For Barry with love
New Orleans
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20 — 11:00 P.M.
She undressed slowly, dreamily, and when she was naked, she selected a bright red negligee to wear so that the blood would not show. Doris Whitney looked around the bedroom for the last time to make certain that the pleasant room, grown dear over the past thirty years, was neat and tidy. She opened the drawer of the bedside table and carefully removed the gun. It was shiny black, and terrifyingly cold. She placed it next to the telephone and dialed her daughter's number in Philadelphia. She listened to the echo of the distant ringing. And then there was a soft “Hello?”
“Tracy… I just felt like hearing the sound of your voice, darling.”
“What a nice surprise, Mother.”
“I hope I didn't wake you up.”
“No. I was reading. Just getting ready to go to sleep. Charles and I were going out for dinner, but the weather's too nasty. It's snowing hard here. What's it doing there?”
Dear God, we're talking about the weather, Doris Whitney thought, when there's so much I want to tell her. And can't.
“Mother? Are you there?”
Doris Whitney stared out the window. “It's raining.” And she thought, How melodramatically appropriate. Like an Alfred Hitchcock movie.
“What's that noise?” Tracy asked.
Thunder. Too deeply wrapped in her thoughts, Doris had not been aware of it. New Orleans was having a storm. Continued rain, the weatherman had said. Sixty-six degrees in New Orleans. By evening the rain will be turning to thundershowers. Be sure to carry your umbrellas. She would not need an umbrella.
“That's thunder, Tracy.” She forced a note of cheerfulness into her voice. “Tell me what's happening in Philadelphia.”
“I feel like a princess in a fairy tale, Mother,” Tracy said. “I never believed anyone could be so happy. Tomorrow night I'm meeting Charles's parents.” She deepened her voice as though making a pronouncement. “The Stanhopes, of Chestnut Hill,” she sighed. “They're an institution. I have butterflies the size of dinosaurs.”
“Don't worry. They'll love you, darling.”
“Charles says it doesn't matter. He loves me. And I adore him. I can't wait for you to meet him. He's fantastic.”
“I'm sure he is.” She would never meet Charles. She would never hold a grandchild in her lap. No. I must not think about that. “Does he know how lucky he is to have you, baby?”
“I keep telling him.” Tracy laughed. “Enough about me. Tell me what's going on there. How are you feeling?”
You're in perfect health, Doris, were Dr. Rush's words. You'll live to be a hundred. One of life's little ironies. “I feel wonderful.” Talking to you.
“Got a boyfriend yet?” Tracy teased.
Since Tracy's father had died five years earlier, Doris Whitney had not even considered going out with another man, despite Tracy's encouragement.
“No boyfriends.” She changed the subject. “How is your job? Still enjoying it?”
“I love it. Charles doesn't mind if I keep working after we're married.”
“That's wonderful, baby. He sounds like a very understanding man.”
“He is. You'll see for yourself.”
There was a loud clap of thunder, like an offstage cue. It was time. There was nothing more to say except a final farewell. “Good-bye, my darling.” She kept her voice carefully steady.
“I'll see you at the wedding, Mother. I'll call you as soon as Charles and I set a date.”
“Yes.” There was one final thing to say, after all. “I love you very, very much, Tracy.” And Doris Whitney carefully replaced the receiver.
She picked up the gun. There was only one way to do it. Quickly. She raised the gun to her temple and squeezed the trigger.
Philadelphia
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21 — 8:OO A.M.
Tracy Whitney stepped out of the lobby of her apartment building into a gray, sleety rain that fell impartially on sleek limousines driven down Market Street by uniformed chauffeurs, and on the abandoned and boarded-up houses huddled together in the slums of North Philadelphia. The rain washed the limousines clean and made sodden messes of the garbage piled high in front of the neglected row houses. Tracy Whitney was on her way to work. Her pace was brisk as she walked east on Chestnut Street toward the bank, and it was all she could do to keep from singing aloud. She wore a bright-yellow raincoat, boots, and a yellow rain hat that barely contained a mass of shining chestnut hair. She was in her mid-twenties, with a lively, intelligent face, a full, sensuous mouth, sparkling eyes that could change from a soft moss green to a dark jade in moments, and a trim, athletic figure. Her skin ran the gamut from a translucent white to a deep rose, depending on whether she was angry, tired, or excited. Her mother had once told her, “Honestly, child, sometimes I don't recognize you. You've got all the colors of the wind in you.”
Now, as Tracy walked down the street, people turned to smile, envying the happiness that shone on her face. She smiled back at them.
It's indecent for anyone to be this happy, Tracy Whitney thought. I'm marrying the man I love, and I'm going to have his baby. What more could anyone ask?
As Tracy approached the bank, she glanced at her watch. Eight-twenty. The doors of the Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank would not be open to employees for another ten minutes, but Clarence Desmond, the bank's senior vice-president in charge of the international department, was already turning off the outside alarm and opening the door. Tracy enjoyed watching the morning ritual. She stood in the rain, waiting, as Desmond entered the bank and locked the door behind him.
Banks the world over have arcane safety procedures, and the Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank was no exception. The routine never varied, except for the security signal, which was changed every week. The signal that week was a half-lowered venetian blind, indicating to the employees waiting outside that a search was in progress to make certain that no intruders were concealed on the premises, waiting to hold the employees hostage. Clarence Desmond was checking the lavatories, storeroom, vault, and safe-deposit area. Only when he was fully satisfied that he was alone would the venetian blind be raised as a sign that all was well.
The senior bookkeeper was always the first of the employees to be admitted. He would take his place next to the emergency alarm until all the other employees were inside, then lock the door behind them.
Promptly at 8:30, Tracy Whitney entered the ornate lobby with her fellow workers, took off her raincoat, hat, and boots, and listened with secret amusement to the others complaining about the rainy weather.
“The damned wind carried away my umbrella,” a teller complained. “I'm soaked.”
“I passed two ducks swimming down Market Street,” the head cashier joked.
“The weatherman says we can expect another week of this. I wish I was in Florida.”
Tracy smiled and went to work. She was in charge of the cable-transfer department. Until recently, the transfer of money from one bank to another and from one country to another had been a slow, laborious process, requiring multiple forms to be filled out and dependent on national and international postal services. With the advent of computers, the situation had changed dramatically, and enormous amounts of money could be transferred instantaneously. It was Tracy's job to extract overnight transfers from the computer and to make computer transfers to other banks. All transactions were in code, changed regularly to prevent unauthorized access. Each day, millions of electronic dollars passed through Tracy's hands. It was fascinating work, the lifeblood that fed the arteries of business all over the globe, and until Charles Stanhope III had come into Tracy's life, banking had been the most exciting thing in the world for her. The Philadelphia Trust and Fidelity Bank had a large international division, and at lunch Tracy and her fellow workers would discuss each morning's activities. It was heady conversation.
Deborah, the head bookkeeper, announced, “We just closed the hundred-million-dollar syndicated loan to Turkey….”
Mae Trenton, secretary to the vice-president of the bank, said in a confidential tone, “At the board meeting this morning they decided to join the new money facility to Peru. The up-front fee is aver five million dollars….”
Jon Creighton, the bank bigot, added, “I understand we're going in on the Mexican rescue package for fifty million. Those wetbacks don't deserve a damned cent….”
“It's interesting,” Tracy said thoughtfully, “that the countries that attack America for being too money-oriented are always the first to beg us for loans.”
It was the subject on which she and Charles had had their first argument.
Tracy had met Charles Stanhope III at a financial symposium where Charles was the guest speaker. He ran the investment house founded by his great-grandfather, and his company did a good deal of business with the bank Tracy worked for. After Charles's lecture, Tracy had gone up to disagree with his analysis of the ability of third-world nations to repay the staggering sums of money they had borrowed from commercial banks worldwide and western governments. Charles at first had been amused, then intrigued by the impassioned arguments of the beautiful young woman before him. Their discussion had continued through dinner at the old Bookbinder's restaurant.
In the beginning, Tracy had not been impressed with Charles Stanhope III, even though she was aware that he was considered Philadelphia's prize catch. Charles was thirty-five and a rich and successful member of one of the oldest families in Philadelphia. Five feet ten inches, with thinning sandy hair, brown eyes, and an earnest, pedantic manner, he was, Tracy thought, one of the boring rich.
As though reading her mind, Charles had leaned across the table and said, “My father is convinced they gave him the wrong baby at the hospital.”
“What?”
“I'm a throwback. I don't happen to think money is the end-all and be-all of life. But please don't ever tell my father I said so.”
There was such a charming unpretentiousness about him that Tracy found herself warming to him. I wonder what it would be like to be married to someone tike him — one of the establishment.
It had taken Tracy's father most of his life to build up a business that the Stanhopes would have sneered at as insignificant. The Stanhopes and the Whitneys would never mix, Tracy thought. Oil and water. And the Stanhopes are the oil. And what am I going on about like an idiot? Talk about ego. A man asks me out to dinner and I'm deciding whether I want to marry him. We'll probably never even see each other again.
Charles was saying, “I hope you're free for dinner tomorrow…?”
Philadelphia was a dazzling cornucopia of things to see and do. On Saturday nights Tracy and Charles went to the ballet or watched Riccardo Muti conduct the Philadelphia Orchestra. During the week they explored NewMarket and the unique collection of shops in Society Hill. They ate cheese steaks at a sidewalk table at Geno's and dined at the Cafй Royal, one of the most exclusive restaurants in Philadelphia. They shopped at Head House Square and wandered through the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Rodin Museum.
Tracy paused in front of the statue of The Thinker. She glanced at Charles and grinned. “It's you!”
Charles was not interested in exercise, but Tracy enjoyed it, so on Sunday mornings she jogged along the West River Drive or on the promenade skirting the Schuylkill River. She joined a Saturday afternoon t'ai chi ch'uan class, and after an hour's workout, exhausted but exhilarated, she would meet Charles at his apartment. He was a gourmet cook, and he liked preparing esoteric dishes such as Moroccan bistilla and guo bu li, the dumplings of northern China, and tahine de poulet au citron for Tracy and himself.
Charles was the most punctilious person Tracy had ever known. She had once been fifteen minutes late for a dinner appointment with him, and his- displeasure had spoiled the evening for her. After that, she had vowed to be on time for him.
Tracy had had little sexual experience, but it seemed to her that Charles made love the same way he lived his life: meticulously and very properly. Once, Tracy had decided to be daring and unconventional in bed, and had so shocked Charles that she began secretly to wonder if she were some kind of sex maniac.
The pregnancy had been unexpected, and when it happened, Tracy was filled with uncertainty. Charles had not brought up the subject of marriage, and she did not want him to feel he had to marry her because of the baby. She was not certain whether she could go through with an abortion, but the alternative was an equally painful choice. Could she raise a child without the help of its father, and would it be fair to the baby?
She decided to break the news to Charles after dinner one evening. She had prepared a cassoulet for him in her apartment, and in her nervousness she had burned it. As she set the scorched meat and beans in front of him, she forgot her carefully rehearsed speech and wildly blurted out, “I'm so sorry, Charles. I'm — pregnant.”
There was an unbearably long silence, and as Tracy was about to break it, Charles said, “We'll get married, of course.”
Tracy was filled with a sense of enormous relief. “I don't want you to think I — You don't have to marry me, you know.”
He raised a hand to stop her. “I want to marry you, Tracy. You'll make a wonderful wife.” He added, slowly, “Of course, my mother and father will be a bit surprised.” And he smiled and kissed her.
Tracy quietly asked, “Why will they be surprised?”
Charles sighed. “Darling, I'm afraid you don't quite realize what you're letting yourself in for. The Stanhopes always marry — mind you, I'm using quotation marks — 'their own kind.' Mainline Philadelphia.”
“And they've already selected your wife,” Tracy guessed.
Charles took her in his arms. “That doesn't matter a damn. It's whom I've selected that counts. We'll have dinner with Mother and Father next Friday. It's time you met them.”
At five minutes to 9:00 Tracy became aware of a difference in the noise level in the bank. The employees were beginning to speak a little faster, move a little quicker. The bank doors would open in five minutes and everything had to be in readiness. Through the front window, Tracy could see customers lined up on the sidewalk outside, waiting in the cold rain.
Tracy watched as the bank guard finished distributing fresh blank deposit and withdrawal slips into the metal trays on the six tables lined up along the center aisle of the bank. Regular customers were issued deposit slips with a personal magnetized code at the bottom so that each time a deposit was made, the computer automatically credited it to the proper account. But often customers came in without their deposit slips and would fill out blank ones.
The guard glanced up at the clock on the wall, and as the hour hand moved to 9:00, he walked over to the door and ceremoniously unlocked it.
The banking day had begun.
For the next few hours Tracy was too busy at the computer to think about anything else. Every wire transfer had to be double-checked to make sure it had the correct code. When an account was to be debited, she entered the account number, the amount, and the bank to which the money was to be transferred. Each bank had its own code number, the numbers listed in a confidential directory that contained the codes for every major bank in the world.
The morning flew by swiftly. Tracy was planning to use her lunchtime to have her hair done and had made an appointment with Larry Stella Botte. He was expensive, but it would be worth it, for she wanted Charles's parents to see her at her best. I've got to make them like me. I don't care whom they chose for him, Tracy thought. No one can make Charles as happy as I will.
At 1:00, as Tracy was getting into her raincoat, Clarence Desmond summoned her to his office. Desmond was the image of an important executive. If the bank had used television commercials, he would have been the perfect spokesman. Dressed conservatively, with an air of solid, old-fashioned authority about him, he looked like a person one could trust.
“Sit down, Tracy,” he said. He prided himself on knowing every employee's first name. “Nasty outside, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
“Ah, well. People still have to do their banking.” Desmond had used up his small talk. He leaned across his desk. “I understand that you and Charles Stanhope are engaged to be married.”
Tracy was surprised. “We haven't even announced it yet. How —?”
Desmond smiled. “Anything the Stanhopes do is news. I'm very happy for you. I assume you'll be returning here to work with us. After the honeymoon, of course. We wouldn't want to lose you. You're one of our most valuable employees.”
“Charles and I talked it over, and we agreed I'd be happier if I worked.”
Desmond smiled, satisfied. Stanhope and Sons was one of the most important investment houses in the financial community, and it would be a nice plum if he could get their exclusive account for his branch. He leaned back in his chair. “When you return from your honeymoon, Tracy, there's going to be a nice promotion for you, along with a substantial raise.”
“Oh, thank you! That's wonderful.” She knew she had earned it, and she felt a thrill of pride. She could hardly wait to tell Charles. It seemed to Tracy that the gods were conspiring to do everything they could to overwhelm her with happiness.
The Charles Stanhope Seniors lived in an impressive old mansion in Rittenhouse Square. It was a city landmark that Tracy had passed often. And now, she thought, it's going to be a part of my life.
She was nervous. Her beautiful hairdo had succumbed to the dampness in the air. She had changed dresses four times. Should she dress simply? Formally? She had one Yves Saint Laurent she had scrimped to buy at Wanamaker's. If I wear it, they'll think I'm extravagant. On the other hand, if l dress in one of my sale things from Post Horn, they'll think their son is marrying beneath him. Oh, hell, they're going to think that anyway, Tracy decided. She finally settled on a simple gray wool skirt and a white silk blouse and fastened around her neck the slender gold chain her mother had sent her for Christmas.
The door to the mansion was opened by a liveried butler. “Good evening, Miss Whitney.” The butler knows my name. Is that a good sign? A bad sign? “May I take your coat?” She was dripping on their expensive Persian rug.
He led her through a marble hallway that seemed twice as large as the bank. Tracy thought, panicky, Oh, my God. I'm dressed all wrong! ! should have worn the Yves Saint Laurent. As she turned into the library, she felt a run start at the ankle of her pantyhose, and she was face-to-face with Charles's parents.
Charles Stanhope, Sr., was a stern-looking man in his middle sixties. He looked like a successful man; he was the projection of what his son would be like in thirty years. He had brown eyes, like Charles's, a firm chin, a fringe of white hair, and Tracy loved him instantly. He was the perfect grandfather for their child.
Charles's mother was impressive looking. She was rather short and heavy-set, but despite that, there was a regal air about her. She looks solid and dependable, Tracy thought. She'll make a wonderful grandmother.
Mrs. Stanhope held out her hand. “My dear, so good of you to join us. We've asked Charles to give us a few minutes alone with you. You don't mind?”
“Of course she doesn't mind,” Charles's father declared. “Sit down… Tracy, isn't it?”
“Yes, sir.”
The two of them seated themselves on a couch facing her. Why do I feel as though I'm about to undergo an inquisition? Tracy could hear her mother's voice: Baby, God will never throw anything at you that you can't handle. Just take it one step at a time.
Tracy's first step was a weak smile that came out all wrong, because at that instant she could feel the run in her hose slither up to her knee. She tried to conceal it with her hands.
“So!” Mr. Stanhope's voice was hearty. “You and Charles want to get married.”
The word want disturbed Tracy. Surely Charles had told them they were going to be married.
“Yes,” Tracy said.
“You and Charles really haven't known each other long, have you?” Mrs. Stanhope asked.
Tracy fought back her resentment. I was right. It is going to be an inquisition.
“Long enough to know that we love each other, Mrs. Stanhope.”
“Love?” Mr. Stanhope murmured.
Mrs. Stanhope said, “To be quite blunt, Miss Whitney, Charles's news came as something of a shock to his father and me.” She smiled forebearingly. “Of course, Charles has told you about Charlotte?” She saw the expression on Tracy's face. “I see. Well., he and Charlotte grew up together. They were always very close, and — well, frankly, everyone expected them to announce their engagement this year.”
It was not necessary for her to describe Charlotte. Tracy could have drawn a picture of her. Lived next door. Rich, with the same social background as Charles. All the best schools. Loved horses and won cups.
“Tell us about your family,” Mr. Stanhope suggested.
My God, this is a scene from a late-night movie, Tracy thought wildly. I'm the Rita Hayworth character, meeting Cary Grant's parents for the first time. I need a drink. In the old movies the butler always came to the rescue with a tray of drinks.
“Where were you born, my dear?” Mrs. Stanhope asked.
“In Louisiana. My father was a mechanic.” There had been no need to add that, but Tracy was unable to resist. To hell with them. She was proud of her father.
“A mechanic?”
“Yes. He started a small manufacturing plant in New Orleans and built it up into a fairly large company in its field. When father died five years ago, my mother took over the business.”
“What does this — er — company manufacture?”
“Exhaust pipes and other'automotive parts.”
Mr. and Mrs. Stanhope exchanged a look and said in unison, “I see.”
Their tone made Tracy tense up. I wonder how long it's going to take me to love them? she asked herself. She looked into the two unsympathetic faces across from her, and to her horror began babbling inanely. “You'll really like my mother. She's beautiful, and intelligent, and charming. She's from the South. She's very small, of course, about your height, Mrs. Stanhope —” Tracy's words trailed off, weighted down by the oppressive silence. She gave a silly little laugh that died away under Mrs. Stanhope's stare.
It was Mr. Stanhope who said without expression, “Charles informs us you're pregnant.”
Oh, how Tracy wished he had not! Their attitude was so nakedly disapproving. It was as though their son had had nothing to do with what had happened. They made her feel it was a stigma. Now I know what I should have worn, Tracy thought. A scarlet letter.
“I don't understand how in this day and —” Mrs. Stanhope began, but she never finished the sentence, because at that moment Charles came into the room. Tracy had never been so glad to see anyone in her entire life.
“Well,” Charles beamed. “How are you all getting along?”
Tracy rose and hurried into his arms. “Fine, darling.” She held him close to her, thinking, Thank goodness Charles isn't like his parents. He could never be like them. They're narrow-minded and snobbish and cold.
There was a discreet cough behind them, and the butler stood there with a tray of drinks. It's going to be all right, Tracy told herself. This movie's going to have a happy ending.
The dinner was excellent, but Tracy was too nervous to cat. They discussed banking and politics and the distressing state of the world, and it was all very impersonal and polite. No one actually said aloud, “You trapped our son into marriage.” In all fairness, Tracy thought, they have every right to be concerned about the woman their son marries. One day Charles will own the firm, and it's important that he have the right wife. And Tracy promised herself, He will have.
Charles gently took her hand which had been twisting the napkin under the table and smiled and gave a small wink. Tracy's heart soared.
“Tracy and I prefer a small wedding,” Charles said, “and afterward —”
“Nonsense,” Mrs. Stanhope interrupted. “Our family does not have small weddings, Charles. There will be dozens of friends who will want to see you married.” She looked over at Tracy, evaluating her figure. “Perhaps we should see that the wedding invitations are sent out at once.” And as an afterthought, “That is, if that's acceptable to you?”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” There was going to be a wedding. Why did I even doubt it?
Mrs. Stanhope said, “Some of the guests will be coming from abroad. I'll make arrangements for them to stay here at the house.”
Mr. Stanhope asked, “Have you decided where you're going on your honeymoon?”
Charles smiled. “That's privileged information, Father.” He gave Tracy's hand a squeeze.
“How long a honeymoon are you planning?” Mrs. Stanhope inquired.
“About fifty years,” Charles replied. And Tracy adored him for it.
After dinner they moved into the library for brandy, and Tracy looked around at the lovely old oak-paneled room with its shelves of leather-bound volumes, the two Corots, a small Copley, and a Reynolds. It would not have mattered to her if Charles had no money at all, but she admitted to herself that this was going to be a very pleasant way to live.
It was almost midnight when Charles drove her back to her small apartment off Fairmount Park.
“I hope the evening wasn't too difficult for you, Tracy. Mother and Father can be a bit stiff sometimes.”
“Oh, no, they were lovely.” Tracy lied.
She was exhausted from the tension of the evening, but when they reached the door of her apartment, she asked, “Are you going to come in, Charles?” She needed to have him hold her in his arms. She wanted him to say, “I love you, darling. No one in this world will ever keep us apart.”
He said, “Afraid not tonight. I've got a heavy morning.”
Tracy concealed her disappointment. “Of course. I understand, darling.”
“I'll talk to you tomorrow.” He gave her a brief kiss, and she watched him disappear down the hallway.
The apartment was ablaze and the insistent sound of loud fire bells crashed abruptly through the silence. Tracy jerked upright in her bed, groggy with sleep, sniffing for smoke in the darkened room. The ringing continued, and she slowly became aware that it was the telephone. The bedside clock read 2:30 A.M. Her first panicky thought was that something had happened to Charles. She snatched up the phone. “Hello?”
A distant male voice asked, “Tracy Whitney?”
She hesitated. If this was an obscene phone call… “Who is this?”
“This is Lieutenant Miller of the New Orleans Police Department. Is this Tracy Whitney?”
“Yes.” Her heart began to pound.
“I'm afraid I have bad news for you.”
Her hand clenched around the phone.
“It's about your mother.”
“Has — has Mother been in some kind of accident?”
“She's dead, Miss Whitney.”
“No!” It was a scream. This was an obscene phone call. Some crank trying to frighten her. There was nothing wrong with her mother. Her mother was alive. I love you very, very much, Tracy.
“I hate to break it to you this way,” the voice said.
It was real. It was a nightmare, but it was happening. She could not speak. Her mind and her tongue were frozen.
The lieutenant's voice was saying, “Hello…? Miss Whitney? Hello…?”
“I'll be on the first plane.”
She sat in the tiny kitchen of her apartment thinking about her mother. It was impossible that she was dead. She had always been so vibrant, so alive. They had had such a close and loving relationship. From the time Tracy was a small girl, she had been able to go to her mother with her problems, to discuss school and boys and, later, men. When Tracy's father had died, many overtures had been made by people who wanted to buy the business. They had offered Doris Whitney enough money so that she could have lived well for the rest of her life, but she had stubbornly refused to sell. “Your father built up this business. I can't throw away all his hard work.” And she had kept the business flourishing.
