The Lonely Lady (45 page)

Detective Millstein spoke for the first time. “You can dress in the bathroom, miss,” he said. “We’ll wait out here.”

JeriLee nodded gratefully, still fighting back the tears. She took jeans and a shirt from the closet and some underthings from a drawer and went into the bathroom and closed the door. She splashed cold water on her face but she was still feeling drugged from the Nembutals. She had to wake herself up.

She searched frantically through the medicine cabinet for the Dexamyl. There were two left in the bottle. They would do it.

Quickly she finished dressing and ran a comb through her hair. When she came out of the bathroom Detective Millstein was the only one waiting for her.

“Where are the others?” she asked.

“On the way in,” he said. “Ready?”

“I’ll get my bag.” She took it from the top of the dresser. “Look, you seem like a regular guy. Do I have to go in?”

He nodded.

“What are they going to do with me?”

“They’ll probably let you go,” he said. “But you’ll have to come in anyway. Your boyfriend was involved with a pretty big mob. And there was forty keys of grass in those bags.”

“Shit, all I did was rent an apartment. And whoever heard of asking a landlord for references?”

He laughed. “I’m sorry, miss.”

They went outside. On the way down the steps, he stopped her. “Don’t you think you ought to lock your door, miss? You wouldn’t want to get back here and find that you’ve been burglarized.”

Chapter 19

Dawn was beginning to break as they pulled up the ramp in front of the police station. “Shit!” Millstein cursed when he saw the crowd of reporters and the TV camera truck parked in front of the building. “That asshole Collins couldn’t wait to get his picture in the papers.”

He kept the car going past the station and down the off ramp. He circled around the block. “How do you feel about publicity?” he asked.

“I don’t like this kind.”

“I’ll try to get you in the back way. Maybe they haven’t covered it.” He turned the car up the street. “You got dark glasses in that bag?”

“Yes.”

“Put them on. At least it will keep them from getting a clear shot of your face.”

She opened her bag. She put on the glasses. “How does that look?”

He glanced at her. “Okay. There’s a newspaper on the backseat. Take it. You can hold it over your face when we go in.”

“You’re a good man, Charlie Brown,” she said.

“Millstein,” he said, unsmiling. He turned the car into the parking lot in the rear of the station. There were not as many reporters as out front but they were all around the car even before he came to a stop. “You don’t get out of the car until I come around to your side and let you out,” he said.

The flashbulbs began exploding as they tried to shoot pictures through the closed windows. She held the paper up around her face until she heard the door click and the sound of his voice. “Come on now, miss.”

He walked her rapidly to the door and she kept her face pressed into the paper. She could hear the reporters shouting.

“Come on, Jane, give us a good picture.”

“The publicity will sell out your next show.”

“Show ’em you got something else besides tits and ass!”

She heard Millstein’s voice. “Watch it. There’s a step up here.”

She stumbled and almost fell but he held her up and a moment later they were through the door. “You okay?” he asked.

She nodded.

“We’ll have to walk up two flights,” he said. “The elevator isn’t running at this hour.”

“Okay, and thanks,” she said as they started up the stairs.

He smiled almost shyly. “It’s okay.” He stopped on the second landing. “You’ll have to be booked, you know. There’ll be reporters in there but no photographers. You don’t have to talk to them. I’ll try to get you through as quickly as I can.”

They entered the large room through the backdoor. They were almost at the sergeant’s bench before the reporters saw them. They surged toward her hurling questions. They had been well briefed. They all knew her name and where she worked. She kept her head down, not looking at any of them.

Millstein was as good as his word. He whispered across the desk to the sergeant, who nodded and gestured to a side door. Millstein led her through the door into a small room. “The sarge is a friend of mine,” he explained. “He’ll bring the booking sheet in here away from the mob.”

“What did you say to him?” he asked.

He grinned. “I asked him if he really wanted to help Collins make lieutenant.”

