Suitable for Framing

by Edna Buchanan

  “So you say you’re familiar with the park?”

  “Of course! I grew up in Miami.”

  “So you didn’t follow Ms. Tierney there and ‘wring her neck,’ as you put it?”

  “Of course not!”

  “So if a witness told me he saw you there today, he would be lying?”

  “Yes!”

  Charlie met my eyes and looked down, almost embarrassed, then brightened with an idea.

  “Maybe it was self-defense,” he offered.

  “You don’t believe me, Charlie!” I half shouted. “I want to talk to a lawyer!”

  “Sure,” he said smoothly. “You need a phone book?”

  He stepped out and took the Yellow Pages off a nearby desk. Ojeda brought in a phone on a long cord.

  Hand shaking, I dialed Jake Lassiter’s number.

  Jake is a former Dolphin linebacker with bad knees, a law practice, and a rakish charm. We had a date once for a stone crab dinner, but I wound up covering a three-alarm fire instead.

  Seething with indignation, I couldn’t wait to sic him on these guys.

  Cindy, his secretary, answered. “I need to talk to Jake,” I said urgently.

  “Skiing in Colorado.” She sounded nonchalant. I could practically hear her filing her nails. “Be back a week from next Monday.”

  Who else? I wondered in desperation. Jeremiah Tannen! Jerry Tannen had recently left the public defender’s office after an unprecedented winning streak. The twenty-seven-year-old boy wonder had won his last fifteen jury trials—in less than two months. An average lawyer in private practice might try two major cases a year. The public defender’s office is a baptism by fire. J.T. thrived on combat, a street fighter who didn’t hesitate to hit below the belt. Exactly what I wanted to see happen to Simmons and Ojeda at this point.

  Both detectives reacted as though slapped when they heard me ask the information operator for Tannen’s number. Ojeda muttered what sounded like a curse, and Charlie pushed back his chair and walked out.

  Tannen answered his own phone.

  “I’m glad you’re there, J.T.,” I said, dismayed at the quiver in my voice. I began to tell him my situation.

  He interrupted. “How much have you told them?”

  “I’ve answered all their questions, done whatever they asked—”

  He went ballistic. “Don’t talk! Don’t do anything! Don’t say another word to anybody! I’ll be right down.”

  The cavalry was on the way. But it was small comfort, because I knew now what I had been denying to myself all along. I was in serious trouble. I was about to be arrested on a murder charge.

  I sat alone in the little room while they did the paperwork. I thought I heard J.T.’s indignant voice a short time later but could not make out the words.

  He was there when they asked me to step out.

  I felt like a drowning person with my only hope for rescue this tall, pale, boyish lawyer. His eyes were intelligent and intense behind the lenses of his rimless glasses.

  He rested his hands on my shoulders.

  “I’m sorry you have to go through this, Britt. They’re arresting you.”

  “This is crazy, J.T.”

  “I know, I know. And I’ll get you out of jail because this is all bullshit.” His last remark seemed directed at the detectives pointedly doing busywork at their nearby desks, pretending not to listen.

  “Don’t talk to anybody unless I’m present.” J.T. lowered his voice. “You’ve probably said too much already. Now, here is what you can reasonably expect. You will be patted down and processed here at headquarters. Their regulations require that you be handcuffed when they transport you to the jail in a car.”

  He read my rising panic.

  “I know, I know. It won’t get any better. At the jail you will have to remove all your clothing in the presence of a woman matron and assume various positions so they can search to make sure you’re not seeking to smuggle in any contraband or weapons. I will not be able to see you until after the booking process. I’ll probably have a bondsman talk to you even though you’re not entitled to a bond.”

  I gasped in protest.

  “I know. You’re a decent person, you’ve lived here a long time, you’ve never been charged with a crime, but that doesn’t help. First-degree murder is not a bondable offense. I’m gonna have a bail bondsman come and see you, not because he will be able to write you a bond but because they can get in faster than lawyers can. He’ll be able to get in real quick to see you and find out what the story is.

  “I’ll talk to the detectives, learn what I can about the case, and talk to the state attorney.”

