terrified, convinced I’d be pulled over at any moment. But when I didn’t get robbed or caught or run into any of the other scenarios I’d seen in Miami Vice, I started to believe I could get away with anything.

I wanted my American friends to enjoy the rave atmosphere I’d experienced in England, so we mostly did Ecstasy. My number of friends increased fast – as it does when you’re giving drugs away for free. When the local dealers could no longer supply my needs, I found out who their main supplier was in LA – a surfer gangster called Sol – and arranged to buy 500 hits from him.

Two carloads of us took the I-10 to a house in West Hollywood. Annoyingly, Sol wasn’t home at the prearranged time. From a vantage point in a side street, we sat in our cars and waited. Our stress rising. Carrying a surfboard, Sol showed up hours later.

‘I’ll go in now,’ I said to Wild Man. ‘If I’m not back out in 15 minutes, come and rescue me.’

Wild Man was my raving partner from England who’d grown into a goliath. Two years younger than me, I’d looked out for him when he was just a chubby boy his older brother used to beat up. In his later teens, he honed his fighting skills on nightclub bouncers.

‘I’d like to wrap that fucking surfboard around his head,’ Wild Man said, ‘seeing as he’s kept us waiting this fucking long. Why don’t I just kick his door down and take his shit?’

‘That’s not good business,’ I said.

‘It’s not good business him keeping us waiting out here for two hours either!’

‘If you rob him, then who’re we going to go through?’ Turning to Wild Man’s cousin, Hammy, I said, ‘Keep the Wild Man under control, would you?’

‘That’s like trying to keep a bull from a red rag,’ Hammy said. ‘I’ll do me best.’

I got out, and knocked on Sol’s door.

‘Come in,’ Sol said.

‘I’ve been here a while.’ Entering his house, not quite knowing what I was getting into, I feared someone might jump out and rob me.

‘I lost track of time,’ he said with an indifference that irked me right away. ‘I have your 500 Mitsubishis. I’ll be right back.’ He went into another room. For a few seconds, I half expected him to reappear with a gun. But my heartbeat slowed down when he brought out a Ziploc bag with more pills than I’d ever seen.

‘How much MDMA’s in them?’ I asked, feasting my eyes on the quantity.

‘125 milligrams. From Holland. I don’t sell any Made-in-America bunk. Besides, I’m told you can afford a lot more than 500. I’m sick of Arizona ravers coming to my house and buying a hundred here and there. I’d rather sell bulk to one person. It’d be safer for all of us. And the product will be good like these.’

‘Can I taste one?’ I asked.

‘Taste one?’ he said, surprised.

‘I always chew them. They have a distinct taste,’ I said, studying his face for hints of deceit.

‘Want a chaser?’

‘Water, please.’

I examined a pill. More dirty white than beige. Speckled like a bird’s egg. A press of three diamonds: the Mitsubishi logo. Chewing it, I recognised the sharp chemical taste that precedes an Ecstasy high. ‘It’s a good pill. Here’s seven gees. If you want me to buy more, I expect a much better price next time.’

The Ecstasy my friends and I didn’t eat, we dealt to the local dealers in Arizona. Making money from the dealers enabled me to increase the scale of things. I began throwing raves for thousands of people, generating enough profits to give away hundreds of Ecstasy pills every weekend and to squander thousands on lavish after-parties and other drugs like Special K, GHB and speed. The more I fed my friends with drugs, the more they pampered me. I was buying popularity, especially with the glitter girls who spoiled me at the after-parties. Due to all of the drugs and sexual attention, I was beginning to lose touch with reality. But I was enjoying every second of it without thinking I’d ever get caught.

The ravers nicknamed me ‘English Shaun’ and ‘The Bank of England’. I was considered one of the wealthiest people in Arizona’s rave scene. So as not to get robbed in a scene that attracted all sorts, I formed my own security team. One of my security guards, G Dog – a tall Mexican-American with long hair and prison-tattooed arms – urged me to meet his brother, Raul. He said if Raul and his associates had my back, I wouldn’t have too many problems in Arizona.

The grenade launcher on top of the biggest TV I’d ever seen belonged to Raul, who was watching a much smaller CCTV screen showing the comings and goings on the street crowded with lowriders outside his home in Tempe.

‘This is the English guy I want you to meet,’ G Dog said.

