Clean Sweep

by Jane Heller

  “Sorry, Mr. Harrington,” said Detective Corsini, who appeared not the least bit sorry. “We can’t transport criminals without handcuffs. Departmental procedure.”

  “I don’t care about departmental procedure. Alison Koff is not a criminal.”

  “Alison Koff, you are under arrest for possession of cocaine with intent to sell,” Detective Corsini said, ignoring Cullie. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used for or against you in court. You have the right to—”

  “You’re charging me with cocaine possession?” I said, starting to sob. “With intent to sell?”

  “You have the right to stop answering questions at any time,” he continued, ignoring me, too. “You have the right to have an attorney present during questioning. If you can’t afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

  “Why are you arresting her?” Cullie yelled. “She wasn’t dealing cocaine and she didn’t kill Melanie Moloney.”

  “We gotta disagree with you, fella,” said Detective Michaels. “We’ve had our eye on your girlfriend for a while now. We think she did it. Now that we’ve got her on the cocaine charge, she can cool her heels in the Women’s Correctional Facility in Niantic while we nail down the murder charge.”

  “But why would you think I killed Melanie?” I asked. “There are so many people who hated her.”

  “You had the opportunity, seeing as you were her maid and all,” said Detective Michaels. “What we couldn’t figure out was the motive. Now we’ve got that too.”

  “What motive?” I cried. “I had no reason to kill Melanie. I was broke. She paid me well. Why would I murder my meal ticket?”

  “Sure you were broke. Coke’s an expensive habit,” Detective Corsini said, holding up the bag of cocaine. “We happen to think you’re a heavy user. We think you went to work all coked up one day and Miss Moloney caught you with the stuff. She threatened to fire you, have you arrested. You panicked. You went back to Bluefish Cove the night of the twentieth, after Mr. Harrington here brought you home. You walked in on Miss Moloney as she sat in her office. She had your stash of coke right there on her desk. You snuck up on her from behind, smacked her on the back of the head, and killed her. When you went to grab your coke, the bag broke and the stuff spilled out onto the desk. You thought you cleaned it all up, but some of it stayed there. You left the house and returned the next morning for work. Later that afternoon, you called 911 and reported the murder. Open and shut, huh?”

  Detective Michaels smiled at his partner, then said, “Like I said before, we had a hunch it was you, Miss Koff. But we couldn’t prove it. Then we got the tip about the coke in your refrigerator. It was the coke that tied you to the crime scene.”

  “But you aren’t even sure the white powder on Melanie’s desk was cocaine,” I cried. “You aren’t even sure the white powder in my refrigerator is cocaine. Don’t you have to wait for the lab reports before you can accuse me of murder?”

  “Nah. We know what we’re doin’. The lab reports will only confirm what we already know.”

  “I’d like to know more about this tip you got,” Cullie said. “Who was the informant? And how do you know it wasn’t the real murderer who planted the coke in Alison’s refrigerator?”

  “We just know, that’s all,” said Corsini. “This case is open and shut, I’m tellin’ ya.”

  “What about the murder weapon?” I asked. “What am I supposed to have hit Melanie over the head with? My vacuum cleaner? My dust mop? My Windex bottle?”

  “Always making jokes, aren’t you, Miss Koff?” said Detective Michaels. “You even made jokes at the crime scene, right in front of the corpse. That’s what made me suspicious of you from the very beginning. Most people don’t make jokes when somebody they know has just been murdered.”

  He looked at Detective Corsini, who nodded in agreement.

  Great, I thought. Sandy always said my jokes would get me into trouble someday, but I never imagined he meant this kind of trouble.

  “Let’s go,” Detective Michaels said, leading me out of the kitchen by my right arm, which was pulled behind my back and fastened to my left arm by the handcuffs, which, if they’d been sterling silver instead of cheap steel, would have looked just like the ones Sandy ordered from Tiffany’s 1988 Christmas catalog.

  “Where do you think you’re taking her?” Cullie barked at both cops.

  “Down to the station,” Corsini replied. “Your girlfriend here is gonna spend the night in a cozy little jail cell.”