  Even at this numbing moment I viewed my situation from an oddly distant perspective. I know something about the system and how it operates. How terrifying this all must be, I thought, for a citizen who suddenly finds himself in trouble with no idea what to expect or who to call.

  “Thanks for getting here so fast, J.T. I really need help. I didn’t do it. I can’t believe they even think me capable of such a thing.”

  “Hang tight, Britt. I’ll be doing everything that can be done.”

  Ojeda walked me down to prisoner processing, where I was fingerprinted and had my mug shot taken.

  Lieutenant Kendall McDonald was nowhere in sight, to my relief. The cuffs were plastic flex-cuffs, first used as a cost-cutting measure for crowds of prisoners rounded up at demonstrations, concerts, and civil disturbances. Luckily the women’s jail was just blocks way, the ride in the back of a cage car short enough that I could block my feelings of claustrophobia.

  The officer carefully radioed his mileage to dispatch before we started and again on arrival: protection against women prisoners who might claim sexual abuse during unauthorized detours.

  The four-story brick building stands in the shadow of the expressway on the fringe of Overtown. Before we rolled in through the sally port, my driver stopped and locked his sidearm in the trunk. Then he opened my cage and marched me through the double doors.

  I had never really paid much attention to the sign above the booking desk: ALL NEWS PERSONS MUST CHECK WITH THE COMMANDING OFFICER.

  “Guess what?” The officer escorting me grinned at the middle-aged sergeant. “Better get the commanding officer down here. We got us a news person.”

  “I don’t think we need to bother the commander,” the sergeant said good-humoredly. She wore a drab green skirt and a gray uniform shirt. “That’s for when they come in the other side, the public entrance. She’s coming in the criminal entrance.”

  I came here often during my appointed rounds. This was my first arrival in handcuffs.

  “Hi, Jewel,” I said.

  “What happened, Britt?” She looked sympathetic. “Step across that police line once too often?” She picked up the paperwork. Her smile faded and her eyebrows lifted.

  “It’s a mistake,” I told her.

  The look in her eyes told me that’s what they all say.

  The Dade County Women’s Jail houses prisoners with sentences of a year or less and those awaiting trial. Everything played out the way J.T. had said it would.

  I was glad I had worn my sweat suit. It felt soft and comforting. Jail is a cold place in more ways than one. They confiscated the shoelaces from my Reeboks, apparently to protect me from myself, so I had to shuffle into the “pod.” In this modern jail they eschew such terms as cell blocks.

  Each pod has a dozen little open cells surrounding a small living room dominated by a television set. This one was tuned to some tabloid show. At the back was a toilet and an open shower without curtains. The door closed behind me with a metallic clank that stunned my soul and echoed in the pit of my stomach.

  I seemed to be the only non-black or Hispanic person in my pod. “¡Hola!” I said to my new roommates. “¿Qué tal?”

  They must be hard-core offenders, I thought, as they stared idly. A dangerous murder suspect like me wouldn’t
be locked up with small-time shoplifters and drunk drivers. I thought ironically of the times I had wanted to interview jail inmates and been turned away. Now I had them all to myself. My welcoming committee lunged to her feet, creating a fearful flutter in my stomach. Built like a linebacker, she weighed 350 pounds, minimum. Her skin had the blue-black sheen of anthracite, her overtaxed stretch pants were red, and her tent-size white T-shirt said IF MOMMA AIN’T HAPPY, AIN’T NOBODY HAPPY.

  Her blue scuffs flapped like wounded birds against the soles of her feet as she approached.

  “Here’s your bed, honey,” she said, in an unexpectedly high-pitched, childlike voice. “My name is Winsome. We just got us a new vacancy. Somebody left. An officer will be around in a minute. I’ll go to the laundry room for your blanket. I’m a trusty.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m Britt.”

  Her mention of the vacancy had evoked a chorus of snorts and laughs.

  “Where did she go?” I asked, gingerly trying out the bunk and hoping its last occupant did not depart feet first.

  “For pizza.” Somebody tittered.

  I looked around.

  “Linelle,” somebody said. “She gone again.”