Raul, short and plump, tilted his head back. ‘Wattup, homey,’ he said without smiling.

‘Pleased to meet you,’ I said, shaking his hand. ‘I like your TV.’

‘Damn, you talk funny – like an accent – I guess you are from England, homey. Come through to the kitchen. Meet my homies.’

Raul introduced me to a gang of gargantuan Mexican Americans. Heavily tattooed, they were standing around a table laden with slabs of crystal meth, cocaine and various weighing scales. They eyed me suspiciously. The biggest swung a spoon with cocaine towards my face. ‘Snort it.’ There was danger in his wide and alert eyes.

Concerned, I looked to G Dog for help, but he just nodded back with a serious expression. G Dog hadn’t told me these men were members of the New Mexican Mafia, the most powerful criminal organisation in Arizona at that time. Or that the man with the spoon was a hit man on a killing spree. Sensing the gravity of the situation, I rolled a hundred-dollar bill, pushed one nostril flat and snorted the cocaine through the other.

The man with the spoon nodded and shook my hand. But he didn’t smile. None of them smiled.

‘Shaun, let’s go talk business,’ Raul said, leading me into a bedroom. ‘G Dog tells me you can get this Ecstasy shit and that it’s all good.’

‘I can get it,’ I said, my throat gagging on the numbing aftertaste of the cocaine.

‘None of us have ever done that shit. The only thing I do is smoke good weed – know what I’m saying? – hydro, kind bud. I’m having a party at the weekend, some women are coming over, and we wanna check your Ecstasy out.’

I was present when they all took Ecstasy for the first time. Not only did they smile, it reduced them to overgrown teddy bears who wouldn’t stop hugging me. That’s how I earned the protection of the New Mexican Mafia. It was a relationship that probably saved my life later on, when, for reasons of their own, they killed some rival gangsters who were about to shoot and rob me.

In the run up to the dot.com bubble, I started day trading and became a millionaire. Now I had enough money to really expand my operation. My new main supplier in LA, Mike Hotwheelz, was arrested, and the other LA suppliers like Sol couldn’t fill my increasingly large orders, so I imported bulk Ecstasy. At the peak of things, I had my own rave clothing/music store and LSD chemist. I married one of the most glamorous glitter girls in the rave scene, Amy – a political science student at the University of Arizona who was also a bisexual topless dancer – at a chapel on the Las Vegas Strip, and we moved into a million-dollar mountainside home in Sin Vacas, Tucson. I had run-ins with gangsters such as Sammy the Bull Gravano, my main competitor.

The first time I discussed business with members of Sammy the Bull’s crew, I brought along one of the notorious Rossetti Brothers, who also worked security for me. Outside the meeting place, Heart 5 in Tucson, I drank some GHB, which had the effect of making me fearless. I said to Rossetti, ‘While I talk to Spaniard, make sure you’re always somewhere you can pull your gun in case they try to kidnap me. I’m not going to start any shit, but who knows how big a crew he’s with or what might happen.’

‘No problem. If they try anything, I’ll open up on the motherfuckers.’

I was at the bar when a six and a half foot man with dark spiky hair and biceps as broad as my neck tapped me on the shoulder. ‘I’m Mark, Spaniard’s partner. He wants to see you in the VIP area.’

‘OK, Mark.’ I shook his hand and followed him.

‘Glad you came, English Shaun,’ said Spaniard, a well-groomed Hispanic. ‘Mark, clear that sofa so we can all sit down.’

Mark yelled, ‘You need to move, so we can sit down!’ The people on the sofa jumped up.

To the side of us, Rossetti slipped into the VIP area.

As I sat down between the two of them, the GHB jolted my brain. It made me playful and crazy. Like my grandfather used to do to me, I squeezed their legs just above the knee and said, ‘So what’s this all about?’

They were taken aback for a few seconds, then Spaniard laughed, and said in a friendly voice, ‘Look, we know you’re doing your own thing. You’ve got a lotta people working for you. As do we. It would be best if we worked together rather than be enemies.’

‘What’re you proposing?’ There are not many things in the world more reckless than an Englishman on GHB, yet I could always negotiate business shrewdly no matter how high I was.

‘We’re getting a lotta pills, and we figure we can give you a better price than what you’re paying.’

