CHAPTER 1
Visiting Hours
"Square Jane, you wanna li'l action on this? It's from Colorado," whispered Zeela Matta, a zaftig Haitian woman in her early forties. Her kind eyes and soft smile exuded an air of confidence and congenitally.
"Ki sa se bon, pomee-sha," Zeela continued in her thick accent as she extended her arm, offering a half-smoked joint to Lulu Norris.
"No thanks, I just had some Thai stick with my Chinese buffet," Lulu muttered sarcastically, her green eyes sparkled despite her depressive tone.
"Oh, Square Jane, you gettin' funny," Zeela mused on in her broken Haitian Creole accent.
"In here, anything sounds funny," Lulu said as she looked past the cold concrete walls of what she dubbed the "Grey Bar Hotel."
Lulu was longing to get back to her seemingly normal life. She was beginning to lose all faith in her mouthpiece that had sworn six ways to Sunday on his gray crocodile Armani attaché that he would waltz through the door at exactly the right moment to save her ass. Lulu, wearing a neon-tangerine cotton jumper certainly didn't miss the mornings and the hours spent obsessing over which respectable suit to wear. The orange jumpsuit played against Lulu's long, thick, auburn hair and fair complexion as she sat in the elevated salon chair.
"You ain't a fish no mo', but you definitely still fresh meat in here; ain't she sha?" Zeela asked, eyeing Lulu up and down, holding a pair of pink and silver thinning shears in her large right hand and the marijuana cigarette in the other, motioning for Lulu to grab it.
Zeela had a comfortable and carefree manner about herself. In the short amount of time Lulu had known her, she had grown to admire and respect her honest ways.
Sharing memories of her family back home in Haiti, Zeela's stories always began with the family gathered around a pot of vegetable stew, or legim, how Zeela referred to it, and always ended with someone having too much sugarcane spiced rum to drink. Then there were the devastatingly sad stories of the earthquake destroying everything but the clothes on her family's backs. Zeela would tell these stories a lot, because deep down she still felt a sense of remorse that at the time of the earthquake she wasn't by her family's side. Instead, she was vacationing in New Orleans with her cousin. It was her first time in the United States and a trip she had planned for what seemed like a lifetime. Zeela never felt so far away and helpless.
And it was on that trip that Zeela met an oh-so-charming Haitian man who, unbeknownst to her, was in trouble with the law, stashing an obscene amount of cocaine in her hotel room. When the cops finally found him there, they arrested both Zeela and her new love.
The past five years had been tortuous for Zeela in the Grey Bar, unable to be there for her loved ones in the critical rebuilding of their decimated homes and neighborhoods of Port-au-Prince.
Zeela's smooth, ebony skin glowed against the fluorescent lights that were hung cockeyed throughout the makeshift salon. Her hair, loosely gathered in a bun at the nape of her neck, held together only by a pencil.
"With all your book fans you need your own talk show, apparently," said Ingrid Kokono, sporting a freshly cut, ruby red bob and speaking in a wiser-than-thou, broken Russian accent.
Ingrid was known as the Kapayna, Russian for commander, a moniker she was quite fond of ever since she was brought to the facility in the early nineties.
In her former life, Ingrid had been involved in one of the largest white collar cases in Wall Street history. She easily might have been a breakout Internet mogul along the lines of Meg Whitman from eBay if it hadn't been for her greed and the mystique of illegal activities that drew her toward a life of crime.
Ingrid found solace in the underground world through her interconnected web of Muscovite nightclub contacts. It wasn't until after she earned her degree from a university in St. Petersburg that she turned to a life of automated crime. She eventually turned herself in out of fear of a KGB reprisal, and she has been running the salon efficiently ever since.
It was just then that Davio Spinoza burst through the heavy aluminum double doors. Looking like he came out of an audition for Glee, decked out in a preppy argyle sweater with a purple collared shirt underneath, neatly tucked into his khaki pants. Davio was Lulu's hired gun and longtime gal pal.
"Girl, we gonna get you out of here. There is a sample sale at Barneys next week," sang Davio as he plopped down on the salon chair next to Lulu, slowly opening his infamous Armani attaché. "We are getting you out of here this week."
"I'll settle for my thirtieth birthday," joked Lulu.
"They didn't tell me two," Ingrid interrupted, addressing Davio. "Princess, are we cutting your hair also?"
"No thanks, honey, I gave at the office," Davio chirped.
"Lulu, your hair look like auburn waterfall. We should cut for Locks of Love," Ingrid demanded in a Russian rapid-fire tone.
"Yeah, just give me a Miley Cyrus, cut it all off," said Lulu. "Girlfriend, have you lost your fucking mind?" shrieked Davio, snapping a tiny pair of pinking shears in Lulu's direction.
"Clearly. I'm locked up, with no end to this nightmare in sight," said Lulu, as she turned toward Zeela.
"Girl, I know this ain't what you're used to; this gonna take a while. I got a seventy-two Conair, 850 watts, but more than half of them don't work, so we workin' wit' 410 watts of mystifying, stupefying, hair-drying love," mused Zeela.
