He stopped, petrified. His eyes, looking over Ross’s shoulder, were enormous.
“Go on, sonny,” said a rich female voice from behind Ross. “Don’t let me and the lieutenant stop you just when you’re going good.”
“It must have been that damn manager,” Bernie said for the fifteenth time.
Ross uncrossed his legs painfully and tried lying on the floor on his side. “What’s the difference?” he asked. “They got us; we’re in the jug. And face it: somebody would have caught us sooner or later, and we might have wound up in a worse jail than this one.” He shifted uncomfortably. “If that’s possible, I mean. Why don’t they at least have beds in these places?”
“Oh,” said Bernie immediately, “some do. The jails in Azor City and Nuevo Reykjavik have beds; Novj Grad, Eleanor, and Milo don’t. I mean, that’s what they tell me,” he added virtuously.
“Sure,” Ross growled. “Well, what do they tell you usually happens next?”
Bernie spread his hands. “Different things. First there’s a hearing. That’s all over by now. Then an indictment and trial. Maybe that’s started already; sometimes they get it in on the same day as the hearing, sometimes not. Then—tomorrow sometime, most likely—comes the sentencing. We’ll know about that, though, because we’ll be there. The law’s very strict on that—they always have you in the court for sentencing.”
Ross cried, “You mean the trial might be going on right now without us?”
“Of course. What else? Think they’d take a chance on having the prisoners creating a disturbance during the trial?”