‘You don’t know what I’m paying. I’m familiar with your pills, and I don’t think the quality is there. I’m getting European pills. None of the coloured pills you guys are getting.’

‘Who the fuck do you think you are, talking shit about our pills?’ Mark yelled.

Because of the GHB, Mark didn’t scare me. I viewed him as a monster but a funny one with a little brain.

‘Hey, Mark, calm down,’ Spaniard said.

‘Do you have any idea who Jimmy Moran is?’ Mark said, still fuming.

‘No,’ I said.

‘Sammy the Bull,’ Mark said. ‘That’s who we work for. One call to him and we can have you taken out to the desert.’

I was aware of Sammy the Bull from the news. He’d been a hit man for the Gambino Crime Family run by John Gotti, aka ‘the Teflon Don’. Later on, he became an FBI informant, confessed to killing 19 people, and helped the Feds put the Teflon Don away for life. Still, looking at those two in their shiny animal-print polyester shirts, I assumed they didn’t have as much power in Arizona as my associates in the New Mexican Mafia. I glanced at Rossetti. The look on his face said, Should I shoot that lunkhead or what?

Almost imperceptibly, I shook my head at Rossetti.

‘There’s no need to say all that,’ Spaniard said. ‘Forgive Mark, Shaun. He gets upset real easy. He’s a bit of a hothead.’

‘I have no problems with you guys. But I really don’t care who you work for. You just moved in. Over the years, I’ve made friends with a lot of locals,’ I said, playing it like a gangster.

‘I hear you,’ Spaniard said, implying he knew of my connections. ‘But what if we can get you a better price on pills, would you be interested?’

‘I appreciate the offer, guys, but no thanks. And here’s why: before you guys moved into Ecstasy, the police pretty much ignored us. Now your runners are going around bragging they’re the biggest Ecstasy barons in the world. That’s brought considerable heat to the scene. And I’m not saying this to put you guys down but to give you a heads-up on what’s happening. Every weekend at the raves, we’ve got undercover cops and vehicles hanging around. We’ve got undercover vehicles taping who’s going in and out of the raves and driving through the parking lots taping licence plates. It’s no coincidence that the police moved in shortly after you guys. It’s not each other’s crews we need to beware of, it’s the cops.’

‘What about your security team?’ Spaniard asked.

‘What about it?’ I asked.

‘Will our runners have problems with your security guys jacking their pills?’

‘I don’t want to start a war with you guys. If my security grab someone and we find out they’re part of your crew, we’ll let them go. Ecstasy’s so hard to get and the demand so high, there’s enough of a market for us to coexist. But if I tell my security not to jack your runners, I don’t expect any problems from you guys for my runners in the Scottsdale scene.’

‘Sounds like a good agreement,’ Spaniard said, and shook my hand.

Years later, when I became friends with Sammy the Bull’s son, Gerard Gravano, he said he’d headed a crew dispatched to kidnap me from The Crowbar in Phoenix. Wild Man and his girlfriend had fought that night, so we had left the club in a hurry. That’s why the Bull’s crew just missed us.

The meltdown of my business interests came on fast. The NASDAQ, where I’d invested most of my money, crashed in the latter half of 2000. Some of my smugglers were arrested at airports in America and Europe. Most of my crew were doing so many drugs they were growing paranoid and scheming against each other – my top salesman tried to rob my LSD chemist, resulting in a shootout that made headline news. I could no longer afford my mountainside home and the $20,000-plus a month I was paying in bills for that home and multiple cars and apartments. My wife, Amy, was arrested in a grocery store, high on drugs, walking around barefoot, babbling to herself, with shotgun shells in her handbag. Later on, she bought a one-way ticket to Egypt to commit suicide. She ended up overdosing on prescription pills and slitting her wrists in her hotel room, where she was rescued by staff. With us both too messed up to sustain our relationship, it fell apart – like everything else in our lives.

Drugs had scrambled my mind. I reacted to the disasters by trying to numb myself with even more drugs, accelerating my own downfall. Through bad choices, I lost almost everything. All of the fun, glitz and glamour were gone. I was no longer swanning into raves with my entourage, getting hugged and thanked left and right by partiers high on my Ecstasy. I was hiding out in an apartment in Tucson, fearing the police or rival criminals were coming to get me, having to take Xanax to fall asleep. The meltdown put an end to my large-scale criminal activity, but I feared the name I’d made over the years as English Shaun would eventually lead to my arrest.

