“I was not grabbing crotches!”
In my agitation, my voice got loud. I shushed Lopez, stopped speaking, and glanced over my shoulder to see if I had woken the other resident of my cell, an overweight young African-American woman who was lying on a bench and snoring loudly. She had been like that ever since I was put in here, and her tough appearance made me very reluctant to risk disturbing her.
Lopez folded his arms across his chest and leaned one well-muscled shoulder against the bars of my holding cell. “One man told the cops that you tried to steal his phone.”
“Well, I did do that,” I admitted in a subdued voice.
He sighed wearily and ran a hand over his face. “I assume there’s a perfectly logical explanation for all this, Esther?”
“I got you out of bed, didn’t I?” I said with regret.
“Nah, I was out shooting hoops when my phone rang in the middle of the night.”
“I’m really sorry about this.”
“What the hell were you
doing?
” he said.
The mingled exasperation, bewilderment, and concern in his tone were all too familiar to me. It was the essence of why he wouldn’t date me: He thought I was crazy and possibly felonious. And although that was completely inaccurate, he nonetheless had some justification for thinking it. Moreover, I had to admit that involvement with me seemed to be bad for him. In order to protect me on previous occasions, he had done things that violated his better judgment, his duty, and his honor—such as concealing evidence in a homicide investigation, lying to his superiors, and filing false reports. Lopez didn’t like the choices he had made to shield me, and he was afraid he’d make more of them if we remained involved.
And now I was going to ask him to get the charges against me dropped and expunged. They were bogus charges, of course; but it was still a lot to ask, all things considered.
I said to him, “Look, you’re the last person in the world that I wanted to drag into this. And I swear to you, I really tried
not
to.”
“Oh, I’m glad you called. I wouldn’t have missed your outfit tonight for the world. But the desk sergeant here must lead a sheltered life.” Lopez’s gaze dropped to my cleavage again. “You look
way
too healthy to be a crack whore.” After a moment, he met my eyes again and smiled as he added, “But much too obvious to be an escort, of course.”
“Perhaps we could discuss my character’s position in the hierarchy of the oldest profession
after
you get me out of here?”
“Ah. Which brings us to the point.” There was a little regret in his expression as he said, “If you want me to get you out of this, then your story had better be damn good.”
“Why?” My gaze flickered anxiously to the door. The night-shift cops of the Two- Five were somewhere on the other side of it. “Are they going to be difficult?”
“No,
I’m
going to be difficult, Esther,” he said irritably. “You got picked up while playing in traffic in Harlem in the middle of the night, dressed like a hooker and acting like a lunatic. And it’s going to take a really good explanation to convince me that arraignment, remand, and a psych evaluation aren’t the best things for you.”
“What?”
I gripped the bars. “No!”
My cell mate grumbled in her sleep and rolled over.
“Shh,” I said to Lopez.
“I’m not the one raising my voice,” he pointed out.
“Lopez, you’ve got to get me out of here,” I said desperately. “And you’ve got to get them to delete any record of my arrest! I don’t want it on my record. I don’t want a record at
all
.”
“Start talking,” he said implacably.
“First things first,” I said. “
Please
get them to send a squad car to look for this guy I found tonight. He’s severely injured.”
“They sent a car, Esther. There’s no sign of the man you described.”
“What?” I frowned. “That’s not possible! Darius was hurt too badly to get up and walk away. The cops must have looked in the wrong place.”
“No, they looked in the right place.”
“How do you know?”
“The two cops who went over there to check it out, in response to your story, turned on their cherry top—”
“Their what?”
“Uh, the red light on the roof.”
“Oh.”
“And that attracted the attention of a resident who came downstairs to ask if they were looking for the drunk hooker who’d been ringing his doorbell and shouting up at him a little after midnight.”
“I wasn’t drunk,” I said wearily.
“So that sounds like the right place?”
“Yes. But Darius must have crawled into a doorway or something. He couldn’t have gone far. The cops just didn’t look hard enough.”
“They were thorough, Esther,” Lopez said patiently.
“They didn’t even believe me!”
“No, they didn’t,” he agreed. “But it’s a slow night, and you claimed you saw a man who’d been, er, attacked and maimed, which is serious stuff. So, just in case you’re not quite as insane as you seem, they decided to be thorough.”
I looked at him suspiciously. “You didn’t waltz right in here as soon as you arrived. You talked to the cops out there first, didn’t you?”
“Uh-huh.”
Shit
. While waiting for Lopez to get here, I had planned what to tell him: a version of the night’s events that was close to the truth, but a tad more plausible.
He lifted one brow. “A man with a sword? A severed hand?
Gargoyles?
”
Too late now.
“That’s what I saw,” I said defensively.
“Sadly, I don’t find it hard to believe that’s what you
think
you saw,” Lopez said. “Which is why I’m not so sure that getting you out of here is such a good idea.”
I tried to control my frustration and focus on the most important thing. “Fine, let’s forget about that for a minute. But, please, you’ve got to get them to find Darius.”
“Esther, he’s not there,” Lopez said firmly.
“Then check the local hospitals. Maybe—”
“He’s not at a hospital, either.”
“How do you know?”
“We’ll talk about that in a minute. For now—”
“But—”
“For
now,
” he said, “I want you to tell me what happened. As clearly and rationally as you can.”
“All right.” I took a breath and tried to calm down. “That’s fair.”
“Glad you think so.”
