27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
GRETCHEN
L ittle known fact: the jail cells at the Wellingham police station are in the basement.
From the outside, the precinct looks pretty similar to a house. But they renovated it a few years back and turned the basement into a space with three jail cells. They even hosted an open house to show the renovated space to the community.
Because the Wellingham chief is his friend, my dad went to that open house. I remember him telling me and Mom that it was pretty exciting to see what they did over there.
I can assure you my father never anticipated that his child would be taking up residence in one of those cells.
But by Saturday morning, not only am I locked up in a cell, I’m the only one left.
Last night was mayhem.
I can only remember pieces of it. Everything happened all at once. The cops came in, a tornado of activity went down, an ambulance arrived, more squad cars came, and ten of us were carted off to jail for processing.
I can only share the highlights that I actually saw.
After Vienna opened the door essentially naked and invited the police to enter, my father walked in with four other officer s: the Wellingham chief and two of his guys, and – to add insult to injury – my ex-boyfriend, Keith.
Cherry cut the music, and the party girls actually booed. I got down from the pole and walked over to the officers, yes, in platform glow heels and not much more than underwear.
“Gretchen?!” my father cried.
Cried.
He could not believe his eyes.
Keith – Keith, of all fucking people! – started questioning Vienna. “Do you have ID?” he asked.
Vienna is not very bright, I learned. She wasn’t 100% sure that this wasn’t still part of some stripper act. She replied, “Do you have ID, Officer?”
“I'm asking you a question, ma’am,” he clarified, eyeballing me.
Then Vienna ran both hands down his chest and said, “Ooh, yeah. Call me ma’am,” as her palms landed on his penis . I could not believe my eyes.
“Nope,” Keith said. “This is not happening.” He turned her around and cuffed her, and Vienna, the fucking moron , smiled like she was into it!
Meanwhile, Sweden tried to come for her. “Vie, stop it !” she screamed. “I think these are actual –”
Her sentence was cut short by her ass tumbling to the ground like a house of cards.
She clutched her ankle. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she howled.
Tears sprung to her eyes. “I definitely just broke my foot,” she seethed.
Three of her friends crouched down around her.
One of the officers radioed an ambulance.
B ig Mike, Max, and the two other strippers made moves to leave, but, no, that wasn’t happening. The Wellingham cops began questioning them. Pretty soon, Max was being handcuffed and led outside. Big Mike tried to stop the cop, resulting in his arrest.
Cherry brought the Wellingham chief over to the locker bank and tried to answer his questions.
He asked for a building permit, proof of inspection from the health department, a whole litany of things we did not know where to find, if they even existed.
He pointed out that the lockers were blocking the fire exit.
Eventually, he cuffed Cherry, too, explaining that he needed to bring her in for more questioning.
Many of the girls attending the party were released to leave.
One, who was drunk and topless, yelled at Keith for ‘putting his hands on Vienna’ and ended up in cuffs as well.
It all happened around us, as if me and my father were stuck in a standoff in the eye of a hurricane. He couldn’t say anything, couldn’t do the job he had been sent in there to do. He could only look at me with disgust and shame, and worse, disappointment.
An ambulance that ironically came from the fire department was on the scene moments later, and that was when my father turned around, walked over to Keith, who was questioning someone else, whispered something in his ear, put two sets of cuffs in his hand, and left.
Then, Keith approached me and, shaking his head, began to recite my Miranda rights.
I pushed him. “Don’t touch me,” I said.
But he did. He spun me around, handcuffed me, and added resisting arrest to my list of violations.
Other stuff happened, but it was all too much to register.
Here is what I know:
The girls were split between two cells. The guys were in the third cell.
I did not get to make a phone call. Everyone else did.
There was a warrant out for Joyce Cooke’s arrest. I almost didn’t realize they meant Arrow when I overheard this piece of information.
Bail was set at $500 per person. The arraignments would take place on Monday.
We were fingerprinted. Our pictures were snapped.
Our phones, keys, and money were taken away from us, and we were each given a receipt for our things.
The list of charges was endless: no liquor license, potential exploitation of sex workers/no adult-entertainment license, violations of building codes/zoning laws, Board of Health violations, fire code violations, tax regulations, reckless endangerment, disorderly conduct, noise and nuisance violations, and for me and one other girl, resisting arrest was also on the list.
People were brought in for questioning in a different room, one at a time. Not me, though. No one asked me anything.
I think it’s possible I had a panic attack, because after I got in the police car, I went mute. I could not speak to anyone. The shock was more real than anything I’ve ever felt, but at the same time, I was disconnected from it all, as if I was having an out-of-body experience.
At some point, I fell asleep on the blue bench in the jail cell.
But this morning, I woke up to find I was the only one left .
My voice came back, but I’ve been sitting here for the past ten minutes, listening to the silence.
I hear a door open upstairs.
“Hello?” I call out.
An officer who I do not recognize comes to my cell. “What do you need?”
“Is my dad here? Chief Andrews, from Eastport?”
“Don’t think so. Let me check.” He uses a phone to call someone and ask.
“He said he’ll be in at nine.”
“What time is it?”
“Just after seven.”
“Okay,” I say.
I wait. There’s very little else you can do in jail.
I replay the events over in my mind – the ones I can remember – and little details emerge, like the look on Keith’s face when he saw me, which was an odd combination of sad, smug, and surprised.
I think about my interview for Eastport Elementary, the fact that I got fingerprinted last night, but not in the way I would have preferred, and I wonder if I just threw my entire life plan out the window by ending up here.
I think about Arrow, about Kit and Jenny, and about what will happen to all of them given this new series of unfortunate events.
And of course, I think about Brady, wondering if he’ll be disgusted with me.