Oh, Mother, Tracy thought. I love you so much. You'll never meet Charles, and you'll never see your grandchild, and she began to weep.
She made a cup of coffee and let it grow cold while she sat in the dark. Tracy wanted desperately to call Charles and tell him what had happened, to have him at her side. She looked at the kitchen clock. It was 3:30 A.M. She did not want to awaken him; she would telephone him from New Orleans. She wondered whether this would affect their wedding plans, and instantly felt guilty at the thought. How could she even think of herself at a time like this? Lieutenant Miller had said, “When you get here, grab a cab and come to police headquarters.” Why police headquarters? Why? What had happened?
Standing in the crowded New Orleans airport waiting for her suitcase, surrounded by pushing, impatient travelers, Tracy felt suffocated. She tried to move close to the baggage carousel, but no one would let her through. She was becoming increasingly nervous, dreading what she would have to face in a little while. She kept trying to tell herself that it was all some kind of mistake, but the words kept reverberating in her head: I'm afraid I have bad news for you…. She's dead, Miss Whitney…. I hate to break it to you this way….
When Tracy finally retrieved her suitcase, she got into a taxi and repeated the address the lieutenant had given her: “Seven fifteen South Broad Street, please.”
The driver grinned at her in the rearview mirror. “Fuzzville, huh?”
No conversation. Not now. Tracy's mind was too filled with turmoil.
The taxi headed east toward the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway. The driver chattered on. “Come here for the big show, miss?”
She had no idea what he was talking about, but she thought, No. I came here for death. She was aware of the drone of the driver's voice, but she did not hear the words. She sat stiffly an her seat, oblivious to the familiar surroundings that sped past. It was only as they approached the French Quarter that Tracy became conscious of the growing noise. It was the sound of a mob gone mad, rioters yelling some ancient berserk litany.
“Far as I can take you,” the driver informed her.
And then Tracy looked up and saw it. It was an incredible sight. There were hundreds of thousands of shouting people, wearing masks, disguised as dragons and giant alligators and pagan gods, filling the streets and sidewalks ahead with a wild cacophony of sound. It was an insane explosion of bodies and music and floats and dancing.
“Better get out before they turn my cab over,” the driver said. “Damned Mardi Gras.”
Of course. It was February, the time when the whole city celebrated the beginning of Lent. Tracy got out of the cab and stood at the curb, suitcase in hand, and the next moment she was swept up in the screaming, dancing crowd. It was obscene, a black witches' sabbath, a million Furies celebrating the death of her mother. Tracy's suitcase was torn from her hand and disappeared. She was grabbed by a fat man in a devil's mask and kissed. A deer squeezed her breasts, and a giant panda grabbed her from behind and lifted her up. She struggled free and tried to run, but it was impossible. She was hemmed in, trapped, a part of the singing, dancing celebration. She moved with the chanting mob, tears streaming down her face. There was no escape. When she was finally able to break away and flee to a quiet street, she was near hysteria. She stood still for a long time, leaning against a lamppost, taking deep breaths, slowly regaining control of herself. She headed for the police station.
Lieutenant Miller was a middle-aged, harassed-looking man with a weather-beaten face, who seemed genuinely uncomfortable in his role. “Sorry I couldn't meet you at the airport,” he told Tracy, “but the whole town's gone nuts. We went through your mother's things, and you're the only one we could find to call.”
“Please, Lieutenant, tell me what — what happened to my mother.”
“She committed suicide.”
A cold chill went through her. “That's — that's impossible! Why would she kill herself? She had everything to live for.” Her voice was ragged.
“She left a note addressed to you.”
The morgue was cold and indifferent and terrifying. Tracy was led down a long white corridor into a large, sterile, empty room, and suddenly she realized that the room was not empty. It was filled with the dead. Her dead.
A white-coated attendant strolled over to a wall, reached for a handle, and pulled out an oversized drawer. “Wanna take a look?”
No! I don't want to see the empty, lifeless body lying in that box. She wanted to get out of this place. She wanted to go back a few hours in time when the fire belt was ringing. Let it be a real fire alarm, not the telephone, not my mother dead. Tracy moved forward slowly, each step a screaming inside her. Then she was staring down at the lifeless remains of the body that had borne her, nourished her, laughed with her, loved her. She bent over and kissed her mother on the cheek. The cheek was cold and rubbery. “Oh, Mother,” Tracy whispered. “Why? Why did you do it?”
“We gotta perform an autopsy,” the attendant was saying. “It's the state law with suicides.”
The note Doris Whitney left offered no answer.
My darling Tracy,
Please forgive me. I failed, and I couldn't stand being a burden on you. This is the best way. I love you so much.
Mother.
“Oh, my God!”
“There's more. The district attorney served your mother notice that he was going to ask for an indictment against her for fraud, that she was facing a prison sentence. That was the day she really died, I think.”
Tracy was seething with a wave of helpless anger. “But all she had to do was tell them the truth — explain what that man did to her.”
The old foreman shook his head. “Joe Romano works for a man named Anthony Orsatti. Orsatti runs New Orleans. I found out too late that Romano's done this before with other companies. Even if your mother had taken him to court, it would have been years before it was all untangled, and she didn't have the money to fight him.”
“Why didn't she tell me?” It was a cry of anguish, a cry for her mother's anguish.
“Your mother was a proud woman. And what could you do? There's nothing anyone can do.”
You're wrong, Tracy thought fiercely. “I want to see Joe Romano. Where can I find him?”
Schmidt said flatly, “Forget about him. You have no idea how powerful he is.”
“Where does he live, Otto?”
“He has an estate near Jackson Square, but it won't help to go there, Tracy, believe me.”
Tracy did not answer. She was filled with an emotion totally unfamiliar to her: hatred. Joe Romano is going to pay for killing my mother, Tracy swore to herself.
She needed time. Time to think, time to plan her next move. She could not bear to go back to the despoiled house, so she hecked into a small hotel on Magazine Street, far from the French Quarter, where the mad parades were still going on. She had no luggage, and the suspicious clerk behind the desk said, “You'll have to pay in advance. That'll be forty dollars for the night.”
From her room Tracy telephoned Clarence Desmond to tell him she would be unable to come to work for a few days.
He concealed his irritation at being inconvenienced. “Don't worry about it,” he told Tracy. “I'll find someone to fill in until you return.” He hoped she would remember to tell Charles Stanhope how understanding he had been.
Tracy's next call was to Charles. “Charles, darling —”
“Where the devil are you, Tracy? Mother has been trying to reach you all morning. She wanted to have lunch with you today. You two have a lot of arrangements to go over.”
“I'm sorry, darling. I'm in New Orleans.”
“You're where? What are you doing in New Orleans?”
“My mother — died.” The word stuck in her throat.
“Oh.” The tone of his voice changed instantly. “I'm sorry, Tracy. It must have been very sudden. She was quite young, wasn't she?”
She was very young, Tracy thought miserably. Aloud she said, “Yes. Yes, she was.”
“What happened? Are you all right?”
Somehow Tracy could not bring herself to tell Charles that it was suicide. She wanted desperately to cry out the whole terrible story about what they had done to her mother, but she stopped herself. It's my problem, she thought. I can't throw my burden on Charles. She said, “Don't worry I'm all right, darling.”
“Would you like me to come down there, Tracy?”
“No. Thank you. I can handle it. I'm burying Mama tomorrow. I'll be back in Philadelphia on Monday.”
When she hung up, she lay on the hotel bed, her thoughts unfocused. She counted the stained acoustical tiles on the ceiling. One… two… three… Romano… four… five… Joe Romano… six… seven… he was going to pay. She had no plan. She knew only that she was not going to let Joe Romano get away with what he had done, that she would find some way to avenge her mother.
Tracy left her hotel in the late afternoon and walked along Canal Street until she came to a pawn shop. A cadaverous-looking man wearing an old-fashioned green eyeshade sat in a cage behind a counter.
“Help you?”
“I — I want to buy a gun.”
“What kind of gun?”
“You know… a… revolver.”
“You want a thirty-two, a forty-five, a —”
Tracy had never even held a gun. “A — a thirty-two will do.”
“I have a nice thirty-two caliber Smith and Wesson here for two hundred twenty-nine dollars, or a Charter Arms thirty-two for a hundred fifty-nine…”
She had not brought much cash with her. “Have you got something cheaper?”
He shrugged. “Cheaper is a slingshot, lady. Tell you what. I'll let you have the thirty-two for a hundred fifty, and I'll throw in a box of bullets.”
“All right.” Tracy watched as he moved over to an arsenal on a table behind him and selected a revolver. He brought it to the counter. “You know how to use it?”
“You — you pull the trigger.”
He grunted. “Do you want me to show you how to load it?”
She started to say no, that she was not going to use it, that she just wanted to frighten someone, but she realized how foolish that would sound. “Yes, please.”
Tracy watched as he inserted the bullets into the chamber. “Thank you.” She reached in tier purse and counted out the money.
“I'll need your name and address for the police records.”
That had not occurred to Tracy. Threatening Joe Romano with a gun was a criminal act. But he's the criminal, not I.
The green eyeshade made the man's eyes a pale yellow as he watched her. “Name?”
“Smith. Joan Smith.”
He made a note on a card. “Address?”
“Dowman Road. Thirty-twenty Dowman Road.”
Without looking up he said, “There is no Thirty-twenty Dowman Road. That would be in the middle of the river. We'll make it Fifty-twenty.” He pushed the receipt in front of her.
She signed JOAN SMITH. “Is that it?”
“That's it.” He carefully pushed the revolver through the cage. Tracy stared at it, then picked it up, put it in her purse, turned and hurried out of the shop.
“Hey, lady,” he yelled after her. “Don't forget that gun is loaded!”
Jackson Square is in the heart of the French Quarter, with the beautiful St. Louis Cathedral towering over it like a benediction. Lovely old homes and estates in the square are sheltered from the bustling street traffic by tall hedges and graceful magnolia trees. Joe Romano lived in one of those houses.
Tracy waited until dark before she set out. The parades had moved on to Chartres Street, and in the distance Tracy could hear an echo of the pandemonium she had been swept up in earlier.
She stood in the shadows, studying the house, conscious of the heavy weight of the gun in her purse. The plan she had worked out was simple. She was going to reason with Joe Romano, ask him to clear her mother's name. If he refused, she would threaten him with the gun and force him to write out a confession. She would take it to Lieutenant Miller, and he would arrest Romano, and her mother's name would be protected. She wished desperately that Charles were there with her, but it was best to do it alone. Charles had to be left out of it. She would tell him about it when it was all over and Joe Romano was behind bars, where he belonged. A pedestrian was approaching. Tracy waited until he had walked past and the street was deserted.
She walked up to the house and pressed the doorbell. There was no answer. He's probably at one of the private krewes balls given during Mardi Gras. But I can wait, Tracy thought. I can wait until he gets home. Suddenly, the porch light snapped on, the front door opened, and a man stood in the doorway. His appearance was a surprise to Tracy. She had envisioned a sinister-looking mobster, evil written all over his face. Instead, she found herself facing an attractive, pleasant-looking man who could easily have been mistaken for a university professor. His voice was low and friendly. “Hello. May I help you?”
“Are you Joseph Romano?” Her voice was shaky.
“Yes. What can I do for you?” He had an easy, engaging manner. No wonder my mother was taken in by this man, Tracy thought.
“I — I'd like to talk to you, Mr. Romano.”
He studied her figure for a moment. “Certainly. Please come in.”
Tracy walked into a living room filled with beautiful, burnished antique furniture. Joseph Romano lived well. On my mother's money, Tracy thought bitterly.
“I was just about to mix myself a drink. What would you like?”
“Nothing.”
He looked at her curiously.. “What was it you wanted to see me about, Miss —?”
“Tracy Whitney. I'm Doris Whitney's daughter.”
He stared at her blankly for an instant, and then a look of recognition flashed across his face. “Oh, yes. I heard about your mother. Too bad.”
Too bad! He had caused the death of her mother, and his only comment was: “Too bad.”
“Mr. Romano, the district attorney believes that my mother was guilty of fraud. You know that's not true. I want you to help me clear her name.”
He shrugged. “I never talk business during Mardi Gras. It's against my religion.” Romano walked over to the bar and began mixing two drinks. “I think you'll feel better after you've had a drink.”
He was leaving her no choice. Tracy opened her purse and pulled out the revolver. She pointed it at him. “I'll tell you what will make me feel better, Mr. Romano. Having you confess to exactly what you did to my mother.”
Joseph Romano turned and saw the gun. “You'd better put that away, Miss Whitney. It could go off.”
“It's going to go off if you don't do exactly what I tell you to. You're going to write down how you stripped the company, put it into bankruptcy, and drove my mother to suicide.”
He was watching her carefully now, his dark eyes wary. “I see. What if I refuse?”
“Then I'm going to kill you.” She could feel the gun shaking in her hand.
“You don't took like a killer, Miss Whitney.” He was moving toward her now, a drink in his hand. His voice was soft and sincere. “I had nothing to do with your mother's death, and believe me, I —” He threw the drink in her face.
Tracy felt the sharp sting of the alcohol in her eyes, and an instant later the gun was knocked from her hand.
“Your old lady held out on me,” Joe Romano said. “She didn't tell me she had a horny-looking daughter.”
He was holding her, pinning her arms, and Tracy was blinded and terrified. She tried to move away from him, but he backed her into a wall, pressing against her.
“You have guts, baby. I like that. It turns me on.” His voice was hoarse. Tracy could feel his body hard against hers, and she tried to twist away, but she was helpless in his grip.
“You came here for a little excitement, huh? Well, Joe's going to give it to you.”
She tried to scream, but her voice came out in a gasp. “Let me go!”
He ripped her blouse away. “Hey! Look at those tits,” he whispered. He began pinching her nipples. “Fight me, baby,” he whispered. “I love it!”
“Let go of me!”
He was squeezing harder, hurting her. She felt herself being forced down to the floor.
“I'll bet you've never been fucked by a real man,” he said. He was astride her now, his body heavy on hers, his hands moving up her thighs. Tracy pushed out blindly, and her fingers touched the gun. She grabbed for it, and there was a sudden, loud explosion.
“Oh, Jesus!” Romano cried. His grip suddenly relaxed. Through a red mist, Tracy watched in horror as he fell off her and slumped to the floor, clutching his side. “You shot me… you bitch. You shot me….”
Tracy was transfixed, unable to move. She felt she was going to be sick, and her eyes were blinded by stabbing pain. She pulled herself to her feet, turned, and stumbled to a door at the far end of the room. She pushed it open. It was a bathroom. She staggered over to the sink, filled the basin with cold water, and bathed her eyes until the pain began to subside and her vision cleared. She looked into the cabinet mirror. Her eyes were bloodshot and wild looking. My God, I've just killed a man. She ran back into the living room.
Joe Romano lay on the floor, his blood seeping onto the white rug. Tracy stood over him, white-faced. “I'm sorry,” she said inanely. “I didn't mean to —”
“Ambulance…” His breathing was ragged.
Tracy hurried to the telephone on the desk and dialed the operator. When she tried to speak, her voice was choked. “Operator, send an ambulance right away. The address is Four-twenty-one Jackson Square. A man has been shot.”
She replaced the receiver and looked down at Joe Romano. Oh, God, she prayed, please don't let him die. You know I didn't meal: to kill him. She knelt beside the body on the floor to see if he was still alive. His eyes were closed, but he was breathing. “An ambulance is on its way,” Tracy promised.
She fled.
She tried not to run, afraid of attracting attention. She pulled her jacket close around her to conceal her ripped blouse. Four blocks from the house Tracy tried to hail a taxi. Half a dozen sped past her, filled with happy, laughing passengers. In the distance Tracy heard the sound of an approaching siren, and seconds later an ambulance raced past her, headed in the direction of Joe Romano's house. I've got to get away from here, Tracy thought. Ahead of her, a taxi pulled to the curb and discharged its passengers. Tracy ran toward it, afraid of losing it. “Are you free?”
“That depends. Where you goin'?”
“The airport.” She held her breath.
“Get in.”
On the way to the airport, Tracy thought about the ambulance. What if they were too late and Joe Romano was dead? She would be a murderess. She had left the gun back at the house, and her fingerprints were on it. She could tell the police that Romano had tried to rape her and that the gun had gone off accidentally, but they would never believe her. She had purchased the gun that was lying on the floor beside Joe Romano. How much time had passed? Half an hour? An hour? She had to get out of New Orleans as quickly as possible.
“Enjoy the carnival?” the driver asked.
Tracy swallowed. “I — yes.” She pulled out her hand mirror and did what she could to make herself presentable. She had been stupid to try to make Joe Romano confess. Everything had gone wrong. How can I tell Charles what happened? She knew how shocked he would be, but after she explained, he would understand. Charles would know what to do.
When the taxi arrived at New Orleans International Airport, Tracy wondered, Was it only this morning that I was here? Did all this happen in just one day? Her mother's suicide… the horror of being swept up in the carnival… the man snarling, “You shot me… you bitch….”
When Tracy walked into the terminal, it seemed to her that everyone was staring at her accusingly. That's what a guilty conscience does, she thought. She wished there were some way she could learn about Joe Romano's condition, but she had no idea what hospital he would be taken to or whom she could call. He's going to be all right. Charles and I will come back for Mother's funeral, and Joe Romano will be fine. She tried to push from her mind the vision of the man lying on the white rug, his blood staining it red. She had to hurry home to Charles.
Tracy approached the Delta Airlines counter. “I'd like a one-way ticket on the next flight to Philadelphia, please. Tourist.”
The passenger representative consulted his computer. “That will be Flight three-o-four. You're in luck. I have one seat left.”
“What time does the plane leave?”
“In twenty minutes. You just have time to board.”
As Tracy reached into her purse, she sensed rather than saw two uniformed police officers step up on either side of her. One of them said, “Tracy Whitney?”
Her heart stopped beating for an instant. It would be stupid to deny my identity. “Yes…”
“You're under arrest.”
And Tracy felt the cold steel of handcuffs snapped on her wrists.
Everything was happening in slow motion to someone else. Tracy watched herself being led through the airport, manacled to one of the policemen, while passersby turned to stare. She was shoved into the back of a black-and-white squad car with steel mesh separating the front seat from the rear. The police car sped away from the curb with red lights flashing and sirens screaming. She huddled in the backseat, trying to become invisible. She was a murderess. Joseph Romano had died. But it had been an accident. She would explain how it had happened. They had to believe her. They had to.
The police station Tracy was taken to was in the Algiers district, on the west bank of New Orleans, a grim and foreboding building with a look of hopelessness about it. The booking room was crowded with seedy-looking characters — prostitutes, pimps, muggers, and their victims. Tracy was marched to the desk of the sergeant-on-watch.
One of her captors said, “The Whitney woman, Sarge. We caught her at the airport tryin' to escape.”
“I wasn't —”
“Take the cuffs off.”
The handcuffs were removed. Tracy found her voice. “It was an accident. I didn't mean to kill him. He tried to rape me and —” She could not control the hysteria in her voice.
The desk sergeant said curtly, “Are you Tracy Whitney?”
“Yes. I —”
“Lock her up.”
“No! Wait a minute,” she pleaded. “I have to call someone. I — I'm entitled to make a phone call.”
The desk sergeant grunted, “You know the routine, huh? How many times you been in the stammer, honey?”
“None. This is —”
“You get one call. Three minutes. What number do you want?”
She was so nervous that she could not remember Charles's telephone number. She could not even recall the area code for Philadelphia. Was it two-five-one? No. That was not right. She was trembling.
“Come on. I haven't got all night.”
Two-one-five. That was it! “Two-one-five-five-five-five-nine-three-zero-one.”
The desk sergeant dialed the number and handed the phone to Tracy. She could hear the phone ringing. And ringing. There was no answer. Charles had to be home.
The desk sergeant said, “Time's up.” He started to take the phone from her.
“Please wait!” she cried. But she suddenly remembered that Charles shut off his phone at night so that he would not be disturbed. She listened to the hollow ringing and realized there was no way she could reach him.
The desk sergeant asked, “You through?”
Tracy looked up at him and said dully, “I'm through.”
A policeman in shirt-sleeves took Tracy. into a room where she was booked and fingerprinted, then led down a corridor and locked in a holding cell, by herself.
“You'll have a hearing in the morning,” the policeman told her. He walked away, leaving her alone.
None of this is happening, Tracy thought. This is all a terrible dream. Oh, please, God, don't let any of this be real.
But the stinking cot in the cell was real, and the seatless toilet in the corner was real, and the bars were real.
The hours of the night dragged by endlessly. If only I could have reached Charles. She needed him now more than she had ever needed anyone in her life. I should have confided in him in the first place. If I had, none of this would have happened.
At 6:00 A.M. a bored guard brought Tracy a breakfast of tepid coffee and cold oatmeal. She could not touch it. Her stomach was in knots. At 9:00 a matron came for her.
“Time to go, sweetie.” She unlocked the cell door.
“I must make a call,” Tracy said. “It's very —”
“Later,” the matron told her. “You don't want to keep the judge waiting. He's a mean son of a bitch.”
She escorted Tracy down a corridor and through a door that led into a courtroom. An elderly judge was seated on the bench. His head and hands kept moving in small, quick jerks. In front of him stood the district attorney, Ed Topper, a slight man in his forties, with crinkly salt-and-pepper hair cut en brosse, and cold, black eyes.
Tracy was led to a seat, and a moment later the bailiff called out, “People against Tracy Whitney,” and Tracy found herself moving toward the bench. The judge was scanning a sheet of paper in front of him, his head bobbing up and down.
Now. Now was Tracy's moment to explain to someone in authority the truth about what had happened. She pressed her hands together to keep them from trembling. “Your Honor, it wasn't murder. I shot him, but it was an accident. I only meant to frighten him. He tried to rape me and —”
The district attorney interrupted. “Your Honor, I see no point in wasting the court's time. This woman broke into Mr. Romano's home, armed with a thirty-two-caliber revolver, stole a Renoir painting worth half a million dollars, and when Mr. Romano caught her in the act, she shot him in cold blood and left him for dead.”
Tracy felt the color draining from her face. “What — what are you talking about?”
None of this was making any sense.
The district attorney rapped out, “We have the gun with which she wounded Mr. Romano. Her fingerprints are on it.”
Wounded! Then Joseph Romano was alive! She had not killed anyone.
“She escaped with the painting. Your Honor. It's probably in the hands of a fence by now. For that reason, the state is requesting that Tracy Whitney be held for attempted murder and armed robbery and that bail be set at half a million dollars.”
The judge turned to Tracy, who stood there in shock. “Are you represented by counsel?”
She did not even hear him.
He raised his voice. “Do you have an attorney?”
Tracy shook her head. “No. I — what — what this man said isn't true. I never —”
“Do you have money for an attorney?”
There was her employees' fund at the bank. There was Charles. “I… no, Your Honor, but I don't understand —”
“The court will appoint one for you. You are ordered held in jail, in lieu of five hundred thousand dollars bail. Next case.”
“Wait! This is all a mistake! I'm not —”
She had no recollection of being led from the courtroom.
The name of the attorney appointed by the court was Perry Pope. He was in his late thirties, with a craggy, intelligent face and sympathetic blue eyes. Tracy liked him immediately.
