“Mark Hutton,” he replied, shaking Grant’s hand with a crushing firmness before waving him into the foyer where Sigrid was already pacing.
“What did you do?” she asked. “Cat and Bess called me collect two hours ago from a pay phone in Brooklyn Central Holding. I made Grant come out here so you can tell him exactly what you did. They wouldn’t tell me, but it’s obviously your fault. You have to get them out.”
“How did you get in here?” he asked. “Did you shoot my doorman?”
“I told him I was your ex-wife and that Grant was my attorney,” Sigrid said distractedly. “He sent me straight up. I think you need to tip him better. But don’t change the subject.”
“I’m not,” he said, yawning. “Make some coffee?” He pointed to the kitchen. “And we’ll figure out what to do. Let me put on some pants and brush my teeth. I’ll be right back.” He walked back to his bedroom and shut the door before Sigrid could protest.
When he came back out, Sigrid and Grant were sitting at his kitchen table. Hutton felt her vibrating with anger from across the room.
“It’ll be okay,” he ventured.
“I don’t think you understand how bad this is,” she said quietly.
“It’s not that big a deal,” he scoffed. “They’ll be out on Monday. The story will blow over.”
She pulled up Cat’s mug shot on her phone. “This is not a joke. You can’t make mistakes like this after thirty. It’s not cute or rebellious: it’s seen as irresponsible and unprofessional. This,” she said as she pointed to Cat’s picture, “is how you become a pariah. And I won’t let that happen to my two best friends.”
“Come on, Sigrid, they’ll be fine,” he insisted. “Everyone will forget about this next week.”
“How do I explain this to you?” Sigrid asked, her voice breaking. “This is a public shaming. It’s different for women. If you’re not married and you fuck up like this—hell, even if you are married, let’s face it, in this day and age, your husband can still just leave you with absolutely no consequences; someone else will climb right back on in a heartbeat—you’ll never be someone that somebody wants to be with. New York is so competitive, for everything. Who’s going to hire two washed-up party girls? Who’s going to take them home for Thanksgiving? Nobody. Nobody.”
The room was quiet.
“What, no response?” Sigrid asked desperately. An awkward moment passed until Hutton finally spoke, filling Sigrid and the young associate in on the details of their arrest and the protocol at Brooklyn holding. Grant finished up their discussion with professional courtesy, but an obvious distaste—almost a hatred, Hutton thought—shone through his eyes, and Hutton knew then he was an interloper: a bad-boy-bad-influence who had quite possibly ruined the lives of two perfectly nice women for his own gain. When he shook Grant’s reluctantly extended hand a second time and they walked out the door, he felt truly ashamed of himself.
Cat and Bess perched awkwardly on the edges of two metal chairs, their hands still cuffed behind them, while Grant Bonner sat across from them.
“Are you okay?” he asked immediately.
Bess looked at him sheepishly. “We’re fine, just uncomfortable. Thanks for coming.”
“I spoke with the DA,” he replied. “They aren’t pressing drug charges pending further cooperation, but your custody was deviated to Central Holding because of outstanding arrest warrants. You both got tickets for biking on the sidewalk in April. Because the fine wasn’t paid, it turned into an arrest warrant.”
“We figured that part out over the last ten hours,” Bess said. “When can you get us out of here?”
“The officer who originally arrested you both wasn’t aware that you were already cooperating with the department—he was from a different precinct. He ran your licenses and took you here. I checked with Citibank and they confirmed the payments went through last Friday, but the NYPD’s credit card processor hadn’t updated their system. We still need to get you in front of a judge and show them the bank’s confirmation before you can go home.”
“What?” Their jaws dropped open.
“Yeah,” Grant said, shaking his head and holding his palms to the sky. “This is the system. You’re in it now.”
“You can literally show it to them on your phone,” Bess pleaded. “Let me log in.”
“It doesn’t matter if you show it to a guard,” he explained. “You need to show it to a judge, and there are no judges here between 5:00 p.m. on Friday and 7:00 a.m. on Monday.”
“How much longer are we going to be here?”
“Again, the judges aren’t in chambers until Monday at 7:00 a.m.”
Bess thought she was going to burst out crying then and there. “That can’t be possible. Today is Saturday. We’re not safe in here. What if one of their henchmen decides to shank us or something?”
“You should be happy to know that nothing actually indicates this was more than a beauty company. Sure—they used Schedule I felony substances in the manufacturing of their products—but the organization appears to be pretty narrow. It wasn’t a drug front so much as a clever business plan with a healthy revenue stream. Plus, the women in your cell are two old prostitutes, a pregnant woman who stole a car, and a nineteen-year-old from Park Slope who let her dog off leash. I think you’ll be fine.”
“Do the Bedford Organics people suspect anything? To be fair to us, they did get us pretty high before we got arrested.”
“I doubt it. Someone videoed the arrest on Bedford. Bess, you were yelling ‘They’re trashing our rights,’ whatever that means; and Cat, you hissed like an animal and spit on the officer who handed you off to the clown that brought you here.”
“Matthew Lillard yells that in Hackers. It’s all I could think of,” Bess replied.
Cat was shaking her head and laughing. “I forgot about that. Verisimilitude, man. Look it up.”
“You weren’t exactly protesting in Birmingham.” He laughed, too, but nicely. “You were arrested for buying face cream with ecstasy in it.”
“Have you seen our mug shots?”
“Cat’s is pretty cute, actually,” he said, winking at Cat, who rolled her eyes. “Very defiant. Bess, yours looks like a class picture.”
“Is there any way you can get them deleted?”
“No. They’re already online.”
An officer knocked on the door and called out, “One minute.”
Cat started to panic. “Find Detective Mark Hutton and Sergeant Peter Roth. They got us into this. They have to fucking get us out of here.”
“I did,” he answered. Cat’s heart sank.
“Look,” Grant continued, “I know it’s frustrating, but you’re in holding in Brooklyn, not in Midtown South. There’s nothing anyone can or, frankly, should do until a judge releases you. This is all in your best interests. I’ll be back first thing Monday morning. You’ll be out in less than forty-eight hours, I promise.”
Two officers opened the door, barking, “Time’s up.”