Lilly's Law

Lilly’s call to her bailiff hushed the crowd, and Pete Walker snapped to attention, pulling the handcuffs from his belt. He studied them for a second since, in his nine months as bailiff, this was the first time they’d ever been off his belt. When he was satisfied that he remembered how to use them, he marched straight to Mike, each and every one of his footsteps clicking in sharp military precision on the floor. “You have the right to remain silent,” he said on approach.

“Lilly, you’ve got to be kidding,” Mike exclaimed, seeming genuinely surprised. “You’re not really going to do this to me, are you?”

“This is Friday, Mr. Collier. Consider yourself a guest of the city jail until Monday morning at nine, at which time we’ll resume this conversation. And maybe by then you’ll be persuaded to see it my way. Not that you really have a choice, because it is my way in my courtroom—such as it is. And that fine…let’s say we make it an even two thousand just on account of—” Lilly removed her glasses and looked directly at him “—I can.” Then she put them back on.

“Honest to God, I really think you’d do it, wouldn’t you?” Mike exclaimed. “You’d really throw me in jail. Over parking tickets. Come on, Lilly, give me a break here.”

“Please turn around and hold your hands behind your back, Mr. Collier,” Pete instructed, his voice on the verge of quivering, since this was, after all, the first time he’d ever arrested anyone. “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney and if you can’t afford one…” Mike, at six foot three inches, towered over Pete by a head and a half as he submitted to the man’s cuffs. And Pete, whose hands were shaking, fumbled with the latch until the cuffs slipped from his grip and hit the floor. A congenial-looking seventyish woman, decked in floral capri pants and a white straw hat, picked up the cuffs and winked when she handed them back to Pete.

“You do know that I own the newspaper, don’t you?” Mike asked, spinning back around to face Lilly. His hands still behind him, he inched forward to allow Pete sufficient room to continue the protracted cuffing ordeal.

“Boy, do I know,” she snapped. “And I certainly hope that’s not intended as a threat, because if it is…if you intend to use the power of the press to—”

“A news item, Your Honor,” Mike interrupted, a thin edge of anger finally sounding in his voice. “Not a threat.”

It never was a threat, she recalled. Her last year of law school, she had been at the top of her class with some great career prospects lining up for her future. Mike was working on his postgraduate degree at the time, teaching at the university and overseeing the campus paper. And she’d made that ominous mistake of kicking their relationship up a few notches. A whopper, in retrospect, and she really had liked him back then. Maybe even a little more than like…and after one great week of their relationship kicking into even newer and better notches every single day, he’d gone and written an article proclaiming a campus plagiarism epidemic. Names were named. Hers was at the top of the list—Mike’s list.

Sure, she had purchased a plagiarized paper, but she was writing a thesis on how easy the process was, with an emphasis on the legal implications. But Mike Collier, superjournalist in his own bent estimation, hadn’t asked her any questions about it. He’d simply snooped for his scoop in her research notes because, of all the dumb things, she’d trusted him! Meaning she didn’t bother hiding her research from him before they adjourned to the boudoir, silly Lilly. And that on the day they’d achieved the most unbelievable notch ever. Of course, Mike’s discovery netted him a front page splash, not only in the school paper, but the real newspaper as well. The result—she was expelled from law school. One tidy, speedy, out the door and don’t come back.

But she did go back, a full semester later, after a whole string of appeals and some utterly pitiful begging. To his credit, Mike did make an appearance on her behalf, thankfully leaving out the part that he’d done his snooping on his way to the kitchen to satisfy some after-sex munchies while she was still in bed basking in the afterglow. No matter, because the damage to her reputation was already done, leaving her in the bottom slot of her class ranking instead of the top, where she’d been before Mike. Years to build a reputation, minutes to destroy it—Lilly was placed on probation until she graduated, constantly the object of watchful, if not distrustful, speculation by the powers that were. Not an auspicious ending to her school days, even though she was absolved of the charges. But after that, the jobs weren’t forthcoming. The ones already offered backed out. No more pick and choose. Instead, she was forced to take whatever she could get, and pickings were slim. All because of Mike Collier’s little snoop after sex.

Consequentially, Lilly was uniquely aware of what one of Mike’s “news items” could do, and had done to her. And she was also aware of how he procured those news items. “Monday morning, Mr. Collier. Have a nice weekend.”

Lilly banged her gavel and Pete led Mike out of the room. At the edge of the door though, Mike turned back around to face her briefly and he…

Lilly blinked. Was that another wink?

