The lawyer stops and takes a breath. A beautiful smile comes over his face and he says, “Your bail will be processed here momentarily. There was a little hiccup, but things are all squared away. I just didn’t want to have you sitting in that cell a moment longer than you had to.”
“One cell for another,” I say. “Great.”
“I’m going to go make sure everything is taken care of, and when I come back, I want you to walk with me. There are some people I think you should talk to before we go too much farther,” Mr. Witherton says.
“Where are my doting parents?” I ask.
“I don’t keep track of my clients’ whereabouts twenty-four hours a day!” he comes back, almost yelling.
I blink a few times. “Mr. Witherton, who are you talking to right now?”
“I’m very sorry,” he says. “It’s just stuff like this makes me so mad!”
Okay, this guy’s in on it. I don’t know what part he played, but from the bizarre way he’s acting, he’s got to be in this deeper than just knowing about it.
“Mr. Witherton?” I ask.
“Yes?” he returns.
He’s not inspiring a whole lot of confidence right now.
“Two things: My bail and my parents,” I answer. “Which one do we want to discuss first?”
“I’ll go take care of your bail here,” he says. “Just wait in here. I had to pull some strings to get you some privacy while I’m taking care of getting you out of here.”
My suspicions that my parents are going to try to pin this all on me somehow are only growing. I mean, the man ended his last three sentences with the same word. Who trusts a person like that?
“The faster you go, the faster I get out of here,” I tell him and he finally leaves the room.
I lean up against the wall as there’s nowhere to sit other than the floor. Given that this room smells unmistakably of urine, I’d like to avoid that if possible.
Okay, so the lawyer’s in on this to some degree or another, and with as nervous as he seems to be around me, I’d say he knows that something pretty bad is coming my way. Maybe I’m just paranoid from being in the joint, but the world’s so much different than I remember it.
For one thing, I’m making jokes to myself while standing alone in a concrete box.
Johnson B. Witherton VI, Esq. comes back into the room after a few minutes, and I’m wondering why he didn’t just get this taken care of already. Still, I’m happy enough to get out that I’m not going to start asking too many real questions until I’m outside this building.
“I’m going to take you to see some people now,” Johnson says.
Seriously, did this guy tell my parents to just blame everything on me and he’s feeling that guilty about it or is he just not much of a people person?
“Fine,” I tell him. “Can we go?”
“Of course,” he says and goes to the door of the room. “Did you notice?” he asks.
“What’s that?” I respond.
“They agreed to leave the door to this room unlocked while we’re using it,” he says. “The chief owed me a favor, and I felt that you should be the beneficiary of it!”
“Would you mind giving me a demonstration and then maybe showing me some more doors that you can open?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says and finally opens the door.
We walk back to the room with the actual exit and we leave the building. I haven’t even been in here a day, but I could swear the air actually does smell a little sweeter than I remember.
Maybe it’s finally being out of the urine room my parents’ favorite lawyer was so proud of getting for me.
“My car is the platinum Lexus on the third row,” Johnson says.
“You mean the silver one?” I ask. I know my parents’ crowd well enough to know that question is going to be going through his mind until he sells the car. Maybe it’s a mean thing to do, but I really just don’t like this guy.
“Actually, I brought in a friend who specializes in color palettes and he confirmed that the color was clearly platinum,” Johnson retorts.
“Ooh,” I mock, holding up my hands.
I’m in a bit of a mood.
We’re no less than twenty feet away from the car when I start to make out the silhouettes of people in the backseat, obstructed by the car’s tinted windows. I breathe in slowly through my nose and take as close to an equal amount of time exhaling through my mouth.
Either the people in the back of the car are my parents or they’re hitmen. I’m not sure which I’d be less enthusiastic about seeing.
I open the passenger’s door and take a quick glance to see who’s in there waiting for me.
“You’d think with all your money you’d be able to afford better disguises,” I tell my parents.
It’s bad. Dad’s wearing a bald cap with tufts of fuzzy hair-like matter in a horseshoe pattern along the sides. The edges of the bald cap aren’t quite blended properly, so it looks like my dad has a farmer’s tan under his hair, but nowhere else.
My mom is in a white pantsuit, wearing Elton John glasses and a voluminous and very curly redhead wig. Both of them are holding handkerchiefs to their mouths.
“What are you doing?” I ask, getting in the car.
“We can’t be too careful,” mom says. “The way they just went after you like that—we don’t know how long it’s going to be before they come after us.”
“Dear,” my dad chimes in, “you’ve got to come with us.”
“I’m not putting on a disguise like that,” I tell them. “I’d rather be back in lockup.”
“Darling, she’s speaking like an ordinary criminal,” mom says to dad. She doesn’t lower her voice or shield her mouth. She says it just as loud and clear as everything else she’s said so far.
“Would you prefer I was a bad one like the two of you?” I ask. “At least ordinary criminals seem to have some kind of sense about them. You two—”
“We’re leaving the country,” mom interrupts. “You know the way the US treats its wealthy. We simply cannot weather the PR.”
“On the bright side, they’d probably give you a job in government after you served your week and a half in the Palm Springs Luxury Resort and Detention Center,” I taunt.
“You know, that doesn’t sound so bad,” mom says, turning toward dad.
“She’s mocking us, dear,” dad explains.
“What is your lawyer doing?” I ask.
Johnson B. Witherton VI, Esq. is standing in front of the car, pacing back and forth talking to no one.
“He’s used to a finer quality institution,” dad says. “Coming to a common jail is a bit of a step outside all our comfort zones.”
“Where are you going?” I ask. “Which country, I mean.”
“I don’t think we should discuss this until we’re already on the plane,” mom says, turning toward dad again.
I’m gritting my teeth. “Unless it’s a private plane,” I start, “it would be good for me to know before we walk up to the counter at the—”