He walked into her cell, sat on the cot, and said, “Well! You've created quite a sensation for a lady who's been in town only twenty-four hours.” He grinned. “But you're lucky. You're a lousy shot. It's only a flesh wound. Romano's going to live.” He took out a pipe. “Mind?”
“No.”
He filled his pipe with tobacco, lit it, and studied Tracy. “You don't look like the average desperate criminal. Miss Whitney.”
“I'm not. I swear I'm not.”
“Convince me,” he said. “Tell me what happened. From the beginning. Take your time.”
Tracy told him. Everything. Perry Pope sat quietly listening to her story, not speaking until Tracy was finished. Then he leaned back against the wall of the cell, a grim expression on his face. “That bastard,” Pope said softly.
“I don't understand what they were talking about.” There was confusion in Tracy's eyes. “I don't know anything about a painting.”
“It's really very simple. Joe Romano used you as a patsy, the same way he used your mother. You walked right into a setup.”
“I still don't understand.”
“Then let me lay it out for you. Romano will put in an insurance claim for half a million dollars for the Renoir he's hidden away somewhere, and he'll collect. The insurance company will be after you, not him. When things cool down, he'll sell the painting to a private patty and make another half million, thanks to your do-it-yourself approach. Didn't you realize that a confession obtained at the point of a gun is worthless?”
“I — I suppose so. I just thought that if I could get the truth out of him, someone would start an investigation.”
His pipe had gone out. He relit it. “How did you enter his house?”
“I rang the front doorbell, and Mr. Romano let me in.”
“That's not his story. There's a smashed window at the back of the house, where he says you broke in. He told the police he caught you sneaking out with the Renoir, and when he tried to stop you, you shot him and ran.”
“That's a lie! I —”
“But it's his lie, and his house, and your gun. Do you have any idea with whom you're dealing?”
Tracy shook her head mutely.
“Then let me tell you the facts of life, Miss Whitney. This town is sewn up tight by the Orsatti Family. Nothing goes down here without Anthony Orsatti's okay. If you want a permit to put up a building, pave a highway, run girls, numbers, or dope, you see Orsatti. Joe Romano started out as his hit man. Now he's the top man in Orsatti's organization.” He looked at her in wonder. “And you walked into Romano's house and pulled a gun on him.”
Tracy sat there, numb and exhausted. Finally she asked, “Do you believe my story?”
He smiled. “You're damned right. It's so dumb it has to be true.”
“Can you help me?”
He said slowly, “I'm going to try. I'd give anything to put them all behind bars. They own this town and most of the judges in it. If you go to trial, they'll bury you so deep you'll sever see daylight again.”
Tracy looked at him, puzzled. “If I go to trial?”
Pope stood and paced up and down in the small cell. “I don't want to put you in front of a jury, because, believe me, it will be his jury. There's only one judge Orsatti has never been able to buy. His name is Henry Lawrence. If I can arrange for him to hear this case, I'm pretty sure I can make a deal for you. It's not strictly ethical, but I'm going to speak to him privately. He hates Orsatti and Romano as much as I do. Now all we've got to do is get to Judge Lawrence.”
Perry Pope arranged for Tracy to place a telephone call to Charles. Tracy heard the familiar voice of Charles's secretary. “Mr. Stanhope's office.”
“Harriet. This is Tracy Whitney. Is —?”
“Oh! He's been trying to reach you, Miss Whitney, but we didn't have a telephone number for you. Mrs. Stanhope is most anxious to discuss the wedding arrangements with you. If you could call her as soon as possible —”
“Harriet, may I speak to Mr. Stanhope, please?”
“I'm sorry, Miss Whitney. He's on his way to Houston for a meeting. If you'll give me your number, I'm sure he'll telephone you as soon as he can.”
“I —” There was no way she could have him telephone her at the jail. Not until she had a chance to explain things to him first.
“I — I'll have to call Mr. Stanhope back.” She slowly replaced the receiver.
Tomorrow, Tracy thought wearily. I'll explain it all to Charles tomorrow.
That afternoon Tracy was moved to a larger cell. A delicious hot dinner appeared from Galatoire's, and a short time later fresh flowers arrived with a note attached. Tracy opened the envelope and pulled out the card. CHIN UP, WE'RE GOING TO BEAT THE BASTARDS. PERRY POPE.
He came to visit Tracy the following morning. The instant she saw the smile on his face, she knew there was good news.
“We got lucky,” he exclaimed. “I've just left Judge Lawrence and Topper, the district attorney. Topper screamed like a banshee, but we've got a deal.”
“A deal?”
“I told Judge Lawrence your whole story. He's agreed to accept a guilty plea from you.”
Tracy stared at him in shock. “A guilty plea? But I'm not —”
He raised a hand. “Hear me out. By pleading guilty, you save the state the expense of a trial. I've persuaded the judge that you didn't steal the painting. He knows Joe Romano, and he believes me.”
“But… if I plead guilty,” Tracy asked slowly, “what will they do to me?”
“Judge Lawrence will sentence you to three months in prison with —”
“Prison!”
“Wait a minute. He'll suspend the sentence, and you can do your probation out of the state.”
“But then I'll — I'll have a record.”
Perry Pope sighed. “If they put you on trial for armed robbery and attempted murder during the commission of a felony, you could be sentenced to ten years.”
Ten years in jail!
Perry Pope was patiently watching her. “It's your decision,” he'said. “I can only give you my best advice. It's a miracle that I got away with this. They want an answer now. You don't have to take the deal. You can get another lawyer and —”
“No.” She knew that this man was honest. Under the circumstances, considering her insane behavior, he had done everything possible for her. If only she could talk to Charles. But they needed an answer now. She was probably lucky to get off with a three-month suspended sentence.
“I'll — I'll take the deal,” Tracy said. She had to force the words out.
He nodded. “Smart girl.”
She was not permitted to make any phone calls before she was returned to the courtroom. Ed Topper stood on one side of her, and Perry Pope on the other. Seated on the bench was a distinguished-looking man in his fifties, with a smooth, unlined face and thick, styled hair.
Judge Henry Lawrence said to Tracy, “The court has been informed that the defendant wishes to change her plea from not guilty to guilty. Is that correct?”
“Yes, Your Honor.”
“Are all parties in agreement?”
Perry Pope nodded. “Yes, Your Honor.”
“The state agrees, Your Honor,” the district attorney said.
Judge Lawrence sat there in silence for a long moment. Then he leaned forward and looked into Tracy's eyes. “One of the reasons this great country of ours is in such pitiful shape is that the streets are crawling with vermin who think they can get away with anything. People who laugh at the law. Some judicial systems in this country coddle criminals. Well, in Louisiana, we don't believe in that. When, during the commission of a felony, someone tries to kill in cold blood, we believe that that person should be properly punished.”
Tracy began to feel the first stirrings of panic. She turned to look at Perry Pope. His eyes were fixed on the judge.
“The defendant has admitted that she attempted to murder one of the outstanding citizens of this community — a man noted for his philanthropy and good works. The defendant shot him while in the act of stealing an art object worth half a million dollars.” His voice grew harsher. “Well, this court is going to see to it that you don't get to enjoy that money — not for the next fifteen years, because for the next fifteen years you're going to be incarcerated in the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women.”
Tracy felt the courtroom begin to spin. Some horrible joke was being played. The judge was an actor typecast for the part, but he was reading the wrong lines. He was not supposed to say any of those things. She turned to explain that to Perry Pope, but his eyes were averted. He was juggling papers in his briefcase, and for the first time, Tracy noticed that his fingernails were bitten to the quick. Judge Lawrence had risen and was gathering up his notes. Tracy stood there, numb, unable to comprehend what was happening to her.
A bailiff stepped to Tracy's side and took her arm. “Come along,” he said.
“No,” Tracy cried. “No, please!” She looked up at the judge. “There's been a terrible mistake, Your Honor. I —”
And as she felt the bailiff's grip tighten on her arm, Tracy realized there had been no mistake. She had been tricked. They were going to destroy her.
Just as they had destroyed her mother.
The news of Tracy Whitney's crime and sentencing appeared on the front page of the New Orleans Courier, accompanied by a police photograph of her. The major wire services picked up the story and flashed it to correspondent newspapers around the country, and when Tracy was taken from the courtroom to await transfer to the state penitentiary, she was confronted by a crew of television reporters. She hid her face in humiliation, but there was no escape from the cameras. Joe Romano was big news, and the attempt on his life by a beautiful female burglar was even bigger news. It seemed to Tracy that she was surrounded by enemies. Charles will get me out, she kept repeating to herself. Oh, please, God, let Charles get me out. I can't have our baby born in prison.
It was not until the following afternoon that the desk sergeant would permit Tracy to use the telephone. Harriet answered. “Mr. Stanhope's office.”
“Harriet, this is Tracy Whitney. I'd like to speak to Mr. Stanhope.”
“Just a moment, Miss Whitney.” She heard the hesitation in the secretary's voice. “I'll — I'll see if Mr. Stanhope is in.”
After a long, harrowing wait, Tracy finally heard Charles's voice. She could have wept with relief. “Charles —”
“Tracy? Is that you, Tracy?”
“Yes, darling. Oh, Charles, I've been trying to reach —”
“I've been going crazy, Tracy! The newspapers here are full of wild stories about you. I can't believe what they're saying.”
“None of it is true, darling. None of it. I —”
“Why didn't you call me?”
“I tried. I couldn't reach you. I —”
“Where are you now?”
“I'm — I'm in a jail in New Orleans. Charles, they're going to send me to prison for something I didn't do.” To her horror, she was weeping.
“Hold on. Listen to me. The papers say that you shot a man. That's not true, is it?”
“I did shoot him, but —”
“Then it is true.”
“It's not the way it sounds, darling. It's not like that at all. I can explain everything to you. I —”
“Tracy, did you plead guilty to attempted murder and stealing a painting?”
“Yes, Charles, but only because —”
“My God, if you needed money that badly, you should have discussed it with me…. And trying to kill someone…. I can't believe this. Neither can my parents. You're the headline in this morning's Philadelphia Daily News. This is the first time a breath of scandal has ever touched the Stanhope family.”
It was the bitter self-control of Charles's voice that made Tracy aware of the depth of his feelings. She had counted on him so desperately, and he was on their side. She forced herself not to scream. “Darling, I need you. Please come down here. You can straighten all this out.”
There was a long silence. “It doesn't sound like there's much to straighten out. Not if you've confessed to doing all those things. The family can't afford to get mixed up in a thing like this. Surely you can see that. This has been a terrible shock for us. Obviously, I never really knew you.”
Each word was a hammerblow. The world was falling in on her. She felt more alone than she had ever felt in her life. There was no one to turn to now, no one. “What — what about the baby?”
“You'll have to do whatever you think best with your baby,” Charles said. “I'm sorry, Tracy.” And the connection was broken.
She stood there holding the dead receiver in her hand.
A prisoner behind her said, “if you're through with the phone, honey, I'd like to call my lawyer.”
When Tracy was returned to her cell, the matron had instructions for her. “Be ready to leave in the morning. You'll be picked up at five o'clock.”
She had a visitor. Otto Schmidt seemed to have aged years during the few hours since Tracy had last seen him. He looked ill.
“I just came to tell you how sorry my wife and I are. We know whatever happened wasn't your fault.”
If only Charles had said that!
“The wife and I will be at Mrs. Doris's funeral tomorrow.”
“Thank you, Otto.”
They're going to bury both of us tomorrow, Tracy thought miserably.
She spent the night wide awake, lying on her narrow prison bunk, staring at the ceiling. In her mind she replayed the conversation with Charles again and again. He had never even given her a chance to explain.
She had to think of the baby. She had read of women having babies in prison, but the stories had been so remote from her own life that it was as though she were reading about people from another planet. Now it was happening to her. You'll have to do whatever you think best with your baby, Charles had said. She wanted to have her baby. And yet, she thought, they won't let me keep it. They'll take it away from me because I'm going to be in prison for the next fifteen years. It's better that it never knows about its mother.
She wept.
At 5:00 in the morning a male guard, accompanied by a matron, entered Tracy's cell. “Tracy Whitney?”
“Yes.” She was surprised at how odd her voice sounded.
“By order of the Criminal Court of the State of Louisiana, Orleans Parish, you are forthwith being transferred to the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. Let's move it, babe.”
She was walked down a long corridor, past cells filled with inmates. There was a series of catcalls.
“Have a good trip, honey….”
“You tell me where you got that paintin' hidden, Tracy, baby, and I'll split the money with you…”
“If you're headin' for the big house, ask for Ernestine Littlechap. She'll take real good care of you….”
Tracy passed the telephone where she had made her call to Charles. Good-bye, Charles.
She was outside in a courtyard. A yellow prison bus with barred windows stood there, its engine idling. Half a dozen women already were seated in the bus, watched over by two armed guards. Tracy looked at the faces of her fellow passengers. One was defiant, and another bored; others wore expressions of despair. The lives they had lived were about to come to an end. They were outcasts, headed for cages where they would be locked up like animals. Tracy wondered what crimes they had committed and whether any of them was as innocent as she was, and she wondered what they saw in her face.
The ride on the prison bus was interminable, the bus hot and smelly, but Tracy was unaware of it. She had withdrawn into herself, no longer conscious of the other passengers or of the lush green countryside the bus passed through. She was in another time, in another place.
She was a little girl at the shore with her mother and father, and her father was carrying her into the ocean on his shoulders, and when she cried out her father said, Don't be a baby, Tracy, and he dropped her into the cold water. When the water closed over her head, she panicked and began to choke, and her father lifted her up and did it again, and from that moment on she had been terrified of the water….
The college auditorium was filled with students and their parents and relatives. She was class valedictorian. She spoke for fifteen minutes, and her speech was filled with soaring idealism, clever references to the past, and shining dreams for the future. The dean had presented her with a Phi Beta Kappa key. l want you to keep it, Tracy told her mother, and the pride on her mother's face was beautiful….
I'm going to Philadelphia, Mother. I have a job at a bank there.
Annie Mahler, her best friend, was calling her. You'll love Philadelphia, Tracy. It's full of all kinds of cultural things. It has beautiful scenery and a shortage of women. I mean, the men here are really hungry! I can get you a job at the bank where I work….
Charles was making love to her. She watched the moving shadows on the ceiling and thought, How many girls would like to be in my place? Charles was a prime catch. And she was instantly ashamed of the thought. She loved him. She could feel him inside her, beginning to thrust harder, faster and faster, on the verge of exploding, and he gasped out, Are you ready? And she lied and said yes. Was it wonderful for you? Yes, Charles. And she thought, Is that all there is? And the guilt again….
“You! I'm talkin' to you. Are you deaf for Christ's sake? Let's go.”
Tracy looked up and she was in the yellow prison bus. It had stopped in an enclosure surrounded by a gloomy pile of masonry. A series of nine fences topped with barbed wire surrounded the five hundred acres of farm pasture and woodlands that made up the prison grounds of the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women.
“Get out,” the guard said. “We're here.”
Here was hell.
A stocky, stony-faced matron with sable-brown dyed hair was addressing the new arrivals: “Some of you are gonna be here for a long, long time. There's only one way you're gonna make it, and that's by forgettin' all about the outside world. You can do your time the easy way or the hard way. We have rules here, and you'll follow those rules. We'll tell you when to get up, when to work, when to eat, and when to go to the toilet. You break any of our rules, and you'll wish you was dead. We like to keep things peaceful here, and we know how to handle troublemakers.” Her eyes flicked over to Tracy. “You'll be taken for your physical examinations now. After that you'll go to the showers and be assigned your cells. In the mornin' you'll receive your work duties. That's all.” She started to turn away.
A pale young girl standing next to Tracy said, “Excuse me, please, could —”
The matron whirled around, her face filled with fury. “Shut your fuckin' mouth. You speak only when you're spoken to, do you understand? That goes for all you assholes.”
The tone, as much as the words, was a shock to Tracy. The matron signaled to two women guards at the back of the room. “Get these no-good bitches out of here.”
Tracy found herself being herded out of the room with the others, down a long corridor. The prisoners were marched into a large, white-tiled room, where a fat, middle-aged man in a soiled smock stood next to an examination table.
One of the matrons called out, “Line up,” and formed the women into one long line.
The man in the smock said, “I'm Dr. Glasco, ladies. Strip!”
The women turned to look at one another, uncertainly. One of them said, “How far should we —?”
“Don't you know what the hell strip means? Get your clothes off — all of them.”
Slowly, the women began to undress. Some of them were self-conscious, some outraged, some indifferent. On Tracy's left was a woman in her late forties, shivering violently, and on Tracy's right was a pathetically thin girl who looked to be no more than seventeen years old. Her skin was covered with acne.
The doctor gestured to the first woman in line. “Lie down on the table and put your feet in the stirrups.”
The woman hesitated.
“Come on. You're holding up the line.”
She did as she was told. The doctor inserted a speculum into her vagina. As he probed, he asked, “Do you have a venereal disease?”
“No.”
“We'll soon find out about that.”
The next woman replaced her on the table. As the doctor started to insert the same speculum into her, Tracy cried out, “Wait a minute!”
The doctor stopped and looked up in surprise. “What?”
Everyone was staring at Tracy. She said, “I… you didn't sterilize that instrument.”
Dr. Glasco gave Tracy a slow, cold smile. “Well! We have a gynecologist in the house. You're worried about germs, are you? Move down to the end of the line.”
“What?”
“Don't you understand English? Move down.”
Tracy, not understanding why, took her place at the end of the line.
“Now, if you don't mind,” the doctor said, “we'll continue.” He inserted the speculum into the woman on the table, and Tracy suddenly realized why she was the last in line. He was going to examine all of them with the same unsterilized speculum, and she would be the last one on whom he used it. She could feel an anger boiling up inside her. He could have examined them separately, instead of deliberately stripping away their dignity. And they were letting him get away with it. If they all protested — It was her turn.
“On the table, Ms. Doctor.”
Tracy hesitated, but she had no choice. She climbed up on the table and closed her eyes. She could feel him spread her legs apart, and then the cold speculum was inside her, probing and pushing and hurting. Deliberately hurting. She gritted her teeth.
“You got syphilis or gonorrhea?” the doctor asked.
“No.” She was not going to tell him about the baby. Not this monster. She would discuss that with the warden.
She felt the speculum being roughly pulled out of her. Dr. Glasco was putting on a pair of rubber gloves. “All right,” he said. “Line up and bend over. We're going to check your pretty little asses.”
Before she could stop herself, Tracy said, “Why are you doing this?”
Dr. Glasco stared at her. “I'll tell you why, Doctor. Because assholes are great hiding places. I have a whole collection of marijuana and cocaine that I got from ladies like you. Now bend over.” And he went down the line, plunging his fingers into anus after anus. Tracy was sickened. She could feel the hot bile rise in her throat and she began to gag.
“You vomit in here, and I'll rub your face in it.” He turned to the guards. “Get them to the showers. They stink.”
Carrying their clothes, the naked prisoners were marched down another corridor to a large concrete room with a dozen open shower stalls.
“Lay your clothes in the corner,” a matron ordered. “And get into the showers. Use the disinfectant soap. Wash every part of your body from head to foot, and shampoo your hair.”
Tracy stepped from the rough cement floor into the shower. The spray of water was cold. She scrubbed herself hard, thinking, I'll never be clean again. What kind of people are these? How can they treat other human beings this way? I can't stand fifteen years of this.
A guard called out to her, “Hey, you! Time's up. Get out.”
Tracy stepped out of the shower; and another prisoner took her place. Tracy was handed a thin, worn towel and half dried her body.
When the last of the prisoners had showered, they were marched to a large supply room where there were shelves of clothes guarded by a Latino inmate who sized up each prisoner and handed out gray uniforms. Tracy and the others were issued two uniform dresses, two pairs of panties, two brassieres, two pairs of shoes, two nightgowns, a sanitary belt, a hairbrush, and a laundry bag. The matrons stood watching while the prisoners dressed. When they had finished, they were herded to a room where a trusty operated a large portrait camera set on a tripod.
“Stand over there against the wall.”
Tracy moved over to the wall.
“Full face.”
She stared into the camera. Click.
“Turn your head to the right.”
She obeyed. Click.
“Left.” Click. “Over to the table.”
The table had fingerprint equipment on it. Tracy's fingers were rolled across an inky pad, then pressed onto a white card.
“Left hand. Right hand. Wipe your hands with that rag. You're finished.”
She's right, Tracy thought numbly. I'm finished. I'm a number. Nameless, faceless.
A guard pointed to Tracy. “Whitney? Warden wants to see you. Follow me.”
Tracy's heart suddenly soared. Charles had done something after all! Of course he had not abandoned her, any more than she ever could have abandoned him. It was the sudden shock that had made him behave the way he had. He had had time to think it over now and to realize he still loved her. He had talked to the warden and explained the terrible mistake that had been made. She was going to be set free.
She was marched down a different corridor, through two sets of heavily barred doors manned by male and female guards. As Tracy was admitted through the second door, she was almost knocked down by a prisoner. She was a giant, the biggest woman Tracy had ever seen — well over six feet tall, she must have weighed three hundred pounds. She had a flat, pockmarked face, with feral yellow eyes. She grabbed Tracy s arm to steady her and pressed her arm against Tracy's breasts.
“Hey!” the woman said to the guard. “We got a new fish. How 'bout you put her in with me?” She had a heavy Swedish accent.
“Sorry. She's already been assigned, Bertha.”
The amazon stroked Tracy's face. Tracy jerked away, and the grant woman laughed. “It's okay, littbarn. Big Bertha will see you later. We got plenty of time. You ain't goin' nowhere.”
They reached the warden's office. Tracy was faint with anticipation. Would Charles be there? Or would he have sent his attorney?
The warden's secretary nodded to the guard, “He's expecting her. Wait here.”
Warden George Brannigan was seated at a scarred desk, studying some papers in front of him. He was in his mid-forties, a thin, careworn-Looking man, with a sensitive face and deep-set hazel eyes.
Warden Brannigan had been in charge of the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women for five years. He had arrived with the background of a modern penologist and the zeal of an idealist, determined to make sweeping reforms in the prison. But it had defeated him, as it had defeated others before him.
The prison originally had been built to accommodate two inmates to a cell, and now each cell held as many as four to six prisoners. He knew that the same situation applied everywhere. The country's prisons were all overcrowded and understaffed. Thousands of criminals were penned up day and night with nothing to do but nurse their hatred and plot their vengeance. It was a stupid, brutal system, but it was all there was.
He buzzed his secretary. “All right. Send her in.”
The guard opened the door to the inner office, and Tracy stepped inside.
Warden Brannigan looked up at the woman standing before him. Dressed in the drab prison uniform, her face bruised with fatigue, Tracy Whitney still looked beautiful. She had a lovely, candid face, and Warden Brannigan wondered how long it would remain that way. He was particularly interested in this prisoner because he had read about her case in the newspapers and had studied her record. She was a first offender, had not killed anyone, and fifteen years was an inordinately harsh sentence. The fact that Joseph Romano was her accuser made her conviction all the more suspect. But the warden was simply the custodian of bodies. He could not buck the system. He was the system.
“Please have a seat,” he said.
Tracy was glad to sit down. Her knees were weak. He was going to tell her now about Charles, and how soon she would be released.
“I've been looking over your record,” the warden began.
Charles would have asked him to do that.
“I see you're going to be with us a long time. Your sentence is fifteen years.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in. Something was dreadfully wrong. “Didn't — didn't you speak to — to Charles?” In her nervousness she was stammering.
He looked at her blankly. “Charles?”
And she knew. Her stomach turned to water. “Please,” she said. “Please listen to me. I'm innocent. I don't belong here.”
How many times had he heard that? A hundred? A thousand? I'm innocent.