2

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 a raise.” Half an hour later, after Roger hit the Send button and his first-ever front-page piece was winging its way through cyberspace to the newspaper office two blocks away, he finally took Mike down the hall to the public phone. “Use your call wisely. We’re pretty strict on jail regulations around here and you might not get another one.” He laughed, heading into the break room, leaving Mike uncuffed and unattended. “And don’t escape,” he called back. “Care for some coffee?”

The number Mike meant to call was burned into his brain, even though he’d never used it before. As he waited for the first ring, he wondered why he was even bothering. She’d hang up when she heard his voice. Or tack another couple of days on to his sentence for some kind of trumped-up harassment. But he owed her this one. Make the call, then be done with it, and her.

Yeah, like he could ever be done with Lilly Malloy.

“Hello,” a voice said from the other end.

“Lilly?” Mike asked.

“You’ve reached the voice mail of Judge Lillianne Malloy. Please leave your name, phone number and a brief message, and I’ll return the call as soon as I can. Have a nice day.” Beep.

“Have a nice day like hell.…Look, Lilly. I need to see you. I can’t go into it on the phone…you know where I am, where I’ll be until Monday morning. And it’s important. Hell, this was a stupid idea. I should have called my attorney instead of you. Lilly, I know that the situation between us isn’t the best, but—”

Beep.

“Hell.”

“Arms behind your back, Mike,” Roger said, setting the coffee on the desk, then taking his handcuffs off his belt. “Sorry, but it’s the rules. You like it black, no sugar, right?”

“You’re not going to make me strip again, are you?” Mike growled, turning around and gritting his teeth when the cuffs went on. They didn’t hurt, but he sure didn’t like the thought of what they signified. Tried, convicted, sentenced. Prisoner. As a journalist, going to jail on principle such as not revealing a source or being in the wrong place at the wrong time to get the right story, now, that was honorable. It made a statement about ethics and principles and high moral integrity. But being nabbed for parking in the wrong place? The only statement coming from that was dud, flop, washout, bomb, a big bust. “No sugar, but some whiskey would be good. In fact, skip the coffee. Just bring on the whiskey.”

“Sure wish I could Mike, but…”

“I know. You’ve got rules.” When he’d learned he was going to Lilly’s court, he’d hoped that after all this time she was over the bad history between them. Bad, bad history! Forgive and forget, or just forget. Yeah, and wasn’t that just being pointless and optimistic after what he’d done to her? Thank God parking tickets weren’t a hanging offense.

First time with Lilly he’d been canned over the mix-up, and sure, he’d deserved it. One slight error in judgment and his job was out the door along with his postgrad degree. But she did have that damned bought-and-paid-for paper sitting right out on her desk for anybody to see who cared to look.

Second time…well, he shook his head over that one. What were the odds she’d turn up on the receiving end of another of his investigations? She’d been innocent that time, too. In fact, he’d never even connected her to that story—probably because she wasn’t connected, not directly, anyway. But her law firm epitomized that notoriously fictitious Dewey, Cheatham and Howe. They’d done some book cooking, trust-fund skimming, creative billing, so on and so on. And even though Lilly was only a contract employee, not a real member of the firm—meaning she’d never gotten near the trusts, never did any billing, hardly ever got out of the research library—she’d been swept into the sting along with everybody else. Swept, cuffed and locked up tight.

And he’d never forget the look on her face that day when they shoved her, handcuffed and horrified, through the lobby, in front of friends and co-workers. On her way out of the building she still hadn’t known who was responsible for the bust, but as the police hustled her past him and their eyes met briefly, she’d realized who’d done that to her. That look of betrayal in her eyes had punched him in the gut, and the heart, because he knew she’d trusted him—she’d put everything else behind her and trusted him.

If ever there was a defining moment in a life, that was his.

Lilly had been released hours later, thanks to one of the partners, who’d mustered enough integrity to unimplicate her. Afterward, Mike had sent her flowers, written a dozen contrite e-apologies and printed the damned retraction she’d demanded in place of suing him. Granted, it ran on page seven, when the picture of her being arrested was a first-page classic. But apparently that make-good hadn’t done the trick. Problem was, he wasn’t sure even sending him up the river now, if only for a weekend, would be enough to satisfy her yet. Lilly was clearly holding on to some surplus rage after all this time. And she deserved to. But he’d sure been hoping it wouldn’t trickle into this little matter. “So should I drop my drawers again, Mike?” he asked, his voice on the verge of acceptance, since there was no other choice but to accept his fate for the next three days. If there was one thing he knew for sure about Lilly, she wouldn’t give in. Once she’d made up her mind, nothing changed it.