  “Don’t worry, Sonny,” Cullie said, looking much more frantic than he sounded. “You won’t have to spend a second in jail. They’ll let you out on bail.”

  “Not tonight,” said Detective Michaels. “Judges don’t set bail at this time of night. And even if they did, your girlfriend’s bail would be so high she’d have a tough time comin’ up with the money. Possession with intent to sell is big-time.”

  I was so dizzy I nearly fainted. “Help me, Cullie. Help me,” I cried. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I was led out of the house in handcuffs, into the waiting camera lenses of America’s tabloid media.

  “Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry,” Cullie called out to me as he stood helplessly on my front lawn, watching me being stuffed into the back seat of the police car. “I’m going to get you some help.”

  “How?” I wailed.

  “I’m going over to your mother’s,” he said.

  “Oh, gee. I feel much better now,” I muttered.

  “I’m going to ask her to call that lawyer she had dinner with tonight,” he said.

  “Louis Obermeyer?”

  “Yeah, that’s the guy. We’ll get you out of this, Sonny. I promise. I love you.”

  “I love you too,” I sobbed as the police car pulled away.

  When we arrived at the station, I was taken into Detective Corsini’s office and freed from my handcuffs. Then I was booked, fingerprinted, and photographed. A few minutes later, a middle-aged policewoman named Officer Nancy Dancy instructed me to follow her into the ladies’ room, where she told me to take off my clothes and raise my arms. I’d done everything else I’d been asked to do—without complaint—but when it came to Officer Dancy’s request, I demurred.

  “Do I have to?” was the way I put it.

  “Yeah. Off with the clothes—now.”

  “But it’s so cold in here,” I said. I was terrified. I’d heard about so-called “strip searches” but never thought I’d be the searchee.

  “Let’s go,” said Officer Dancy, clearly losing patience with me.

  “All right,” I said, fighting back tears.

  First I pulled my sweater over my head. Then I took off my T-shirt. Then I stepped out of my boots. Then I peeled off my blue jeans, then my socks. When I was standing in front of Officer Dancy wearing nothing but my bra and panties, I demurred again. “I can keep these on, right?” I asked with as much respect for Officer Dancy’s authority as I could manifest, while trying to establish a sort of slumber-party, just-us-girls rapport with her.

  “No. Take ’em off—now,” she grumbled, then added, “you better get over the modesty bit, honey. Once you get to the state facility at Niantic, the women there will be on you like flies on shit.”

  I froze. “How do you mean?” I asked tentatively.

  “It’s guaranteed—especially if you’re a first timer. There’ll be thirty other women on your cell block. If they don’t get you in the day room, they’ll get you in the showers. And if they don’t get you, the guards will.”

  I didn’t have to ask what “get you” meant, but I was not about to be intimidated by Officer Dancy or anybody else. I was Alison Waxman Koff, mistress of Maplebark Manor. I was innocent of all crimes of which I’d been accused. I would go free. It was The American Way.

  I took off my underwear and stood stark naked and perfectly still (well, almost perfectly still) while Officer Dancy checked me for drugs and weapons. I say “almost” because when she fel
t under my arms, in the center of my armpits, I had an attack of the giggles.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, trying to squelch my laughter. “I’m ticklish there. Always have been. You too?”

  Officer Dancy ignored my question, reached into the left pocket of her uniform, and pulled out a pair of rubber gloves.

  “What are those for?” I gulped.

  “They booked you on possession of cocaine, right? I gotta check your body cavity for drugs.”

  My body cavity? I was horrified.

  “Bend over,” said Officer Dancy.

  Quick! A joke! A joke! Don’t let this situation traumatize you. Crack yourself up so you won’t feel the pain and humiliation of what’s about to happen to you. Pretend you’re at your gynecologist’s office having a checkup. Quick! A joke!

  “Hey, Officer Dancy,” I said as I bent over and allowed her to insert her gloved fingers into my body cavity. “An eighty-year-old woman goes to the gynecologist and finds out, much to her great surprise, that she’s pregnant. She immediately calls her husband on the telephone. ‘You old coot,’ she says. ‘You got me pregnant.’ The husband pauses for a second, then asks, ‘Who’s this?’”