He said, “The courts have found you guilty. The best advice I can give you is to try to do easy time. Once you accept the terms of your imprisonment, it will be a lot easier for you. There are no clocks in prison, only calendars.”
I can't be locked up here for fifteen years, Tracy thought in despair. I want to die. Please, God, let me die. But I can't die, can I? I would be killing my baby. It's your baby, too, Charles. Why aren't you here helping me? That was the moment she began to hate him.
“If you have any special problems,”, Warden Brannigan said, “I mean, if I can help you in any way, I want you to come see me.” Even as he spoke, he knew how hollow his words were. She was young and beautiful and fresh. The bull-dykes in the prison would fall on her like animals. There was not even a safe cell to which he could assign her. Nearly every cell was controlled by a stud. Warden Brannigan had heard rumors of rapes in the showers, in the toilets, and in the corridors at night. But they were only rumors, because the victims were always silent afterward. Or dead.
Warden Brannigan said gently, “With good behavior, you might be released in twelve or —”
“No!” It was a cry of black despair, of desperation. Tracy felt the walls of the office closing in on her. She was on her feet, screaming. The guard came hurrying in and grabbed Tracy's arms.
“Easy,” Warden Brannigan commanded him.
He sat there, helpless, and watched as Tracy was led away.
She was taken down a series of corridors past cells filled with inmates of every description. They were black and white and brown and yellow. They stared at Tracy as she passed and called out to her in a dozen accents. Their cries made no sense to Tracy.
“Fish night…”
“French mate…”
“Fresh mite…”
“Flesh meet…”
It was not until Tracy reached her cell block that she realized what the women were chanting: “Fresh meat.”
There were sixty women in Cell Block C, four to a cell. Faces peered out from behind bars as Tracy was marched down the long, smelly corridor, and the expressions varied from indifference to lust to hatred. She was walking underwater in some strange, unknown land, an alien in a slowly unfolding dream. Her throat was raw from the screaming inside her trapped body. The summons to the warden's office had been her last faint hope. Now there was nothing. Nothing except the mind-numbing prospect of being caged in this purgatory for the next fifteen years.
The matron opened a cell door. “Inside!”
Tracy blinked and looked around. In the cell were three women, silently watching her.
“Move,” the matron ordered.
Tracy hesitated, then stepped into the cell. She heard the door slam behind her.
She was home.
The cramped cell barely held four bunks, a little table with a cracked mirror over it, four small lockers, and a seatless toilet in the far corner.
Her cell mates were staring at her. The Puerto Rican woman broke the silence. “Looks like we got ourselves a new cellie.” Her voice was deep and throaty. She would have been beautiful if it had not been for a livid knife scar that ran from her temple to her throat. She appeared to be no older than fourteen, until you looked into her eyes.
A squat, middle-aged Mexican woman said, “ЎQue suerte verte! Nice to see you. What they got you in for, querida?”
Tracy was too paralyzed to answer.
The third woman was black. She was almost six feet tall, with narrow, watchful eyes and a cold, hard mask of a face. Her head was shaved and her skull shone blue-black in the dim light. “Tha's your bunk over in the corner.”
Tracy walked over to the bunk. The mattress was filthy, stained with the excreta of God only knew how many previous occupants. She could not bring herself to touch it. Involuntarily, she voiced her revulsion. “I — I can't sleep on this mattress.”
The fat Mexican woman grinned. “You don' have to, honey. Hay tiempo. You can sleep on mine.”
Tracy suddenly became aware of the undercurrents in the cell, and they hit her with a physical force. The three women were watching her, staring, making her feel naked. Fresh meat. She was suddenly terrified. I'm wrong, Tracy thought Oh, please let me be wrong.
She found her voice. “Who — who do I see about getting a clean mattress?”
“God,” the black woman grunted. “But he ain't been around here lately.”
Tracy turned to look at the mattress again. Several large black roaches were crawling across it. I can't stay in this place, Tracy thought. I'll go insane.
As though reading her mind, the black woman told her, “You go with the flow, baby.”
Tracy heard the warden's voice: The best advice l can give you is to try to do easy time….
The black woman continued. “I'm Ernestine Littlechap.” She nodded toward the woman with the long scar. “Tha's Lola. She's from Puerto Rico, and fatso here is Paulita, from Mexico. Who are you?”
“I'm — I'm Tracy Whitney.” She had almost said, “I was Tracy Whitney.” She had the nightmarish feeling that her identity was slipping away. A spasm of nausea swept through her, and she gripped the edge of the bunk to steady herself.
“Where you come from, honey?” the fat woman asked.
“I'm sorry, I — I don't feel like talking.” She suddenly felt too weak to stand. She slumped down on the edge of the filthy bunk and wiped the beads of cold perspiration from her face with her skirt. My baby, she thought. I should have told the warden I'm going to have a baby. He'll move me into a clean cell. Perhaps they'll even let me have a cell by myself.
She heard footsteps coming down the corridor. A matron was walking past the cell. Tracy hurried to the cell door. “Excuse me,” she said, “I have to see the warden. I'm —”
“I'll send him right down,” the matron said over her shoulder.
“You don't understand. I'm —”
The matron was gone.
Tracy crammed her knuckles in her mouth to keep from screaming.
“You sick or somethin', honey?” the Puerto Rican asked.
Tracy shook her head, unable to speak. She walked back to the bunk, looked at it a moment, then slowly lay down on it. It was an act of hopelessness, an act of surrender. She closed her eyes.
Her tenth birthday was the.most exciting day of her life. We're going to Antoine's for dinner, her father announced.
Antoine's! It was a name that conjured up another world, a world of beauty and glamour and wealth. Tracy knew that her father did not have much money: We'll be able to afford a vacation next year, was the constant refrain in the house. And now they were going to Antoine's! Tracy's mother dressed her in a new green frock.
Just look at you two, her father boasted. I'm with the two prettiest women in New Orleans. Everyone's going to be jealous of me.
Antoine's was everything Tracy had dreamed it would be, and more. So much more. It was a fairyland, elegant and tastefully decorated, with white napery and gleaming silver-and-gold monogrammed dishes. It's a palace, Tracy thought. I'll bet kings and queens come here. She was too excited to eat, too busy staring at all the beautifully dressed men and women. When I'm grown up, Tracy promised herself, I'm going to come to Antoine's every night, and I'll bring my mother and father with me.
You're not eating, Tracy, her mother said.
And to please her, Tracy forced herself to eat a few mouthfuls. There was a cake for her, with ten candles on it, and the waiters sang Happy Birthday and the other guests turned and applauded, and Tracy felt like a princess. Outside she could hear the clang of a streetcar bell as it passed.
The clanging of the bell was loud and insistent.
“Suppertime,” Ernestine Littlechap announced.
Tracy opened her eyes. Cell doors were slamming open throughout the cell block. Tracy lay on her bunk, trying desperately to hang on to the past.
“Hey! Chow time,” the young Puerto Rican said.
The thought of food sickened her. “I'm not hungry.”
Paulita, the fat Mexican woman spoke. “Es llano. It's simple. They don' care if you're hungry or not. Everybody gotta go to mess.”
Inmates were lining up in the corridor outside.
“You better move it, or they'll have your ass,” Ernestine warned.
I can't move, Tracy thought. I'll stay here.
Her cell mates left the cell and lined up in a double file. A short, squat matron with peroxided-blond hair saw Tracy lying on her bunk. “You!” she said. “Didn't you hear the bell? Get out here.”
Tracy said, “I'm not hungry, thank you. I'd like to be excused.”
The matron's eyes widened in disbelief. She stormed inside the cell and strode over to where Tracy lay. “Who the fuck do you think you are? You waitin' for room service? Get your ass in that line. I could put you on report for this: If it happens again, you go to the bing. Understand?”
She did not understand. She did not understand anything that was happening to her. She dragged herself from the bunk and walked out into the line of women. She was standing next to the black woman. “Why do I —?”
“Shut up!” Ernestine Littlechap growled out of the corner of her mouth. “No talkin' in line.”
The women were marched down a narrow, cheerless corridor past two sets of security doors, into an enormous mess hall filled with large wooden tables and chairs. There was a long serving counter with steam tables, where prisoners lined up for their food. The menu of the day consisted of a watery tuna casserole, limp green beans, a pale custard, and a choice of weak coffee or a synthetic fruit drink. Ladles of the unappetizing-looking food were thrown into the tin plates of the prisoners as they moved along the line, and the inmates who were serving behind the counter kept up a steady cry: “Keep the line moving. Next… keep the line moving. Next…”
When Tracy was served, she stood there uncertainly, not sure where to go. She looked around for Ernestine Littlechap, but the black woman had disappeared. Tracy walked over to a table where Lola and Paulita, the fat Mexican woman, were seated. There were twenty women at the table, hungrily wolfing down their food. Tracy looked down at what was on her plate, then pushed it away, as the bile rose and welled in her throat.
Paulita reached over and grabbed the plate from Tracy. “If you ain't gonna eat that, I'll take it.”
Lola said, “Hey, you gotta eat, or you won't last here.”
I don't want to last, Tracy thought hopelessly. l want to die. How could these women tolerate living like this? How tong had they been here? Months? Years? She thought of the fetid cell and her verminous mattress, and she wanted to scream. She clenched her jaw shut so that no sound would come out.
The Mexican woman was saying, “If they catch you not eatin', you go to the bing.” She saw the uncomprehending look on Tracy's face. “The hole — solitary. You wouldn't like it.” She leaned forward. “This is your first time in the joint, huh? Well, I'm gonna give you a tip, querida. Ernestine Littlechap runs this place. Be nice to her an' you got it made.”
Thirty minutes from the time the women had entered the room, a loud bell sounded and the women stood up. Paulita snatched a lone green bean from a plate next to her. Tracy joined her in the line, and the women began the march back to their cells. Supper was over. It was four o'clock in the afternoon — five long hours to endure before lights out.
When Tracy returned to the cell, Ernestine Littlechap was already there. Tracy wondered incuriously where she had bee at dinnertime. Tracy looked at the toilet in the corner. She desperately needed to use it, but she could not bring herself to do so in front of these women. She would wait until the lights went out. She sat down on the edge of her bunk.
Ernestine Littlechap said, “I understan' you didn't eat none of your supper. Tha's stupid.”
How could she have known that? And why should she care? “How do I see the warden?”
“You put in a written request. The guards use it for toilet paper. They figure any cunt who wants to see the warden is a troublemaker.” She walked over to Tracy. “There's lotsa things kin get you in trouble here. What you need is a friend who kin he'p keep you outta trouble.” She smiled, showing a gold front tooth. Her voice was soft. “Someone who knows their way around the zoo.”
Tracy looked up into the black woman's grinning face. It seemed to be floating somewhere near the ceiling.
It was the tallest thing she had ever seen.
That's a giraffe, her father said.
They were at the zoo in Audubon Park. Tracy loved the park. On Sundays they went there to listen to the band concerts and afterward her mother and father took her to the aquarium or the zoo. They walked slowly, looking at the animals in the cages.
Don't they hate being locked up, Papa?
Her father laughed. No. Tracy. They have a wonderful life They're taken care of and fed, and their enemies can't get them.
They looked unhappy to Tracy. She wanted to open their cages and let them out. l wouldn't ever want to be locked up like that, Tracy thought.
At 8:45 the warning bell rang throughout the prison. Tracy's cell mates began to undress. Tracy did not move.
Lola said, “You got fifteen minutes to get ready for bed.”
The women had stripped and put.on nightgowns. The peroxided-blond matron passed the cell. She stopped when she saw Tracy lying on her cot.
“Get undressed,” she ordered. She turned to Ernestine. “Didn't you tell her?”
“Yeah. We tol' her.”
The matron turned back to Tracy. “We got a way of takin' care of troublemakers,” she warned. “You do what you're told here, or I'll bust your ass.” The matron moved down the hall.
Paulita cautioned, “You better listen to her, baby. Old Iron Pants is one mean bitch.”
Slowly, Tracy rose and began to undress, keeping her back to the others. She took off all her clothes, with the exception of her panties, and slipped the coarse nightgown over her head. She felt the eyes of the other women on her.
“You got a real nice body,” Paulita commented.
“Yeah, real nice,” Lola echoed.
Tracy felt a shiver go through her.
Ernestine moved over to Tracy and looked down at her. “We're your friends. We gonna take good care of you.” Her voice was hoarse with excitement.
Tracy wildly jerked around. “Leave me alone! All of you. I'm — I'm not that way.”
The black woman chuckled. “You'll be any way we want you to be, baby.”
“Hay tiempo. There's plenty of time.”
The lights went out.
The dark was Tracy's enemy. She sat on the edge of her bunk, her body tense. She could sense the others waiting to pounce on her. Or was it her imagination? She was so overwrought that everything seemed to be a threat. Had they threatened her? Not really. They were probably just trying to be friendly, and she had read sinister implications into their overtures. She had heard about homosexual activity in prisons, but that had to be the exception rather than the rule. A prison would not permit that sort of behavior.
Still, there was a nagging doubt. She decided she would stay awake all night. If one of them made a move, she would call for help. It was the responsibility of the guards to see that nothing happened to the inmates. She reassured herself that there was nothing to worry about. She would just have to stay alert.
Tracy sat on the edge of her bunk in the dark, listening to every sound. One by one she heard the three women go to the toilet, use it, and return to their bunks. When Tracy could stand it no longer, she made her way to the toilet. She tried to flush it, but it did not work. The stench was almost unbearable. She hurried back to her cot and sat there. It will be light soon, she thought. In the morning I'll ask to see the warden. I'll tell him about the baby. He'll have me moved to another cell.
Tracy's body was tense and cramped. She lay back on her bunk and within seconds felt something crawling across her neck. She stifled a scream. I've got to stand it until morning. Everything will be all right in the morning, Tracy thought. One minute at a time.
At 3:00 she could no longer keep her eyes open. She slept.
She was awakened by a hand clamped across her mouth and two hands grabbing at her breasts. She tried to sit up and scream, and she felt her nightgown and underpants being ripped away. Hands slid between her thighs, forcing her legs apart. Tracy fought savagely, struggling to rise.
“Take it easy,” a voice in the dark whispered, “and you won't get hurt.”
Tracy lashed out at the voice with her feet. She connected with solid flesh.
“Carajo! Give it to the bitch,” the voice gasped. “Get her on the floor!”
A hard fist smashed into Tracy's face and another into her stomach. Someone was on top of her, holding her down, smothering her, while obscene hands violated her.
Tracy broke loose for an instant, but one of the women grabbed her and slammed her head against the bars. She felt the blood spurt from her nose. She was thrown to the concrete floor, and her hands and legs were pinned down. Tracy fought like a madwoman, but she was no match for the three of them. She felt cold hands and hot tongues caressing her body. Her legs were spread apart and a hard, cold object was shoved inside her. She writhed helplessly, desperately trying to call out. An arm moved across her mouth, and Tracy sank her teeth into it, biting down with all her strength.
There was a muffled cry. “You cunt!”
Fists pounded her face…. She sank into the pain, deeper and deeper, until finally she felt nothing.
It was the clanging of the bell that awakened her. She was lying on the cold cement floor of her cell, naked. Her three cell mates were in their bunks.
In the corridor, Iron Pants was calling out, “Rise and shine.” As the matron passed the cell, she saw Tracy lying on the floor in a small pool of blood, her face battered and one eye swollen shut.
“What the hell's goin' on here?” She unlocked the door and stepped inside the cell.
“She musta fell outta her bunk,” Ernestine Littlechap offered.
The matron walked over to Tracy's side and nudged her with her foot. “You! Get up.”
Tracy heard the voice from a far distance. Yes, she thought, I must get up; I must get out of here. But she was unable to move. Her body was screaming out with pain.
The matron grabbed Tracy's elbows and pulled her to a sitting position, and Tracy almost fainted from the agony.
“What happened?”
Through one eye Tracy saw the blurred outlines of her cell mates silently waiting for her answer.
“I — I —” Tracy tried to speak, but no words would come out. She tried again, and some deep-seated atavistic instinct made her say, “I fell off my bunk….”
The matron snapped, “I hate smart asses. Let's put you in the bing till you learn some respect.”
It was a form of oblivion, a return to the womb. She was alone in the dark. There was no furniture in the cramped basement cell, only a thin, worn mattress thrown on the cold cement floor. A noisome hole in the floor served as a toilet. Tracy lay there in the blackness, humming folk songs to herself that her father had taught her long ago. She had no idea how close she was to the edge of insanity.
She was not sure where she was, but it did not matter. Only the suffering of her brutalized body mattered. I must have fallen down and hurt myself, but Mama will take care of it. She called out in a broken voice, “Mama…,” and when there was no answer, she fell asleep again.
She slept for forty-eight hours, and the agony finally receded to pain, and the pain gave way to soreness. Tracy opened her eyes. She was surrounded by nothingness. It was so dark that she could not even make out the outline of the cell. Memories came flooding back. They had carried her to the doctor. She could hear his voice: “…a broken rib and a fractured wrist. We'll tape them up…. The cuts and bruises are bad, but they'll heal. She's lost the baby….”
“Oh, my baby,” Tracy whispered. “They've murdered my baby.”
And she wept. She wept for the loss of her baby. She wept for herself. She wept for the whole sick world.
Tracy lay on the thin mattress in the cold darkness, and she was filled with such an overpowering hatred that it literally shook her body. Her thoughts burned and blazed until her mind was empty of every emotion but one: vengeance. It was not a vengeance directed against her three cell mates. They were victims as much as she. No; she was after the men who had done this to her, who had destroyed her life.
Joe Romano: “Your old lady held out on me. She didn't tell me she had a horny-looking daughter….”
Anthony Orsatti: “Joe Romano works for a man named Anthony Orsatti. Orsatti runs New Orleans….”
Perry Pope: “By pleading guilty; you save the state the expense of a trial….”
Judge Henry Lawrence: “For the next fifteen years you're going to be incarcerated in the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women….”
Those were her enemies. And then there was Charles, who had never even listened to her: “If you needed money that badly, you could have discussed it with me…. Obviously I never really knew you…. You'll have to do whatever you think best with your baby….”
She was going to make them pay. Every one of them. She had no idea how. But she knew she was going to get revenge. Tomorrow, she thought. If tomorrow comes.
Time lost all meaning. There was never light in the cell, so there was no difference between night and day, and she had no idea how long she was kept in solitary confinement. From time to time cold meals were shoved through a slot in the bottom of the door. Tracy had no appetite, but she forced herself to eat every morsel. You gotta eat, or you won't last here. She understood that now; she knew she would need every bit of her strength for what she planned to do. She was in a situation that anyone else would have considered hopeless: She was locked away for fifteen years, with no money, no friends, no resources of any kind. But there was a wellspring of strength deep within her. I will survive, Tracy thought. I face mine enemies naked, and my courage is my shield. She would survive as her ancestors had survived. In her was the mixed blood of the English and the Irish and the Scots, and she had inherited the best of their qualities, the intelligence and the courage and the will. My ancestors survived famine and plagues and floods, and I'm going to survive this. They were with her now in her stygian cell: the shepherds and trappers, the farmers and shopkeepers, the doctors and teachers. The ghosts of the past, and every one was a part of her. I won't let you down, Tracy whispered into the darkness.
She began to plan her escape.
Tracy knew that the first thing she had to do was regain her physical strength. The cell was too cramped for extensive exercise, but it was large enough for t'ai chi ch'uan, the centuries-old martial art that was taught warriors to prepare them for combat. The exercises required little space, and they used every muscle in the body. Tracy stood up and went through the opening moves. Each movement had a name and a significance. She started with the militant Punching the Demons, then into the softer Gathering the Light. The movements were fluid and graceful and done very slowly. Every gesture came from tan tien, the psychic center, and all the movements were circular. Tracy could hear the voice of her teacher: Arouse your chi, your vital energy. It starts heavy as a mountain and becomes light as a bird's feather. Tracy could feel the chi flowing through her fingers, and she concentrated until her whole being was focused on her body moving through the timeless patterns.
Grasp the bird's tail, become the white stork, repulse the monkey, face the tiger, let your hands become clouds and circulate the water of life. Let the white snake creep down and ride the tiger. Shoot the tiger, gather your chi, and go back to tan tien, the center.
The complete cycle took an hour, and when it was finished Tracy was exhausted. She went through the ritual each morning and afternoon until her body began to respond and grow strong.
When she was not exercising her body, Tracy exercised her mind. She lay in the dark, doing complicated mathematical equations, mentally operating the computer at the bank, reciting poetry, recalling the lines of plays she had been in at college. She was a perfectionist, and when she had gotten a part in a school play where she had to use different accents, she had studied accents for weeks before the play went on. A talent scout had once approached her to offer her a screen test in Hollywood. “No, thank you. I don't want the limelight. That's not for me,” Tracy had told him.
Charles's voice: You're the headline in this morning's Daily News.
Tracy pushed the memory of Charles away. There were doors in her mind that had to remain closed for now.
She played the teaching game: Name three absolutely impossible things to teach.
To teach an ant the difference between Catholics and Protestants.
To make a bee understand that it is the earth that travels around the sun.
To explain to a cat the difference between communism and democracy.
But she concentrated mostly on how she was going to destroy her enemies, each of them in turn. She remembered a game she had played as a child. By holding up one hand toward the sky, it was possible to blot out the sun. That's what they had done to her. They had raised a hand and blotted out her life.
Tracy had no idea how many prisoners had been broken by their confinement in the bing, nor would it have mattered to her.
On the seventh day, when the cell door opened, Tracy was blinded by the sudden light that flooded the cell. A guard stood outside. “On your feet. You're going back upstairs.”
He reached down to give Tracy a helping hand, and to his surprise, she rose easily to her feet and walked out of the cell unaided. The other prisoners he had removed from solitary had come out either broken or defiant, but this prisoner was neither. There was an aura of dignity about her, a self-confidence that was alien to this place. Tracy stood in the light, letting her eyes gradually get accustomed to it. What a great-looking piece of ass, the guard thought. Get her cleaned up and you could take her anywhere. I'll bet she'd do anything for a few favors.
Aloud he said, “A pretty girl like you shouldn't have to go through this kind of thing. If you and me was friends, I'd see that it didn't happen again.”
Tracy turned to face him, and when he saw the look in her eyes, he hastily decided not to pursue it.
The guard walked Tracy upstairs and turned her over to a matron.
The matron sniffed. “Jesus, you stink. Go in and take a shower. We'll burn those clothes.”
The cold shower felt wonderful. Tracy shampooed her hair and scrubbed herself from head to foot with the harsh lye soap.
When she had dried herself and put on a change of clothing, the matron was waiting for her. “Warden wants to see you.”
The last time Tracy had heard those words, she had believed it meant her freedom. Never again would she be that naive.
Warden Brannigan was standing at the window when Tracy walked into his office. He turned and said, “Sit down, please.” Tracy took a chair. “I've been away in Washington at a conference. I just returned this morning and saw a report on what happened. You should not have been put in solitary.”
She sat watching him, her impassive face giving nothing away.
The warden glanced at a paper on his desk. “According to this report, you were sexually assaulted by your cell mates.”
“No, sir.”
Warden Brannigan nodded understandingly. “I understand your fear, but I can't allow the inmates to run this prison. I want to punish whoever did this to you, but I'll need your testimony. I'll see that you're protected. Now, I want you to tell me exactly what happened and who was responsible.”
Tracy looked him in the eye. “I was. I fell off my bunk.”
The warden studied her a long time, and she could see the disappointment cloud his face. “Are you quite sure”
“Yes, sir.”
“You won't change your mind?”
“No, sir.”