Towards the end of it all, an attorney I used whenever one of my crew was arrested called me into his office.

‘How’re you doing, Ray?’ I asked, shaking his hand.

‘I’m good. It’s you I’m worried about.’

‘Why?’ I asked, growing alarmed.

‘My sources at the DEA tell me it’s time for you to get the hell out of Arizona.’

‘Since the stock market crashed, I’ve not been doing much anyway.’

‘You shouldn’t be doing anything at all! You’ve had a good run. Now’s the time to get out. You’re an intelligent guy. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you. If you continue on, there’s only one way this is going to end.’

I knew he was right, but I still couldn’t stop my personal use. The woman who encouraged me to sober up was Claudia. I met her at a friend’s apartment. She mocked me for being a raver – which I couldn’t help but admire, not to mention the desire it kindled – so I asked her out. She said no – further inflaming my desire – so I obtained her number and pursued her for months. It paid off. I won the heart of one of the most caring people I’d ever met. Thanks to her, I’d mostly quit partying, returned to online stock trading, enrolled in Scottsdale Community College to study Spanish and put the English Shaun persona behind me. She didn’t approve of my raver friends, so I didn’t let them know where we lived. As my mind started to clear, I grew more afraid of the consequences of hanging out with the people I used to lead. Knowing the police were onto me, I mostly stayed at home on my computer. We were saving up to start new lives in LA, where she wanted to be an actress and I planned to do a Masters in finance. But there was no chance of any of that happening now.

The driver parked by a mobile police unit. He uncuffed me, told me to put my jeans on and escorted me to a man sat at a desk.

‘Fill this out.’

NAME, DATE OF BIRTH, SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER, HOME ADDRESS, OCCUPATION, WORK ADDRESS . . .

‘I’m exercising my right to remain silent,’ I said.

‘You must fill this out or else we’ll book you in as a John Doe, and you don’t want that.’

I complied and was escorted into the police station. ‘What about my right to make a call?’ I asked, desperate to notify Ray the attorney.

‘Not now. Straight to a cell.’

He deposited me in a small cell. Clean and air-conditioned. It had two bunks and a stainless-steel toilet with a built-on water fountain. The smell of bleach rose from the recently mopped floor.

The police put Cody, the head of my security team, in the cell opposite. Close to average height and weight, he wasn’t intimidating. I’d put him in charge due to his knack for staying sober while the rest of us were high. I’d initially disliked this quirky character who sported a blond crew cut and preppy clothes. But he proved to be trustworthy and a methodical smuggler. That’s how he became my right-hand man.

I rushed to the front of the cell. We exchanged nervous smiles, like children caught smoking.

‘Where they get you?’ Cody asked.

‘Knocked my door down. And you?’ I asked.

‘You gotta hear this.’

‘What?’

‘I was out and about, taking care of bills and shit, driving from place to place, and I noticed a helicopter above me. I watched it for a while and it didn’t go away. So I drove to the other side of town, and there it was, still above me. I thought I was losing my mind. I thought of Goodfellas, how the helicopter was above him every time he looked out of his car. No matter where I went, it stayed with me, but I still wasn’t 100 per cent sure. So, to see if I was just sketching, I decided to speed back over to the other side of town. I get on the freeway and head east. I’m in the fast lane. I notice the helicopter’s still above me, to the side. I’m cruising along wishing the helicopter would go off in another direction, and I notice a bunch of cop motorcycles in the traffic behind me. I slowed down, expecting them to overtake me, but they surrounded my car – four of them! – and signalled for me to get off the freeway. There was nothing I could do. I pulled off, parked and they arrested me.’

‘Helicopters and biker cops! My God! At least my arrest wasn’t as dramatic as yours. SWAT knocked our door down, yelled and pointed big guns at us. Tell you what, they sure spent some money on these arrests. Not a good sign. They catch you with anything?’

‘Nothing for them to catch me with.’

‘Same here. They tore my pad apart looking for drugs. Took my computer and everything. We should be able to get bonded out when they don’t find anything,’ I said, hoping it to be true.

The sound of jingling keys and approaching footsteps halted our conversation. My cell door clinked open, and in came DJ Spinelli. A short man with a round, friendly face who’d played techno at my raves.