  Officer Dancy was not amused. “All finished,” she said. “You can get dressed now.”

  Officer Dancy brought me back to Detective Corsini’s office, where I was interrogated yet again—about both the cocaine that had been seized from my refrigerator and the cocaine that had been detected on Melanie’s desk. I refused to comment on anything I was asked, and wondered when Cullie would show up with my lawyer.

  At midnight, I stopped wondering. Just as I was about to be taken down to the basement, where the female jail cells were located and where, Detective Corsini had explained, I would be spending the night, Louis Obermeyer, the Alan Dershowitz of Grassy Glen Country Club, strode into the station trailed by Cullie and my mother, both of whom looked weak with worry.

  “Thank you so much for coming,” I said to Mr. Obermeyer as I pumped his hand enthusiastically. I don’t remember ever being so glad to see anyone. I’d only met him once, at his daughter Betsy’s Bat Mitzvah when I was thirteen, but I recognized him instantly from his picture, which was frequently in The New York Times business section. He was tall, had a big gut which he made no effort to conceal, and wore his kinky white hair in what Sandy used to call a “Jewish Afro.” His opponents in the courtroom often referred to him as Louis Ogremeyer, because of his cantankerous, curmudgeonly manner. But I didn’t care how crabby he was, as long as he got me out of jail. “Sorry you had to come out so late, Mr. Obermeyer,” I offered. “I sure do appreciate it.”

  “Damn right, it’s late. I’m tired and I want to go home,” he said, then belched.

  I embraced Cullie and air-kissed my mother. No, I hadn’t forgotten our set-to earlier in the evening, but I had more important things on my mind than her tangled love life.

  “Where’s the arresting officer?” Mr. Obermeyer barked.

  “Right here,” Detective Corsini replied, then ran his fingers through his hair and buffed his nails against his pant leg.

  “What in the hell makes you think you can search this woman’s house for drugs without a search and seizure warrant?”

  “Who says we searched her house?” Corsini said smugly.

  “According to this young man here,” Mr. Obermeyer said, nodding at Cullie, “you and your partner conducted an unlawful search and seizure.”

  “That’s right. They did,” I chimed in.

  “Shut up, Alison. Don’t tell them anything,” my lawyer snapped at me. “Keep your damn mouth shut until I tell you otherwise.”

  Okay, so his jail-side manner was nothing to write home about.

  “We didn’t do a search,” Corsini said. “Didn’t have to. Miss Koff let us into her house voluntarily. She also opened her refrigerator door voluntarily. The cocaine was in plain view. We didn’t have to search at all.”

  “Boloney,” said Mr. Obermeyer. “She didn’t open the refrigerator door voluntarily. She was deceived into opening it.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “Detective Corsini pretended he wanted a glass of milk so he could—”

  “I thought I told you to shut up, Alison,” Mr. Obermeyer snapped again.

  “Sorry,” I whispered.

  “You detectives arrested my client falsely because you had no warrant, and you violated her reasonable expectation of privacy because you deceived her into opening that refrigerator door,” he continued.

  “You got your opinion of how it went, and we got ours,” Corsini said. He was as cocky as my lawyer was cranky. “Now, if there’s nothin’ else, we’re gonna take your client down to the basement to beddy-bye.”

  I looked at Mr. Obermeyer with pleading eyes. “You’re going to let them take me? They can do that? I have to spend the night in jail?”

  “I’m afraid so,” he said. “It’s too late to do anything about bail. But you’re a tough cookie, your boyfriend tells me. You’ll be just fine down there. You’ll see.”

  “But Louis,” my mother said, tugging on his arm. “Surely, there’s something you can do about this.”

  “Yes, Doris. There’s something I can do. I can go home, get a decent night’s sleep, and be wide awake when I represent her in court tomorrow morning. Now if you people will excuse me…”

  Louis Obermeyer strode out of the police station. A few minutes later, I said a tearful goodbye to Cullie and my mother, who appeared to have become fast friends. As they walked out together, she hooked her arm through his.

