Beaten-up furniture, scuffed floors, disinterested guards and cops, people yelling, quarreling, whimpering, faces creased with helplessness and fear. The air was stale, tainted with the mingled aromas of whiskey breath, body odor, exhaled cigarette smoke. Once, when the thunder clapped, Gelsey grabbed for his hand. He held hers tight, finally felt her relax. Then, when they took her away, she looked back at him, panicked, with the eyes of a frightened doe.
As he stood in the rear of the courtroom waiting for her to come out, he was again struck by the tawdriness of the system-the alienated dialogue between judges and lawyers; dehumanizing deal-making; battered, abused public facilities he'd always taken for granted. Where, he wondered, amid all this filth and taint, was the vaunted Majesty of the Law? As Netti had predicted, the entire procedure took two hours, but Gelsey was shaking when she emerged. She had. to Janek that although she had often been frightened in men's hotel rooms and apartments, she had managed to keep her cool because she knew she was in control. At Central Booking she'd had no control over anything. She'd been but one in an endless stream of beasts prodded and Coaxed through the Stock yard-, of life.
"It's not that I'm so fancy," she said when they were outside the courthouse. The rain had stopped but the steps still were slick. "I've eaten plenty of shit in my. life, but in there I felt helpless." She paused. "Jail's like that, isn't it?"
"No one wants you to go to jail, Gelsey," Netti said. They were walking on either side of her, descending the broad granite steps to the street.
"Yeah, sure. No one except Carlson. Look, I know I did bad stuff."
She was fighting back her tears. "I deserve to be punished. I know that, too."
She looked at Janek, again grasped hold of his hand. "I just don't know if I can take it."
Janek took her to lunch at a fish joint on South Street, a rowdy place filled with workmen talking loudly over plates of mussels and clams. The moment they sat down, Gelsey began to castigate herself, saying how it was good for her to have gone through booking and arraignment, how the experience had helped her to see what she really was: a doper-girl, a felon, a thief.
Janek didn't quarrel with her, just listened. He thought: She needs to bruiz herself down, needs to let it out. But the whole time his heart was crushed with grief.
When their food came, Gelsey brightened. "Know what I'm going to do when this is over'?"
"What?"
"Destroy the maze. Sell the building. Look for a loft here in the city."
"Sounds good. But why not sell the building with the maze intact?"
She shook her head. "Nobody'll want it. Nobody'll understand it. And for me, now it's finished. You helped me solve the mystery of it, Janek. I look at it now and all I see is a lot of stupid glass."
"So, it's no longer art. That's what you're saying. One day it's a great maze work, the next it's a pile of shit."
She shook her head. When she spoke it was with the same bitter contempt she'd just applied to herself. "Oh, sure, it's art. It just doesn't feel like art anymore. To me now it feels like terror and pain. So, why not tear it down?"
He didn't challenge her. He understood why she would want to destroy it, considering the evil ways her father had used it against her. But he hoped she'd change her mind. The maze was magnificent, and once broken up it could never be rebuilt. More important, he felt she would do nothing for herself by trying to punish the scene of her suffering.
Yes, the maze had terrorized her and held her in its thrall, but now, having understood her pain and having rendered harmless its source, she could leave it to dazzle and entertain others. He resolved to broach this to her when she was in a less bitter state.
There was a bill from Netti in the office mail. It was typed on formal invoice stationery:
TO FRANK JANEK, FOR PROFESSIONAL SERVICES: One Chinese Carry-out Dinner (Payable on Demand) He laughed, carefully placed it back in its envelope, then stored it in his personal file.
That evening he sat alone at Special Squad, reading, waiting by the phone. At 7:20 it rang. It was Sue. She was whispering, excited:
"I'm at the mall, Frank, the one Janet goes to every afternoon. I'm standing at a phone bank. She's at another one, fifty feet away.,I figure she's on line with Clury. She's yakking a lot and looks upset.
About five minutes after Aaron left, she stormed out of her house, peered around, then got in her car and took off. Wait a see… she's listening… now she's nodding. He must be trying to calm her down."
"When she leaves, stay with her," Janek said. "But don't forget which phone she used. Note the time, come back in the morning, copy down the number, then go to the locals and have them subpoena records from the phone company. If she's using a credit card-"
"She isn't. I saw her feed coins to the slot."
"Then Clury's probably not too far away. Remember, he's a cop. He may figure she was trailed. He may try and come in behind you, so watch your back."
"I never thought of that."
"Be careful. If Janet doesn't head home, she may be leading you into a trap."
"What do I do?"
"Drop the tail, go back to your, motel, get a good night's sleep."
"Right." She paused. "Whadd ya think he'll do, Frank now that he knows we're on to him?"
"One of three things. He'll either run, go nuts and try to bomb us, or get in touch to see what kind of deal he can Make.
On his way out to La Guardia to pick up Aaron, he thought about the real possibility that Gelsey would have to go to prison. He knew now that he and Netti had been deluding themselves. As soon as Gelsey's story came out, more victims would come forward, more complaints would be filed, the felonies would mount up, the pressure for a sentence would grow.
Despite her assistance in trapping Kane, a fair judge would have to take into account the violence of her crimes and the ways she'd terrorized her victims.
It was after midnight when Aaron's plane touched down. He emerged tired but still high on his interview with Janet. He described it as they walked through the terminal, then across the parking lot to his Chevrolet:
"She's the cool-blonde type, but she wasn't all that cool when I got done with her. All that stuff about heavy-duty jail time-I swear, Frank, she was ready to pee in her pants."
"She denied everything."
Aaron nodded. "She bugged out her blues." He bugged out his to demonstrate. "What'd she do afterward?"
"Drove fast to a public phone in a mall."
"Clury must have told her never to call him from the house. I wonder if she still cares for him. Or if they made some kind of deal."
"The pension was the kiss-off. All she had to do was act sad at his funeral, cry a little on the commissioner's arm, then sign the cremation papers." Aaron smiled. "Come to think of it, I didn't see an um in her parlor."
"Now she knows the string's played out. The old cfime's come back to haunt."
"Think Clury'll show?" Janek shrugged. "Sue asked me the same thing.
We'll have to wait and see."
But his mind wasn't on Clury anymore. He could think only of Gelsey: her misery as she endured four or five years in a woman's prison and her state when she emerged.
The next morning Ray called from Houston.
"Evidence tests positive. Cody and Martinez just picked Collizzi up.
They're tanking him. They'll start sweating im this afternoon. Charge is capital murder. What do you want me to do?"
"You've done all you can," Janek said. "Now it's up to the El Paso police. Come home."