Tracy was fighting hard to control her anger. “I’m not interested. Would you let me out, please?”
“Certainly, if that is what you wish.” He rose to his feet and showed her to the door. “You must understand, Miss Whitney, that if there were the slightest danger of anyone’s being caught, I would not be involved in this. I have my reputation to protect.”
“I promise you I won’t say anything about it,” Tracy said coldly.
He grinned. “There’s really nothing you could say, my dear, is there? I mean, who would believe you? I am Conrad Morgan.”
As they reached the front entrance of the store, Morgan said, “You will let me know if you change your mind, won’t you? The best time to telephone me is after six o’clock in the evening. I’ll wait for your call.”
“Don’t,” Tracy said curtly, and she walked out into the approaching night. When she reached her room, she was still trembling.
She sent the hotel’s one bellboy out for a sandwich and coffee. She did not feel like facing anyone. The meeting with Conrad Morgan had made her feel unclean. He had lumped her with all the sad, confused, and beaten criminals she had been surrounded by at the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. She was not one of them. She was Tracy Whitney, a computer expert, a decent, law-abiding citizen.
Whom no one would hire.
Tracy lay awake all night thinking about her future. She had no job, and very little money left. She made two resolutions: In the morning she would move to a cheaper place and she would find a job. Any kind of job.
The cheaper place turned out to be a dreary fourth-floor walk-up, one-room apartment on the Lower East Side. From her room, through the paper-thin walls, Tracy could hear her neighbors screaming at one another in foreign languages. The windows and doors of the small stores that lined the streets were heavily barred, and Tracy could understand why. The neighborhood seemed to be populated by drunks, prostitutes, and bag ladies.
On her way to the market to shop, Tracy was accosted three times—twice by men and once by a woman.
I can stand it. I won’t be here long, Tracy assured herself.
She went to a small employment agency a few blocks from her apartment. It was run by a Mrs. Murphy, a matronly looking, heavy-set lady. She put down Tracy’s résumé and studied her quizzically “I don’t know what you need me for. There must be a dozen companies that’d give their eyeteeth to get someone like you.”
Tracy took a deep breath. “I have a problem,” she said. She explained as Mrs. Murphy sat listening quietly, and when Tracy was finished, Mrs. Murphy said flatly, “You can forget about looking for a computer job.”
“But you said—”
“Companies are jumpy these days about computer crimes. They’re not gonna hire anybody with a record.”
“But I need a job. I—”
“There are other kinds of jobs. Have you thought about working as a saleslady?”
Tracy remembered her experience at the department store. She could not bear to go through that again. “Is there anything else?”
The woman hesitated. Tracy Whitney was obviously over-qualified for the job Mrs. Murphy had in mind. “Look,” she said. “I know this isn’t up your alley, but there’s a waitress job open at Jackson Hole. It’s a hamburger place on the Upper East Side.”
“A waitress job?”
“Yeah. If you take it, I won’t charge you any commission. I just happened to hear about it.”
Tracy sat there, debating. She had waited on tables in college. Then it had been fun. Now it was a question of surviving.
“I’ll try it,” she said.
Jackson Hole was bedlam, packed with noisy and impatient customers, and harassed, irritable fry cooks. The food was good and the prices reasonable, and the place was always jammed. The waitresses worked at a frantic pace with no time to relax, and by the end of the first day Tracy was exhausted. But she was earning money.
At noon on the second day, as Tracy was serving a table filled with salesmen, one of the men ran his hand up her skirt, and Tracy dropped a bowl of chili on his head. That was the end of the job.