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He was smoking a cigarette when the matron led her in to the visitor's room. He leaned against the wall next to the door with a paper tucked under his arm, looking at her from under hooded eyes. She sat at the table and folded her hands in front of her, stilling her nervous fingers, but he didn't move toward the opposite chair. The matron left, and still he didn't move other than to take a drag off the cigarette. It smelled good, and she wanted one, but she wouldn't ask.
From the look on his face, he wasn't going to offer, so she said, "Hello, Mr. Spade."
He pushed off from the wall and tossed the paper in front of her. It was a few days old. Perhaps it had taken this long for him to decide to come to the jail. She looked at the headlines: Archer and Thursby Murders Solved! In smaller type beneath it read, Murderess Behind Bars.
"Is that your real name finally?"
She didn't reach toward the paper. "I liked it best when you called me Angel. I liked to think I could be one, with you."
"Betty Jo." He drew out the long O. "That's what the papers say your real name is. Doesn't suit you, but neither did Brigid O'Shaugnessy. Wonderly was a genius choice, though, I have to say. Gets a man in the right frame of mind before he even meets you. Wonder." He paused, but she didn't look up from the paper. "I wonder a lot of things about you."
"I deserve that," she said.
"You deserve what you're getting. Shame they won't execute a woman."
"Don't be so sure." Her answer came out before she could stop it, edit it into something more palatable. "Weren't you talking about ropes around my neck?" She was very afraid she was going to die, but possibly more afraid of living in prison. She looked up at him, but he was shaking his head.
"You're still good. I'm sure you'll be able to plead for clemency. What do you have in your pocket, Angel?" He sneered out the name, and she cringed, but it only made him smirk. This was no longer the man who had had hated to turn her over to the police. In the last few weeks, he had hardened himself. Worse yet, he was so sure she was acting, when for once in her life, she felt completely exposed. It stung. He said, "You planning to plead your broken upbringing, or were you wronged by a man and left to your own devices, depending on other men who would only take you down the bad road?"
It was close to the truth. Thursby she hadn't minded killing, and hoped that telling the jury how he beat her would gain her sympathy for killing him. Archer, though, was another story. She planned to testify that he tried to blackmail her for her murder of Thursby, taking his payment out in flesh. It wasn't true, but it might hold up, and there were no other witnesses. She shook her head, and laughed once, and suddenly she had her protective shell back in place.
"Mr. Spade, I can't think of what you hoped to accomplish here."
"I guess I had to see you, one last time." He had that look in his eye, one she knew well. He wanted her, perhaps not for the tenderness they'd shared in the past. No, he wanted something rough, and direct, and meant to punish her.
"Oh, I'm sure you'll see me in court. Won't you be called to testify?"
"Maybe, maybe not," he said, and stubbed out the cigarette on the bottom of his shoe.
She felt bolder. "Might I have one of those, please?" He was not a man to refuse a polite request, and however grudgingly, crossed the room to give her the cigarette, and even lit it for her before retreating to the wall. She smoked it for a few moments, looking at the paper, reading the story under the sensational headlines. She thought he might leave if she ignored him, but he continued to lean, his arms folded. At last she looked up. He looked sad, and angry, and worst of all, pitying.
"I think that I can guarantee that you will have to testify, Mr. Spade." In that instant, as she spoke, she knew that if she was going down, she'd drag him as far with her as she could. "I hoped to be your angel once, to have the chance to live better, and to be what you thought I was, but you took that away when you turned me over to the police."
"I know what you are, and you know why I had to do it."
"Yes, Mr. Spade, so you told me." She put out her cigarette, stood, and leaned with her hands on the table. The prison dress wasn't much, but as she bent over, she watched his eyes move to her cleavage. She didn't let her face show the bitter amusement she felt. She imitated the rhythms of his voice. "When a man's partner is killed, well, he's supposed to do something about it. I may have killed your partner, Mr. Spade," she continued, using the upper class speech she'd learned to imitate. It would give more impact to the crude language she was about to unleash on him. "I may have killed him, but you fucked his wife."
He stood from the wall in a sudden motion, stiff and jerking like he'd been electrocuted. She nodded once, as regal as she could, and then turned her back to him, hiding her smile and knocking on the door to be let back into the prison, back into her cell. For the moment, she felt utterly free.