Criminal

to Grady after being attacked by a rat. The creature chewed off most of his nose before the guards managed to beat it off with a broom.
    The most surprising part of that story was not that there was a broom at the jail, but that a guard had noticed something was amiss. Security was lax. Most of the men were already inebriated when they showed up for work. Escapes were routine, a problem compounded by the fact that the secretarial pool was adjacent to the cells. Amanda had heard horror stories from some of the typists about rapists and murderers running past their desks on their way out the front doors.
    “Ma’am,” a patrolman said, tipping his hat to Amanda as she walked up the stairs. He took a deep breath of fresh air as he headed toward the street. Amanda imagined she’d do the same thing when she left this nasty place. The smell was almost as bad as the projects.
    She smiled at Larry Pearse, who ran the property room from behind a caged door. He gave her a wink as he sipped from his flask. Amanda waited until she was on the stairs to look at her watch. It wasn’t yet ten in the morning. Half the jail was probably lit.
    The whir of Selectrics got louder as Amanda headed toward the typing pool. This had been her dream job, but now she couldn’t imagine sitting behind a desk all day. Nor could she imagine working for Bubba Keller. He was lecherous and bombastic, two things he didn’t bother to hide from Amanda, despite being close friends with Duke.
    She often wondered what would happen if she told her father that Keller had grabbed her breast on more than one occasion, or about the time he’d pushed her up against the wall and whispered filthy things in her ear. Amanda wanted to think that Duke would be angry. That he would end the friendship. That he would pop Keller in the nose. The possibility that he might not do any of these things was likely what kept her from telling him.
    True to form, she could hear Keller’s raised voice over the hum of typewriters. His office faced the typing pool, which was large and open. Sixty women sat behind rows of desks, diligently typing, pretending that they couldn’t hear what was going on a few yards away. Holly Scott, Keller’s secretary, stood in his open doorway. She was wise not to go in. Keller’s face was bright red. He waved his arms in the air, then swooped down his hand and pushed all the papers onto the floor.
    “You goddamn do that!” he yelled. Holly mumbled something back, and he picked up his telephone and threw it against the wall. The plaster cracked, sending down a rain of white powder. “Clean up this mess!” Keller ordered, grabbing his hat and stomping out of his office. He stopped when he saw Amanda. “What the hell are you doing here?”
    The lie came without much thought. “Butch Bonnie asked me to check—”
    “I don’t care,” he interrupted. “Just don’t be here when I get back.”
    Amanda watched him push his way toward the exit. He was the very definition of a bull in a china shop. Desks were shoved out of the way. Stacks of paper were knocked onto the floor. There were sixty women seated at sixty desks, working on sixty typewriters and trying their darndest not to be singled out.
    And then finally, there was an audible, collective sigh of relief as Keller left the room. The typewriters were momentarily silenced. Someone screamed back in the cells.
    Holly said, “Good night, Irene.”
    Titters of laughter went around the room. The typewriters whirred back into motion. Holly waved Amanda back into Keller’s office.
    “Goodness,” Amanda said. “What was that about?”
    Holly bent over, picking up a broken bottle of Old Grand-Dad bourbon. “I just lost it.”
    Amanda knelt down to help her pick up the scattered papers. “Lost it how?”
    “We’re all trying to get Reggie’s new handbook typed for the printer.” Holly tossed the broken glass into the trashcan. “We’re on deadline. The brass is breathing down our necks. Breathing down Keller’s.”
    “And?”
    “And so Keller thinks that’s the perfect time to call me into his office and tell me to show him my tits.”
    Amanda sighed. She was familiar with the request. It was usually followed by a disturbing laugh and a groping hand. “And?”
    “And, I told him I was going to file a complaint against him.”
    Amanda picked up the telephone. The plastic was cracked, but it still had a dial tone. “Would you really do it?”
    “Probably not,” Holly