LITMIR.BIZ

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When he’d complied with every item on Juanita’s official confiscation list, he automatically put his hands behind his back to be recuffed for the fifty-foot walk into the next room, where he would be uncuffed again, stripped, disinfected, showered and garbed in the very trendy, bright orange jail jumpsuit.

      “So when do I get a phone call?” he asked, as Juanita handed him off to Cal Gekas, a Humpty-Dumpty-ish burly man with abundant hair growing in thick patches everywhere except on his head.

      “You’re the one who’s here from traffic court, aren’t you?” Cal asked, handing Mike a plastic bag for his clothing. “That’s a new one. Parking tickets.” He chuckled. “And I thought I’d about seen it all. Just goes to show ya, doesn’t it?”

      Mike was waiting to hear what it was that went to show him, but when Cal didn’t continue, he simply nodded. “Cal, old buddy. Think you could you do me a favor here and turn around while I undress?”

      Cal shook his head. “Gotta watch. Department policy.”

      “Then I’m hoping you’re a married man, Cal.”

      “Twenty years, three kids.” He grinned. “And if you’re uncomfortable, you can turn around so you don’t have to watch me watching you.”

      “Good idea.” Mike shook his head, spun around and dropped his khakis. “Can I keep the shorts?”

      “After the shower.”

      “This isn’t negotiable? I mean, it’s a damn parking ticket, Cal. I didn’t rob a convenience store or mug a little old lady for her social security check.”

      Cal shrugged. “Hey, I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt on the cavity search, but that’s all I can do for you.” He paused, then chuckled again. “Damn. A parking ticket. Not even speeding. I heard that new judge was a tough one, but don’t this just beat all.”

      Mike nodded. “It sure does.” And he stepped out of his briefs and into the footbath of disinfectant, then on into the shower. “You don’t happen to have any soap-on-a-rope handy, do you?”

      Ten minutes later, showered and dressed, Mike was escorted through fingerprinting, then lined up in front of a camera to have that very stylish rendition of him captured for posterity—orange clothes, washed-out face, glazed eyes, black numbers on a strip of cardboard held up to midchest for proud display. “Think I could get a copy of that for my Christmas cards?” he asked, following Cal through a long gray hall filled, predominantly, with empty cells. At the end they met up with the jailer du jour, Roger Jackson, who, as it turned out, also worked as a crime-beat stringer on Mike’s very own Journal. He’d taken pity on Mike and assigned him to a cell for one, far, far away from the madding jail population, which today was poor old Bert Ford, who’d had one too many drinks the night before and selected Mrs. Clooney’s prize-winning rose garden as the place to relieve his bladder on his stagger home from the pub, and made the mistake of losing his balance in the process, pants down. Which was where Mrs. Clooney had found him this morning. The rest was a matter of public record, including a few thorny scratches in all the wrong places. And poor Bert was still sleeping it off, Mike noted as he walked by him. Sleeping, and probably oblivious to the fact that his brief encounter with the great red American Beauty would be his last dalliance with public intoxication, or Mrs. Clooney’s roses, for quite a while.

      And so at two in the afternoon, on a hot, humid August Friday, Mike rolled the thin mattress issued to him onto the creaky metal coils of his cot, tossed his single pillow on top and plopped down in his cell for the weekend. “I still didn’t get to make my call,” he shouted to Roger, who was busy writing up the story of Mike’s arrest for the morning edition.

      “Okay, as soon as I finish this. I’m on deadline.” His hearty laugh clanged through the empty jail. Roger was a friendly cop, always ready with a smile. With a great marriage, great family, Roger had stability, something Mike had never found a place for in his life, but something he was beginning to envy. And he could almost see himself having that with Lilly.…Well, almost, since Lilly would have a say in that and he knew exactly what her “say” would be—I’d rather be staked to an anthill.

      “Got a tough boss,” Roger continued. “But fair. So fair, in fact, that after he reads this headliner he won’t demote me to obituaries. Might even give me a raise.” Half an hour later, after Roger hit the Send button and his first-ever front-page piece was winging its way through cyberspace to the newspaper office two blocks away, he finally took Mike down the hall to the public phone. “Use your call wisely. We’re pretty strict on jail regulations around here and you might not get another one.” He laughed, heading into the break room, leaving Mike uncuffed and unattended. “And don’t escape,” he called back. “Care for some coffee?”

      The number Mike meant to call was burned into his brain, even though he’d never used it before. As he waited for the first ring, he wondered why he was even bothering. She’d hang up when she heard his voice. Or tack another couple of days on to his sentence for some kind of trumped-up harassment. But he owed her this one. Make the call, then be done with it, and her.

      Yeah, like he could ever be done with Lilly Malloy.

      “Hello,” a voice said from the other end.

      “Lilly?” Mike asked.

      “You’ve reached the voice mail of Judge Lillianne Malloy. Please leave your name, phone number and a brief message, and I’ll return the call as soon as I can. Have a nice day.” Beep.

      “Have a nice day like hell.…Look, Lilly. I need to see you. I can’t go into it on the phone…you know where I am, where I’ll be until Monday morning. And it’s important. Hell, this was a stupid idea. I should have called my attorney instead of you. Lilly, I know that the situation between us isn’t the best, but—”

      Beep.

      “Hell.”

      “Arms behind your back, Mike,” Roger said, setting the coffee on the desk, then taking his handcuffs off his belt. “Sorry, but it’s the rules. You like it black, no sugar, right?”

      “You’re not going to make me strip again, are you?” Mike growled, turning around and gritting his teeth when the cuffs went on. They didn’t hurt, but he sure didn’t like the thought of what they signified. Tried, convicted, sentenced. Prisoner. As a journalist, going to jail on principle such as not revealing a source or being in the wrong place at the wrong time to get the right story, now, that was honorable. It made a statement about ethics and principles and high moral integrity. But being nabbed for parking in the wrong place? The only statement coming from that was dud, flop, washout, bomb, a big bust. “No sugar, but some whiskey would be good. In fact, skip the coffee. Just bring on the whiskey.”

      “Sure wish I could Mike, but…”

      “I know. You’ve got rules.” When he’d learned he was going to Lilly’s court, he’d hoped that after all this time she was over the bad history between them. Bad, bad history! Forgive and forget, or just forget. Yeah, and wasn’t that just being pointless and optimistic after what he’d done to her? Thank God parking tickets weren’t a hanging offense.

      First time with Lilly he’d been canned over the mix-up, and sure, he’d deserved it. One slight error in judgment and his job was out the door along with his postgrad degree. But she did have that damned bought-and-paid-for paper sitting right out on her desk for anybody to see who cared to look.

      Second time…well, he shook his head over that one. What were the odds she’d turn up on the receiving end of another of his investigations? She’d been innocent that time, too. In fact, he’d never even connected her to that story—probably because she wasn’t connected, not directly, anyway. But her law firm epitomized that notoriously fictitious Dewey, Cheatham and Howe. They’d done some book cooking, trust-fund skimming, creative billing, so on and so on. And even though Lilly was only a contract employee, not a real member of the firm—meaning she’d never gotten near the trusts, never did any billing, hardly ever got out of the research library—she’d been swept into the

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