  Out of every evil comes good, my father the mattress king always said. In this case, the evil was that I was in jail for cocaine possession and suspicion of murder. The good was that my Jewish mother seemed to approve of my gentile boyfriend. I hoped they’d be a comfort to each other when I was serving my time at the state correctional facility.

  Officer Dancy escorted me down to the basement and showed me to my cell. It wasn’t a suite at the Helmsley Palace, but at least I didn’t have to share it with anyone else. It had a bed, a blanket, a Bible, and its own little toilet—without a seat, I was quick to notice.

  “Is there another cell available?” I asked Officer Dancy. “The toilet in this one is missing its seat.”

  “They’re all like that,” she sniffed, not believing my ignorance. “We gotta make sure you don’t kill yourself.”

  “With my toilet seat?”

  “People hang themselves with it,” she explained. Then, sensing my skepticism, she added, “People do strange things when they’re incarcerated.”

  “Yes, I bet they do. What’s that for?” I asked, pointing to the camera in the corner of the cell. I was hoping she’d tell me that I was on “Candid Camera” and that the whole business about my being arrested and thrown in jail was just part of the gag.

  “It’s a suicide camera,” she said. “Like I told you, we gotta watch the inmates. Can’t afford to lose one of ya, huh?” She smiled for the first time since we met. I was surprised to see that she wore braces on her teeth. Had she decided to have orthodontia in middle age because she wanted to improve her appearance or because the sharp edges of braces offered her a secret weapon against recalcitrant prisoners?

  “I understand about your not wanting us to commit suicide,” I said. “But what about our privacy? We can’t even go to the bathroom without that camera recording the action.”

  “You got it. That’s why most people would rather stay out of jail than deal drugs or commit murder. Jail’s no picnic.”

  “No, I suppose not.” I never thought it would be a picnic. More to the point, I never thought I’d have to think about it. “Speaking of picnics, do they serve meals here? Or should I ask my family to bring in some take-out?”

  Officer Dancy looked at me as if she wished she’d taken another career path. “You’ll get breakfast in the morning,” she muttered. “Nighty night.”

  She walked out of my cell, locked me in, and turned to go back upstairs.
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  “Good night,” I called after her. “Thanks for…well, for whatever.”

  God, I was really in jail. I stared at my little cot with its thread-bare, scratchy green wool blanket and felt a catch in my throat. I flashed back to my luxurious master bedroom at Maplebark Manor—its sleigh bed and matching night tables, its chintz drapes and matching upholstered club chairs, its random-width cherry wood floor, its needlepoint area rug, its linen-pleated swing lamps.

  Stop it, Alison. Just stop it right now, I scolded myself as tears streamed down my cheeks. It won’t do any good to think about your “abundant life” at Maplebark Manor. Even if you hadn’t been arrested and sent to jail, you’d have been forced to give up that life anyway. Sandy is gone. Your marriage is over. The bank is going to foreclose on your house unless Janet Claiborne finds a buyer for it. The woman from Second Hand Rose is going to run a tag sale and sell all your worldly goods to complete strangers. What’s left?

  I considered the question, then sat gingerly on the bed. I wondered if the inmate who had the cell before me had crab lice and if I’d catch it. I wondered if the camera in the corner of the cell was shooting me on my good side. I wondered if Detectives Corsini and Michaels were watching my every move on a big-screen TV monitor. I wondered if they would get bored and change the channel.

  I lay down on the bed and pulled the blanket over me. I clutched the Bible to my chest and prayed.

  Please, God, I whispered. Please get me out of here. Or please help Mr. Obermeyer get me out of here. And when you get me out of here, God, please help me find out who planted that cocaine in my refrigerator, who killed Melanie Moloney, and who wants me to take the rap for it. Please give Cullie and me a real chance to be together when this is all over, God. He’s a special person, don’t you think? Oh, and one more thing, God. Please find a buyer for my house—someone who doesn’t mind that Maplebark Manor has no family room. Thanks a million. Amen.