‘You too!’ I said. ‘How’d they get you?’

‘I was ambushed!’ he said.

‘What?’ Cody said.

‘I had to get a real job to pay the bills. Today was my first day at work raising money for the Republican Party.’

‘Republican Party!’ I said, and we all laughed.

‘So I’m at work, and I receive a call from a cop saying my place has been burglarised and I need to return home immediately. I explained the situation to my new boss, and he gave me permission to leave. I’m driving home, and the same cop calls my cell phone: “Where you at? You heading home?” I told him I was and hung up. Then he called two more times. He was antsy. I should have known something was wrong. When I got home, I was arrested.’

‘Crafty bastards,’ Cody said.

‘Mug shot. Get against that wall,’ he said.

‘Is this good?’ I was in no mood to smile at a camera.

‘Where’s that accent from?’

‘England.’

‘I’m from England, too. Which part?’

‘Widnes, Cheshire.’

‘Rugby-league town, eh?’

‘Yes.’

‘How’d you end up in here?’

‘They knocked my door down.’

‘If they knocked your door down, you must be in a lot of trouble. Stay still right there.’ He took my photograph. ‘Well, nice to have met you. Good luck with your charges. Maybe they’ll ship you back to England.’

If only, I thought.

‘Get in the strip-search room,’ said a large African American.

The room was tiny, cold, bare.

‘Take everything off.’

I undressed. The day’s events had retracted my penis, which I shielded with my hands to minimise my embarrassment.

‘Now raise your arms. Good. Open your mouth. Raise your tongue. Good. Lift your nutsack. Good. Pull your foreskin back.’

‘What?’

‘Pull your foreskin back. You could have drugs in there.’

The request was too much for my penis. It wanted to hide inside my body and die of shame. Reluctantly, I drew back my foreskin.

‘Good. Now turn around. Bend over and spread ’em.’

Spreading, I felt humiliated and vulnerable. I told myself it was no different from the mooning I’d done as a child. Just when I thought the worst was over, he said, ‘Spread ’em wider.’ It was beyond mooning now. More of a visual raping. ‘Good. Let me see the bottoms of your feet.’

Relieved the strip search was over, I was escorted back to my cell and served a hot meal. Salisbury steak. Mash. Gravy.

‘Watch your heads getting into the van!’

I bundled myself into the van, surprised to see more of my party friends, including Wild Man, Misty, Melissa, Boo and Wild Woman. Galvanised by the day’s events, everyone tried to talk at once.

‘Where’s Claudia?’ I asked.

‘They let her go,’ said Wild Woman – who had emigrated from my hometown to be with Wild Man. She was in her 40s, blonde and tiny, but tougher than most men. Armed with a bar stool during a pub fight, she’d put multiple people in hospital. We’d nicknamed her and Wild Man the Wild Ones.

‘Thank God for that,’ I said.

‘I was outside the room they were questioning her in,’ Wild Man said. ‘She was crying ’cause they said they’d found some prescription pills without prescriptions in your apartment, and she was facing some very serious charges. So I yelled, “Serious fucking charges my arse,” and they tried getting crazy with me. Daft pig bastards.’

‘What’s gonna happen to us?’ asked Melissa.

‘Our attorney friend probably knows we’ve been arrested by now,’ I said, hoping he had. ‘He’ll be doing all he can to find out what’s going on. Any of you get caught with drugs?’

They all answered no except for Melissa.

‘If they didn’t find any drugs,’ I said, ‘I don’t see how they can hold us for very long.’

‘Where they taking us?’ Cody asked.

‘The Horseshoe,’ Wild Man said. ‘We’ll be stuck in filthy holding cells for days while they process us.’

‘Why they call it The Horseshoe?’ Cody asked.

‘’Cause you go in at one end and work your way round the cells in a horseshoe shape,’ Wild Man said. ‘They kept me in there for almost a week one time ’cause I wouldn’t tell them me name.’

The van parked in a subterranean lot. A transportation officer allowed the women out first. The 30 or so male arrestees waiting to go inside the jail stopped heckling the prostitutes in the line and focused on my female friends.

‘Ooh, babies!’

‘Nice ass!’

‘Show us your titties!’

‘Come and play with the bad boys!’

‘This way, honey!’