Warden Brannigan sighed. “All right. If that's your decision. I'll have you transferred to another cell where —”
“I don't want to be transferred.”
He looked at her in surprise. “You mean you want to go back to the same cell?”
“Yes, sir.”
He was puzzled. Perhaps he had been wrong about her; maybe she had invited what had happened to her. God only knew what those damned female prisoners were thinking or doing. He wished he could be transferred to some nice, sane men's prison, but his wife and Amy, his small daughter, liked it here. They all lived in a charming cottage, and there were lovely grounds around the prison farm. To them, it was like living in the country, but he had to cope with these crazy women twenty-four hours a day.
He looked at the young woman sitting before him and said awkwardly, “Very well. Just stay out of trouble in the future.”
“Yes, sir.”
Returning to her cell was the most difficult thing Tracy had ever done. The moment she stepped inside she was assailed by the horror of what had happened there. Her cell mates were away at work. Tracy lay on her bunk, staring at the ceiling, planning. Finally, she reached down to the bottom of her bunk and pried a piece of the metal side loose. She placed it under her mattress. When the 11:00 A.M. lunch bell rang, Tracy was the first to line up in the corridor.
In the mess hall, Paulita and Lola were seated at a table near the entrance. There was no sign of Ernestine Littlechap.
Tracy chose a table filled with strangers, sat down, and finished every bite of the tasteless meal. She spent the afternoon alone in her cell. At 2:45 her three cell mates returned.
Paulita grinned with surprise when she saw Tracy. “So you came back to us, pretty pussy. You liked what we did to you, huh?”
“Good. We got more for you,” Lola said.
Tracy gave no indication that she heard their taunting. She was concentrating on the black woman. Ernestine Littlechap was the reason Tracy had come back to this cell. Tracy did not trust her. Not for a moment. But she needed her.
I'm gonna give you a tip, querida. Ernestine Littlechap runs this place….
That night, when the fifteen-minute warning bell sounded for lights out, Tracy rose from her bunk and began to undress. This time there was no false modesty. She stripped, and the Mexican woman gave a long, low whistle as she looked at Tracy's full, firm breasts and her long, tapering legs and creamy thighs. Lola was breathing hard. Tracy put on a nightgown and lay back on her bunk. The lights went out. The cell was in darkness.
Thirty minutes went by. Tracy lay in the dark listening to the breathing of the others.
Across the cell, Paulita whispered, “Mama's gonna give you some real lovin' tonight. Take off your nightgown, baby.”
“We're gonna teach you how to eat pussy, and you'll do it till you get it right,” Lola giggled.
Still not a word from the black woman. Tracy felt the rush of wind as Lola and Paulita came at her, but Tracy was ready for them. She lifted the piece of metal she had concealed in her hand and swung with all her might, hitting one of the women in the face. There was a scream of pain, and Tracy kicked out at the other figure and saw her fall to the floor.
“Come near me again and I'll kill you,” Tracy said.
“You bitch!”
Tracy could hear them start for her again, and she raised the piece of metal.
Ernestine's voice came abruptly out of the darkness. “Tha's enough. Leave her alone.”
“Ernie, I'm bleedin'. I'm gonna fix her —”
“Do what the fuck I tell you.”
There was a long silence. Tracy heard the two women moving back to their bunks, breathing hard. Tracy lay there, tensed, ready for their next move.
Ernestine Littlechap said, “You got guts, baby.”
Tracy was silent.
“You didn't sing to the warden.” Ernestine laughed softly in the darkness. “If you had, you'd be dead meat.”
Tracy believed her.
“Why di'n' you let the warden move you to another cell?”
So she even knew about that. “I wanted to come back here.”
“Yeah? What fo'?” There was a puzzled note in Ernestine Littlechap's voice.
This was the moment Tracy had been waiting for. “You're going to help me escape.”
A matron came up to Tracy and announced, “You got a visitor, Whitney.”
Tracy looked at her in surprise. “A visitor?” Who could it be? And suddenly she knew. Charles. He had come after all. But he was too late. He had not been there when she had so desperately needed him. Well, I'll never need him again. Or anyone else.
Tracy followed the matron down the corridor to the visitors' room.
Tracy stepped inside.
A total stranger was seated at a small wooden table. He was one of the most unattractive men Tracy had ever seen. He was short, with a bloated, androgynous body, a long, pinched-in nose, and a small, bitter mouth. He had a high, bulging forehead and intense brown eyes, magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses.
He did not rise. “My name is Daniel Cooper. The warden gave me permission to speak to you.”
“About what?” Tracy asked suspiciously.
“I'm an investigator for IIPA — the International Insurance Protection Association. One of our clients insured the Renoir that was stolen from Mr. Joseph Romano.”
Tracy drew a deep breath. “I can't help you. I didn't steal it.” She started for the door.
Cooper's next words stopped her. “I know that.”
Tracy turned and looked at him, wary, every sense alert.
“No one stole it. You were framed, Miss Whitney.”
Slowly, Tracy sank into a chair.
Daniel Cooper's involvement with the case had begun three weeks earlier when he had been summoned to the office of his superior, J. J. Reynolds, at IIPA headquarters in Manhattan.
“I've got an assignment for you, Dan,” Reynolds said.
Daniel Cooper loathed being called Dan.
“I'll make this brief.” Reynolds intended to make it brief because Cooper made him nervous. In truth, Cooper made everyone in the organization nervous. He was a strange man — weird, was how many described him. Daniel Cooper kept entirely to himself. No one knew where he lived, whether he was married or had children. He socialized with no one, and never attended office parties or office meetings. He was a loner, and the only reason Reynolds tolerated him was because the man was a goddamned genius. He was a bulldog, with a computer for a brain. Daniel Cooper was single-handedly responsible for recovering more stolen merchandise, and exposing more insurance frauds, than all the other investigators in the organization put together. Reynolds just wished he knew what the hell Cooper was all about. Merely sitting across from the man with those fanatical brown eyes staring at him made him uneasy.
Reynolds said, “One of our client companies insured a painting for half a million dollars and —”
“The Renoir. New Orleans. Joe Romano. A woman named Tracy Whitney was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years. The painting hasn't been recovered.”
The son of a bitch! Reynolds thought. If it were anyone else, I'd think he was showing off. “That's right,” Reynolds acknowledged grudgingly. “The Whitney woman has stashed that painting away somewhere, and we want it back. Go to it.”
Cooper turned and left the office without a word. Watching him leave, J. J. Reynolds thought, not for the first time, Someday I'm going to find out what makes that bastard tick.
Cooper walked through the office, where fifty employees were working side by side, programming computers, typing reports, answering telephones. It was bedlam.
As Cooper passed a desk, a colleague said, “I hear you got the Romano assignment. Lucky you. New Orleans is —”
Cooper walked by without replying. Why couldn't they leave him alone? That was all he asked of anybody, but they were always pestering him with their nosy overtures.
It had become a game in the office. They were determined to break through his mysterious reserve and find out who he really was.
“What are you doing for dinner Friday night, Dan…?”
“If you're not married, Sarah and I know a wonderful girl, Dan…?”
Couldn't they see he did not need any of them — didn't want any of them?
“Come on, it's only for a drink….”
But Daniel Cooper knew what that could lead to. An innocent drink could lead to dinner, and a dinner could start friendships, and friendships could lead to confidences. Too dangerous.
Daniel Cooper lived in mortal terror that one day someone would learn about his past. Let the dead past bury its dead was a lie. The dead never stayed buried. Every two or three years one of the scandal sheets would dig up the old scandal, and Daniel Cooper would disappear for several days. Those were the only times he ever got drunk.
Daniel Cooper could have kept a psychiatrist busy full-time had he been able to expose his emotions, but he could never bring himself to speak of the past to anyone. The one piece of physical evidence that he retained from that terrible day long ago was a faded, yellowed newspaper clipping, safety locked away in his room, where no one could ever find it. He looked at it from time to time as a punishment, but every word in the article was emblazoned on his mind.
He showered or bathed at least three times a day, but never felt clean. He firmly believed in hell and hell's fire, and he knew his only salvation on earth was expiation, atonement. He had tried to join the New York police force, but when he had failed the physical because he was four inches too short, he had become a private investigator. He thought of himself as a hunter, tracking down those who broke the law. He was the vengeance of God, the instrument that brought down God's wrath on the heads of wrongdoers. It was the only way he could atone for the past, and prepare himself for eternity.
He wondered if there was time to take a shower before he caught his plane.
Daniel Cooper's first stop was New Orleans. He spent five days in the city, and before he was through, he knew everything he needed to know about Joe Romano, Anthony Orsatti, Perry Pope, and Judge Henry Lawrence. Cooper read the transcripts of Tracy Whitney's court hearing and sentencing. He interviewed Lieutenant Miller and learned about the suicide of Tracy Whitney's mother. He talked to Otto Schmidt and found out how Whitney's company had been stripped. During all these meetings, Daniel Cooper made not one note, yet he could have recited every conversation verbatim. He was 99 percent sure that Tracy Whitney was an innocent victim, but to Daniel Cooper, those were unacceptable odds. He flew to Philadelphia and talked to Clarence Desmond, vice-president of the bank where Tracy Whitney had worked. Charles Stanhope III had refused to meet with him.
Now, as Cooper looked at the woman seated across from him, he was 100 percent convinced that she had had nothing to do with the theft of the painting. He was ready to write his report.
“Romano framed you, Miss Whitney. Sooner or later, he would have put in a claim for the theft of that painting. You just happened to come along at the right moment to make it easy for him.”
Tracy could feel her heartbeat accelerate. This man knew she was innocent. He probably had enough evidence against Joe Romano to clear her. He would speak to the warden or the governor, and get her out of this nightmare. She found it suddenly difficult to breathe. “Then you'll help me?”
Daniel Cooper was puzzled. “Help you?”
“Yes. Get a pardon or —”
“No.”
The word was like a slap. “No? But why? If you know I'm innocent ”
How could people be so stupid? “My assignment is finished.”
When he returned to his hotel room, the first thing Cooper did was to undress and step into the shower. He scrubbed himself from head to foot, letting the steaming-hot spray wash over his body for almost half an hour. When he had dried himself and dressed, he sat down and wrote his report.
To: J. J. Reynolds
File No. Y-72-830-412
FROM: Daniel Cooper
SUBJECT: Deux Femmes dans le Cafй Rouge, Renoir — Oil on Canvas
It is my conclusion that Tracy Whitney is in no way involved in the theft of above painting. I believe that Joe Romano took out the insurance policy with the intention of faking a burglary, collecting the insurance, and reselling the painting to a private party, and that by this time the painting is probably out of the country. Since the painting is well known, I would expect it to turn up in Switzerland, which has a good-faith purchase and protection law. If a purchaser says he bought a work of art in good faith, the Swiss government permits him to keep it, even though it is stolen.
Recommendation: Since there is no concrete proof of Romano's guilt, our client will have to pay him off on the policy. Further, it would be useless to look to Tracy Whitney for either the recovery of the painting or damages, since she has neither knowledge of the painting nor any assets that I have been able to uncover. In addition, she will be incarcerated in the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women for the next fifteen years.
Daniel Cooper stopped a moment to think about Tracy Whitney. He supposed other men would consider her beautiful. He wondered, without any real interest, what fifteen years in prison would do to her. It had nothing to do with him.
Daniel Cooper signed the memo and debated whether he had time to take another shower.
Old Iron Pants had Tracy Whitney assigned to the laundry. Of the thirty-five work assignments available to prisoners, the laundry was the worst. The enormous, hot room was filled with rows of washing machines and ironing boards, and the loads of laundry that poured in were endless. Filling and emptying the washing machines and toting heavy baskets to the ironing section was a mindless, backbreaking job.
Work began at 6:00 A.M., and prisoners were permitted one 10-minute rest period every two hours. By the end of the nine-hour day, most of the women were ready to drop from exhaustion. Tracy went about her work mechanically, speaking to no one, cocooned in her own thoughts.
When Ernestine Littlechap heard about Tracy's assignment, she remarked, “Old Iron Pants is out for your ass.”
Tracy said, “She doesn't bother me.”
Ernestine Littlechap was puzzled. This was a different woman from the terrified young girl who had been brought into the prison three weeks earlier. Something had changed her, and Ernestine Littlechap was curious to know what it was.
On Tracy's eighth day working in the laundry, a guard came up to her in the early afternoon. “I got a transfer here for you. You're assigned to the kitchen.” The most coveted job in the prison.
There were two standards of food in the penitentiary: The prisoners ate hash, hot dogs, beans, or inedible casseroles, while the meals for the guards and prison officials were prepared by professional chefs. Their range of meals included steaks, fresh fish, chops, chicken, fresh vegetables and fruits, and tempting desserts. The convicts who worked in the kitchen had access to those meals, and they took full advantage of it.
When Tracy reported to the kitchen, she was somehow not surprised to see Ernestine Littlechap there.
Tracy approached her. “Thank you.” With difficulty, she forced a friendly note into her voice.
Ernestine grunted and said nothing.
“How did you get me past Old Iron Pants?”
“She ain't with us no mo'.”
“What happened to her?”
“We got a little system. If a guard is hard-ass and starts givin' us too much of a bad time, we get rid of 'em.”
“You mean the warden listens to —?”
“Shee-et. What's the warden got to do with it?”
“Then how can you —?”
“It's easy. When the guard you want to get rid of is on duty, hassles begin to happen. Complaints start comin' in. A prisoner reports that Old Iron Pants grabbed her pussy. The next day 'nother prisoner accuses her of brutality. Then someone complains she took somethin' from her cell — say a radio — and sure enough, it turns up in Old Iron Pants's room. Old Iron Pants is gone. The guards don't run this prison, we do.”
“What are you in here for?” Tracy asked. She had no interest in the answer. The important thing was to establish a friendly relationship with this woman.
“Through no fault of Ernestine Littlechap, you'd better believe it. I had a whole bunch of girls workin' for me.”
Tracy looked at her. “You mean as —?” She hesitated.
“Hookers?” She laughed.. “Naw. They worked as maids in big homes. I opened me a employment agency. I had at least twenty girls. Rich folks have a hell of a time findin' maids. I did a lot of fancy advertisin' in the best newspapers, and when they called me I placed my girls with 'em. The girls would size up the houses, and when their employers was at work or outta town, the girls would gather up all the silver and jewelry and furs and whatever other goodies were around and skip.” Ernestine sighed. “If I told you how much fuckin' tax-free money we was pullin' down, you wouldn't believe me.”
“How did you get caught?”
“It was the fickle finger of fate, honey. One of my maids was servin' a luncheon at the mayor's house, and one of the guests was a old lady the maid had worked for and cleaned out. When the police used hoses on her, my girl began singin', and she sang the whole opera, and here's poor of Ernestine.”
They were standing at a stove by themselves. “I can't stay in this place,” Tracy whispered. “I've got to take care of something on the outside. Will you help me escape? I —”
“Start slicin' up them onions., We're havin' Irish stew tonight.”
And she walked away.
The prison grapevine was incredible. The prisoners knew everything that was going to happen long before it occurred. Inmates known as garbage rats picked up discarded memos, eavesdropped on phone calls, and read the warden's mail, and all information was carefully digested and sent around to the inmates who were important. Ernestine Littlechap was at the head of the list. Tracy was aware of how the guards and prisoners deferred to Ernestine. Since the other inmates had decided that Ernestine had become Tracy's protector, she was left strictly alone. Tracy waited warily for Ernestine to make advances toward her, but the big black kept her distance. Why? Tracy wondered.
Rule number 7 in the official ten-page pamphlet issued to new prisoners read, “Any form of sex is strictly forbidden. There will be no more than four inmates to a cell. Not more than one prisoner shall be permitted to be on a bunk at one time.”
The reality was so startlingly different that the prisoners referred to the pamphlet as the prison joke book. As the weeks went by, Tracy watched new prisoners — fish — enter the prison every day, and the pattern was always the same. First offenders who were sexually normal never had a chance. They came in timid and frightened, and the bull-dykes were there, waiting. The drama was enacted in planned stages. In a terrifying and hostile world, the bull-dyke was friendly and sympathetic. She would invite her victim to the recreation hall, where they would watch television together, and when the bull-dyke held her hand, the new prisoner would allow it, afraid of offending her only friend. The new prisoner quickly noticed that the other inmates left her alone, and as her dependence on the bull-dyke grew, so did the intimacies, until finally, she was willing to do anything to hold onto her only friend.
Those who refused to give in were raped. Ninety percent of the women who entered the prison were forced into homosexual activity — willingly or unwillingly — within the first thirty days. Tracy was horrified.
“How can the authorities allow it to happen?” she asked Ernestine.
“It's the system,” Ernestine explained, “and it's the same in every prison, baby. There ain't no way you can separate twelve hundred women from their men and expect them not to fuck somebody. We don't just rape for sex. We rape for power, to show 'em right off who's boss. The new fish who come in here are targets for everybody who wants to gang-fuck 'em. The only protection they got is to become the wife of a bull-dyke. That way, nobody'll mess with 'em.”
Tracy had reason to know she was listening to an expert.
“It ain't only the inmates,” Ernestine went on. “The guards are jest as bad. Some fresh meat comes in and she's on H. She's strung out and needs a fix real bad. She's sweatin' and shakin' herself to pieces. Well, the matron can get heroin for her, but the matron wants a little favor in exchange, see? So the fish goes down on the matron and she gets her fix. The male guards are even worse. They got keys to these cells, and all they have to do is walk in at night and he'p themselves to free pussy. They might get you pregnant, but they can do a lot of favors. You want a candy bar or a visit from your boyfriend, you give the guard a piece of ass. It's called barterin', and it goes on in every prison system in the country.”
“It's horrible!”
“It's survival.” The overhead cell light shone on Ernestine's bald head. “You know why they don't allow no chewin' gum in this place?”
“No.”
“Because the girls use it to jam up the locks on the doors so they don't close all the way, and at night they slip out and visit one another. We follow the rules we want to follow. The girls who make it out of here may be dumb, but they're smart dumb.”
Love affairs within the prison walls flourished, and the protocol between lovers was even more strictly enforced than on the outside. In an unnatural world, the artificial roles of studs and wives were created and played out. The studs assumed a man's role in a world where there were no men. They changed their names. Ernestine was called Ernie; Tessie was Tex; Barbara became Bob; Katherine was Kelly. The stud cut her hair short or shaved her head, and she did no chores. The Mary Femme, the wife, was expected to do the cleaning, mending, and ironing for her stud. Lola and Paulita competed fiercely for Ernestine's attentions, each fighting to outdo the other.
The jealousy was fierce and frequently led to violence, and if the wife was caught looking at another stud or talking to one in the prison yard, tempers would flare. Love letters were constantly flying around the prison, delivered by the garbage rats.
The letters were folded into small triangular shapes, known as kites, so they could easily be hidden in a bra or a shoe. Tracy saw kites being passed among women as they brushed by one another entering the dining hall or on their way to work.
Time after time, Tracy watched inmates fall in love with their guards. It was a love born of despair and helplessness and submissiveness. The prisoners were dependent on the guards for everything: their food, their well-being, and sometimes, their lives. Tracy allowed herself to feel no emotion for anyone.
Sex went on day and night. It occurred in the shower room, in toilets, in cells, and at night there was oral sex through the bars. The Mary Femmes who belonged to guards were let out of their cells at night to go to the guards' quarters.
After lights out, Tracy would lie in her bunk and put her hands over her ears to shut out the sounds.
One night Ernestine pulled out a box of Rice Krispies from under her bunk and began scattering them in the corridor outside the cell. Tracy could hear inmates from other cells doing the same thing.
“What's going on?” Tracy asked.
Ernestine turned to her and said harshly, “Non'a your business. Jest stay in your bunk. Jest stay in your fuckin' bunk.”
A few minutes later there was a terrified scream from a nearby cell, where a new prisoner had just arrived. “Oh, God, no. Don't! Please leave me alone!”
Tracy knew then what was happening, and she was sick inside. The screams went on and on, until they finally diminished into helpless, racking sobs. Tracy squeezed her eyes tightly shut, filled with burning rage. How could women do this to one another? She had thought that prison had hardened her, but when she awoke in the morning, her face was stained with dried tears.
She was determined not to show her feelings to Ernestine. Tracy asked casually, “What were the Rice Krispies for?”
“That's our early warnin' system. If the guards try sneakin' up on us, we kin hear 'em comin'.”
Tracy soon learned why inmates referred to a term in the penitentiary as “going to college.” Prison was an educational experience, but what the prisoners learned was unorthodox.
The prison was filled with experts in every conceivable type of crime. They exchanged methods of grifting, shoplifting, and rolling drunks. They brought one another up to date on badger games and exchanged information on snitches and undercover cops.
In the recreation yard one morning, Tracy listened to an older inmate give a seminar on pickpocketing to a fascinated young group.
“The real pros come from Colombia. They got a school in Bogotб, called the school of the ten bells, where you pay twenty-five hundred bucks to learn to be a pickpocket. They hang a dummy from the ceilin', dressed in a suit with ten pockets, filled with money and jewelry.”
“What's the gimmick?”
“The gimmick is that each pocket has a belt on it. You don't graduate till you kin empty every damn pocket without ringin' the bell.”
Lola sighed, “I used to go with a guy who walked through crowds dressed in an overcoat, with both his hands out in the open, while he picked everybody's pockets like crazy.”
“How the hell could he do that?”
“The right hand was a dummy. He slipped his real hand through a slit in the coat and picked his way through pockets and wallets and purses.”
In the recreation room the education continued.
“I like the locker-key rip-off,” a veteran said. “You hang around a railroad station till you see a little old lady tryin' to lift a suitcase or a big package into one a them lockers. You put it in for her and hand her the key. Only it's the key to an empty locker. When she leaves, you empty her locker and split.”
In the yard another afternoon, two inmates convicted of prostitution and possession of cocaine were talking to a new arrival, a pretty young girl who looked no more than seventeen.
“No wonder you got busted, honey,” one of the older women scolded. “Before you talk price to a John, you gotta pat him down to make sure he ain't carryin' a gun, and never tell him what you're gonna do for him. Make him tell you what he wants. Then if he turns out to be a cop, it's entrapment, see?”
The other pro added, “Yeah. And always took at their hands. If a trick says he's a workin' man, see if his hands are rough. That's the tip-off. A lot of plainclothes cops wear workin' men's outfits, but when it comes to their hands, they forget, so their hands are smooth.”
Time went neither slowly nor quickly. It was simply time. Tracy though of St. Augustine's aphorism: “What is time? If no one asks me, I know. But if I have to explain it, I do not know.”
The routine of the prison never varied:
4:40 A.M. Warning bell
4:45 A.M. Rise and dress
5:00 A.M. Breakfast
5:30 A.M. Return to cell
5:55 A.M. Warning bell
6:00 A.M. Work detail lineup
10:00 A.M. Exercise yard
10:30 A.M. Lunch
11:00 A.M. Work detail lineup
3:30 P.M. Supper
4:00 P.M. Return to cell
5:00 P.M. Recreation room
6:00 P.M. Return to cell
8:45 P.M. Warning bell
9:00 P.M. Lights out
The rules were inflexible. All inmates had to go to meals, and no talking was permitted in the lines. No more than five cosmetic items could be kept in the small cell lockers. Beds had to be made prior to breakfast and kept neat during the day.
The penitentiary had a music all its own: the clanging bells, shuffle of feet on cement, slamming iron doors, day whispers and night screams… the hoarse crackle of the guards' walkie-talkies, the clash of trays at mealtime. And always there was the barbed wire and the high walls and the loneliness and isolation and the pervading aura of hate.
