A Body to die for

Barney Cutler?”
    Doy. “No, I figured you arrested him for his banana wedgie.”
    “Watson was arrested for attempting to break into the Western Athletic Club at five o’clock this morning. He made a hell of a racket, and he broke a window. We picked him up when we got a disturbing-the-peace call. And you’re saying you were there?”
    I had to shift in the chair. The money was digging into my abdomen. “Why are you handling this?” I asked. “Unless homicide in Brooklyn Heights has to keep busy with residential disturbances.”
    “When my prime suspect starts smashing windows at the murder site, you better believe I’m going to get involved.”
    She was pissed off now. Enough to scare me a little. “I want to talk to Jack,” I said.
    She slowly nodded and put out her cigarette. Before she answered, she lit another. I imagined those tiny glass particles tearing her throat. My lungs hurt just watching. She said, “His bail hearing will be tomorrow.”
    “I still want to talk to him today.”
    She picked up the telephone and turned her back to me. I watched smoke rise above her head. The air got thick with it. I followed its movements as it danced upward, brushing the ceiling above her desk. It seemed like a darker yellow than the rest of the paint job. For the first time, cigarettes seemed genuinely disgusting to me. I’d been a smoker for twelve years. I swallowed my small epiphany and tried to listen in on Falcone’s conversation. Before I pricked up my ears, she was hanging up. “Okay, Mallory,” she said. “Jack has been screaming for you since he was brought in. You’d think he’d want a lawyer, wouldn’t you? Any idea why he’s so hot to talk to you?”
    The money—I guess he thinks he can buy his freedom or something. “Just lucky I guess.”
    “Something tells me that the word lucky has nothing to do with you.” Little did she know. Falcone stood. Her skirt waist dug into her belly. It looked painful. I owned two skirts myself that dug into my belly. But they were years old. With a couple weeks of intense dieting... I stopped the thought in midformation. The last thing I needed was more anxiety about my weight. I stood, too, happy to notice my jeans were loose around the gut. I still wore 501s, had yet to cross into the land of Easy Fit.
    I followed Falcone through a maze of offices and cubicles toward the back of the building. “Two blocks that way,” she said, pointing toward Atlantic Avenue. “They’re waiting for you.” I knew where the Detention Center was. I’d walked past it many times. Smack in the middle of Atlantic Avenue’s Little Persia (where to go to find Arab grocers and Koran reading rooms), the center loomed largely between a curio shop and a spice store. Falcone turned to go, but first said, “I’m not amused by your client, Mallory. I think he killed Barney Cutler, and I’m going to make the charges stick. If I were you, I’d cut my losses. Today.”
    I smiled brightly and walked away from Falcone into the bright sunshine. Who the fuck does she think she is, I wondered. I don’t respond meekly to threats. The two-block walk to the center was uneventful. I passed no tempting shops, and no one I imagined fucking.
    The Detention Center was a squat gray building, from the outside resembling a giant Skinner box. I found the main entrance and told the guard at the front desk my name. He led me past a locked steel door. Another armed guard waited for me. She leaned against a locked door of bulletproof glass.
    “I’m here to see Jack Watson.”
    The female guard asked the other, “Should I put them in a room?” A room with a two-way glass, no doubt.
    The chubby guy guard glanced at me to see if I knew what she meant. Then he said, “Just let her into his cell.” He left me alone with the female guard. She had a big, slightly cockeyed bun in her hair. She tilted her head funny. Around her hips, she wore a .45 pistol. I was impressed by its size. The weight on her hip made her walk funny, too.
    She led me down a long row of jail cells. They had no beds-—just toilets and benches. Most were vacant. I tried not to stare inside the cells as I passed, not wanting to inspire a jailbreak. Jack was at the end of the row. He sat on his wooden bench with his face in his tanned hands. When he heard the click of the door unlatching, he looked up. His cheeks were streaked with tears, his eyes red and puffy. The muscles in his jaw twitched.
    “Here I am,” I