If Zeela had one thing, it was a sense of humor, a trait that Lulu truly adored. In her book, anyone that could make her laugh under such duress deserved her respect and equally earned her trust.
Humming a Zydeco tune, Zeela began cutting a four-inch swath off of Lulu's soft curls. "Your book fans are going to set you free, Square Jane. They love your pretty, little white ass."
"No. No. I am going to get you out of here," exclaimed Davio, pushing back his gingersnap red highlights.
"I've heard that before," Lulu replied.
"Mm-hmm, ain't that the truth," Zeela chimed in.
"I may not be the best lawyer in town, but I certainly sleep with the best. And I have something that will settle the score, wherever that bitch is hiding," Davio confessed.
* * *
"If you don't mind me saying, you seem a little too egotistical to kill yourself lady," said the fair-haired, Irish paramedic as he monitored his patient from inside the cozy yet crowded ambulance.
"You would think," Lizette Hansen muttered under her breath, her mousy brown coif had seen better days. But in her own subjective opinion, seeing her reflection in the EMT's silver dial of the stethoscope, she thought she looked pretty damn good for a post-menopausal, fifty-six-year-old woman, twisting in the wind over the East River. After all, she was Lizette "Screwzette" Hansen, the epicenter of spin, and somehow she would fix this mess.
"I mean, twenty freakin' minutes ago, you offered me a gold watch to leave ya dangling off the side of the Queensboro," said Jimmy, his thick Brooklyn accent making it hard to understand him.
"It's a diamond-encrusted Cartier tank," Lizette barked. "You provincial fuck! You should have left me there. It's worth more than your whole year's salary."
"Ma'am, I don't do this for the money," replied the medic. "C-clearly," shot Lizette, choking on her own ego.
"I'd drop you off right here on Third Avenue, right in front of this fucking Korean deli, but I am bound by certain moral codes and obligations," the medic continued.
"Fuck the moral codes; are you gonna take me to Lennox Hill or not? I don't think you know who I am," Lizette impatiently blasted. "You'll know who I am when you read tomorrow's paper! You dickless dolt!"
"I know who you are," Jimmy replied. "You're the lady that was dangling wit' a nosebleed, like a fucking Magic Tree air freshener that I just rescued off the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge. And if it weren't for your bloody jacket, you would have fallen to your certain death."
"That'll teach me to buy hand-sewn clothes," retorted Lizette. "Yeah, next time buy some cheap Chinese shit, it would have split right in half," said Jimmy. "I suggest you grow up today, lady."
"Got any ideas? Who should I call, handsome?" replied Lizette.
Clad in a tattered khaki Burberry trench coat and reeking of booze and children's Benadryl, Lizette Hansen was not the picture-perfect corporate commander of one of the most powerful public relations firms on the planet. No, rather the thought of her looking like a Magic Tree swinging from the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge above the hordes of onlookers, journalists, and news crews taunting her to jump was more than she could handle, and she began welling up with tears. Her pale Irish complexion, flush with fear, not for almost plunging to her certain death, but for the ignominious reprisal that was occurring daily in the media about the fall of Kline Allen & Robbins Public Relations. She needed more than a raincoat. In fact, she needed to wear her Chanel leisure suit in court in order to look calm and collected.
* * *
Lulu's stint in jail began to feel more like Brokedown Palace than The Shawshank Redemption. Surprisingly, her sleep had improved, and her apnea had nearly vanished.
Lulu had a rare gift to drown out sounds. Unfortunately, this gift couldn't make her any money, but it gave her solitude, particularly valuable over the past few months. It seemed as if she had been training her whole life for this jail sentence. Without that gift, she surely would have gone mad within the first twenty-four hours with all the "cell soldiers" screaming at their hired guns.
It was high noon in the yard. The scores of women were going about their daily routine on the compound, exercising their version of nation building between the different factions of roving gangs that ran the yard of the Metropolitan Detention Center. The yard was the same as the ones Lulu saw in the movies. It was made up of dirt, with two basketball hoops at either end.
"Get your butcher's hook into this, Square Jane," said a gaunt-looking young Latina wearing curlers covered over by a yellow cotton kerchief, waving a copy of the latest New York Post. Missy Alvarez was Lulu's cellmate and confidant. As far as Lulu could tell, Missy was yet another decent girl who got caught up with a bad guy, getting into some trouble with an abusive boyfriend after college. What started as a petty campus scam, running credit cards turned into a global identity theft ring, leaving Missy with a ten-year stint in the Metropolitan Detention Center, located near Gowanus Bay, on Twenty-Ninth Street between Second and Third Avenue in Brooklyn, which housed close to three thousand inmates on a busy day. Reviews of the facility varied, but a top liberal blog claimed the facility to be "a decent room with no view."
Missy smoothly palmed off the New York Post to Lulu, who snapped open the folded newspaper to find the salacious headline:
"Leap of Fate: Ex-KAR Exec Hangs by Thread"
"Your nemesis made the front page! No tellin' how much longer you're gonna be in here for," Missy kept interrupting, as Lulu continued reading every single word of the small black print.
