Chapter 8 Chapter VII

After registering Jackie at a table in the reception room, they removed the handcuffs and took her to a table at the end of a long narrow corridor, where they searched, photographed, and fingerprinted six separate cards.They took an inventory of all her belongings, taking away her flight bag, her watch, jewelry, the gold flight badge pinned to her uniform jacket, while Jackie studied the list of bail bondsmen displayed on the wall.They took her high heels and pantyhose and gave her a pair of flats that looked like shower slippers.They took the blades and the mirror from her bathroom set, leaving her with the rest, her incense sticks - there were two left - and the change in her purse.They snapped a blue plastic bracelet with her ID on her wrist, said she was lucky to get through the routine so quickly, and brought a curved-handled broom.The officers were all in dark green uniforms and their holsters were empty.They say she can call now.

Jackie dialed a phone number.A young black woman's voice said, "He's not home," and hung up.Jackie dialed the number again.The woman said in the same tone, "He's not home." Jackie said, "Wait a minute," but it was too late.They told her that she could call again after she was admitted to the cell. This prison number.She remembered college. But it looked neither like a university nor like a fortress, and on the way here she had imagined that detention centers were surrounded by upright pointed wooden fences.But in fact the fence here is made of iron wire, and the walls of this bungalow seem to be made of cement bricks or cement boards.It was dark when the car pulled in, and she saw construction equipment and piles of building materials.

They took her from the office and across the street for a physical.There they gave her a form to answer questions to fill out, took her temperature and blood pressure, and checked her for parasites.After they came out, they continued down the road, and the deputy, wearing a police officer's armband, said, "That's the number 'F'. You live there." He walked towards a block of houses surrounded by double-barbed wire. Nod.Spotlights shone on coils of barbed wire strung together across the roof.He unlocked the door and said to her with a smile, "Find a reason for your arrest, haven't you?" Jackie watched him. He was a clean-shaven young man with carefully brushed hair. ."Please," he said, and she went in, thinking that the barred cell must be waiting for her.

What she saw were six doors leading to the cell, each room with a large barbed wire over the window.Three rooms are on the side of the courtyard with sentry boxes, and three rooms are on the opposite side.She saw someone watching her from behind the window, and heard muffled voices and noises.A female police officer stands in a waist-high walled sentry box: tall, broad-shouldered, with light-blond hair tied in a bun.She was smoking a cigarette, the case protruding from her empty holster.The police officer said: "Miss Kay, can you take care of this lady?" He handed her a three-inch by five-inch long prison identification card.Miss Kay said, "Of course, Terry." She looked at the card and then at Jackie. "Believe it or not? Probably, I dare say, you are my first stewardess in three years."

Jackie said nothing, wondering if they were playing tricks on her.She smelled the aroma of Miss Kay's little cigarillos.That's real stuff. Miss Kay shuffled down the corridor to the first room on the left with two quilts in between. She told Jackie that this detention center was where prisoners waited to appear in court.Miss Kay unlocked the door, opened it, and stood holding the handle while the faces behind the wire windows moved away.Jackie went in and saw four picnic tables in the front half of the room, two of which were leaning against women.They were all black, and one or two were Latino.They all looked at her, and the TV was on but not watching.The second half of the room is bunk beds, and no one is sitting on them.Miss Kay told Jackie that she could sleep in any available bed.“If anyone asks you to pay for the bed, tell me,” she said. The toilet and shower are behind the bunk.There were two telephones on the wall—one with direct access to the appointed attorney's office, and the other for pay, but only for long distance calls.Each person is only allowed to bring six yuan in change.There was a movie on the TV, starring Mel Gibson...the women were still watching her, waiting for something.Miss Kay ignored them.She said that this room can accommodate sixteen people, but there are only seven people at present.There are two rooms for petty criminals, two for drug offenders, and one for violent offenders.Miss Kay turned to the women at the picnic table, all in street clothes, baggy trousers, a few in suits, and she said, "This is Jackie."

