Lilly's Law. Dianne Drake

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      No Friday afternoon get-out-of-jail-free cards allowed

      MIKE DUMPED HIS wristwatch and car keys into the plastic box bearing his official prisoner number, then absently searched his empty pockets for change. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me keep my cell phone, will you?” he asked, pulling it off his belt, which he was also forced to surrender.

      Juanita Lane, a humorless, sixty-something jail matron who had to look up to see a full five feet tall, didn’t even glance over from the property list she was dutifully recording when she boomed, “No cell phone, no personal property. Hand over your shoelaces, please.” Dripping wet she might have weighed ninety pounds, and with spiked, champagne-colored hair and big purple-rimmed glasses clashing with her khaki-colored uniform blouse, she wasn’t the typical image of cop that came to Mike’s mind. But when she glared at him through those glasses, patted the pistol on her hip and barked, “Do it now, please!” he knew that the weapon was there for more than show. So he promptly gave up the phone and bent to unlace his rip-off Nikes. 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 СКАЧАТЬ