The alleged architect behind white collar crimes involving one of the largest, most powerful public relations firms, now being investigated by the SEC, attempted suicide last night atop the Queensboro Bridge.
KAR PR executive Lizette Hansen was found hanging by a thread from the Fifty-Ninth Street Bridge around 10 pm last night in a failed attempt to drown out the public scorn surrounding her impending court case.
"At first, I thought it was just an adventurer. Then as I got closer, I realized it was a high concentration of craziness," said Jimmy Sullivan, the EMT who found Ms. Hansen. "She reeked of booze and cigarettes and was hysterical after I saved her life."
Once one of the most respected and successful PR firms in the US, KAR PR is now embroiled in a lawsuit and smear campaign that has brought down some of the firm's top clients, and their stock prices, and has decimated the firm's reputation.
In recent months, the firm, a target of a series of SEC investigations focusing on allegations of criminal activities and corporate wrongdoing against their employees, clients, and national news media. Suspected to be initiated by a competitor or whistle-blower employee, the firm has been under close surveillance by New York's Attorney General by order of Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
While Lulu Norris, a former vice president of KAR PR, remains detained at the Metropolitan Detention Center, with her novel due out next week, Ms. Hansen is out on bail.
"Oh, Miss Mo is comin' for you now," Missy sang.
As the burly female guard approached Missy and Lulu, Miss Mo said, "Lulu, your not-so-gentleman caller has arrived."
Lulu was escorted to a visitor's booth in the main building of the detention facility where Davio was waiting for her across the thick, bulletproof glass, which resembled a giant bank teller's window, except with a chartreuse-colored phone receiver on either side of the window that was drenched in sweat and whatever other petri dish of misanthropic germs one could muster to imagine.
Before Lulu could take a seat, Davio pulled out a copy of the New York Post and plastered it flush against the glass window, motioning for Lulu to pick up the phone receiver.
"Girlfriend, this will all be over soon. In the meantime ..." sang Davio, as he held up a small paperback titled Prison Slang for Dummies.
"Fuck off. Where are we with the senator?" Lulu angrily questioned, growing more and more impatient by the second.
"Well, you'll be happy to know that we are going on a cruise this weekend to the Bahamas," Davio replied. "And honey, if it doesn't work out with him, it's going to be raining men on the lido deck."
"Listen, Julie McCoy, you better not fuck this up. I have to get out of here. My book signing is next week. That bitch is a mess, she even fucked up killing herself," said Lulu, hastily slamming down the receiver.
* * *
On Manhattan's Upper East Side, Lennox Hill is a five-star, six-hundred-bed hospital and one of the most prestigious facilities in New York.
Choking on her own ego, catatonically staring out of the hospital window, looking past the blossoming dogwoods that perfectly lined Seventy-Seventh Street, a forlorn Lizette fumbled for the nurse call box that was intertwined with her IV drip.
"Yes?" sang the nurse.
"What's taking so long? I should have been discharged hours ago. I am not staying here overnight!" Lizette screamed into the receiver, her mouth moving sideways like an evil cartoon crab.
"Please, Ms. Hansen, like I told you ten minutes ago, the doctor is on his way in to see you," replied the nurse.
"I don't need a doctor, I need to see the fucking hospital administrator in my room, now!" screamed Lizette.
Lizette threw the call box across the room, only to find it had a longer cord than she thought, she nearly hit Marni Zhuk as she opened the door; she was carrying enough copies of the New York Post to choke a news kiosk, cradling them in her chubby little arms.
Marni, a first generation Romanian immigrant, spoke textbook English and kept Lizette out of hot water with the firm's partners, and in their mind out of jail, until now.
Marni was one of KAR's "well-meaners." Her long, jet-black hair fell gently against her milky white complexion. Still, Marni's English was a bit too perfect and Lulu thought perhaps she was a spy for another PR firm or at least the Cartoon Network. The way Marni interrogated people reminded Lulu of Natasha in the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.
As Marni slowly glanced around the room, fits of resentment overcame her. She stared at Lizette, who looked less like she tried to commit suicide six hours ago and more like she had just euthanized her childhood puppy.
Lizette was basically an evil person at heart; cruelty is the Devil's own trademark.
She knew how to treat people nicely to get what she wanted, and Marni felt she was one of them. But like the guy that lived in a cave with a family of bears, she feared eating with them, grooming with them, and in the end becoming breakfast for them. Her fear was that one day, Lizette, the bear that she once had a respectful fondness for, might turn on her, claws bared, ready to tear her torso to sheds.
"At least your room is nice, really nice," Marni awkwardly stuttered. "Um, I hate to ask, but are you gonna do any of these interviews?" she questioned as she simultaneously stacked the newspapers neatly in the corner of the room by the love seat.
"Geraldo's people showed up at the office this morning. They really want to talk to you," Marni continued. "They spoke to Kline ..."
"F-u-u-c-k Kline. Fuck Geraldo. Fuck the Post. Fuck them all—no, make that fuck this hospital!" she said as she pulled out a copy of the New York Post and flung it against the TV, knocking over her breakfast tray, spilling oatmeal and raspberry Jell-O onto the floor.
