Insiders

‘What?’ she asked. He must be joking. ‘Go where?’

Tom looked away from her, unable to meet her eyes. ‘To be transported,’ he said. ‘To go …’

‘To go to jail?’ she asked, and heard her voice rising. After the indictment she’d been out on bail before the desk sergeant could call the press and tip them off to her presence. ‘Ridiculous,’ she said, with more bravado than she felt, but the guard came at her relentlessly and when he reached her he pulled out handcuffs. Jennifer almost fainted. ‘No,’ she said, and it came out almost as a moan.

‘Surely handcuffs aren’t necessary …’ Tom began.

‘It’s procedure,’ the marshal said, and it was clear that there was no negotiating. He snapped the cuffs on Jennifer’s wrists, then had to stop and adjust them again and again because her wrists were so small. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go. We have transport waiting.’

‘We’re going to have to go out there,’ Tom told her. ‘There will be a lot of photographers and journalists.’ He paused. ‘Look, this is only a momentary setback,’ he said. ‘You’ll be there overnight. We’ll appeal or we’ll get a mistrial. Don’t worry about this.’

‘Let’s go,’ the marshal said again and took her, not gently, by the arm.

‘Um, could she fix herself for a moment?’ Tom asked.

Jennifer, dazed and confused, didn’t know what he was talking about, but Jane, one of the other attorneys, took out a comb and tissue and actually fussed with Jennifer’s face as if she were an actor about to go before the cameras. As she was being preened, Tom stood very close to her and she felt something drop into her pocket.

‘Call me sometime,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘Look undaunted,’ Tom continued as he stepped back, while she was marshaled out to face the exploding lights and equally unsettling questions. ‘Are you sorry now?’ a woman’s voice yelled.

‘What will you do in prison?’ she heard someone else shout.

‘Jenny, look over here!’ a husky voice intoned.

‘Jenny!’ echoed behind her.

‘Jenny! Jenny, here!’ was being chanted all around her.

Now she realized why people photographed for the newspapers always looked guilty. She, too, had to hang her head down to protect herself from being blinded by the flashbulbs and strobes. The marshal had been joined by several court officers who were pushing the media out of the way. Jennifer realized that she didn’t know if Tom was still with her or not, but when they walked through the double doors and she found herself at a loading dock, Tom was right behind her, though blessedly the wolf pack was stopped in their tracks.

But right now, the idea of prison gave Jennifer another roll of nausea. She tried to quiet her fears with the confidence that she had cut quite a deal with the firm. With Tom in charge of her appeal, and Howard McBane, senior partner of the white shoe firm of Swithmore, McBane pleading it, there was – she reminded herself – essentially no risk. When all the dust was settled, Donald Michaels was going to owe her big time. She may have left the firm in cuffs, but she was certain that she would return as a senior partner.

In the days following her initial arrest, Jennifer focused her energies on practicing her testimony with Tom and deciding what to wear to court. She was charged with investment fraud, so it seemed that she should try to look as unfraudulent as possible. She chose Armani over Yamaguchi, because who could appear fraudulent in Armani? And for shoes she opted for Louboutin over Manolo Blahnik. Only a classic Gucci purse would do, and with a new hairstyle and makeup done to perfection, Jennifer was sure that she was dressed not only for success, but for an acquittal.

What she hadn’t planned on, however, was the possibility of a female judge. For all of her success, Jennifer had never learned how to deal well with other women – especially the fat, dumpy types who prefer to cloak their femininity in the dark uniformity of robes. When Jennifer saw her judge it was like seeing the ghost of Sister Mary Margaret from St Bartholomew’s school. Jennifer had looked to Tom for encouragement.

But as clever and handsome as Tom was in his own impeccably tailored suit, he had no charm over this severe incarnation of Lady Justice. The grand jury hearing was a disaster. Jennifer was indicted and brought to trial amidst a media frenzy that made national headlines. Donald had warned her that the Feds were looking for a high-profile scapegoat. They found one in Jennifer Spencer. Her story kept the tabloids churning out edition after edition, and while the humiliation of the live television coverage was considerable, what really frustrated Jennifer was the judge’s inability to see that the charges against her were bogus.