‘With those boobs, I’m surprised you ain’t got two black eyes!’

Shuffling towards the men, the women cowered. The last woman out of the van was Wild Woman.

From inside the van, Wild Man watched his fiancée. Other than an eyebrow reacting – one shot up and stayed up, while the other didn’t budge – he seemed unperturbed. But I knew that particular eyebrow formation meant he was about to do something in character with his name.

In a Liverpudlian brogue that sounded as if she were hawking phlegm, Wild Woman scolded the men, who responded by turning up the volume of their chant, ‘Show us yer boobs!’

‘Get out of the van!’ a transportation officer yelled.

Wild Man stooped out, stopped on the top step and unfurled the physique of a bear. He cocked his head back, targeting the men over his Viking’s beard. ‘If you don’t pack it in and leave my woman alone, I’ll have any of you when we get inside those cells.’ He nodded at The Horseshoe and grinned. ‘If you think I won’t, just keep it up and see what happens.’ Wild Man laughed in a way that said he really knew how to hurt someone. That shut up most of the men.

‘No,’ I said into the speak holes of a Plexiglas window in the crowded pre-intake room at the Madison Street jail.

The old lady fired more screening questions and grimaced at my answers as if my voice pained her. The Tempe transportation officers removed our chains and left us in the custody of Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s deputies.

‘Take your shoes off, put your hands up against the wall and spread your legs!’ yelled a drill sergeant of a guard in the admissions’ hallway.

Guards patted us down, examined our shoes and confiscated our shoelaces.

‘Step through there,’ yelled a female, pointing at a walk-through metal detector.

On both sides of the corridor, the inmates in the intake holding cells were banging on the Plexiglas windows. Outside the cells, the guards were shouting surnames, slamming doors and cursing the inmates.

‘You, this way!’ a guard yelled at me.

I walked by a Mexican woman in a black restraint chair. Limbs shackled. Chest strapped. The drool string dangling from her chin swung like a pendulum as she wriggled in the tilted-back seat. When a guard hid her head in a spit hood, she howled like a cat on fire.

‘I’m Attwood.’

‘Get in there!’ The guard pointed at one of the first holding cells in The Horseshoe.

My heart pistoned as I entered a cell containing dozens of men, most of them huddled on the floor in a variety of uncomfortable positions. Swastikas and gang graffiti – South Side Posse Bloods, Aryan Brotherhood, South Side Phoeniquera – loomed down from the walls. I gagged on the plague-like fug.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, pushing through the men clustered around the door yelling at the guards. At either side of the room, rows of men on steel double bunks formed shelves of humans. Manoeuvring over the patchwork of limbs and bodies, I found a space with a urinous odour by the toilet. Resting against the filthy back wall, I slid down. I was congratulating myself on finding a place to sit until I noticed insects shaped like almonds darting on the floor. Cockroaches! I flicked one off my sneaker and rose fast. I brushed the surrounding ranks of them away with my feet. Some of them scaled the ankles of a hobo sleeping under the nearest bunk and disappeared into his trousers. I’d never been surrounded by so many people and felt so lonely. Everyone looked agitated, and I soon lapsed into the same state. Every five minutes or so, the cell door swung open and a guard ordered someone in or out. Desperate for relief from the suffocating atmosphere, I hoped my name would be called next.

‘Fuck you! Get up!’ said an old hobo, rising unsteadily. His face belonged on a shrunken head in a jar. He slurred a string of insults, the top of his grimy beard sinking into his mouth as he spoke.

Grumbling, his rival rose. The cell hushed, as if the curtains had opened for a violent comedy show. His rival swung, missed and fell on a gang member.

‘Don’t fucking fall on me, you drunk-ass motherfucker,’ the gangbanger said, pushing one hobo into the other.

Ranting, the hobos fell as one, tied together by their own bluster until they twisted apart.

The disappointment in the lack of bloodshed was palpable until a black man roused by the antics of the hobos yelled, ‘Why you look at me?’ at the man sitting next to him.

‘What’re you talking about?’ the man said, sidling away.

‘He’s a crazy Cuban,’ someone said.

On his feet now, the Cuban ranged the room like a time bomb. Watching him confront people, I feared I’d be the one he’d explode on. He was gravitating towards me when the door opened.

