"I don't understand," Laura repeated.
"She wants to know where we are," the negro girl said in a husky voice.
"She's been asking that all the way downtown. She's never been south of
72nd Street before." Turning to the Puerto Rican, she said, "_Estamos
cerca la calle numero cuarentidos_."
The answer seemed to satisfy the Spanish-speaking woman, who settled
back in silence.
Perhaps fifteen minutes later, the wagon pulled up in front of the
House of Detention in Greenwich Village. Police guarded the women
carefully as the van was unloaded. Other wagons were parked nearby in
the streets, indicating that there had been plenty of arrests in the
last half hour.
As Laura marched up the steps and into the building, bright light
exploded in her face. To her horror, she saw a little squad of press
photographers just inside the door, getting shots of the girls as they
came in. Spitting a curse, Laura threw up her arm to shield her face,
hoping their pictures would not come out.
She was ushered inside. The place was brightly lit and ugly, with high,
bare walls. A bored-looking desk sergeant booked the new arrivals in,
explaining yawningly that they would be held in custody overnight
and arraigned in the morning. Laura once again gave her name as Lois
Harper, and she was led further into the building, to the cell blocks.
They put her in a big cell with four other women who had been picked up
that evening. One was the negress, one the big blonde who had ridden
with her in the wagon. The Puerto Rican women went into another cell.
Laura's remaining two cellmates were a slovenly-looking redhead who
seemed to be a friend of the blonde, and a tall, lean girl in blue
jeans who kept to herself at the far corner of the cell. The metal
door clanged shut. Far down the corridor, some woman was singing in
a high-pitched, drunken voice. Further down, two women were arguing
violently in Spanish.
Feeling strangely out of place in her elegant clothing, Laura huddled
down on one of the hard cots. It was only midnight. There were many
long, bleak hours yet to come before dawn.
She wondered what would happen now. They might send her to jail, she
thought. Perhaps she would just get off with a fine. In any case, she
was in trouble. Not so much trouble as McDermott, though. She pitied
him terribly. No doubt there would be a messy divorce case, now. She
would be named as co-respondent, and the pictures of her and McDermott
in the nude would figure prominently in the trial, and his reputation
would be blasted. Probably he had enough money to get along for the
rest of his life, but his banking career would be effectively ended.
She settled down without undressing and tried to sleep. A short while
later, she heard hoarse sounds coming from the other side of the cell,
and looked up. It was the big blonde and the redhead. They had pushed
their cots together and had stripped, and now they were lying with
their heavy bodies entwined, their lips pressed together, making love.
It was a disgusting sight. Laura remembered her own brief lesbian
interlude with Marilyn, but she told herself it had been nothing
like this. These were two heavybreasted cows of women, women in rut,
grappling with each other to slake their revolting lusts. Big breasts
quivered with desire; thigh locked around thigh. Laura closed her eyes,
but she continued to hear their heavy grunting, to hear the sudden
gasping insucking of breath as first one, then the other, arrived at a
culmination.
It was a horrible night. Laura slept hardly at all, and every time she
awoke it seemed that the two lesbian prostitutes were at each other
again, enjoying it mightily. She heard the slap of hands on buttocks,
the sticky squish of one sweat-bathed body pulling away from another
and approaching it again. When morning came, Laura's head throbbed
mercilessly. She felt as though there was sand in her mouth, gravel
where her eyeballs once had been. Her clothing was rumpled and dirty,
and she needed a shower badly. She was hungry. She was frightened. She
was miserable.
A burly policewoman came to the cell door about seven the next morning,
looked in, and entered. The two lesbians were still asleep in each
other's arms. The policewoman, grayhaired and iron-jawed, slapped them
soundly on their exposed buttocks. "Here, you two disgusting chippies!
Get up and separate those cots!"
She stalked out. The lesbians muttered angry curses after her, but
separated.
At nine that morning the policewoman returned. Peering into the cell,
she said, "Lois Harper, or Laura Haynes, or whatever you call yourself?"
"That's me," Laura said.
"Somebody to see you. Come on out."
Laura freshened up quickly at the little dirty washstand in the
cell, while the policewoman opened the door. Laura followed her down
the wide halls toward the offices at the front of the building.
Feeling hopelessly rumpled and sloppy, she was ushered into a small
waiting-room. A suave-looking man of about forty rose immediately to
greet her.
"Miss Haynes?"
"Yes," Laura said uncertainly.
"My name is Brewer, Leon Brewer. I'm a legal representative of Phil
Spinelli." He dropped his voice to a hollow whisper when mentioning
Spinelli's name.