  “Linelle Early?” My mouth dropped open. I had covered her escapades. She packed a .44-caliber Magnum and an attitude. Voluptuous and affable, she was a one-woman crime wave, a Bonnie without a Clyde. She managed quite well on her own, thank you. After her last escape she had robbed four banks, a Wal-Mart, and an International House of Pancakes.

  “You know Linelle?” Winsome asked, in a baby-bird-like trill.

  “I know of her.”

  “Everybody know Linelle,” snickered a skinny woman in a striped blouse.

  “Escape? How?”

  She had been checked out by a corrections officer who had obligingly stopped for a pizza on the way back to the jail. He got out to pick up the pie, leaving his gun and his keys in the car. He wound up on a street corner holding nothing but a warm pizza. His prisoner, his car, and his gun were gone. Likewise his career.

  “What did he have her checked out for?”

  “That’s what they asking him now,” said a woman wearing her hair in cornrows. She was positively gleeful.

  “His ass in a sling,” Winsome said, nodding brightly.

  I looked around for a phone. My instinct was to call in the tip to the city desk, while common sense told me that if I did get my hands on a phone that wasn’t who I should be calling.

  A woman with graying hair was seated in one of the open cells, forehead on her knees, arms wrapped around her head, rocking from side to side, mumbling something indiscernible. I felt her utter hopelessness, totally out of control of my life. My heart ached for my mother. What about my car, parked at the paper? My pets at home? My job? My salary? How much would J.T. charge me?

  “Ain’t you Britt Montero from the News?” The skinny woman had sprung up from her bunk, consternation on her face.

  I said I was.

  “Well, hell, how you gonna help git me outa here now?” she demanded, slapping the wall, dancing in frustration on the balls of her feet. “I wrote you!”

  I studied her. “You’re the Singer! I read your letters.”

  Her dance slowed to a little strut. Famous and feared among the swank South Beach sidewalk cafés crowded with happily chatting diners, she roamed the tables belting out Patti LaBelle tunes at the top of her lungs. If her audience didn’t tip, she would spit in their tricolor tortellini pesto salads.

  “Don’t git her started,” peeped Winsome.

  “I remember. You wrote that you were harassed by police officers who planted a knife on you and made up an assault charge.”

  “That’s it!” Scathing, she looked me up and down. “Look at you!” she gestured in disgust, voice rising. “What good you gonna do me now? Why didn’t you answer my letters?”

  “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been having a bad time lately.”

  “Ain’t we all.” A solidly built brunette tossed aside the paperback romance she’d been reading and leaned forward. Her elaborately decorated fingernails were long and fake, some painted bright green. One was black, with a white moon and stars. The only time I ever had a fingernail that color was when I slammed it in the door of my old T-Bird right on deadline. Her left thumbnail was shiny green with a little palm tree and a full moon. She stared down the Singer, who stalked off, scowling over her shoulder. “Boyfriend or drugs?” the brunette asked confidentially.

  “Neither,” I said wanly. “It’s a long story.”

  True to his word, J.T. sent Billy the Bondsman. We sat in the visitors’ section and talked into microphones, heavy plate glass between us.

  I had seen Billy Marker around for years, never holding him in especially high esteem, maybe just a step above a repo man. Billy is fifty pounds overweight, sweats too much, and wears too much gold. He was carrying a briefcase and had a pocket full of pens and dark stubble on his chin. It was amazing how glad I was to see him.

  “Okay, Britt. First lemme tell ya how sorry I am to see you in this jam, but I want ya to know J.T. is doing everything he can.”

  That said, he got down to the meaty stuff.

  Trish had been found in her car, in the park, as the cops had said. She was fully clothed, her purse and jewelry seemed intact She had not been robbed. She had been strangled.

  I shuddered at the thought. “Whoever did it has probably got scratch marks,” he said, shrewd eyes lingering on my jaw.

  “This is from when we had a skirmish earlier, at the station.” I lightly fingered the scratch along my jawline.

  He nodded. “I heard all about that, but J.T. wants you to give me a full rundown. From what we hear, the cops got physical evidence putting you in the car and an eyewitness who swears he saw you there.”

  “I can’t believe this, Billy! What witness? It’s impossible. I was never, ever, in her car and nobody saw me there because I wasn’t!”