Tracy became a model prisoner. Her body responded automatically to the sounds of prison routine: the bar sliding across her cell at count time and sliding back at wake-up time; the bell for reporting to work and the buzzer when work was finished.
Tracy's body was a prisoner in this place, but her mind was free to plan her escape.
Prisoners could make no outside telephone calls, and they were permitted to receive two five-minute calls a month. Tracy received a call from Otto Schmidt.
“I thought you'd want to know,” he said awkwardly. “It was a real nice funeral. I took care of the bills, Tracy.”
“Thank you, Otto. I — thank you.” There was nothing more for either of them to say.
There were no more phone calls for her.
“Girl, you best forget the outside world,” Ernestine warned her. “There ain't nobody out there for you.”
You're wrong, Tracy thought grimly.
Joe Romano
Perry Pope
Judge Henry Lawrence
Anthony Orsatti
Charles Stanhope III
It was in the exercise yard that Tracy encountered Big Bertha again. The yard was a large outdoor rectangle bounded by the high outer prison wall on one side and the inner wall of the prison on the other. The inmates were allowed in the yard for thirty minutes each morning. It was one of the few places where talking was permitted, and clusters of prisoners gathered together exchanging the latest news and gossip before lunch. When Tracy walked into the yard for the first time, she felt a sudden sense of freedom, and she realized it was because she was in the open air. She could see the sun, high above, and cumulus clouds, and somewhere in the distant blue sky she heard the drone of a plane, soaring free.
“You! I been lookin' for you,” a voice said.
Tracy turned to see the huge Swede who had brushed into her on Tracy's first day in prison.
“I hear you got yourself a nigger bull-dyke.”
Tracy started to brush past the woman. Big Bertha grabbed Tracy's arm, with an iron grip. “Nobody walks away from me,” she breathed. “Be nice; littbarn.” She was backing Tracy toward the wall, pressing her huge body into Tracy's.
“Get away from me.”
“What you need is a real good lickin'. You know what I mean? An' I'm gonna give it to you. You're gonna be all mine, дlskade.”
A familiar voice behind Tracy rasped, “Get your fuckin' hands off her, you asshole.”
Ernestine Littlechap stood there, big fists clenched, eyes blazing, the sun reflecting off her shiny shaved skull.
“You ain't man enough for her, Ernie.”
“I'm man enough for you,” the black woman exploded “You bother her again, and I'll have your ass for breakfast. Fried.”
The air was suddenly charged with electricity. The two amazons were eyeing each other with naked hatred. They're ready to kill each other over me, Tracy thought. And then she realized it had very little to do with her. She remembered something Ernestine had told her: “In this place, you have to fight, fuck, or hit the fence. You gotta hold your mud, or you're dead.”
It was Big Bertha who backed down. She gave Ernestine a contemptuous look. “I ain't in no hurry.” She leered at Tracy. “You're gonna be here a long time, baby. So am I. I'll be seein' you.”
She turned and walked away.
Ernestine watched her go. “She's a bad mother. 'Member that nurse in Chicago who killed off all them patients? Stuck 'em full of cyanide and stayed there an' watched 'em die? Well, that angel of mercy is the one who got the hots for you, Whitney. Shee-et! You need a fuckin' keeper. She ain't gonna let up on you.”
“Will you help me escape?”
A bell rang.
“It's chow time,” Ernestine Littlechap said.
That night, lying in her bunk, Tracy thought about Ernestine.
Even though she had never tried to touch Tracy again, Tracy still did not trust her. She could never forget what Ernestine and her other cell mates had done to her. But she needed the black woman.
Each afternoon after supper, the inmates were allowed to spend one hour in the recreation room, where they could watch television or talk or read the latest magazines and newspapers. Tracy was thumbing through a copy of a magazine when a photograph caught her eye. It was a wedding picture of Charles Stanhope III and his new bride, coming out of a chapel, arm in arm, laughing. It hit Tracy like a blow. Seeing his photograph now, the happy smile on his face, she was filled with a pain that turned to cold fury. She had once planned to share her life with this man, and he had turned his back on her, let them destroy her, let their baby die. But that was another time, another place, another world. That was fantasy. This is reality.
Tracy slammed the magazine shut.
On visiting days it was easy to know which inmates had friends or relatives coming to see them. The prisoners would shower and put on fresh clothes and makeup. Ernestine usually returned from the visitors' room smiling and cheerful.
“My Al, he always comes to see me,” she told Tracy. “He'll be waitin' for me when I get out. You know why? 'Cause I give him what no other woman gives him.”
Tracy could not hide her confusion. “You mean… sexually?”
“You bet your ass. What goes on behind these walls has nothin' to do with the outside. In here, sometimes we need a warm body to hold — somebody to touch us and tell us they love us. We gotta feel there's somebody who gives a damn about us. It don't matter if it ain't real or don't last. It's all we got. But when I get on the outside” — Emestine broke into a broad grin — “then I become a fuckin' nymphomaniac, hear?”
There was something that had been puzzling Tracy. She decided to bring it up now. “Ernie, you keep protecting me. Why?”
Ernestine shrugged. “Beats the shit out of me.”
“I really want to know.” Tracy chose her words carefully. “Everyone else who's your — your friend belongs to you. They do whatever you tell them to do.”
“If they don't want to walk around with half an ass, yeah.”
“But not me. Why?”
“You complainin'?”
“No. I'm curious.”
Ernestine thought about it for a moment. “Okay. You got somethin' I want.” She saw the look on Tracy's face. “No, not that. I get alla that I want, baby. You got class. I mean, real, honest-to-God class. Like those cool ladies you see in Vogue and Town and Country, all dressed up and servin' tea from silver pots. That's where you belong. This ain't your world. I don't know how you got mixed up with all that rat shit on the outside, but my guess is you got suckered by somebody.” She looked at Tracy and said, almost shyly, “I ain't come across many decent things in my life. You're one of 'em.” She turned away so that her next words were almost inaudible. “And I'm sorry about your kid. I really am….”
That night, after lights out, Tracy whispered in the dark, “Ernie, I've go to escape. Help me. Please.”
“I'm tryin' to sleep, for Christ's sake! Shut up now, hear?”
Ernestine initiated Tracy into the arcane language of the prison. Groups of women in the yard were talking: “This bull-dyker dropped the belt on the gray broad, and from then on you had to feed her with a long-handled spoon….”
“She was short, but they caught her in a snowstorm, and a stoned cop turned her over to the butcher. That ended her getup. Good-bye, Ruby-do….”
To Tracy, it was like listening to a group of Martians. “What are they talking about?” she asked.
Ernestine roared with laughter. “Don't you speak no English, girl? When the lesbian 'dropped the belt,' it meant she switched from bein' the guy to bein' a Mary Femme. She got involved with a 'gray broad' — that's a honky, like you. She couldn't be trusted, so that meant you stayed away from her. She was 'short,' meanin' she was near the end of her prison sentence, but she got caught takin' heroin by a stoned cop — that's someone who lives by the rules and can't be bought — and they sent her to the 'butcher,' the prison doctor.”
“What's a 'Ruby-do' and a 'getup'?”
“Ain't you learned nothin'? A 'Ruby-do' is a parole. A 'getup' is the day of release.”
Tracy knew she would wait for neither.
The explosion between Ernestine Littlechap and Big Bertha happened in the yard the following day. The prisoners were playing a game of softball, supervised by the guards. Big Bertha, at bat with two strikes against her, hit a hard line drive on the third pitch and ran to first base, which Tracy was covering. Big Bertha slammed into Tracy, knocking her down, and then was on top of her. Her hands snaked up between Tracy's legs, and she whispered, “Nobody says no to me, you cunt. I'm comin' to get you tonight, littbarn, and I'm gonna fuck your ass off.”
Tracy fought wildly to get loose. Suddenly, she felt Big Bertha being lifted off her. Ernestine had the huge Swede by the neck and was throttling her.
“You goddamn bitch!” Ernestine was screaming. “I warned you!” She slashed her fingernails across Big Bertha's face, clawing at her eyes.
“I'm blind!” Big Bertha screamed: “I'm blind!” She grabbed Ernestine's breasts and starting pulling them. The two women were punching and clawing at each other as four guards came running up. It took the guards five minutes to pull them apart. Both women were taken to the infirmary. It was late that night when Ernestine was returned to her cell. Lola and Paulita hurried to her bunk to console her.
“Are you all right?” Tracy whispered.
“Damned right,” Ernestine told her. Her voice sounded muffled, and Tracy wondered how badly she had been hurt. “I made my Ruby-do yesterday. I'm gettin' outta this joint. You got a problem. That mother ain't gonna leave you alone now. No way. And when she's finished fuckin' with you, she's gonna kill you.”
They lay there in the silent darkness. Finally, Ernestine spoke again. “Maybe it's time you and me talked about bustin' you the hell outta here.”
“You're going to lose your governess tomorrow,” Warden Brannigan announced to his wife.
Sue Ellen Brannigan looked up in surprise. “Why? Judy's very good with Amy.”
“I know, but her sentence is up. She's being released in the morning.”
They were having breakfast in the comfortable cottage that was one of the perquisites of Warden Brannigan's job. Other benefits included a cook, a maid, a chauffeur, and a governess for their daughter, Amy, who was almost five. All the servants were trusties. When Sue Ellen Brannigan had arrived there five years earlier, she had been nervous about living on the grounds of the penitentiary, and even more apprehensive about having a house full of servants,who were all convicted criminals.
“How do you know they won't rob us and cut our throats in the middle of the night?” she had demanded.
“If they do,” Warden Brannigan had promised, “I'll put them on report.”
He had persuaded his wife, without convincing her, but Sue Ellen's fears had proved groundless. The trusties were anxious to make a good impression and cut their time down as much as possible, so they were very conscientious.
“I was just getting comfortable with the idea of leaving Amy in Judy's care,” Mrs. Brannigan complained. She wished Judy well, but she did not want her to leave. Who knew what kind of woman would be Amy's next governess? There were so many horror stories about the terrible things strangers did to children.
“Do you have anyone in particular in mind to replace Judy, George?”
The warden had given it considerable thought. There were a dozen trusties suitable for the job of taking care of their daughter. But he had not been able to get Tracy Whitney out of his mind. There was something about her case that he found deeply disturbing. He had been a professional criminologist for fifteen years, and he prided himself that one of his strengths was his ability to assess prisoners. Some of the convicts in his care were hardened criminals, others were in prison because they had committed crimes of passion or succumbed to a momentary temptation, but it seemed to Warden Brannigan that Tracy Whitney belonged in neither category. He had not been swayed by her protests of innocence, for that was standard operating procedure for all convicts. What bothered him was the people who had conspired to send Tracy Whitney to prison. The warden had been appointed by a New Orleans civic commission headed by the governor of the state, and although he steadfastly refused to become involved in politics, he was aware of all the players. Joe Romano was Mafia, a runner for Anthony Orsatti. Perry Pope, the attorney who had defended Tracy Whitney, was on their payroll, and so was Judge Henry Lawrence. Tracy Whitney's conviction had a decidedly rank odor to it.
Now Warden Brannigan made his decision. He said to his wife, “Yes. I do have someone in mind.”
There was an alcove in the prison kitchen with a small Formica-topped dining table and four chairs, the only place where it was possible to have a reasonable amount of privacy. Ernestine Littlechap and Tracy were seated there, drinking coffee during their ten-minute break.
“I think it's about time you tol' me what your big hurry is to bust outta here,” Ernestine suggested.
Tracy hesitated. Could she trust Ernestine? She had no choice. “There — there are some people who did things to my family and me. I've got to get out to pay them back.”
“Yeah? What'd they do?”
Tracy's words came out slowly, each one a drop of pain. “They killed my mother.”
“Who's they?”
“I don't think the names would mean anything to you. Joe Romano, Perry Pope, a judge named Henry Lawrence; Anthony Orsatti —”
Ernestine was staring at her with her mouth open. “Jesus H. Christ! You puttin' me on, girl?”
Tracy was surprised. “You've heard of them?”
“Heard of 'em! Who hasn't heard of 'em? Nothin' goes down in New Or-fuckin'-leans unless Orsatti or Romano says so. You can't mess with them. They'll blow you away like smoke.”
Tracy said tonelessly, “They've already blown me away.”
Ernestine looked around to make sure they could not be overheard. “You're either crazy or you're the dumbest broad I've ever met. Talk about the untouchables!” She shook her head. “Forget about 'em. Fast!”
“No. I can't. I have to break out of here. Can it be done?”
Ernestine was silent for a long time. When she finally spoke, she said, “We'll talk in the yard.”
They were in the yard, off in a corner by themselves.
“There've been twelve bust-outs from this joint,” Ernestine said. “Two of the prisoners were shot and killed. The other ten were caught and brought back.” Tracy made no comment. “The tower's manned twenty-four hours by guards with machine guns, and they're mean sons of bitches. If anyone escapes, it costs the guards their jobs, so they'd just as soon kill you as look at you. There's barbed wire all around the prison, and if you get through that and past the machine guns, they got hound dogs that can track a mosquito's fart. There's a National Guard station a few miles away, and when a prisoner escapes from here they send up helicopters with guns and searchlights. Nobody gives a shit if they bring you back dead or alive, girl. They figure dead is better. It discourages anyone else with plans.”
“But people still try,” Tracy said stubbornly.
“The ones who broke out had help from the outside — friends who smuggled in guns and money and clothes. They had getaway cars waltin' for 'em.” She paused for effect. “And they still got caught.”
“They won't catch me,” Tracy swore.
A matron was approaching. She called out to Tracy, “Warden Brannigan wants you. On the double.”
“We need someone to take care of our young daughter,” Warden Brannigan said. “It's a voluntary job. You don't have to take it if you don't wish to.”
Someone to take care of our young daughter. Tracy's mind was racing. This might make her escape easier. Working in the warden's house, she could probably learn a great deal more about the prison setup.
“Yes,” Tracy said. “I'd like to take the job.”
George Brannigan was pleased. He had an odd, unreasonable feeling that he owed this woman something. “Good. It pays sixty cents an hour. The money will be put in your account at the end of each month.”
Prisoners were not allowed to handle cash, and all monies accumulated were handed over upon the prisoner's release.
l won't be here at the end of the month, Tracy thought, but aloud she said, “That will be fine.”
“You can start in the morning. The head matron will give you the details.”
“Thank you, Warden.”
He looked at Tracy and was tempted to say something more. He was not quite sure what. Instead, he said, “That's all.”
When Tracy broke the news to Ernestine, the black woman said thoughtfully, “That means they gonna make you a trusty. You'll get the run of the prison. That might make bustin' out a little easier.”
“How do I do it?” Tracy asked.
“You got three choices, but they're all risky. The first way is a sneak-out. You use chewin' gum one night to jam the locks on your cell door and the corridor doors. You sneak outside to the yard, throw a blanket over the barbed wire, and you're off and runnin'.”
With dogs and helicopters after her. Tracy could feel the bullets from the guns of the guards tearing into her. She shuddered. “What are the other ways?”
“The second way's a breakout. That's where you use a gun and take a hostage with you. If they catch you, they'll give you a deuce with a nickel tail.” She saw Tracy's puzzled expression. “That's another two to five years on your sentence.”
“And the third way?”
“A walkaway. That's for trusties who are out on a work detail. Once you're out in the open, girl, you jest keep movin'.”
Tracy thought about that. Without money and a car and a place to hide out, she would have no chance. “They'd find out I was gone at the next head count and come looking for me.”
Ernestine sighed. “There ain't no perfect escape plan, girl. That's why no one's ever made it outta this place.”
I will, Tracy vowed. I will.
The morning Tracy was taken to Warden Brannigan's home marked her fifth month as a prisoner. She was nervous about meeting the warden's wife and child, for she wanted this job desperately. It was going to be her key to freedom.
Tracy walked into the large, pleasant kitchen and sat down. She could feel the perspiration bead and roll down from her underarms. A woman clad in a muted rose-colored housecoat appeared in the doorway.
She said, “Good morning.”
“Good morning.”
The woman started to sit, changed her mind, and stood. Sue Ellen Brannigan was a pleasant-faced blonde in her middle thirties, with a vague, distracted manner. She was thin and hyper, never quite sure how to treat the convict servants. Should she thank them for doing their jobs, or just give them orders? Should she be friendly, or treat them like prisoners? Sue Ellen still had not gotten used to the idea of living in the midst of drug addicts and thieves and killers.
“I'm Mrs. Brannigan,” she rattled on. “Amy is almost five years old, and you know how active they are at that age. I'm afraid she has to be watched all the time.” She glanced at Tracy's left hand. There was no wedding ring there, but these days, of course, that meant nothing. Particularly with the lower classes, Sue Ellen thought. She paused and asked delicately, “Do you have children?”
Tracy thought of her unborn baby. “No.”
“I see.” Sue Ellen was confused by this young woman. She was not at all what she had expected. There was something almost elegant about her. “I'll bring Amy in.” She hurried out of the room.
Tracy looked around. It was a fairly large cottage, neat and attractively furnished. It seemed to Tracy that it had been years since she had been in anyone's home. That was all part of the other world, the world outside.
Sue Ellen came back into the room holding the hand of a young girl. “Amy, this is —” Did one call a prisoner by her first or last name? She compromised. “This is Tracy Whitney.”
“Hi,” Amy said. She had her mother's thinness and deepset, intelligent hazel eyes. She was not a pretty child, but there was an open friendliness about her that was touching.
I won't let her touch me.
“Are you going to be my new nanny?”
“Well, I'm going to help your mother look after you.”
“Judy went out on parole, did you know that? Are you going out on parole, too?”
No, Tracy thought. She said, “I'm going to be here for a long while, Amy.”
“That's good,” Sue Ellen said brightly. She colored in embarrassment and bit her lip. “I mean —” She whirled around the kitchen and started explaining Tracy's duties to her. “You'll have your meals with Amy. You can prepare breakfast for her and play with her in the morning. The cook will make lunch here. After lunch, Amy has a nap, and in the afternoon she likes walking around the grounds of the farm. I think it's so good for a child to see growing things, don't you?”
“Yes.”
The farm was on the other side of the main prison, and the twenty acres, planted with vegetables and fruit trees, were tended by trusties. There was a large artificial lake used for irrigation, surrounded by a stone wall that rose above it.
The next five days were almost like a new life for Tracy. Under different circumstances, she would have enjoyed getting away from the bleak prison walls, free to walk around the farm and breathe the fresh country air, but all she could think about was escaping. When she was not on duty with Amy, she was required to report back to the prison. Each night Tracy was locked in her cell, but in the daytime she had the illusion of freedom. After breakfast in the prison kitchen, she walked over to the warden's cottage and made breakfast for Amy. Tracy had learned a good deal about cooking from Charles, and she was tempted by the varieties of foodstuffs on the warden's shelves, but Amy preferred a simple breakfast of oatmeal or cereal with fruit. Afterward, Tracy would play games with the little girl or read to her. Without thinking. Tracy began teaching Amy the games her mother had played with her.
Amy loved puppets. Tracy tried to copy Shari Lewis's Lamb Chop for her from one of the warden's old socks, but it turned out looking like a cross between a fox and a duck. “I think it's beautiful,” Amy said loyally.
Tracy made the puppet speak with different accents: French, Italian, German, and the one Amy adored the most, Paulita's Mexican lilt. Tracy would watch the pleasure oft the child's face and think, I won't become involved. She's just my means of getting out of this place.
After Amy's afternoon nap, the two of them would take long walks, and Tracy saw to it that they covered areas of the prison grounds she had not seen before. She carefully observed every exit and entrance and how the guard towers were manned and noted when the shifts changed. It became obvious to her that none of the escape plans she had discussed with Ernestine would work.
“Has anyone ever tried to escape by hiding in one of the service trucks that deliver things to the prison? I've seen milk trucks and food —”
“Forget it,” Ernestine said flatly. “Every vehicle comin' in and goin' out of the gate is searched.”
At breakfast one morning, Amy said, “I love you, Tracy. Will you be my mother?”
The words sent a pang through Tracy. “One mother is enough. You don't need two.”
“Yes, I do. My friend Sally Ann's father got married again, and Sally Ann has two mothers.”
“You're not Sally Ann,” Tracy said curtly. “Finish your breakfast.”
Amy was looking at her with hurt eyes. “I'm not hungry anymore.”
“All right. I'll read to you, then.”
As Tracy started to read, she felt Amy's soft little hand on hers.
“Can I sit on your lap?”
“No.” Get your affection from your own family, Tracy thought. You don't belong to me. Nothing belongs to me.
The easy days away from the routine of the prison somehow made the nights worse. Tracy loathed returning to her cell, hated being caged in like an animal. She was still unable to get used to the screams that came from nearby cells in the uncaring darkness. She would grit her teeth until her jaws ached. One night at a time, she promised herself. I can stand one night at a time.
She slept little, for her mind was busy planning. Step one was to escape. Step two was to deal with Joe Romano, Perry Pope, Judge Henry Lawrence, and Anthony Orsatti. Step three was Charles. But that was too painful even to think about yet. I'll handle that when the time comes, she told herself.
It was becoming impossible to stay out of the way of Big Bertha. Tracy was sure the huge Swede was having her spied upon. If Tracy went to the recreation room, Big Bertha would show up a few minutes later, and when Tracy went out to the yard, Big Bertha would appear shortly afterward.
One day Big Bertha walked up to Tracy and said, “You're looking beautiful today, littbarn. I can't wait for us to get together.”
“Stay away from me,” Tracy warned.
The amazon grinned. “Or what? Your black bitch is gettin' out. I'm arrangin' to have you transferred to my cell.”
Tracy stared at her.
Big Bertha nodded. “I can do it, honey. Believe it.”
Tracy knew then her time was running out. She had to escape before Ernestine was released.
Amy's favorite walk was through the meadow, rainbowed with colorful wildflowers. The huge artificial lake was nearby, surrounded by a low concrete wall with a long drop to the deep water.
“Let's go swimming,” Amy pleaded. “Please, let's, Tracy?”
“It's not for swimming,” Tracy said. “They use the water for irrigation.” The sight of the cold, forbidding-looking lake made her shiver.
Her father was carrying her into the ocean on his shoulders, and when she cried out, her father said, Don't be a baby, Tracy, and he dropped her into the cold water, and when the water closed over her head she panicked and began to choke….
When the news came, it was a shock, even though Tracy had expected it.
“I'm gettin' outta here a week from Sattiday,” Ernestine said.
The words sent a cold chill through Tracy. She had not told Ernestine about her conversation with Big Bertha. Ernestine would not be here to help her. Big Bertha probably had enough influence to have Tracy transferred to her cell. The only way Tracy could avoid it would be to talk to the warden, and she knew that if she did that, she was as good as dead. Every convict in the prison would turn on her. You gotta fight, fuck; or hit the fence. Well, she was going to hit the fence.
She and Ernestine went over the escape possibilities again. None of them was satisfactory.
“You ain't got no car, and you ain't got no one on the outside to he'p you. You're gonna get caught, sure as hell, and then you'll be worse off. You'd be better doin' cool time and flnishin' out your gig.”
But Tracy knew there would be no cool time. Not with Big Bertha after her. The thought of what the giant bull-dyke had in mind for her made her physically ill.
It was Saturday morning, seven days before Ernestine's release. Sue Ellen Brannigan had taken Amy into New Orleans for the weekend, and Tracy was at work in the prison kitchen.
“How's the nursemaid job goin'?” Ernestine asked.
“All right.”
“I seen that little girl. She seems real sweet.”
“She's okay.” Her tone was indifferent.
