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“Paul said he will help me.”
“What if he can’t? You need a Plan B.”
I knew a lot of rich authors and agents but not well enough to hit them up for a couple of thousand dollars. “I can’t think of anyone else,” I whispered.
“What about one of your girlfriends?”
I didn’t have any girlfriends. Not a single one. Mama had preached to me so long and decisively about the folly of having females in your house and your business that I’d never really trusted members of my own sex.
It wasn’t until after I moved out and Mama got lonely that she allowed herself a girlfriend, even though Elvira had lived across the hall from us for almost twenty years.
“There is no one like that in my life,” I whispered.
Keith sighed. “I spoke to the district attorney just before I picked you up. We both agreed that since this is Saturday night, it is a lot easier to get you in without the media getting wind of it.”
I knew that Keith was just trying to keep me from having a nervous breakdown. He was wasting his time. It wasn’t the press that had me terrified. “Are they going to lock me in a cell?”
The limousine turned up Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard, headed for 125th Street.
“Not exactly. It’s a holding pen. We’re skipping the whole precinct thing and taking you straight to Central Booking.”
His tone suggested that I should be impressed with the enormous clout he wielded with the powers-that-be. Since I didn’t know what “the whole precinct thing” was and what indignities would have awaited me there, I was unmoved. I focused on “holding pen” and an image of a huge basketball court-type space surrounded by razor wire fixed itself in my mind and I started to hyperventilate. Keith grabbed me by the back of the neck, forcing my head down.
“Put your head between your knees and take deep breaths,” he ordered.
The interior of the plush vehicle was silent as I huffed and puffed loudly. Then I noticed the fully stocked bar. “Keith, I need a drink.”
“No!” shouted Keith. “I don’t want liquor on your breath.”
“Don’t be an asshole, Keith. I’m about to faint.” We went at it, bickering like an old married couple or a bunch of siblings as I breathed in and out between my sweatpant-clad thighs, with one hand reaching up wildly for a drink of anything alcoholic.
I won and by the time we were headed down the West Side Highway, I had gulped two shot glasses of straight whiskey. Keith gave me some orange Tic-Tacs to cover the smell. When I had recovered enough to lie back against the expensive leather and stretch my legs out, Keith held my hand and spoke quietly.
“Jackie, I need you to be brave. Do you hear me?”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“When we get downtown, you will be relieved of all your belongings, fingerprinted, photographed, and then taken to a holding area. I can’t come with you but when they bring you into the courtroom for arraignment on Monday morning, I’ll be right there waiting for you, understand?”
“Monday! This is Saturday night! “Oh Keith, isn’t there a night court or something that could spring me before tomorrow morning?”
He patted my knee. “I’m so sorry, Jackie. That doesn’t work in a murder case.”
“What is an arraignment?”
“An arraignment is the first appearance in court before a judge on a criminal charge. The charges against you will be read or you will be asked if you are aware of the charges against you, and you will be asked how you wish to plead.”
The limousine sped through the dark, wet streets, and with each roll of the tires, I felt another crumbling of who I was and what I used to be.
The car finally stopped in front of a fortress-like building. As Keith helped me out, I noticed that a lot of police cars were parked on the street. Detective Marcus Gilchrist stepped from the shadows. Keith pushed me in back of him and had a whispered discussion which I could not hear.
I just stood in the rain. Part of me felt removed from the whole scene. Surely this was some other woman’s life I was watching on a movie screen—in some surrealistic plot created by Hollywood writers. It just didn’t make sense that a person could really get entangled in the criminal justice system on the most serious of all charges just by misplacing an appointment book and running across a lobby! Why, the whole thing was insane and getting crazier by the moment. It was time for me to leave this mess—yeah, that was it. All I had to do was hail a cab and go to Mama’s house. I must have turned to leave because there was a sudden pain in my arm.
“Stop it,” Keith whispered in my ear through gritted teeth. “If you run, it’s all over. You’ll never get bail if you’re pegged as a flight risk.”
“Ow,” was my reply. His hands had clamped down on me like a vise. “Let go of my arm.”
“Shut up and don’t move.”