A black woman in a shiny wig said, "What does she do, a general? Why is she in uniform?" The other women all laughed, some screamed admiration, to please the wig-wearing woman, or to let off steam and hear their own voices vibrate against the concrete walls.Then Miss Kay said, "Shut up!" and they stopped.Then Kay looked at the black woman who had just spoken and said, "Ramona, I'm just telling you one more time. Don't mess with her." Jackie dialed the number she had just dialed again.The young woman's voice said, "He didn't—" Jackie quickly picked up the conversation, "Tell him it was Jackie." There was a silence. "Tell him I'm in prison, the detention center. Did you hear that?" There was another silence, then the phone hung up.

She took the quilt from the picnic table, and the women still looked at her, and she walked slowly to the eight bunk bunks in two rows at the back, which had no lights, only the front.Jackie thought the lights in the front were probably going to be on all night.She decided to sleep on the lower bunk.There are already quilts on the five lower bunks.At this time, a radio was also turned on, singing the opposite of the movie on TV.She picked an empty bed, not sure if she could fall asleep, she leaned on the railing of the upper bunk with one hand, bent over and looked at the quilt.Something behind her flickered in front of the lamp.Knowing who it was, Jackie straightened up and looked back at Ramona.

She was big and dark, and the lamp behind her made a halo of her head, and she said, "Do you want to talk to me?" "If you want," Jackie said. "But don't make it hard on me, will you? I've had enough bad luck." "Are you a stewardess, huh? Work for an airline?" Jackie nodded, and Ramona said, "I never knew, do they pay much?" Here she was going to sleep and wake up in the dim light to see the crosssprings and mattresses of the top bunk, to hear people talking and the radio playing.She would feel the plastic body bracelet turning around her wrist.She'd hear the officer say, "There's a reason to detain you, right?" She remembered looking at him, but wasn't sure what he was saying.

Several times she wanted to cry. But she changed her mind and replayed the role of chatting with Ramona, who said she was locked up here for aggravated assault, beating the brains out of a man who didn't want to leave her room.A fight, maybe a murder charge if he wouldn't let it go.But heck, what about working for an airline? ...Jackie told her that after working for ten years, she can earn thirty-five thousand to forty thousand a year, fly no more than seventy hours a month, and can choose the route you want, as long as it is from you The base to take off on the line.As for her own experience, she worked for TWA for three years and Delta for fourteen years before being fired.At Archipelago Air she made less than half what she used to make, and was just getting acquainted, but not enough to pay her rent, her clothes, her car, her insurance.Now Archipelago Air would fire her as soon as they found out she was in jail.Ramona said, "If you're not happy there, why do you care if they let you go?" She said that when she had a job, she cleaned people's houses for fifty dollars a day, but only three or four days a week.People there do it now, and the Haitians are taking jobs from the locals.She asked Jackie if anyone would clean her suite.

It didn't take long for Jackie to tell Ramona about her situation, to ask the non-smoking cleaning lady in the forty-nine-dollar wig for advice.Ramona said: "Carrying money around, what's the point? I don't see anything wrong with you. The way you look? The way you wear your hair? If I did, I'd send you to jail, but you wouldn't. They will clap your hand and say, 'Miss, don't do it next time.' No, if the man you're working for has the money to hire a good lawyer, you don't have to worry about it. If he won't, by then If you think about dealing with the law, if you can do them a favor, they will drop the charges against you instead of just commuting your sentence. Did you hear me?"