“I'll sure be glad to get outta here. I'll tell you one thing, I ain't never comin' back to this joint. If there's anythin' Al or me kin do for you on the outside —”
“Coming through,” a male voice called out.
Tracy turned. A laundryman was pushing a huge cart piled to the top with soiled uniforms and linens. Tracy watched, puzzled, as he headed for the exit.
“What I was sayin' was if me and Al can do anythin' for you — you know — send you things or —”
“Ernie, what's a laundry truck doing here? The prison has its own laundry.”
“Oh, that's for the guards,” Ernestine laughed. “They used to send their uniforms to the prison laundry, but all the buttons managed to get ripped off, sleeves were torn, obscene notes were sewn inside, shirts were shrunk, and the material got mysteriously slashed. Ain't that a fuckin' shame, Miss Scarlett? Now the guards gotta send their stuff to an outside laundry.” Ernestine laughed her Butterfly McQueen imitation.
Tracy was no longer listening. She knew how she was going to escape.
“George, I don't think we should keep Tracy on.”
Warden Brannigan looked up from his newspaper. “What? What's the problem?”
“I'm not sure, exactly. I have the feeling that Tracy doesn't like Amy. Maybe she just doesn't like children.”
“She hasn't been mean to Amy, has she? Hit her, yelled at her?”
“No…”
“What, then?”
“Yesterday Amy ran over and put her arms around Tracy, and Tracy pushed her away. It bothered me because Amy's so crazy about her. To tell you the truth, I might be a little jealous. Could that be it?”
Warden Brannigan laughed. “That could explain a lot, Sue Ellen. I think Tracy Whitney is just right for the job. Now, if she gives you any real problems, let me know, and I'll do something about it.”
“All right, dear.” Sue Ellen was still not satisfied. She picked up her needlepoint and began stabbing at it. The subject was not closed yet.
“Why can't it work?”
“I tol' you, girl. The guards search every truck going through the gate.”
“But a truck carrying a basket of laundry — they're not going to dump out the laundry to check it.”
“They don' have to. The basket is taken to the utility room, where a guard watches it bein' filled.”
Tracy stood there thinking. “Ernie… could someone distract that guard for five minutes?”
“What the hell good would —?” She broke off, a slow grin lighting her face. “While someone pumps him full of sunshine, you get into the bottom of the hamper and get covered up with laundry!” She nodded. “You know, I think the damned thing might work.”
“Then you'll help me?”
Ernestine was thoughtful for a moment. Then she said softly, “Yeah. I'll he'p you. It's my last chance to give Big Bertha a kick in the ass.”
The prison grapevine buzzed with the news of Tracy Whitney's impending escape. A breakout was an event that affected all prisoners. The inmates lived vicariously through each attempt, wishing they had the courage to try it themselves. But there were the guards and the dogs and the helicopters, and, in the end, the bodies of the prisoners who had been brought back.
With Ernestine's help, the escape plan moved ahead swiftly. Ernestine took Tracy's measurements, Lola boosted the material for a dress from the millinery shop, and Paulita had a seamstress in another cell block make it. A pair of prison shoes was stolen from the wardrobe department and dyed to match the dress. A hat, gloves, and purse appeared, as if by magic.
“Now we gotta get you some ID,” Ernestine informed Tracy “You'll need a couple a credit cards and a driver's license.”
“How can I —?”
Ernestine grinned. “You jest leave it to old Ernie Littlechap.”
The following evening Ernestine handed Tracy three major credit cards in the name of Jane Smith.
“Next, you need a driver's license.”
Sometime after midnight Tracy heard the door of her cell being opened. Someone had sneaked into the cell. Tracy sat up in her bunk, instantly on guard.
A voice whispered, “Whitney? Let's go.”
Tracy recognized the voice of Lillian, a trusty. “What do you want?” Tracy asked.
Ernestine's voice shot out of the darkness. “What kind of idiot child did your mother raise? Shut up and don't ask questions.”
Lillian said softly, “We got to do this fast. If we get caught, they'll have my ass. Come on.”
“Where are we going?” Tracy asked, as she followed Lillian down the dark corridor to a stairway. They went up to the landing above and, after making sure there were no guards about, hurried down a hallway until they came to the room where Tracy had been fingerprinted and photographed. Lillian pushed the door open. “In here,” she whispered.
Tracy followed her into the room. Another inmate was waiting inside.
“Step up against the wall.” She sounded nervous.
Tracy moved against the wall, her stomach in knots.
“Look into the camera. Come on. Try and took relaxed.”
Very funny, Tracy thought. She had never been so nervous in her life. The camera clicked.
“The picture will be delivered in the morning,” the inmate said. “It's for your driver's license. Now get out of here — fast.”
Tracy and Lillian retraced their steps. On the way, Lillian said, “I hear you're changin' cells.”
Tracy froze. “What?”
“Didn't you know? You're movin' in with Big Bertha.”
Ernestine, Lola, and Paulita were waiting up for Tracy when she returned. “How'd it go?”
“Fine.”
Didn't you know? You're movin' in with Big Bertha.
“The dress'll be ready for you Sattiday,” Paulita said.
The day of Ernestine's release. That's my deadline, Tracy thought.
Ernestine whispered, “Everythin' is cool. The laundry pickup Sattiday is two o'clock. You gotta be in the utility room by one-thirty. You don' have to worry about the guard. Lola will keep him busy next door. Paulita will be in the utility room waitin' for you. She'll have your clothes. Your ID will be in your purse. You'll be drivin' out the prison gates by two-fifteen.”
Tracy found it difficult to breathe. Just talking about the escape made her tremble. Nobody gives a shit if they bring you back dead or alive…. They figure dead is better.
In a few days she would be making her break for freedom. She had no illusions: The odds were against her. They would eventually find her and bring her back. But there was something she had sworn to take care of first.
The prison grapevine knew all about the contest that had been fought between Ernestine Littlechap and Big Bertha over Tracy. Now that the word was out that Tracy was being transferred to Big Bertha's cell, it was no accident that no one had mentioned anything, to Big Bertha about Tracy's escape plan: Big Bertha did not like to hear bad news. She was often apt to confuse the news with the bearer and treat that person accordingly. Big Bertha did not learn about Tracy's plan until the morning the escape was to take place, and it was revealed to her by the trusty who had taken Tracy's picture.
Big Bertha took the news in ominous silence. Her body seemed to grow bigger as she listened.
“What time?” was all she asked.
“This afternoon at two o'clock, Bert. They're gonna hide her in the bottom of a laundry hamper in the utility room.”
Big Bertha thought about it for a long time. Then she waddled over to a matron and said, “I gotta see Warden Brannigan right away.”
Tracy had not slept all night. She was sick with tension. The months she had been in prison seemed like a dozen eternities. Images of the past flashed through her mind as she lay on her bunk, staring into the dark.
I feel like a princess in a fairy tale, Mother. I didn't know anyone could be this happy.
So! You and Charles want to get married.
How long a honeymoon are you planning?
You shot me, you bitch!…
Your mother committed suicide….
I never really knew you….
The wedding picture of Charles smiling at his bride….
How many eons ago? How many planets away?
The morning bell clanged through the corridor like a shock wave. Tracy sat up on her bunk, wide awake. Ernestine was watching her. “How you feelin', girl?”
“Fine,” Tracy lied. Her mouth was dry, and her heart was beating erratically.
“Well, we're both leavin' here today.”
Tracy found it hard to swallow. “Uh-huh.”
“You sure you kin get away from the warden's house by one-thirty?”
“No problem. Amy always takes a nap after lunch.”
Paulita said, “You can't be late, or it won't work.”
“I'll be there.”
Ernestine reached under her mattress and took out a roll of bills. “You're gonna need some walkin' around money. It's only two hundred bucks, but it'll get you on your way.”
“Ernie, I don't know what to —”
“Oh, jest shut up, girl, and take it.”
Tracy forced herself to swallow some breakfast. Her head was pounding, and every muscle in her body ached. I'll never make it through the day, she thought. I've got to make it through the day.
There was a strained, unnatural silence in the kitchen, and Tracy suddenly realized she was the cause of it. She was the object of knowing looks and nervous whispers. A breakout was about to happen, and she was the heroine of the drama. In a few hours she would be free. Or dead.
She rose from her unfinished breakfast and headed for Warden Brannigan's house. As Tracy waited for a guard to unlock the corridor door, she came face-to-face with Big Bertha. The huge Swede was grinning at her.
She's going to be in for a big surprise, Tracy thought.
She's all mine now, Big Bertha thought.
The morning passed so slowly that Tracy felt she would go out of her mind. The minutes seemed to drag on interminably. She read to Amy and had no idea what she was reading. She was aware of Mrs. Brannigan watching from the window.
“Tracy, let's play hide-and-seek.”
Tracy was too nervous to play games, but she dared not do anything to arouse Mrs. Brannigan's suspicions. She forced a smile. “Sure. Why don't you hide first, Amy?”
They were in the front yard of the bungalow. In the far distance Tracy could see the building where the utility room was located. She had to be there at exactly 1:30. She would change into the street clothes that had been made for her, and by 1:45 she would be lying in the bottom of the large clothes hamper, covered over with uniforms and linens. At 2:00 the laundryman would come by for the hamper and wheel it out to his truck. By 2:15 the truck would drive through the gates on its way to the nearby town where the laundry plant was located.
The driver can't see in the back of the truck from the front seat. When the truck gets to town and stops for a red light, just open the door, step out, real cool, and catch a bus to wherever you're goin'.
“Can you see me?” Amy called. She was half-hidden behind the trunk of a magnolia tree. She held her hand over her mouth to stifle a giggle.
I'll miss her, Tracy thought. When I leave here, the two people I'll miss will be a black, bald-headed bull-dyke and a young girl. She wondered what Charles Stanhope III would have made of that.
“I'm coming to find you,” Tracy said.
Sue Ellen watched the game from inside the house. It seemed to her that Tracy was acting strangely. All morning she had kept looking at her watch, as though expecting someone, and her mind was obviously not on Amy.
I must speak to George about it when he comes home for lunch, Sue Ellen decided. I'm going to insist that he replace her.
In the yard, Tracy and Amy played hopscotch for a while, then jacks, and Tracy read to Amy, and finally, blessedly, it was twelve-thirty, time for Amy's lunch. Time for Tracy to make her move. She took Amy into the cottage.
“I'll be leaving now, Mrs. Brannigan.”
“What? Oh. Didn't anyone tell you, Tracy? We're having a delegation of VIP visitors today. They'll be having lunch here at the house, so Amy won't be having her nap. You may take her with you.”
Tracy stood there, willing herself not to scream. “I — I can't do that, Mrs. Brannigan.”
Sue Ellen Brannigan stiffened. “What do you mean you can't do that?”
Tracy saw the anger in her face and she thought, l mustn't upset her. She'll call the warden, and I'll be sent back to my cell.
Tracy forced a smile. “I mean… Amy hasn't had her lunch. She'll be hungry.”
“I've had the cook prepare a picnic lunch for both of you. You can go for a nice walk in the meadow and have it there. Amy enjoys picnics, don't you, darling?”
“I love picnics.” She looked at Tracy pleadingly. “Can we, Tracy? Can we?”
No! Yes. Careful. It could still work.
Be in the utility room by one-thirty. Don't be late.
Tracy looked at Mrs. Brannigan. “What — what time do you want me to bring Amy back?”
“Oh, about three o'clock. They should be gone by then.”
So would the truck. The world was tumbling in on her. “I —”
“Are you all right? You look pale.”
That was it. She would say she was ill. Go to the hospital.
But then they would want to check her over and keep her there. She would never be able to get out in time. There had to be some other way.
Mrs. Brannigan was staring at her.
“I'm fine.”
There's something wrong with her, Sue Ellen Brannigan decided. I'm definitely going to have George get someone else.
Amy's eyes were alight with joy. “I'll give you the biggest sandwiches, Tracy. We'll have a good time, won't we?”
Tracy had no answer.
The VIP tour was a surprise visit. Governor William Haber himself was escorting the prison reform committee through the penitentiary. It was something that Warden Brannigan had to live with once a year.
“It goes with the territory, George,” the governor had explained. “Just clean up the place, tell your ladies to smile pretty, and we'll get our budget increased again.”
The word had gone out from the chief guard that morning: “Get rid of all the drugs, knives, and dildos.”
Governor Haber and his party were due to arrive at 10:00 A.M. They would inspect the interior of the penitentiary first, visit the farm, and then have lunch with the warden at his cottage.
Big Bertha was impatient. When she had put in a request to see the warden, she had been told, “The warden is very pressed for time this morning. Tomorrow would be easier. He —”
“Fuck tomorrow!” Big Bertha had exploded. “I want to see him now. It's important.”
There were few inmates in the prison who could have gotten away with it, but Big Bertha was one of them. The prison authorities were well aware of her power. They had seen her start riots, and they had seen her stop them. No prison in the world could be run without the cooperation of the inmate leaders, and Big Bertha was a leader.
She had been seated in the warden's outer office for almost an hour, her huge body overflowing the chair she sat in. She's a disgusting-looking creature, the warden's secretary thought. She gives me the creeps.
“How much longer?” Big Bertha demanded.
“It shouldn't be too much longer. He has a group of people in with him. The warden's very busy this morning.”
Big Bertha said, “He's gonna be busier.” She looked at her watch. Twelve-forty-five. Plenty of time.
It was a perfect day, cloudless and warm, and the singing breeze carried a tantalizing mixture of scents across the green farmland. Tracy had spread out a tablecloth on a grassy area near the lake, and Amy was happily munching on an egg salad sandwich. Tracy glanced at her watch. It was already 1:00. She could not believe it. The morning had dragged and the afternoon was winging by. She had to think of something quickly, or time was going to steal away her last chance at freedom.
One-ten. In the warden's reception office Warden Brannigan's secretary put down the telephone and said to Big Bertha, “I'm sorry. The warden says it's impossible for him to see you today. We'll make another appointment for —”
Big Bertha pushed herself to her feet. “He's got to see me! It's —”
“We'll fit you in tomorrow.”
Big Bertha started to say, “Tomorrow will be too late,” but she stopped herself in time. No one but the warden himself must know what she was doing. Snitches suffered fatal accidents. But she had no intention of giving up. There was no way she was going to let Tracy Whitney get away from her. She walked into the prison library and sat down at one of the long tables at the far end of the room. She scribbled a note, and when the matron walked over to an aisle to help an inmate, Big Bertha dropped the note on her desk and left.
When the matron returned, she found the note and opened it. She read it twice:
YOU BETTER CHEK THE LAUNDREY TRUCK TO DAY.
There was no signature. A hoax? The matron had no way of knowing. She picked up the telephone. “Get me the superintendent of guards…”
One-fifteen. “You're not eating,” Amy said. “You want some of my sandwich?”
“No! Leave me alone.” She had not meant to speak so harshly.
Amy stopped eating. “Are you mad at me, Tracy? Please don't be mad at me. I love you so much. I never get mad at you.” Her soft eyes were filled with hurt.
“I'm not angry.” She was in hell.
“I'm not hungry if you're not. Let's play ball, Tracy.” And Amy pulled her rubber ball out of her pocket.
One-sixteen. She should have been on her way. It would take her at least fifteen minutes to get to the utility room. She could just make it if she hurried. But she could not leave Amy alone. Tracy looked around, and in the far distance she saw a group of trusties picking crops. Instantly, Tracy knew what she was going to do.
“Don't you want to play ball, Tracy?”
Tracy rose to her feet. “Yes. Let's play a new game. Let's see who can throw the ball the farthest. I'll throw the ball, and then it will be your turn.” Tracy picked up the hard rubber ball and threw it as far as she could in the direction of the workers.
“Oh, that's good,” Amy said admiringly. “That's real far.”
“I'll go get the ball,” Tracy said. “You wait here.”
And she was running, running for her life, her feet flying across the fields. It was 1:18. If she was late, they would wait for her. Or would they? She ran faster. Behind her, she heard Amy calling, but she paid no attention. The farm workers were moving in the other direction now. Tracy yelled at them, and they stopped. She was breathless when she reached them.
“Anythin' wrong?” one of them asked.
“No, n — nothing.” She was panting, fighting for breath. “The little girl back there. One of you look after her. I have something important I have to do. I —”
She heard her name called from a distance and turned. Amy was standing on top of the concrete wall surrounding the lake. She waved. “Look at me, Tracy.”
“No! Get down!” Tracy screamed.
And as Tracy watched in horror, Amy lost her balance and plunged into the lake.
“Oh, dear God!” The blood drained from Tracy's face. She had a choice to make, but there was no choice. I can't help her. Not now. Someone will save her. I have to save myself. I've got to get out of this place or I'll die. It was 1:20.
Tracy turned and began running as fast as she had ever run in her life. The others were calling after her, but she did not hear them. She flew through the air, unaware that her shoes had fallen off, not caring that the sharp ground was cutting into her feet. Her heart was pounding, and her lungs were bursting, and she pushed herself to run faster, faster. She reached the wall around the lake and vaulted on top of it: Far below, she could see Amy in the deep, terrifying water, struggling to stay afloat. Without a second's hesitation, Tracy jumped in after her. And as she hit the water, Tracy thought; Oh, my God! I can't swim….
New Orleans
FRIDAY, AUGUST 25 — lO:OO A.M.
Lester Torrance, a teller at the First Merchants Bank of New Orleans, prided himself on two things: his sexual prowess with the ladies and his ability to size up his customers. Lester was in his late forties, a lanky, sallow-faced man with a Tom Selleck mustache and long sideburns. He had been passed over for promotion twice, and in retaliation, Lester used the bank as a personal dating service. He could spot hookers a mile away, and he enjoyed trying to persuade them to give him their favors for nothing. Lonely widows were an especially easy prey. They came in all shapes, ages, and states of desperation, and sooner or later they would appear in front of Lester's cage. If they were temporarily overdrawn, Lester would lend a sympathetic ear and delay bouncing their checks. In return, perhaps they could have a quiet little dinner together? Many of his female customers sought his help and confided delicious secrets to him: They needed a loan without their husbands' knowledge …. They wanted to keep confidential certain checks they had written…. They were contemplating a divorce, and could Lester help them close out their joint account right away? Lester was only too eager to please. And to be pleased.
On this particular Friday morning, Lester knew he had hit the jackpot. He saw the woman the moment she walked in the door of the bank. She was an absolute stunner. She had sleek black hair falling to her shoulders, and she wore a tight skirt And sweater that outlined a figure a Las Vegas chorine would have envied.
There were four other tellers in the bank, and the young woman's eyes went from one cage to the other, as though seeking help. When she glanced at Lester, he nodded eagerly and gave her an encouraging smile. She walked over to his cage, just as Lester had known she would.
“Good morning,” Lester said warmly. “What may I do for you?” He could see her nipples pushing against her cashmere sweater, and he thought, Baby, what I'd like to do for you!
“I'm afraid I have a problem,” the woman said softly. She had the most delightful southern accent Lester had ever heard.
“That's what I'm here for,” he said heartily, “to solve problems.”
“Oh, I do hope so. I'm afraid I've done somethin' just terrible.”
Lester gave her his best paternal, you-can-lean-on-me smile. “I can't believe a lovely lady like you could do anything terrible.”
“Oh, but I have.” Her soft brown eyes were wide with panic. “I'm Joseph Romano's secretary, and he told me to order new blank checks for his checking account a week ago, and I simply forgot all about it, and now we've just about run out, and when he finds out, I don't know what he'll do to me.” It came out in a soft, velvety rush.
Lester was only too familiar with the name of Joseph Romano. He was a prized customer of the bank's, even though he kept relatively small amounts in his account. Everyone knew that his real money was laundered elsewhere.
He sure has great taste in secretaries, Lester thought. He smiled again. “Well, now, that's not too serious, Mrs. —?”
“Miss. Hartford. Lureen Hartford.”
Miss. This was his lucky day. Lester sensed that this was going to work out splendidly. “I'll just order those new checks for you right now. You should have them in two or three weeks and —”
She gave a little moan, a sound that seemed to Lester to hold infinite promise. “Oh, that's too late, and Mr. Romano's already so upset with me. I just can't seem to keep my mind on my work, you know?” She leaned forward so that her breasts were touching the front of the cage. She said breathlessly, “If you could just rush those checks out, I'd be happy to pay extra.”
Lester said ruefully, “Gee, I'm sorry, Lureen, it would be impossible to —” He saw that she was near to tears.
“To tell you the truth, this might cost me my job. Please… I'll do anything.”
The words fell like music on Lester's ears.
“I'll tell you what I'll do,” Lester declared. “I'll phone in a special rush on them, and you'll have them Monday. How's that?”
“Oh, you're just wonderful!” Her voice was filled with gratitude.
“I'll send them to the office and —”
“It would be better if I picked them up myself. I don't want Mr. Romano to know how stupid I was.”
Lester smiled indulgently. “Not stupid, Lureen. We all get a little forgetful sometimes.”
She said softly, “I'll never forget you. See you Monday.”
“I'll be here.” It would take a broken back to keep him home.
She gave him a dazzling smile and walked slowly out of the bank, and her walk was a sight to behold. Lester was grinning as he went over to a file cabinet, got the number of Joseph Romano's account, and phoned in a rush order for the new checks.
The hotel on Carmen Street was indistinguishable from a hundred other hotels in New Orleans, which was why Tracy had chosen it. She had been in the small, cheaply furnished room for a week. Compared to her cell, it was a palace.
When Tracy returned from her encounter with Lester, she took off the black wig, ran her fingers through her own luxuriant hair, removed the soft contact lenses, and creamed off her dark makeup. She sat down on the single straight chair in the room and breathed deeply. It was going well. It had been easy to learn where Joe Romano kept his bank account. Tracy had looked up the canceled check from her mother's estate, issued by Romano. “Joe Romano? You can't touch him,” Ernestine had said.
Ernestine was wrong and Joe Romano was just the first. The others would follow. Every one of them.
She closed her eyes and relived the miracle that had brought her there….
She felt the cold, dark waters closing over her head. She was drowning, and she was filled with terror. She dived down, and her hands found the child and grabbed her and pulled her to the surface. Amy struggled in blind panic to break free, dragging them both under again, her arms and legs flailing wildly. Tracy's lungs were bursting. She fought her way out of the watery grave, hanging on to the little girl in a death grip, and she felt her strength ebbing. We're not going to make it, she thought. We're dying. Voices were calling out, and she felt Amy's body torn from her arms and she screamed, “Oh, God, no!” Strong hands were around Tracy's waist and a voice said, “Everything's fine now. Take it easy. It's over.”
Tracy looked around frantically for Amy and saw that she was safe in a man's arms. Moments later they were both hauled up from the deep, cruel water….
The incident would have been worth no more than a paragraph on the inside page of the morning newspapers, except for the fact that a prisoner who could not swim had risked her life to save the child of the warden. Overnight the newspapers and television commentators turned Tracy into a heroine. Governor Haber himself visited the prison hospital with Warden Brannigan to see Tracy.
“That was a very brave thing you did,” the warden said. “Mrs. Brannigan and I want you to know how grateful we are.” His voice was choked with emotion.
Tracy was still weak and shaken from her experience. “How is Amy?”
“She's going to be fine.”
Tracy closed her eyes. I couldn't have borne it if anything had happened to her, she thought. She remembered her coldness, when all the child had wanted was love, and Tracy felt bitterly ashamed. The incident had cost her her chance to escape, but she knew that if she had it to do over again, she would do the same thing.
There was a brief inquiry into the accident.
“It was my fault,” Amy told her father. “We were playing ball, and Tracy ran after the ball and told me to wait, but I climbed up on the wall so I could see her better and I fell in the water. But Tracy saved me, Daddy.”