  “J.T. already has an investigator working on it. He’ll get a copy of the ME report as soon as the post is done. J.T. thinks the ASA was in a big rush to charge you to make sure the public didn’t get the perception that the press was getting any special treatment.”

  I told him everything. He took notes and quizzed me about my assets—and my mother’s. “For future reference,” he said, “just in case J.T. can work something out. Maybe get you an Arthur hearing.”

  The legislature mandates that defendants be held in custody in certain serious crimes, such as first-degree murder. But the Supreme Court, concerned about fairness to the accused, created the right to a hearing that allows judges to evaluate evidence on a case-by-case basis. If the evidence seems strong enough for a conviction, no bond is permitted. If the state’s case appears weak, the judge can set bond until the trial.

  Billy promised to call Lottie so she could talk to my mother and my landlady and take care of Bitsy and Billy Boots. What will the poor little creatures think, I wondered, if I never come home?

  I had to remain positive. At least this was a modern facility, more like a dormitory than a jail. I can get through this, I told myself, hoping I was right.

  My pod mates had seen my picture on the news while I was gone, and I was greeted with more respect. I wondered what my friends and relatives thought when they saw it. I had missed dinner but wasn’t hungry; in fact I felt nauseous. I sat on my bunk, head between my knees. Would my life ever be the same again? How could it?

  Inez, the inmate with the ornately decorated nails, took pity.

  “Scared?” she asked.

  “I’m thinking about my father,” I told her truthfully.

  “He know you’re in here yet? Maybe he can hire you a lawyer.”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Bummer. Heart attack?” She looked truly concerned.

  “No, he was shot.”

  “Cops do it?”

  “In Cuba. He was in jail; then he was
executed by a firing squad. Castro. When I was three.”

  “Don’t forget to tell your lawyer.” She nodded sagely. “He can use it. Childhood trauma. No papa. That’s why you wound up here.”

  I thanked her for the legal advice and admired her manicure.

  “I could do yours like this,” she offered. “We have a cosmetology lab. Some of the girls are real professionals.” She pulled back, studying me with a practiced eye. “You could use a good haircut.”

  She turned to complain to Winsome about the Singer, who was raising hell, shrieking for corrections officers, noisily demanding immediate medical attention. The woman’s lungs were powerful.

  “That’s what happens to people in here,” sighed Winsome, the unofficial manager of our pod. “Check into the Greybar Motel and all of a sudden, you get sick, sexy, and religious. The woman’s had a case of the VD for a year and a half; all of a sudden she wants treatment now. Everybody in here’s got the hots for somebody. And people who never saw the inside of a church all wanna carry Bibles to court.”

  Lights out came at eleven o’clock, though it never really grew dark. Lights burned all night outside the pod. My thoughts seemed to echo off the shadowy walls, amid the screams, cries, and whimpers. Thoughts of my father flooded my mind. I had always identified with him. He had been wrongly accused; so was I. Now, like him, I faced a death sentence. J.T. and Billy Marker had been careful not to say it, but we all knew that first-degree murder is punishable by death in Florida’s electric chair.

  Chapter Nineteen

  I woke up shivering in the cold and reached out half asleep for the furry warmth of Billy Boots, who usually greets me at dawn. I had forgotten where I was. I was hungry, yet could barely swallow the corn flakes, dry toast, and weak coffee. We were allowed ten minutes, no more, for breakfast.

  Immediately after, I was hustled off for my arraignment, apprehensive but glad that something, anything, was happening.

  We didn’t travel far. This is the video era. Defendants are now arraigned on TV, so we never had to leave the building. The system saves corrections officers the trouble of transporting prisoners to and from the jail and reduces the possibility of escapes or suicide attempts along the way. About twenty of us straggled single file to the video room, where we found seats in three rows of wooden pews, fidgeting under the watchful eyes of cameras mounted high on the wall. Most of our motley crew had checked in overnight. Some were sullen, some weepy, several hung over or descending from bad trips, some in high heels and hot pants, dressed for an evening out but now wearing the dazed, rumpled look of those who have slept in their clothes. At least one wore a housecoat and bedroom slippers. A sorry group. One nodded off, but the rest of us in our wooden pews must have appeared as nervous as whores in church.