Hell's Kitchen by Jeffery Deaver Page A

concerned that she looked nice, always ironing her dresses and blouses and skirts. But here, in the Women’s Detention Center in downtown Manhattan, where they let you wear street clothes—minus belts and laces, of course—Ettie Washington had had no clothes.
    When they’d brought her from the hospital all she had on was her pale blue robe with dots on it, open up the back. No buttons, just ties. She was dreadfully embarrassed. Finally one of the guards had found her a simple dress, a prison shift. Blue. Washed a million times. She hated it.
    “Hey, Mother, you hear me? You feeling okay?”
    A large black form hovered over her. A hand stroked her forehead. “She feel hot. Mebbe got a fever.”
    “God gonna watch over that woman,” came another voice from the far side of the detention center.
    “She be okay. You be okay, Mother.” The large woman, in her forties, shrank down on her knees next to Ettie, who squinted until she could see the woman clearly.
    “How’s yo arm?”
    “It hurts,” Ettie responded. “I broke it.”
    “That quite a cast.” The brown eyes took in John Pellam’s signature.
    “What’s your name?” Ettie asked her, struggling to sit up.
    “No, no, Mother, you stay lying down. I’m Hatake Imaham, Mother.”
    “I’m Ettie Washington.”
    “We know.”
    Ettie tried again to sit. She felt helpless, weaker than she already was, on her back.
    “No, no, no, Mother, you stay there. Don’t get up. They brung you in like a sacka flour. Them white fuckers. Dropped you down.”
    There were two dozen cots, bolted to the floor. The mattresses were an inch thick and hard as dirt. She might as well have been lying on the floor.
    Ettie had a vague memory of the cops moving her here from the hospital room. She’d been exhausted and doped up. They used a paddy wagon. There was nothing to hold onto and it seemed to her that the driver had taken turns fast—on purpose. Twice she’d fallen off the slick plastic bench and often she banged her broken arm so badly it brought tears to her eyes.
    “I’m tired,” she said to Hatake and looked past the huge woman to the other occupants of the cell. The detention center was a single large room, barred and painted beige. Like many Hell’s Kitchen residents Ettie Washington knew something about holding cells. She knew that most of these women would be in here for pissy crimes, who-cares crimes. Shoplifting, prostitution, assault, fraud. (Shoplifting was okay because it helped you feed your family. If you were a prostitute—Ettie hated the term “ho”—it was because youcouldn’t get a job doing decent work for decent pay; besides at least you were working and not on the dole. Assault—well, whaling on your husband’s girlfriend? What’s wrong with that? Ettie’d done it herself once or twice. And as for ripping off the welfare system—oh, please. Trees ripe for the picking. . . .)
    Ettie had a taste for some wine. Wanted some badly. She’d snuck a hundred dollars into her cast but it didn’t look like anybody here was connected enough to get her a bottle. Why, these’re just girls, here, most of ’em babies.
    Hatake Imaham stroked Ettie’s head once more.
    “You lie right there, Mother. You be still and don’t you worry ’bout nothing. I’ma look out for you. I’ma get you what you need.”
    Hatake was a huge woman with cornrows and dangling, beaded African hair—exactly the way Elizabeth had worn it the day she left New York City. Ettie noticed that the holes in Hatake’s ear lobes were huge and she wondered about the size of the earrings that had stretched the skin so much. She wondered if Elizabeth wore jewelry like that. Probably. The girl had an ostentatious side to her.
    “I’ve gotta make a phone call,” Ettie said.
    “They let you but not now.” The woman touched her good arm, squeezed it gently.
    “Some son of a bitch took away my pills,” Ettie complained. “One of the guards. I need ’em back.”
    Hatake