At the van Jennifer cried as Tom held her close. ‘This is only a little setback,’ he told her. ‘It’s all going to blow over. We’ll get an appeal. You’ll get another judge. We’ll get Howard McBane for the appeal. McBane is an appellate genius and every judge in the state knows him. Your case will be decided on its merits.’ Jennifer tried to remind herself ‘No guts – no glory.’ The shame of the publicity and the shock of the verdict would be a small price to pay for a senior partnership in the firm – and a lifetime of wealth with her beloved Tom. She’d taken a gamble and if this was the downside of it, the upside was well worth a few days of a little discomfort. ‘I’ll call ahead,’ Tom told her. ‘I’ll pull a few strings and make sure that you get nothing but white-glove treatment.’

Jennifer nodded as yet another horrible wave of fear, anger, and shame washed over her. She was leaving for prison! She wished Donald Michaels, the author of all this, had come to see her off, but that thought had barely registered when they moved through the doors and, as if out of nowhere, the prison transport van pulled up and two armed officers got out.

The shorter officer carried a clipboard on which various papers were signed and exchanged. Then the taller one opened the doors of the cold parking bay in which they stood. Immediately a second horde of photographers swarmed into the loading area, and in the frenzy and noise Jennifer searched their faces, hoping that Donald might be among them. He wasn’t there, but Lenny Benson was. There, in the back of the crowd, Jennifer spotted good old Lenny standing all alone. He gave her a small wave good-bye just as she was told to get into the van.

‘I guess I have to go,’ Jennifer whispered to Tom. She felt her throat close and her eyes tear up.

‘Don’t worry. This is nothing,’ Tom said, though he looked as pale as she must have. ‘It’s going to be okay, Jen. Trust me.’

‘I do,’ she told him, and only later thought about saying those two words in this awful context.

‘Come on,’ the tall officer urged.

Tom bent to kiss her, but not on the lips – only on the forehead. It made Jennifer feel like the dutiful child she had behaved as. She did trust Tom, but so far he had been wrong when he said that she wouldn’t be indicted, wouldn’t be tried, and then that she would get off. She looked up and tried to smile into his handsome face. ‘Are you sure you’re going to want to marry an ex-con?’ she asked, heroically trying to joke.

Tom stared at her intently, then took her face in his hands. ‘You are so beautiful,’ he said in the husky voice he used when they made love. ‘You know that?’ he asked her. ‘Think of this as just an ugly business trip. I’ll take care of all the legal aspects. There will be an appeal, we’ll win and it’ll all be over soon. This will be completely expunged from your record when you’re exonerated.’

‘I love it when you talk legal,’ she told him bravely, but a betraying tear slipped down one of her cheeks.

‘Come on! We got a schedule to keep,’ the tall officer nearly barked.

Tom looked down at Jennifer’s hand. There, on the fourth finger, she wore his ring. ‘Maybe you should leave the diamond with me,’ he said. ‘Just for safekeeping,’ he added with an apologetic smile.

Jennifer was stunned. She loved her ring. When he’d put it on her finger she’d planned to never take it off. But … well, of course it was silly, insane really, to wear a three-carat diamond to … She tried not to think about what she was doing, but again, like a child, she did as she was told and slipped the gorgeous emerald-cut ring from her finger and gave it back to Tom.

It was almost a relief when the van doors slid shut. As she looked out, hoping for a last glimpse of Tom, she saw nothing but photographers, and then, there in the crowd was Lenny’s stricken face. She lifted her ringless hand to wave good-bye through the wire mesh. ‘This Jennings place is like a country club,’ she reminded herself as the van lurched forward and took her away from her job, her luxurious home, her love. And her life.

2 Gwen Harding (#ulink_527a2df6-6e77-5389-92ff-3aac3e8294cd)

The law is the true embodiment

of everything that’s excellent.