Wondering why he hasn’t come for me yet.
I breathe with intention, trying desperately not to panic.
The officer has taken up residence at a desk on the other side of the bars I'm locked behind, and I ask him to turn around so that I can use the toilet. When I’m done, I wash my hands in t he small, metal sink, lie flat on my back on the bench seat, and stare at a speck on the ceiling.
Until my dad arrives.
I hear his footsteps. He greets the guard and then dismisses him. “I need to speak to my daughter alone,” he says. The guard heads up the stairs and shuts the door behind him.
My father pulls up a chair outside my cell. He sits down, rests his elbows on his knees, laces his fingers together, rests his forehead on his hands.
And begins to cry.
I have never seen my father cry before.
It is the most gut-wrenching experience of my life. Without words, I can see that I have broken him. Hurt him beyond measure. Gravely disappointed him. His shoulders heave as the tears fall from his eyes and onto the tile floor.
My own eyes fill with release, an understanding that yes, this is horrible, but it happened, and my dad showed up. He came back for me. He wouldn’t be crying if he didn’t still love me.
I fucked everything up, and I’m sorry.
I try to say the words aloud, but it comes out as a gasp, because my tears have become sobs. He looks up. He wipes his eyes. He stands up, grabs a few tissues from a box on the small, steel desk nearby, and silently offers one to me.
I stand, approach him at the bars, and gratefully accept his offering.
Our eyes meet.
He shakes his head and sits down in the chair again.
I return to the benc h.
“Brady came to bail you out,” he says.
“He did?” I hiccup.
“He asked for me specifically,” he continues.
“I didn’t call him, though,” I say, confused.
“His friend did. Mike.”
I nod.
“He told me everything.”
My insides clench. “What do you mean?”
My father sighs and remains quiet for a moment. Finally, he speaks again. “Gretchen, you have been lying to your mother and I all summer.”
I look down at the floor, wiping the fresh tears from my eyes.
“Mommy is beside herself.”
His words stab me.
“She doesn’t understand any of this.”
I say nothing.
“I’ll wait, Gretchen. It’s Saturday, and I have nowhere to go. But neither do you. Not until you tell me your side of the story.”
I inhale. Blow my nose. Wipe my tears.
And tell him everything.
I start with David Krumholtz. Then, Brady moving in next door.
Jenna helping me get the job at Cosmo. I tell him about Arrow, about Brady working for the Skeeve, about the parties getting more and more wild once Arrow was gone.
I tell him I did not know that Cosmo was an illegal establishment.
I thought maybe the stripping side of it might have been shady, but the pole side seemed legit to me.
He asks me when I’ve ever had a legit job that paid all in cash, and I shrug and tell h im he has a point.
I explain that I was going to quit, I was just waiting for Arrow to get back.
I tell him me and Brady just want to move forward and start the next chapter of our lives together.
I tell him that I’m sorry.
“Why didn’t you ask us for help? After you lost your job at the Diamond Excelsior?”
“I already owed you guys money.”
“So?”
“I was embarrassed. I didn’t want you thinking I couldn’t handle my own life.”
He gestures at my current living situation. “ This is you handling your life?”
“I’m just doing my best, Dad.” I sigh. “And I’m sorry, but you’ve always set the standards pretty high. I didn’t want to disappoint you.”
“I can be a little overprotective, I’ll give you that. But you just told me that your boyfriend is a stripper.”
“ Was a stripper. And you said Brady told you everything!”
“He must have left that part out.”
“Whatever. He only did it a few times. And it didn’t bother me, which should be all that matters anyway.”
“As your father, I think I’m entitled to have an opinion on that.”
“I don’t know. Are you? This is my life.”
“It’s my responsibility to raise a good person, to turn a good human out into the world.”
“Am I not a good human, Dad? Have I really turned out that bad ? Do you mean to tell me that you’ve never lied, or done something slightly out of character, in an act of desperation?”
“Not like this,” he says.
Something dawns on me. “You’re doing it right now! Didn’t you just tell me that Brady bailed me out of jail hours ago ?”
“Yes.”
“So why am I still here?” I ask.
“Because I wanted to talk to you.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “So you kept me in jail for longer than necessary so that you could talk to me? Does that not seem like an act of desperation?”
“Don’t, Gretchen. Do not use that tone with me.”
I stand down, realizing that I am, in fact, still locked up in a jail cell at his hand. “Fine,” I mumble. “Can I ask you a question, though? Because this is the one part that doesn’t make sense to me.”
“Go ahead.”
“How did this all happen?”
“What do you mean?”
“All of it, Dad. How did you find out about Cosmo?”
“It wasn’t me, Gretchen.”
“Huh?”
“It was Keith.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“Apparently, Keith’s fiancée had her bachelorette party at your establishment, and she said she could tell something was amiss. So he started digging around. Staked out the place a few times.”
“Keith is engaged? ”
“Yeah. He’s getting married in a few weeks.”
“So the bachelorette party was recently?”
He nods. “Not long ago, yes. But anyway, he said that one night he was watching and several young girls came outside the warehouse throwing up. And he saw a big group of guys go inside. He assumed they were adult entertainment, and looked for licensed adult entertainment providers locally and came up empty handed. So he knew something illegal was going on. He tipped me off, and I got in touch with Wellingham. We planned the bust together.”
“That’s so weird,” I say, thinking. “I’ve never had an unhappy bride, except –”
Oh my God.
Miranda.
“Dad, what’s the bride’s name?”
“What?”
“Keith’s wife? Fiancée? Is her name Miranda?”
“In fact it is. I could never forget that name, you know. Because of Miranda rights.”
That fucking bitch.