Latte Trouble - By Cleo Coyle Page 0,56

to another area, scanned us again, this time with metal-detecting rods and a relatively new machine called an Ionscan, which was capable, we were told, of detecting drug residue in much the same way an airport scanner can detect the residue of explosive materials. One of the chat-tier female guards told us the year before over three hundred visitors were arrested on Rikers for attempting to smuggle contraband in to prisoners—drugs, weapons, bullets, etc.

Finally, we were frisked. The women worked silently and efficiently without meeting our eyes. We were asked to empty our pockets and purses, and our cell phones were confiscated, to be returned at the end of our visit. A few minutes later, another armed guard presented us with plastic identification cards.

“Don’t lose these,” he warned. “You will be subject to arrest if you do not display these badges at all times.”

I didn’t doubt it.

Our pass from the Deputy Commissioner must have put us on some kind of VIP track, because we were immediately taken outside by a young Hispanic guard and escorted across the street and down the block to a modern modular building.

I expected the kind of thing you see in the movies—a long table with chairs, bulletproof glass separating you from the prisoner on the other side, a telephone on the table, through which you talk to your loved one. Instead we were placed inside a small windowless room—a cell, really—with a heavy steel door, fluorescent lights, and insulated brick walls thickly slathered with institutional green paint. Madame and I sat on green plastic chairs until the door opened a few minutes later.

We looked up as Tucker entered, a burly uniformed guard twice his size leading the lanky young playwright and actor by his thin arm. I rose to give my friend a hug, but the look of pain and embarrassment on Tucker’s face gave me pause.

“Lift up your arms,” rumbled the guard.

Only then did I notice Tuck’s hands were folded behind his back—and handcuffed. The guard drew a key from his belt, removed the cuffs. Then he acknowledged our presence for the first time.

“Thirty minutes,” he said. “If you need me sooner, bang on the door.”

The guard turned on his heels and left. The door slammed with a loud clang. Tucker, pale and thinner than I’d ever seen him, rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had chaffed them. His beautiful mop of floppy brown hair was gone—replaced by a crewcut. He looked like a shorn sheep, but despite his obvious torment, Tucker stared at us through grateful eyes.

“God…Clare, Madame…thank you…for…” His voice broke as he sat in the green plastic chair beside me, and I took him in my arms. He sobbed, his shoulders heaving.

“I’ll get you out of here, Tucker. I swear…”

Tucker wiped his cheeks with his hands, nodded, but his face was a mask of doubt and confusion. “How did this happen?” he moaned.

Madame leaned forward, “Are you getting good legal council?”

“The lawyer…Mr. Tanner…he’s doing his best. Says that since the second poisoning wasn’t fatal, he can probably get the charges reduced to reckless endangerment. Mr. Tanner interviewed Jeff Lugar—”

I sat up. “What?”

Jeff Lugar was the second victim—the tan, buffed boy-toy who’d been Ricky’s date and finished off the poisoned latte. I’d been desperate for news about his condition. But after the initial stories reporting the poisoning, the ongoing details of the case had disappeared from the news cycle. In a city as big and rich in crazy front page headlines as New York, even a fatal poisoning at a chic event could become old news in forty-eight hours. The last report on Lugar’s condition listed him as “critical” and I had assumed he was in a coma or otherwise unable to give a statement. Obviously, I was wrong.

“Tucker, are you saying your lawyer talked to him?” I asked.

“Yes…or someone from Mr. Tanner’s office did, anyway.”

“What did he say?”

Tucker shrugged. “Not much. All I know is that from Lugar’s version of the events, Mr. Tanner says he can prove Jeff was not the intended victim and that his poisoning was just an unfortunate consequence of the crime…”.

I sat in silence, mulling over the possibility of getting to Lugar myself.

“How are you otherwise?” Madame asked in the meantime, patting Tucker’s hand.

“I think they may move me soon,” he said with a barely suppressed shudder. “Mr. Tanner is trying to get a psychiatric evaluation for me, which means I would be moved to a medical facility like Bellevue, but the judge is resisting…”.

His voice