It has no kind of fault or flaw,

And I, my Lords, embody the law.

W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe

Whenever Warden Gwendolyn Harding was asked to give the occasional speech to a group of young people or a women’s association, she would usually begin by telling those assembled, ‘When I was a little girl and people would ask me whether I wanted to be a nurse or a teacher or a mommy when I grew up, I’d answer that question by saying, “No, I want to be a prison warden, because then I’ll get to be all three of those things at once.”’ The story always got a laugh, and Gwen Harding liked to think that laughing helped people to relax a bit. If you can make someone laugh, aren’t you making his or her life a little better? Isn’t it giving him or her a small gift? That was why Gwen was often so disappointed with herself after a long day at Jennings. She couldn’t make the lives of the inmates much better, and she most certainly could not make them laugh. She wished that she could.

She also wished that she could make the five representatives from JRU International laugh as well. They were all solemnly seated before her in her sunny but somewhat dusty office at Jennings. This wasn’t the first time she’d met with Jerome Lardner, the bald little man with the protruding Adam’s apple, but she didn’t recognize the rest of his staff. They seemed to be interchangeable in their little suits, their little haircuts, and their little ages. They looked like they ranged between ages twenty-four to twenty-eight. Gwen Harding was used to seeing young prisoners, but her staff were mature. Even Jerome Lardner, whom Gwen uncharitably – but only mentally – referred to as ‘Baldy’, was well under forty.

‘What we are hoping to achieve,’ Lardner was saying, ‘is not just a new level of productivity, but also a new level of profitability within a correctional facility.’

‘Well,’ Gwen pointed out with a smile, ‘any profitability would be a new level, wouldn’t it? Prisons have never made any money.’

‘Certainly,’ Jerome nodded, ‘certainly none of the public prisons make money, but the privatized ones do.’

That word! Gwen decided yet again that she would not argue statistics with Jerome Lardner. Whenever she called any of his ‘facts’ into question, he was always ready with statistics. If figures didn’t lie, then liars like Jerome certainly didn’t figure out anything except how to protect their own position. ‘Inmate Output Management Specialists have been very effective in supervising the productivity of privatized facility workers,’ Baldy droned on.

Sometimes it took Gwen as long as five minutes to figure out what the JRU terminology meant. They seemed to avoid using straightforward words like ‘prison’ or ‘forced labor’ when they could use their multisyllabic buzzwords instead. It might fool the politicians, but it didn’t fool Gwen. ‘Whatever you just said, I’m sure you are right,’ Gwen responded.

At last! She got a bit of a chuckle and a few laughs from the JRU staff. That would be her little gift to them. Gwen suspected that they were probably laughing at her, not with her. She imagined that she was probably the butt of plenty of JRU jokes. But that was nothing new. She knew, for example, that at Jennings many of the women – both the inmates and the staff – referred to her as ‘The Prez’ – as in ‘The President’. This wasn’t because of her strong image or authoritative air, but rather because of her somewhat unfortunate name. When Gwen Harding first arrived at Jennings, her nameplate had been erroneously engraved to read: WARREN G. HARDING instead of WARDEN G. HARDING. She assumed that the error was an innocent one and not a purposeful attempt to make her look silly. She had had the sign redone, but she kept the original one at home and amused friends and relatives with it at dinner parties and family gatherings – back when she gave dinner parties and had a family to gather.

Gwen could laugh about the nameplate now, but it was not the most dignified way to begin her tenure as the new warden. Fortunately, over time, Gwen had noticed that fewer and fewer of the women who were sent to Jennings even knew who Warren G. Harding was. She imagined that ‘The Prez’ would eventually be replaced with a new name – probably something even more offensive. Maybe it already had. The inmate population grew, changed, and became less educated and more troubled each year. She’d been shocked only last week when Flora, the middle-aged inmate in charge of the laundry detail, apparently didn’t know the difference between a city and a country. ‘When I get out of here, I’m going to Paris,’ Flora had said.

‘France?’ Gwen had asked her.

‘There, too!’ was Flora’s reply.