She nodded, smiling to herself, lost in her memories. She’d been on the phone herself, she had, and she’d had a great little apartment uptown. Until that one lousy customer had seen the marks on the insides of her legs and bitched that he hadn’t paid to get mixed up with a junkie. Then all of a sudden she hadn’t been working the phone anymore. She’d been back to working the street.
But maybe it wouldn’t happen. Maybe Marie — no, Roxanne — maybe Roxanne wouldn’t get switched over to the phone. There was no sense worrying about it, anyway. No sense worrying about anything.
At eight o’clock, a matron came, a stocky, sour-faced woman in an unattractive uniform, and took Honey Bane away, holding her with a too-tight grip on the elbow. Honey went willingly, not worrying about anything, not caring about anything, and the matron led her to a small room where her clothes were waiting, and she changed from the prison dress back to her own clothes, and the matron turned her over to a guard to be taken up to the court.
The courtroom was up on the next floor. The guard led the way to the stairwell, and stood aside for Honey to go first up the stairs. She did so, and the guard slid his hand up her leg, beneath the skirt, grabbing her.
Her voice flat, she said, “I hope you get syphilis of the hand.”
He jerked his hand away, and growled, “You’re a tough one, huh?”
She didn’t bother to answer.
He reached up and grasped her elbow, pinching it with his fingers, saying, “Not so fast, girlie. There’s no rush.”
She allowed herself to be led up the rest of the way and into the courtroom. Then she had to wait for fifteen minutes, sitting in the front row while the judge worked with people ahead of her.
This was Judge McBee. He smiled and told jokes, and called the defendants by their first names. He could skin you, slowly, with a hot knife, but he’d smile and joke and make friendly chatter all the while. Everybody along Whore Row knew Judge McBee. They hated his guts.
She sat, not listening, not caring, in a soft and pleasant haze. After the first hard jolt and the crystal clarity of thought, she had sunk slowly into a soft cottony mist, and she would be there now for most of the day. She sat, not listening, not thinking about where she was or what was happening to her, and they had to call her name twice before she realized it was her turn before the bar of justice.
She got to her feet, and a guard walked her forward, placed her in front of the judge’s high bench. She looked up at him, the round cheerful face framed with gray-white hair, and he beamed down at her, nodding and saying, “Well, now, Honey, I thought I wasn’t going to be seeing you anymore.”
She smiled a little in return. “Me, too,” she said.
“Looks like things are a lot more serious this time,” said the judge happily. He pawed among the official documents on his desk, and the young man to his right reached over his shoulder and plucked out the particular paper he wanted. The young man was Edward McBee, the judge’s nephew, a law student up in Connecticut. He’d asked Judge McBee to let him sit in at court, behind the judge’s bench, to see the proceedings from the judge’s angle of vision.
Judge McBee now took the paper from his nephew, beaming and nodding his thanks, and slowly read the document. Finished at last, he peered at Honey Bane and said, “It says here you were found with heroin on your person, Honey. You using that stuff now?”
“Yes,” she said.
Edward McBee strained forward, his eager face inches from his uncle’s black-clothed shoulder, and stared at Honey Bane, as though trying to see Honour Mercy, lurking somewhere far beneath.
“That’s terrible stuff, Honey,” said the judge. “You want to get off that, you hear me?”
Some answer was expected of her. She felt a moment of panic, until she realized she could answer the last part of the question. Yes, she did hear him. “Yes,” she said.
“Now,” said Judge McBee, “I’m going to have you sent to Lexington. Have you heard of Lexington?”
“That’s where they have the slow cure,” she said.
“That’s right.” He beamed paternally at her, pleased with the right answer. “I’ll have you sent there, for six months. And when you come back, I want you to stay away from narcotics. Completely.” He looked down at his papers again, and smiled suddenly. “I’m going to help you, Honey,” he said. “I’m going to help you stay away from narcotics. You have also been charged with disorderly conduct, you know. Soliciting again. The last time you were here, you promised me you wouldn’t be doing that anymore.”
She hung her head, hating him. There was nothing she could say.
“When you come back, then,” he said cheerfully, “you can begin a ninety-day sentence in the city jail for disorderly conduct. That’s to begin the day you are released from Lexington.” Uncapping a silver fountain pen, he wrote hastily, and looked up once again, smiling. “I won’t be seeing you for a while, Honey,” he said. “Not for nine months. You be a good girl in Lexington, now.”
“Yes,” she said.
“And I’ll see you in nine months.”
“Yes.”
He shook his head, smiling sadly. “Yes,” he said. “I’ll see you here again in nine months. You won’t be changing, will you? All right, Honey, that’s all. Go on with the matron.”
Another hand was gripping Honey Bane’s elbow, too hard, and she let herself be taken away, through the door to the left of the judge’s bench, as Edward McBee stared after her, his forehead creased in the lines of a puzzled frown.
Nine months. She hated that bastard. In nine months, Roxanne would be God knew where. She’d have to find somebody else to hold the stuff.
Court was finished for the day, and Judge McBee sat with his nephew in his office, smoking his first cigarette of the day. “Well, Edward,” he said. “How did it look from my side of the bench?”
“Frightening,” said Edward McBee earnestly. “Sitting back in the spectator’s seats, you don’t see the expressions on their faces. That girl—”
Judge McBee raised a humorous eyebrow. “Girl?”
“The one you called Honey. Charged with using heroin.”
“Oh, yes.” Judge McBee nodded, smiling. “She’s an old friend,” he said. “In once or twice a month, for playing the prostitute. Been around for years.”
“How old is she?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Twenty-four, I suppose, maybe twenty-five.”
“She looked thirty or more.”
“They get that look,” said the judge wisely. “It’s the kind of life they lead.”
“How does a girl like that get involved in such a life?” his nephew asked him.
“A girl like what?”
The nephew blinked in embarrassment at his uncle’s amusement. “There was something about that girl—” He stopped in confusion.
“Now don’t go romanticizing a common whore,” said the judge sternly. “That’s all the girl is, a common whore.”
“But how did she get that way, that’s what I want know. How did she get that way?”
“They’re born that way,” the judge told him. “It’s simple as that. They’re born that way, and nothing can change them.” He heaved to his feet. “Now, let’s get some lunch,” he said. “I’m starving.”