Seconds later the door flew open and a man burst into the room, gun drawn. A badge was pinned to the breast pocket of his gray business suit. His jacket was unbuttoned, revealing a brown-leather shoulder holster hugging his armpit beneath it.
Sheri stood naked in the center of the room holding her pantyhose in her hand. Now that the cops were in the room there was no point in hurrying into her clothes. But the john already had his pants on and was reaching for his shirt.
"Finish getting dressed, mister," the cop said putting his gun back into its holster. "Then step outside, I want to have a talk with you." Then he turned to Sheri and stared for a long silent minute at her naked body. "You're under arrest, honey," he said. "Get your clothes on. Officer Dresden will stay with you until you're ready to go."
The cop stepped back to the open door and called, "Connie, come in here, please." A tall slender woman stepped into the doorway. She wore the blue skirt, white blouse, and blue tie that were the uniform of a New York City policewoman. "Stay with Lady Godiva until she's dressed," the male cop said. "Then we can get her downtown." He closed the door behind him as he stepped out. The john followed him a moment later, his open shoelaces trailing along behind him as he walked.
Officer Connie Dresden looked quickly at Sheri and then turned away, embarrassed by the prostitute's nakedness. From the pocket of her crisp white blouse she drew a small white card on which several paragraphs were neatly typed. She began to read it aloud.
"It is my duty to inform you that you are under arrest. You have the right to…" As Connie Dresden read the familiar phrases, her nervousness left her. It felt good to be doing, the job that she was trained for.
Sheri eased her still-naked body to a sitting position on the edge of the bed as the policewoman read her her rights. She paid no attention to the words. They had been read to her before. Many times. And they had been explained to her by the Legal Aid lawyers that the court had always appointed for her when she had been busted in the past. She knew the ropes. The john wouldn't testify and the case against her would have to be dismissed. She would be on the street again by the following morning.
The little clock in her head was already beginning to calculate how long it would be before she could get a fix. Tomorrow morning, she thought. It won't be too bad. I've held out longer than that before.
She took a long look at the policewoman who was still reciting her speech about constitutional rights in a mechanical monotone. Sheri had never seen this one before. She looked like anything but a cop. With those titties and with that ass, Sheri thought, she could be a hooker herself.
Connie Dresden was tall and slender but her breasts and her behind were full and round and made her look more like a bathing suit model than a police officer. Her hair was dark and pulled back severely into a tight bun at the back of her neck. But Sheri was sure, from the thickness of the bun, that when free it would hang to her mid-back. The dark hair framed her lightly freckled heart-shaped face, making it seem as white as flour, by comparison. Her almond-shaped eyes were bright green in color and sparkled with the hopeful idealism of youth. Although she was twenty-four, she didn't look more than eighteen or nineteen.
Still naked, Sheri rose from her sitting position on the bed and walked around Connie, looking at her from all sides like a butcher appraising a side of beef. "You know, you're not a bad-looking little piece of ass yourself," she said brazenly. "What's a good-looking chick like you doing in those fuzz duds?"
Connie's eyes tightened to slits and her lips trembled in anger. Who does this pig think she is, talking to me like that? she thought. She felt like slapping her, but restrained herself.
"Just get your clothes on," she said. "And keep your opinions to yourself. This is no game, this is an arrest. And I'm not your friend. I'm a cop. You're the criminal and I'm the cop. And I'm bringing you in to be sent to jail where people like you belong. Now get dressed."
She turned her face, averting her gaze from the sight of the naked prostitute who had begun to pull her pantyhose over her shapely legs. Connie fought to regain control over her emotions. At the Police Academy she had been warned repeatedly about letting a prisoner upset her. Lots of them try it, she had been told, hoping to provoke an incident which might lead to a charge of police brutality, thus becoming the basis for a deal. Well, this one won't be making any deals at my expense, she thought.
Connie had only been on the Police Force for a short time and this was her first "prost" bust. But she was conscientious and had read the Penal Law. Fifteen days was all that the girl would get, but maybe it would be enough, to turn her from a life of filth and degradation. And if fifteen days weren't enough to do the trick, there would be other arrests. And longer sentences.
If animals like this can't be rehabilitated, the policewoman thought, at least they can be put safely away in a place where they can't soil and corrupt others, Connie Dresden had lived in New York City all her life and knew about the scum and the vermin that infested the city and corrupted the people who lived in it.
She had studied the corruption in her police science classes at City College and she had learned how to fight it at the Police Academy. She had learned about the vices – illicit gambling, illicit drugs and, worst of all, illicit sex – that were the causes of most of the city's crime. She had been graduated from the Police Academy six months before, determined to do her share in fighting those vices.
So far, there hadn't been much of an opportunity to do anything more than tag along after the detectives and watch them wage war on the forces of evil. They usually brought her along whenever they were expecting to have female prisoners. Connie had done little more than search them and guard them after one of the detectives had made the arrest. But she hoped to become a detective herself. One day! Then she would really be in a position to fight crime and filth, to help rid the city of some of the scum which poisoned it.
Connie had grown up in a cramped and dirty apartment just a few blocks away. Although her old neighborhood lay in the shadow of Times Square, the busiest intersection in the world, she had spent much of her childhood watching the numbers runners, the dope pushers, and the whores conducting their foul business openly in the street. Connie had learned to hate them at an early age – them and all that they stood for.
"Scum", her mother had called them. "The scum of the earth."
Connie's mother had become pregnant at the age of sixteen, having been dragged into an empty basement and raped by three of the neighborhood toughs. She had no way of knowing which of them was the father of her daughter and she didn't care. At the trial of her three rapists, the defense lawyer had convinced the jury, along with everybody else in the courtroom, that the sixteen-year-old girl had enticed the "youths" into the basement and seduced them.
When the jury brought in its verdict of "not guilty", Connie's mother had walked from the courtroom shamed and humiliated. When she told her parents, later that same day, that she was leaving to live by herself, they hadn't objected. If anything, they had been relieved. They had no desire to bear the shame of the sinful acts by which their daughter had defiled herself. They never knew their granddaughter.
Two months before Connie was born, her mother found a dingy little apartment on the corner of Forty-Third Street and Ninth Avenue. Ever since then it had been her private hell, punishment for the sin of her adolescence. And Connie she regarded as living proof of that sin.
Connie's indoctrination began as soon as she was old enough to understand. "All men are criminals," her mother had said bitterly. "Rutting beasts capable of no thought other than the satisfaction of their own perverted desires. But you can't blame them for this any more than you can blame a pig for eating garbage."