The police station Tracy was taken to was in the Algiers district, on the west bank of New Orleans, a grim and foreboding building with a look of hopelessness about it. The booking room was crowded with seedy-looking characters—prostitutes, pimps, muggers, and their victims. Tracy was marched to the desk of the sergeant-on-watch.
One of her captors said, “The Whitney woman, Sarge. We caught her at the airport tryin’ to escape.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Take the cuffs off.”
The handcuffs were removed. Tracy found her voice. “It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill him. He tried to rape me and—” She could not control the hysteria in her voice.
The desk sergeant said curtly, “Are you Tracy Whitney?”
“Yes. I—”
“Lock her up.”
“No! Wait a minute,” she pleaded. “I have to call someone. I—I’m entitled to make a phone call.”
The desk sergeant grunted, “You know the routine, huh? How many times you been in the slammer, honey?”
“None. This is—”
“You get one call. Three minutes. What number do you want?”
She was so nervous that she could not remember Charles’s telephone number. She could not even recall the area code for Philadelphia. Was it two-five-one? No. That was not right. She was trembling.
“Come on. I haven’t got all night.”
Two-one-five. That was it! “Two-one-five-five-five-five-nine-three-zero-one.”
The desk sergeant dialed the number and handed the phone to Tracy. She could hear the phone ringing. And ringing. There was no answer. Charles had to be home.
The desk sergeant said, “Time’s up.” He started to take the phone from her.
“Please wait!” she cried. But she suddenly remembered that Charles shut off his phone at night so that he would not be disturbed. She listened to the hollow ringing and realized there was no way she could reach him.
The desk sergeant asked, “You through?”
Tracy looked up at him and said dully, “I’m through.”
A policeman in shirt-sleeves took Tracy into a room where she was booked and fingerprinted, then led down a corridor and locked in a holding cell, by herself.
“You’ll have a hearing in the morning,” the policeman told her. He walked away, leaving her alone.
None of this is happening, Tracy thought. This is all a terrible dream. Oh, please, God, don’t let any of this be real.
But the stinking cot in the cell was real, and the seatless toilet in the corner was real, and the bars were real.
The hours of the night dragged by endlessly. If only I could have reached Charles. She needed him now more than she had ever needed anyone in her life. I should have confided in him in the first place. If I had, none of this would have happened.
At 6:00 A.M. a bored guard brought Tracy a breakfast of tepid coffee and cold oatmeal. She could not touch it. Her stomach was in knots. At 9:00 a matron came for her.
“Time to go, sweetie.” She unlocked the cell door.
“I must make a call,” Tracy said. “It’s very—”
“Later,” the matron told her. “You don’t want to keep the judge waiting. He’s a mean son of a bitch.”
She escorted Tracy down a corridor and through a door that led into a courtroom. An elderly judge was seated on the bench. His head and hands kept moving in small, quick jerks. In front of him stood the district attorney, Ed Topper, a slight man in his forties, with crinkly salt-and-pepper hair cut en brosse, and cold, black eyes.
Tracy was led to a seat, and a moment later the bailiff called out, “People against Tracy Whitney,” and Tracy found herself moving toward the bench. The judge was scanning a sheet of paper in front of him, his head bobbing up and down.
Now. Now was Tracy’s moment to explain to someone in authority the truth about what had happened. She pressed her hands together to keep them from trembling. “Your Honor, it wasn’t murder. I shot him, but it was an accident. I only meant to frighten him. He tried to rape me and—”
The district attorney interrupted. “Your Honor, I see no point in wasting the court’s time. This woman broke into Mr. Romano’s home, armed with a thirty-two-caliber revolver, stole a Renoir painting worth half a million dollars, and when Mr. Romano caught her in the act, she shot him in cold blood and left him for dead.”