I started by explaining that a lead actor had fallen ill on the set tonight, which disrupted the shoot.
“Where were you filming?”
“East of Mount Morris Park.”
“Did you tell the cops this?”
“I tried, when they were booking me.” I shrugged and admitted, “But by then, they seemed so convinced I was crazy, I gave up before long and just asked for my phone call.”
“It’s not that I don’t appreciate you thinking of
me
when you’re locked up for being a demented hooker,” he said, “but I’m wondering why you didn’t just call the set and ask them to come confirm that you are who you say you are.”
“All the phone numbers I need are in my purse, which was stolen before I was arrested. And I’m just a guest performer, so I don’t even know most of the people’s full names. When the cops let me have a phone book, the only number I could find was the show’s regular production office. And when I called it, all I got was an answering machine. The office staff isn’t there at two o’clock in the morning. Go figure.” I sighed. “Next, I called my agent’s cell, thinking he could come here and straighten this out. But he didn’t answer, either.”
I rested my head against the bars for a moment, feeling depressed. “I was supposed to be back on the set hours ago. They’ve got no idea where I am. I’m in
so
much trouble.” I would be very lucky if the producers didn’t fire me.
After a moment of silence, Lopez put his hand on mine and squeezed sympathetically. He knew how important my work was to me.
“What’s the show?” he asked, trying to be nice.
“The Dirty Thirty
.
”
He flinched and removed his hand. “I
hate
that show.”
“It’s a really good script,” I said morosely, still thinking about how I was bound to be fired. And probably banned from all
Crime and Punishment
sets. “I play a homeless bisexual junkie prostitute being blackmailed for sex and information by a corrupt cop.”
“Whatever,” Lopez said sourly.
“I mean, that’s what I’m playing
if
I’ve still got a job now.”
“So some actor on a totally fabricated, insulting, bullshit TV show,” he said, “got sick on your location shoot. They sent for a doctor, and filming came to a halt. What happened then?”
“Oh. Well . . .” I continued my story, explaining how I had wound up walking through the neighborhood alone in the dark in my costume, and what had happened next.
Lopez said, “And this guy had a
sword?
”
“Specifically, a rapier.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I’m an actress. The rapier was a common weapon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and it’s used in the plays of that period.”
“Did he threaten you with it?”
“Not really,” I said.
“What does ‘not really’ mean?”
I explained that I had startled the young man, who lowered his sword as soon as he recovered from his surprise. I recounted our conversation, his departure, and what happened next.
“And this is when you saw the gargoyles?”
“Could we not focus on that?” I said irritably. “The
important
point is that I saw this man being attacked. And maimed.” I continued my story.
Lopez soon interrupted to say, “The man was wearing a
tuxedo?
”
“Yes.” Seeing that he was looking at me as if this required an explanation, I said, “What’s so strange about that?”
He shrugged. “It just seems a little odd. Never mind. So this man . . .” Lopez’s tone concealed something. I wasn’t sure what. “He told you his name was . . .”
“Darius,” I said. “Darius Phelps.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Since he just kept looking at me, I asked, “Why?”
“Besides the tux, what did he look like?”
I described Darius.
Lopez lowered black lashes over blue eyes and stood there silently for a few moments. He seemed to be thinking.
Finally, he said, “So you saw him being attacked. Go on.”
I described the scene that ensued. And since Lopez already knew I thought the attacking creatures looked like gargoyles, I decided not to waste any time or energy prevaricating about that.
“Wait, you did
what?
” he said.
Caught up in my description of the struggle with the growling, befanged thing that had
stolen my purse
, by the way—“And is anyone here doing anything about
that?
Hah!”—I was taken by surprise when Lopez suddenly slipped his arms through the bars of my cage and slid his hands around my waist.
He drew me as close to his body as the cell bars would allow, rested his forehead against mine, and closed his eyes. “You saw a stranger being attacked on the street at night, and you jumped in to help him?”
“Well, um . . .” It felt so good to be touched by him. So good to feel the warmth of his skin and the soft tickle of his breath on my cheek. I had tried—with varying degrees of failure—not to think about this since he had broken up with me. And it was the last thing I had expected to experience tonight, given the circumstances.
“Esther, that’s . . . dangerous,” he said quietly.
I tried to snuggle closer, frustrated by the iron bars between us. “More dangerous for Darius than for me, as it turned out.”
“Listen to me,” he said, his hands moving from my waist to my forearms, stroking my flesh. “I’m very serious about this. When you see something happening—something like that, I mean—it’s much better to call nine-one-one than to go diving in like that. Do you understand?”
“Nine-one-one!” I pulled away just enough to meet his gaze.
“Yes.” He touched my cheek. “I know you want to help people, but—”
“No, I mean, that’s why I ran out to Lexington Avenue and, er, bothered people. Darius was severely injured, and that creature had stolen my phone, which was in my purse. I was trying to find a phone to call for help!”
His expression cleared. “So that’s why you were wandering in traffic on Lexington?”
“Yes,” I said with relief, realizing it actually sounded sensible this time around, now that I was explaining it with relative calm to someone who didn’t think I was a violent crack whore. “No one would stop to help me. Because of the way I’m dressed, of course—but I was so freaked out by what had just happened and so focused on getting help for this guy, I totally forgot about what I look like tonight. So I got desperate. And then the first person I stopped was so abusive, it kind of sent me over the edge. The next driver who stopped wanted me to, um, gratify him—”