They kept Tracy in the hospital that night for observation, and the next morning she was taken to Warden Brannigan's office. The media was waiting for her. They knew a human-interest story when they saw one, and stringers from UPI and the Associated Press were present; the local television station had sent a news team.
That evening the report of Tracy's heroism unfolded, and the account of the rescue went on national television and began to snowball. Time, Newsweek, People, and hundreds of newspapers all over the country carried the story. As the press coverage continued, letters .and telegrams poured into the penitentiary, demanding that Tracy Whitney be pardoned.
Governor Haber discussed it with Warden Brannigan.
“Tracy Whitney is in here for some serious crimes,” Warden Brannigan observed.
The governor was thoughtful. “But she has no previous record, right, George?”
“That's right, sir.”
“I don't mind telling you, I'm getting a hell of a lot of pressure to do something about her.”
“So am I, Governor.”
“Of course, we can't let the public tell us how to run our prisons, can we?”
“Certainly not.”
“On the other hand,” the governor said judiciously, “the Whitney girl has certainly demonstrated a remarkable amount of courage. She's become quite a heroine.”
“No question about it,” Warden Brannigan agreed.
The governor paused to light a cigar. “What's your opinion, George?”
George Brannigan chose his words carefully. “You're aware, of course, Governor, that I have a very personal interest in this. It was my child she saved. But, putting that aside, I don't think Tracy Whitney is the criminal type, and I can't believe she would be a danger to society if she were out in the world. My strong recommendation is that you give her a pardon.”
The governor, who was about to announce his candidacy for a new term, recognized a good idea when he heard it. “Let's play this close to the chest for a bit.” In politics, timing was everything.
After discussing it with her husband, Sue Ellen said to Tracy, “Warden Brannigan and I would like it very much if you moved into the cottage. We have a spare bedroom in back. You could take care of Amy full-time.”
“Thank you,” Tracy said gratefully. “I would like that.”
It worked out perfectly. Not only did Tracy not have to spend each night locked away in a cell, but her relationship with Amy changed completely. Amy adored Tracy, and Tracy responded. She enjoyed being with this bright, loving little girl. They played their old games and watched Disney movies on television and read together. It was almost like being part of a family.
But whenever Tracy had an errand that took her into the cell blocks, she invariably ran into Big Bertha.
“You're a lucky bitch,” Big Bertha growled. “But you'll be back here with the common folks one day soon. I'm workin' on it, littbarn.”
Three weeks after Amy's rescue Tracy and Amy were playing tag in the yard when Sue Ellen Brannigan hurried out of the house. She stood there a moment watching them. “Tracy, the warden just telephoned. He would like to see you in his office right away.”
Tracy was filled with a sudden fear. Did it mean that she was going to be transferred back to the prison? Had Big Bertha used her influence to arrange it. Or had Mrs. Brannigan decided that Amy and Tracy were getting too close?
“Yes, Mrs. Brannigan.”
The warden was standing in the doorway of his office when Tracy was escorted in. “You'd better sit down,” he said.
Tracy tried to read the answer to her fate from the tone of his voice.
“I have some news for you.” He paused, filled with some emotion that Tracy did not understand. “I have just received an order from the governor of Louisiana,” Warden Brannigan went on, “giving you a full pardon, effective immediately.”
Dear God, did he say what I think he said? She was afraid to speak.
“I want you to know,” the warden continued, “that this is not being done because it was my child you saved. You acted instinctively in the way any decent citizen would have acted. By no stretch of the imagination could I ever believe that you would be a threat to society.” He smiled and added, “Amy is going to miss you. So are we.”
Tracy had no words. If the warden only knew the truth: that if the accident had not happeped, the warden's men would have been out hunting her as a fugitive.
“You'll be released the day after tomorrow.”
Her “getup.” And still Tracy could not absorb it. “I — I don't know what to say.”
“You don't have to say anything. Everyone here is very proud of you. Mrs. Brannigan and I expect you to do great things on the outside.”
So it was true: She was free. Tracy felt so weak that she had to steady herself against the arm of the chair. When she finally spoke, her voice was firm. “There's a lot I want to do, Warden Brannigan.”
On Tracy's last day in prison an inmate from Tracy's old cell block walked up to her. “So you're getting out.”
“That's right.”
The woman, Betty Franciscus, was in her early forties, still attractive, with an air of pride about her.
“If you need any help on the outside, there's a man you should see in New York. His name is Conrad Morgan.” She slipped Tracy a piece of paper. “He's into criminal reform. He likes to give a hand to people who've been in prison.”
“Thank you, but I don't think I'll need —”
“You never know. Keep his address.”
Two hours later, Tracy was walking through the penitentiary gates, moving past the television cameras. She would not speak to the reporters, but when Amy broke away from her mother and threw herself into Tracy's arms, the cameras whirred. That was the picture that came out over the evening news.
Freedom to Tracy was no longer simply an abstract word. It was something tangible, physical, a condition to be enjoyed and savored. Freedom meant breathing fresh air, privacy, not standing in lines for meals, not listening for bells. It meant hot baths and good-smelling soaps, soft lingerie, pretty dresses, and high-heeled shoes. It meant having a name instead of a number. Freedom meant escape from Big Bertha and fear of gang rapes and the deadly monotony of prison routine.
Tracy's newfound freedom took getting used to. Walking along a street, she was careful not to jostle anyone. In the penitentiary bumping into another prisoner could be the spark that set off a conflagration. It was the absence of constant menace that Tracy found most difficult to adjust to. No one was threatening her.
She was free to carry out her plans.
In Philadelphia, Charles Stanhope III saw Tracy on television, leaving the prison. She's still beautiful, he thought. Watching her, it seemed impossible that she had committed any of the crimes for which she had been convicted. He looked at his exemplary wife, placidly seated across the room, knitting. I wonder if I made a mistake.
Daniel Cooper watched Tracy on the television news in his apartment in New York. He was totally indifferent to the fact that she had been released from prison. He clicked off the television set and returned to the file he was working on.
When Joe Romano saw the television news, he laughed aloud. The Whitney girl was a lucky bitch. I'll bet prison was good for her. She must be really horny by now. Maybe one day we'll meet again.
Romano was pleased with himself. He had already passed the Renoir to a fence, and it had been purchased by a private collector in Zurich. Five hundred grand from the insurance company, and another two hundred thousand from the fence. Naturally, Romano had split the money with Anthony Orsatti. Romano was very meticulous in his dealings with him, for he had seen examples of what happened to people who were not correct in their transactions with Orsatti.
At noon on Monday Tracy, in her Lureen Hartford persona, returned to the First Merchants Bank of New Orleans. At that hour it was crowded with customers. There were several people in front of Lester Torrance's window. Tracy joined the line, and when Lester saw her, he beamed and nodded. She was even more goddamned beautiful than he had remembered.
When Tracy finally reached his window, Lester crowed, “Well, it wasn't easy, but I did it for you, Lureen.”
A warm, appreciative smile lit Lureen's face. “You're just too wonderful.”
“Yes, sir, got 'em right here.” Lester opened a drawer, found the box of checks he had carefully put away, and handed it to her. “There you are. Four hundred blank checks. Will that be enough?”
“Oh, more than enough, unless Mr. Romano goes on a check-writing spree.” She looked into Lester's eyes and sighed, “You saved my life.”
Lester felt a pleasurable stirring in his groin. “I believe people have to be nice to people, don't you, Lureen?”
“You're so right, Lester.”
“You know, you should open your own account here. I'd take real good care of you. Real good.”
“I just know you would,” Tracy said softly.
“Why don't you and me talk about it over a nice quiet dinner somewhere?”
“I'd surely love that.”
“Where can I call you, Lureen?”
“Oh, I'll call you, Lester.” She moved away.
“Wait a min —” The next customer stepped up and handed the frustrated Lester a sackful of coins.
In the center of the bank were four tables that held containers of blank deposit and withdrawal slips, and the tables were crowded with people busily filling out forms. Tracy moved away from Lester's view. As a customer made room at a table, Tracy took her place. The box that Lester had given her contained eight packets of blank checks. But it was not the checks Tracy was interested in: It was the deposit slips at the back of the packets.
She carefully separated the deposit slips from the checks and, in fewer than three minutes, she was holding eighty deposit slips in her hand. Making sure she was unobserved, Tracy put twenty of the slips in the metal container.
She moved on to the next table, where she placed twenty more deposit slips. Within a few minutes, all of them had been left on the various tables. The deposit slips were blank, but each one contained a magnetized code at the bottom, which the computer used to credit the various accounts. No matter who deposited money, because of the magnetic code, the computer would automatically credit Joe Romano's account with each deposit. From her experience working in a bank, Tracy knew that within two days all the magnetized deposit slips would be used up and that it would take at least five days before the mix-up was noticed. That would give her more than enough time for what she planned to do.
On the way back to her hotel, Tracy threw the blank checks into a trash basket. Mr. Joe Romano would not be needing them.
Tracy's next stop was at the New Orleans Holiday Travel Agency. The young woman behind the.desk asked, “May I help you?”
“I'm Joseph Romano's secretary. Mr. Romano would like to make a reservation for Rio de Janeiro. He wants to leave this Friday.”
“Will that be one ticket?”
“Yes. First class. An aisle seat. Smoking, please.”
“Round trip?”
“One way.”
The travel agent turned to her desk computer. In a few seconds, she said, “We're all set. One first-class seat on Pan American's Flight seven twenty-eight, leaving at six-thirty-five P.M. on Friday, with a short stopover in Miami.”
“He'll be very pleased,” Tracy assured the woman.
“That will be nineteen hundred twenty-nine dollars. Will that be cash or charge?”
“Mr. Romano always pays cash. COD. Could you have the ticket delivered to his office on Thursday, please?”
“We could have it delivered tomorrow, if you like.”
“No. Mr. Romano won't be there tomorrow. Would you make it Thursday at eleven A.M.?”
“Yes. That will be fine. And the address?”
“Mr. Joseph Romano, Two-seventeen Poydras Street, Suite four-zero-eight.”
The woman made a note of it. “Very well. I'll see that it's delivered Thursday morning.”
“Eleven sharp,” Tracy said. “Thank you.”
Half a block down the street was the Acme Luggage Store. Tracy studied the display in the window before she walked inside.
A clerk approached her. “Good morning. And what can I do for you this morning?”
“I want to buy some luggage for my husband.”
“You've come to the right place. We're having a sale. We have some nice, inexpensive —”
“No,” Tracy said. “Nothing inexpensive.”
She stepped over to a display of Vuitton suitcases stacked against a wall. “That's more what I'm looking for. We're going away on a trip.”
“Well, I'm sure he'll be pleased with one of these. We have three different sizes. Which one would —?”
“I'll take one of each.”
“Oh. Fine. Will that be charge or cash?”
“COD. The name is Joseph Romano. Could you have them delivered to my husband's office on Thursday morning?”
“Why, certainly, Mrs. Romano.”
“At eleven o'clock?”
“I'll see to it personally.”
As an afterthought, Tracy added, “Oh… would you put his initials on them — in gold? That's J.R.”
“Of course. It will be our pleasure, Mrs. Romano.”
Tracy smiled and gave him the office address.
At a nearby Western Union office, Tracy sent a paid cable to the Rio Othon Palace on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro. It read: REQUEST YOUR BEST SUITE COMMENCING THIS FRIDAY FOR TWO MONTHS. PLEASE CONFIRM BY COLLECT CABLE. JOSEPH ROMANO, 217 POYDRAS STREET, SUITE 408, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA, USA.
Three days later Tracy telephoned the bank and asked to speak to Lester Torrance. When she heard his voice, she said softly, “You probably don't remember me, Lester, but this is Lureen Hartford, Mr. Romano's secretary, and —”
Not remember her! His voice was eager. “Of course I remember you, Lureen. I —”
“You do? Why, I'm flattered. You must meet so many people.”
“Not like you,” Lester assured her. “You haven't forgotten about our dinner date, have you?”
“You don't know how much I'm lookin' forward to it. Would next Tuesday suit you, Lester?”
“Great!”
“Then it's a date. Oh. I'm such an idiot! You got me so excited talkin' to you I almost forgot why I called. Mr. Romano asked me to check on his bank balance. Would you give me that figure?”
“You bet. No trouble at all.”
Ordinarily, Lester Torrance would have asked for a birth date or some form of identification from the caller, but in this case it was certainly not necessary. No, Sir. “Hang on, Lureen,” he said.
He walked over to the file, pulled out Joseph's Romano's sheet, and studied it in surprise. There had been an extraordinary number of deposits made to Romano's account in the past several days. Romano had never kept so much money in his account before. Lester Torrance wondered what was going on. Some big deal, obviously. When he had dinner with Lureen Hartford, he intended to pump her. A little inside information never hurt. He returned to the phone.
“Your boss has been keeping us busy,” he told Tracy. “He has just over three hundred thousand dollars in his checking account.”
“Oh, good. That's the figure I have.”
“Would he like us to transfer it to a money market account? It's not drawing any interest sitting here, and I could —”
“No. He wants it right where it is,” Tracy assured him.
“Okay.”
“Thank you so much, Lester. You're a darlin'.”
“Wait a minute! Should I call you at the office about the arrangements for Tuesday?”
“I'll call you, honey,” Tracy told him.
And the connection was broken.
The modern high-rise office building owned by Anthony Orsatti stood on Poydras Street between the riverfront and the gigantic Louisiana Superdome, and the offices of the Pacific Import-Export Company occupied the entire fourth floor of the building. At one end of the suite were Orsatti's offices, and at the other end, Joe Romano's rooms. The space in between was occupied by four young receptionists who were available evenings to entertain Anthony Orsatti's friends and business acquaintances. In front of Orsatti's suite sat two very large men whose lives were devoted to guarding their boss. They also served as chauffeurs, masseurs, and errand boys for the capo.
On this Thursday morning Orsatti was in his office checking out the previous day's receipts from running numbers, bookmaking, prostitution, and a dozen other lucrative activities that the Pacific Import-Export Company controlled.
Anthony Orsatti was in his late sixties. He was a strangely built man, with a large, heavy torso and short, bony legs that seemed to have been designed for a smaller man. Standing up he looked like a seated frog. He had a face crisscrossed with an erratic web of scars that could have been woven by a drunken spider, an oversized mouth, and black, bulbous eyes. He had been totally bald from the age of fifteen after an attack of alopecia, and had worn a black wig ever since. It fitted him badly, but in all the years no one had dared mention it to his face. Orsatti's cold eyes were gambler's eyes, giving away nothing, and his face, except when he was with his five daughters, whom he adored, was expressionless. The only clue to Orsatti's emotions was his voice. He had a hoarse, raspy voice, the result of a wire having been tightened around his throat on his twenty-first birthday, when he had been left for dead. The two men who had made that mistake had turned up in the morgue the following week. When Orsatti got really upset, his voice lowered to a strangled whisper that could barely be heard.
Anthony Orsatti was a king who ran his fiefdom with bribes, guns, and blackmail. He ruled New Orleans, and it paid him obeisance in the form of untold riches. The capos of the other Families across the country respected him and constantly sought his advice.
At the moment, Anthony Orsatti was in a benevolent mood. He had had breakfast with his mistress, whom he kept in an apartment building he owned in Lake Vista. He visited her three times a week, and this morning's visit had been particularly satisfactory. She did things to him in bed that other women never dreamed of, and Orsatti sincerely believed it was because she loved him so much. His organization was running smoothly. There were no problems, because Anthony Orsatti knew how to solve difficulties before they became problems. He had once explained his philosophy to Joe Romano: “Never let a little problem become a big problem, Joe, or it grows like a fuckin' snowball. You got a precinct captain who thinks he oughta get a bigger cut — you melt him, see? No more snowball. You get some hotshot from Chicago who asks permission to open up his own little operation here in New Orleans? You know that pretty soon that 'little' operation is gonna turn into a big operation and start cuttin' into your profits. So you say yes, and then when he gets here, you melt the son of a bitch. No more snowball. Get the picture?”
Joe Romano got the picture.
Anthony Orsatti loved Romano. He was like a son to him. Orsatti had picked him up when Romano was a punk kid rolling drunks in alleys. He himself had trained Romano, and now the kid could tap-dance his way around with the best of them. He was fast, he was smart, and he was honest. In ten years Romano had risen to the rank of Anthony Orsatti's chief lieutenant. He supervised all the Family's operations and reported only to Orsatti.
Lucy, Orsatti's private secretary, knocked and came into the office. She was twenty-four years old, a college graduate, with a face and figure that had won several local beauty contests. Orsatti enjoyed having beautiful young women around him.
He looked at the clock on his desk. It was 10:45. He had told Lucy he did not want any interruptions before noon. He scowled at her. “What?”
“I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Orsatti. There's a Miss Gigi Dupres on the phone. She sounds hysterical, but she won't tell me what she wants. She insists on speaking with you personally. I thought it might be important.”
Orsatti sat there, running the name through the computer in his brain. Gigi Dupres? One of the broads he had up in his suite his last time in Vegas? Gigi Dupres? Not that he could remember, and he prided himself on a mind that forgot nothing. Out of curiosity, Orsatti picked up the phone and waved a dismissal at Lucy.
“Yeah? Who's this?”
“Is thees Mr. Anthony Orsatti?” She had a French accent.
“So?”
“Oh, thank God I get hold of you, Meester Orsatti!”
Lucy was right. The dame was hysterical. Anthony Orsatti was not interested. He started to hang up, when her voice went on.
“You must stop him, please!”
“Lady, I don't know who you're talkin' about, and I'm a busy —”
“My Joe. Joe Romano. He promised to take me with him, comprenez-vous?”
“Hey, you got a beef with Joe, take it up with him. I ain't his nursemaid.”
“He lie to me! I just found out he is leave for Brazil without me. Half of that three hundred thousand dollars is mine.”
Anthony Orsatti suddenly found he was interested, after all. “What three hundred thousand you talkin' about?”
“The money Joe is hiding in his checking account. The money he — how you say? — skimmed.”
Anthony Orsatti was very interested.
“Please tell Joe he must take me to Brazil with him. Please! Weel you do thees?”
“Yeah;” Anthony Orsatti promised. “I'll take care of it.”
Joe Romano's office was modern, all white and chrome, done by one of New Orleans's most fashionable decorators. The only touches of color were the three expensive French Impressionist paintings on the walls. Romano prided himself on his good taste. He had fought his way up from the slums of New Orleans, and on the way he had educated himself. He had an eye for paintings and an ear for music. When he dined out, he had long, knowledgeable discussions with the sommelier about wines. Yes, Joe Romano had every reason to be proud. While his contemporaries had survived by using their fists, he had succeeded by using his brains. If it was true that Anthony Orsatti owned New Orleans, it was also true that it was Joe Romano who ran it for him.
His secretary walked into his office. “Mr. Romano, there's a messenger here with an airplane ticket for Rio de Janeiro. Shall I write out a check? It's COD.”
“Rio de Janeiro?” Romano shook his head. “Tell him there's some mistake.”
The uniformed messenger was in the doorway. “I was told to deliver this to Joseph Romano at this address.”
“Well, you were told wrong. What is this, some kind of a new airline promotion gimmick?”
“No, sir. I —”
“Let me see that.” Romano took the ticket from the messenger's hand and looked at it. “Friday. Why would I be going to Rio on Friday?”
“That's a good question,” Anthony Orsatti said. He was standing behind the messenger. “Why would you, Joe?”
“It's some kind of dumb mistake, Tony.” Romano handed the ticket back to the messenger. “Take this back where it came from and —”
“Not so fast.” Anthony Orsatti took the ticket and examined it. “It says here one first-class ticket, aisle seat, smoking, to Rio de Janeiro for Friday. One way.”
Joe Romano laughed. “Someone made a mistake.” He turned to his secretary. “Madge, call the travel agency and tell them they goofed. Some poor slob is going to be missing his plane ticket.”
Joleen, the assistant secretary, walked in. “Excuse me, Mr. Romano. The luggage has arrived. Do you want me to sign for it?”
Joe Romano stared at her. “What luggage? I didn't order any luggage.”
“Have them bring it in,” Anthony Orsatti commanded.
“Jesus!” Joe Romano said. “Has everyone gone nuts?”
A messenger walked in carrying three Vuitton suitcases.
“What's all this? I never ordered those.”
The messenger checked his delivery slip. “It says Mr. Joseph Romano, Two-seventeen Poydras Street, Suite four-zero-eight?”
Joe Romano was losing his temper. “I don't care what the fuck it says. I didn't order them. Now get them out of here.”
Orsatti was examining the luggage. “They have your initials on them, Joe.”
“What? Oh. Wait a minute! It's probably some kind of present.”
“Is it your birthday?”
“No. But you know how broads are, Tony. They're always givin' you gifts.”
“Have you got somethin' going in Brazil?” Anthony Orsatti inquired.
“Brazil?” Joe Romano laughed. “This must be someone's idea of a joke, Tony.”
Orsatti smiled gently, then turned to the secretaries and the two messengers. “Out.”
When the door was closed behind them, Anthony Orsatti spoke. “How much money you got in your bank account, Joe?”
Joe Romano looked at him, puzzled. “I don't know. Fifteen hundred, I guess, maybe a couple of grand. Why?”
“Just for fun, why don't you call your bank and check it out?”
“What for? I —”
“Check it out, Joe.”
“Sure. If it'll make you happy.” He buzzed his secretary. “Get me the head bookkeeper over at First Merchants.”
A minute later she was on the line.
“Hello, honey. Joseph Romano. Would you give me the current balance in my checking account? My birth date is October fourteenth.”
Anthony Orsatti picked up the extension phone. A few moments later the bookkeeper was back on the line.
“Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Romano. As of this morning, your checking account balance is three hundred ten thousand nine hundred five dollars and thirty-five cents.”
Romano could feel the blood draining from his face. “It's what?”
“Three hundred ten thousand nine hundred five —”
“You stupid bitch!” he yelled. “I don't have that kind of money in my account. You made a mistake. Let me talk to the —”
He felt the telephone being taken out of his hand, as Anthony Orsatti replaced the receiver. “Where'd that money come from, Joe?”
Joe Romano's face was pale. “I swear to God, Tony, I don't know anything about that money.”
“No?”
“Hey, you've got to believe me! You know what's happening? Someone is setting me up.”
“It must be someone who likes you a lot. He gave you a going-away present of three hundred ten thousand dollars.” Orsatti sat down heavily on the Scalamander silk-covered armchair and looked at Joe Romano for a long moment, then spoke very quietly. “Everything was all set, huh? A one-way ticket to Rio, new luggage… Like you was planning a whole new life.”
“No!” There was panic in Joe Romano's voice. “Jesus, you know me better than that, Tony. I've always been on the level with you. You're like a father to me.”
He was sweating now. There was a knock at the door, and Madge poked her head in. She held an envelope.
“I'm sorry to interrupt, Mr. Romano. There's a cable for you, but you have to sign for it yourself.”
With the instincts of a trapped animal, Joe Romano said, “Not now. I'm busy.”
“I'll take it,” Anthony Orsatti said, and he was out of the chair before the woman could close the door. He took his time reading the cable, then he focused his eyes on Joe Romano.
In a voice so low that Romano could barely hear him, Anthony Orsatti said, “I'll read it to you, Joe. 'Pleased to confirm your reservation for our Princess Suite for two months this Friday, September first.' It's signed, 'S. Montalband, manager, Rio Othon Palace, Copacabana Beach, Rio de Janeiro.' It's your reservation, Joe. You won't be needin' it, will you?”