‘Attwood, get out here! Stand over there!’ a guard yelled, pointing at a ledge down the corridor.

‘Sign here,’ said a woman behind a Plexiglas window.

‘What am I signing for?’

‘Charges.’

‘Good. It’s about time I found out my charges.’ I signed and she slid me a form:

‘You need to go up there,’ she snapped.

‘Where?’

‘See the guard at that cell?’

‘Hold on. I’ve no clue what any of this means.’

‘What?’

‘These charges, and it says my bond’s $750,000 cash only.’

‘Lemme see.’

I gave it to her.

‘Must be a computer error,’ she said. ‘It can’t be that high. It’s probably seventy-five thousand.’

‘I hope so,’ I said, easing up a bit but still dazed by the big number.

‘Go over there. The next cell.’

Sweat and grime gnawed my skin as I urinated. I perched myself on the end of a top bunk. The cell filled quickly. The shock and bewilderment on the faces of the new arrivals abated as they shared arrest and crime stories heavy on police brutality.

A tiny Mexican entered, his dilated eyes darting haphazardly. Yelling, he banged on the Plexiglas at such a rate the other bangers stopped to admire his ability. Hyperventilating, he cupped his left pectoral and looked over his shoulder as if expecting an attack from the rear. He must have swallowed his drugs when the cops came, I thought.

A big bald man in a black T-shirt swaggered in, addressing the cell as if he knew us all. ‘I was on my way to Disneyland with my little daughter. They pulled me over for speeding. But giving me a speeding ticket woulda been too easy for this motherfucker. He ran my name, and a warrant came up. Thank fucking God I called her mom. He arrests me in front of my kid – now that’s fucking child abuse if you ask me! I’m supposed to be at my other kid’s birthday this weekend. I’ll be pissed if I miss her fucking birthday party. I hope this only takes two days. Awww fuck! I love my kids. Awww fuck!’

Then an even bigger man, whose beard lent him the aura of a pirate, came in and said to the bald man, ‘Hey, Chad, they’re gonna try and ship me back to New Mexico. They’ve got a body, but they can’t link me to it. They’ve got nothing on me. Motherfuckers!’

Much to my relief, Cody arrived. I climbed down and we hugged. We discussed our bonds.

Chad interrupted our conversation. ‘You’ve gotta cool accent, man. Did you say you’ve gotta $750,000 cash-only bond?’

‘Yes, but they said it’s a mistake,’ I said, turning to Cody for support.

‘Lemme see your paperwork.’

‘Here you go.’

‘That ain’t no mistake, buddy,’ Chad said.

‘What do you mean it’s not? She just told me it is.’ I went dizzy.

‘Conspiracy. Crime syndicate. Were you guys whacking people or what?’ Chad asked.

‘No. They raided my apartment. There were no drugs found or anything.’

‘Well, you’ve got drug charges.’

I’d been involved in drugs for so long, identifying which transactions they’d charged me for was as likely as raising $750,000.

From outside, Wild Man banged on the Plexiglas and mouthed, ‘What’s your bond?’

‘It says three-quarters of a mill! What’s yours?’ I yelled.

‘Half a fucking mill!’

His response torpedoed my plan to bond out. ‘Aw shit!’ I said, agonising over having to tell my parents. I knew the news would devastate them 5,000 miles away in England.

‘Get in this cell! Do you hear me?’ A guard grabbed Wild Man.

‘I’ve got it,’ Chad said. ‘You’re part of Sammy the Bull’s crew.’

‘I’m nothing to do with him,’ I said, not wanting to admit any criminal relationships. ‘I did throw raves years ago, though.’

‘That’s it then. Raves. Ecstasy,’ Chad said. ‘With a bond like that, you might be on the news tonight.’

‘I hope not,’ I said, fearing members of my family in Arizona would see me.

A guard slid a large plastic bag into the doorway. ‘Who’s hungry?’ The prisoners all shifted towards him at once, like ducks on a pond to someone with bread. He threw brown paper bags at them.

‘They’re Ladmo bags,’ Chad said. ‘Green-baloney sandwiches.’

Things such as food were far from my mind. Curious, I looked in the Ladmo bag. A grapefruit. Bread dotted with blue mould. Slices of processed cheese leaking an orange oil. Green baloney – slimy cuts of meat, iridescent but with an underlying greenish shine.