She began to laugh and suddenly the laughter caught in her throat. The pills she had taken were making her crazy. There was nothing for her to laugh at. Those windows she was looking at had bars on them. This was not a movie or a play. This was for real.

She opened her bag and began searching for her cigarettes. She was sure there had been a pack in there. Finally she looked up a Millstein. Her voice was shaking. “Do you have a cigarette?”

Silently he fished a pack from his pocket and held it toward her. “Ever been through this before?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “No,” she said, taking a drag of the cigarette. “It’s scary. Really scary.”

He didn’t speak.

“What happens now?”

“After the sergeant finishes the booking report, you turn over your valuables to the property clerk. Then we take your fingerprints and photograph. After that we take you up to the women’s holding section, where a matron will search you and assign you a cell until court opens in the morning.”

“I have to stay here until then?”

He nodded.

“In the movies you see people getting out on bail or something.”

“Yes, but it takes a judge to order it.”

The sergeant came into the small room carrying a large gray-green ledger. “Name, age, address?” he asked quickly, after seating himself at the table.

She hesitated, and looked at Millstein, who nodded. “Jane Randolph, 11119 Montecito Way, Santa Monica, twenty-eight.”

“Okay. Collins already filled in the charge sheet,” he said to Millstein.

“What did he say?”

The sergeant read from the ledger. “Transportation and possession of eighty kilos of marijuana with intent to sell.”

“That’s not true,” JeriLee protested. “I had nothing to do with it.”

Ignoring her outburst, the sergeant rose to his feet. “Do you want to take her over to property or shall I call a matron?”

“I’ll take her over,” Millstein said. “We go through that door,” he said, gesturing to the other side of the room.

JeriLee followed him through the door and into a corridor. They stopped in front of an open counter window in the wall opposite the door. Millstein pressed a small bell to call the clerk.

“It’s not fair,” she said. “Collins paid no attention to what I said.”

A shirt-sleeved policeman appeared behind the counter. “Empty your bag on the counter and take off your rings, watches and any other jewelry,” he said in a mechanical voice. “Name and number?” he asked.

“Jane Randolph,” she answered. “What number?”

He didn’t look up from the paper. “Every prisoner has a booking number.”

“I’ve got it.” Millstein gave him a slip of paper. “It’s just routine,” he said soothingly.

She opened her bag and emptied it on the counter. She slipped her watch from her wrist and put it down. The clerk began listing the items in her bag. She dragged on the cigarette and Millstein noticed the trembling of her fingers. “Take it easy,” he said. “I’ll stay with you and try to make it as easy as I can.”

She nodded but he saw the animal-like glaze of fear in her eyes. As if in a daze, she signed the inventory, went through the fingerprints, mug shots and body search. It wasn’t until they followed the matron down the corridor to a holding cell that he saw her stiffen. The matron opened the steel-barred door.

JeriLee turned to Millstein. There was an edge of hysteria in her voice. “Do I have to go in there?”

He looked at her for a moment. There as something about her that touched him, maybe because he was convinced that she had been telling the truth. They had been on the case for two months and this was the first time there was any suggestion that she might be involved. But Collins didn’t give a damn. He was bucking for lieutenant and the district attorney was behind him all the way. Both of them were looking for a big score and didn’t care whom they hurt. He glanced at his watch. It was almost half past seven. The court would be open in an hour and a half.

“It’s okay,” he said to the matron. “I’ll take her over to the conference room and stay with her.”

The matron was a cynical woman who believed that cops were no different from other men, especially when it came to attractive women. “Okay, Officer,” she said in a flat voice. “It’s your sleep.”

JeriLee’s knees went weak as they turned away from the cell.

The conference room was small, with a few chairs and tables and a long couch against one wall. The detective led her to the couch, sat down opposite her and held out a cigarette.

“I couldn’t have gone in there. I don’t know what I would have done,” she said, accepting his light.

His voice was not unsympathetic, just matter-of-fact. “You’ll have to go there sooner or later.”

“Maybe the judge will let me out.”

He was silent for a moment. She really didn’t know what she was facing. The procedures were designed for delay, not speed. “Do you have a lawyer?” he asked.

