“It’s daytime, so it would be too heavy to have both an eye and a lip,” Bess replied. “Your milkmaid braid is kind of…wide-eyed Amish virgin, so I went with a more space-age eye with the ultramarine liquid liner to balance it out. I think your more classic Brooklyn party girl would go with a dark lipstick, but I wanted you to look a little more sophisticated than that. And with Mary, it’s all about the hair,” she continued. “Mary, you have St. Vincent hair. It’s amazing. If you die today, I want you to know that I’m going to shave your head and make a wig out of your hair. From your dead body. Okay? So, anyway, we left the skin basically bare, but I added a little bit of lip stain to give your face some depth.”
“I’m so Williamsburg,” said Mary.
“I bet I can get three days out of this braid,” Patricia noted.
Roth finally looked up from his phone. “Holy shit,” he muttered. “I wouldn’t have recognized either of you.”
Bess checked the clock on her phone and interrupted before Cat could get another rant in. She really didn’t see the point in trying to argue with a middle-aged, white, male New York City police sergeant. “Hey, it’s already three,” she pointed out. “What time are we leaving?”
“We’ll all head over around four,” said Roth. “You ladies go ahead and take the subway, get a coffee as you walk over, do whatever you would normally do. Act like you’re going out tonight.”
“Do we need to wear wires or anything?” Cat had become so focused on the makeovers that she’d forgotten to ask about the logistics.
Mary and Patricia laughed. “No,” Patricia said. “We don’t really do that anymore. The whole place is under surveillance already. They can record a sneeze from across the street. You just have to act like we work with you and try to have the same sort of conversation you had last time. Then we’ll all get arrested.”
Mary gave Cat’s arm a reassuring pat. “It’s easy.”
“Okay, so this is the part where you teach me. I’ve never, ever been arrested.” Roth looked shocked. “Do I…protest, act scared, what?”
“All the officers will be from the DEA. You won’t know any of them. It will be legitimately scary—I doubt you’ll need to act scared,” Patricia replied. “The hardest part is pretending you don’t know it’s coming. Say no a lot. Like, ‘Nonononononono, I can’t be arrested. Where’s my lawyer?’ Things you would actually say.”
“Okay. I can do that. You’re saying it’s like Sleep No More, but with martial law instead of public sex. Then what happens?”
“You’ll get brought into the precinct, and you’ll get your photo taken, fingerprinted, the whole thing. You’ll be held for an hour, max. We’ll have an attorney get to you quickly. Charges will never be filed, but it is an arrest.”
Cat was confused. “Wait…what? I’m actually going to be arrested arrested?” Her tone grew serious. “I’m not a citizen. My status here is contingent upon my employment. I have a morals clause. Cooper is a conservative company. I can’t risk getting in trouble, not legally.”
“I can see why that would concern you,” Roth said, a twinkle in his eye. “But at this point you really don’t have much of a choice. You purchased and possessed large quantities of—even, perhaps, considered distributing?—some very illegal drugs. It’s in your best interest to cooperate with us.”
“That’s such bullshit!” Cat snapped back. “I had that bag for ten minutes until I gave it to Hutton.”
Roth smiled. “The fact that you turned the products over to law enforcement is something we are absolutely willing to consider. I don’t see a reason to file charges or disrupt your status here in any way, provided, of course, that you help out today. I’d also like to remind you that we still don’t know how Hillary Whitney became connected to Bedford Organics—the one person in her life connected to them, that we know of, is you.”
I should have known better than to play games with policemen, Cat thought, suddenly feeling extremely bitter. All they want is to dominate. If they can’t do that, they don’t even stay in the same room as you. She glanced over at Hutton, who stared at the floor and refused to make eye contact. He didn’t have any power here; even Cat could see that.
“Why do I need to be arrested arrested, anyway? Aren’t I bait?” she pointed out, trying to pivot the basis of the entire argument. “Can’t we just say, ‘Hey, the jig is up’? It’s not as though I’m trying to be a repeat customer.”
“We’re talking about a potentially significant amount of money,” Roth said, his voice firm. “This company is an LLC. The shares could be owned by anyone. It’ll be a series of shells within shells within shells. We don’t know who these people are. I assure you that it’s very much in your interest to suffer the potential embarrassment of detainment—it’s a tremendously small price to pay for your own safety.”
“So,” Cat argued back, “you don’t protect your informants at all.”
“We do protect our informants,” Roth replied, “by making sure no one ever knows they’re an informant. And I mean no one—not my wife, not your employer, not anyone. It’s really that simple. You have two choices today: Participate, and be arrested without charges. Don’t participate, and I’ll arrest you and charge you right here and now with possession and intent to distribute. It’s up to you.”
Cat felt tears well up automatically, which she resented almost as much as she resented Roth. The sergeant was so aggressive, so dominant, so satisfied; it broke her. This man has no idea what he’s asking me to do, she thought. A fat tear streamed down her cheek. Bess looked horrified. Hutton whispered something to Roth.
“Just…calm down for a minute. I’ll call the FBI about your visa. Let me see what they can do,” Roth said before he turned around and began muttering into his cellphone.
“I know you cared about Hillary Whitney,” Hutton said to Cat quietly. “These are the people who were responsible for her death. You have a chance to do something about that.” He wiped the tears off her face with his thumb, a gesture both intimate and kind. Bess, Mary, and Patricia all looked away, momentarily embarrassed by the obvious closeness between detective and informant.
Cat shook her head. “No, of course not. I want to help; I…I hadn’t realized what I could lose.”
Bess waved her hands furiously, her face suddenly alight.
“Hello…what am I, chopped liver?”
All four police officers turned to look at her. “I don’t give a shit about being arrested. I already work at RAGE, I’m a real human being, and the Bedford Organics people probably already know who I am because I run our Photogram feed—and most importantly, Cooper won’t fire both of us, Cat. Honestly. We do so much work, but Margot is so particular about who to hire—they can’t fire us because they can’t replace us. I know we were going to pretend these two were freelancers or whatever—”
“Were going to? You still are,” said Patricia. “It’s obviously better to have you both in there, but we need an undercover officer in with you.”
“Okay…fine,” Bess agreed. “But I’m going, too.”
“The FBI says you’re fine to get arrested. They’ll take care of it, no matter what,” said Roth, putting his phone down on the table.
Cat took a hard look at Mary and Patricia. “I think we need to go with freelance stylists from Los Angeles,” she said to Hutton. “They have that ‘too many accessories’ look. Can we invent credits for them somehow on IMDB?”
Mary nodded. “The FBI can add our names to anything that’s online. Old photo shoots, celebrity profiles, literally anything.”