Jackie told her they were mad because she wouldn't even talk to them, wouldn't cooperate with them.Ramona said: "You don't have to worry about them. You need to think that if you lied to that man -- you know, he has no friends -- he's not going to let you go. That's the hard part. Thing. You have to lie to him and keep him from knowing. Worst case scenario you don't tell on the guy, or you don't tell the cops about the deal. You could go to jail, oh, three months total, or so. Up to six months, nothing." Jackie said: "It's horrible. I'm forty-five and I have to live again." She thought of Ramona (she was old enough to be her mother, she thought), smiling at her, showing her gold teeth, asking how old she was, and asking, "When did you Birthday, dear?" She wanted to sleep, but couldn't, thinking of looking out of Taylor's office window in West Palm as the dusk darkened, and thinking of Nicolai's boots on the table, and the sound of his voice, Nikolai. Collet told of finding the Jamaican in the trunk of an Oldsmobile. At noon the next day, Thursday, Jackie was handcuffed and locked with Ramona and the four other women in the holding cell.They were taken out, escorted past a group of male prisoners who were cleaning, and boarded a reformatory bus.Jackie stared at the sidewalk, at the high heels on her bare feet in front of her.A male prisoner leaning on a broom said, "Woman from the women's prison." Jackie looked up and Ramona said, "Watch your mouth, boy." The prisoner leaning on a broom said: "Come here, I'll let you sit on there," Ramona said. "You'll only move your mouth." They both laughed, and the women on the same chain as Jackie were commotioning, and they Shuffling, twisting their buttocks, they turned their faces and grinned at the men who were looking at them.A male prisoner held his crotch in his hand and said, "Check here." Jackie glanced at him—a white guy with a shirt around his waist, sweating from the sun, at least two years younger than her. Ten years old - just look back.She heard him say, "Give me the blond one, I won't go away here," and Ramona next to her said, "Listen to that sweet boy, he's talking about you." The trial court, with its wide aisle and rows of pews, reminded her of a church.The men, all dressed in dark blue like a second-tier team, were brought in from the county jail and sat in the front rows.The female prisoners took off their handcuffs and sat behind the male prisoners as instructed. The male prisoners turned to look at them and talked to them. Then a police officer told them to shut up and face the front.They all stood up when the judge came in, and then sat down again.Nothing happened yet.Court people and police officers walked up to the judge, spoke to him, and handed him papers for his signature.Jackie said, "How long do we have to wait?" Ramona said: "Let them please. That's what jail is for. You have to be patient." It took a full hour and a half from the time the bailiff began to summon the defendant before Jackie was brought to the desk of the appointed lawyer.He looks at the case and files, turns to her, and asks if she has any pleas. "What choice do I have?" "Guilty, not guilty, or plea." Nicolai and Tyler were there, they stayed aside.They leaned against the wall and watched her. "I don't know what to do," Jackie told the lawyer. He was young, in his early thirties, with clean hair, an amiable and charming manner, and a pleasing look on his shaven face. ... For some reason, she felt hopeful, and this man seemed to be able to help. "If you will tell the investigation what they want to know, I can reduce your charge to possession," he said. Hope was dashed. Jackie said, "My cleaning lady could have handled my case better." She saw the lawyer's surprised look.This is not a good sign. "Tell those guys they've got a lot to do and better, or I wouldn't have said hello to them." Nicolai and Taylor stayed aside, like spectators. "Well, here's the state's asking price," the attorney said. "If you plead guilty to possession, your bail will be set at $1,000. If you refuse, the investigation department will ask for a bail of 25,000, depending on your previous record and the risk of escape. If you can't get it Pay, or you don't know anyone who can pay for you, and you spend six to eight weeks in the detention center, awaiting arraignment." She said, "What do you think we should do?" He said, "Would you please say it again?" "What happens if I plead guilty?" "And still cooperate? You can get probation." "What if I don't cooperate?" "Same as before? You may be sentenced to one to five years in prison, it depends on the judge." He said: "Do you want to think about it? You only have two minutes, and your time is almost up." It was his manner, the impatient tone of his voice that irritated her.And Nicolai and Tyler were leaning against the wall, that indifferent expressionless look.Jackie said, "I refuse to answer. From now on, I'm not going to say a word." "If that's what you want," said the lawyer. "All I want is a fucking lawyer," Jackie said. This surprised him again. "That's not what I meant," Jackie said.She paused, looked around, and said to him, "Do you have a pack of cigarettes I can smoke." "I don't smoke," he said. "I didn't expect that," she said.