She shook her head.

“Do you know one?”

Again she shook her head.

“Then the judge will assign your case to the public defender.”

“Is that good?”

“It’s better than nothing.” He hesitated. “If you have any money, you’d be better off getting your own attorney. The D.A. will make mincemeat out of the public defender in this case. He’s after a big score and he won’t make any deals. What you need is a lawyer with clout. Someone the D.A. and the court will listen to.”

“I don’t know anyone like that.”

He was silent for a moment. “I do. But he’s expensive.”

“How expensive?”

“I don’t know.”

“I have some money. Do you think he will talk to me?”

“He might.”

“Would you call him for me?”

“I’m not allowed to do that. But I can give you his telephone number. You can reach him at home now. You’re allowed one phone call.”

***

The matron came into the cell with her lunch tray.

JeriLee looked up at her from the cot on which she was sitting. “What time is it?”

“Twelve o’clock,” the matron answered, placing the tray on the small table against the wall.

JeriLee looked at the sickly sandwiches. “I’m not hungry,” she said.

“Might as well eat. Court won’t open again until two o’clock. You won’t hear anything before then.” She left the cell, closing the steel-barred door behind her.

It had been more than two hours since the lawyer had left her. A tall man quietly dressed in a dark suit with silver-gray hair and a florid complexion, he had listened without comment to her story. When she had finished he asked just one question. “Are you telling me the truth?”

She nodded.

“It’s important. I don’t want the D.A. springing any surprises on me.”

“It’s the truth, I swear it.”

He looked at her for a moment. “Five thousand dollars,” he said.

“What?”

“Five thousand dollars. That’s my fee.”

“I haven’t got that much.”

He rose from his chair. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“That’s a lot of money,” she protested, looking up at him.

“You’re in a lot of trouble,” he said, returning her gaze. “You’re right in the middle of the biggest California drug bust of the year. It’s not going to be easy to make the D.A. and the judge listen.”

She was silent for a moment. “I have about thirty-five hundred in the bank,” she said. “I can pay off the rest when I go back to work.”

He sat down again. “We have to get you off now. The charges must be dismissed. If they bind you over for trial and you have to go before a jury, you’re dead.”

“I don’t understand. I’ll tell them the truth. Exactly what I told you.”

“It won’t matter. You have to understand the rednecks they have on jury panels out here. The minute they hear the kind of work you do, they’ll decide you’re guilty. The way they think, only an immoral woman will dance naked in public.”

“Shit,” she said. “What’s the difference between the men who come into the club and watch me and the jury?”

“The same man who came into the club would go against you in the jury box.”

“Then what are we going to do?”

“Let me think,” he said. “Do you have your checkbook with you?”

“It’s down in the police property room.”

When he left a few minutes later he had her check for thirty-five hundred dollars as well as a signed note for fifteen hundred dollars. “Try to relax,” he said. “You’ll be hearing from me soon.”

It was the middle of the afternoon by the time he reappeared.

“What happened, Mr. Coldwell?” JeriLee asked after the conference room door had been locked behind them.

“I got it all worked out with the D.A.,” he said. “He agreed to separate your case from the others and to dismiss charges if you will agree to act as a material witness for the prosecution.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’re free. All you have to do is appear at the trial and tell your story exactly as you told it to me.”

“I can walk out of here right now?”

“In a few minutes. First you have to appear before the judge who will issue the necessary order.”

“What are we waiting for then?”

“Okay,” he said. “Just remember one thing. Whatever the judge asks you to do, you agree, all right?”

She nodded.

He knocked at the door. “Can Miss Randolph wait here for a moment while I go down to the D.A.’s office and let him know we’re ready to appear in court?” he asked the matron.

She looked at JeriLee doubtfully.

“It won’t be more than a minute, I promise you,” he said quickly. “They’re dropping the charges against her and I think she’s spent enough time in the cell.”

“Okay. But you don’t be long. It’s against regulations.”