Jonathan - Chapter 16

Words and Terms



Federal agents - also known as "the fuzz." The Federal agents are most likely agents from

the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and they tail Billie Holiday because of her past

drug usage and want to find bust her again.



hunch - a strong "gut" feeling one has about what future events will transpire but not with

an identifiable reason



Welfare Island - an island, now known as Roosevelt Island, in the East River of New York,

and located between Manhattan and Queens. In this chapter it refers to the prison on

Roosevelt Island, and is noted for the being a place whose people treat the inmates

there well, if the inmates show their good side.



Jimmy Asundio – a young man who was Billie Holiday’s road manager at the time.



Joe Guy – Billie’s drug dealer who she fell in love with while she was still married to Jimmy

Monroe.



Summary

One night in May of 1947, after Billie finished a show at the Earle Theater in Philadelphia, she had a hunch that the cops would be waiting back at her hotel room to arrest her together with Bobby Tucker and Jimmy Asundio. She tried convincing them not to go back but they brushed her off. Upon pulling up to the hotel, they saw the lobby full of cops. She ordered the chauffeur to drive a little distance, but they were met by a FBI agent. Billie took the wheel, for the first time in her life, and got away, finally making it to New York.

Once there, Billie performed as scheduled at the Onyx Club, and did not have to worry about the feds bothering her until the end of the week. She decided that rather than run, and never have peace, she would give herself in. She went to the hotel where, surely enough, two agents were waiting for her. They arrested her and Joe. These officers were nice though. As she said herself, "I wasn't too much of a drug addict for some of these federal men not to make passes at me."



What is Billie's real motive for turning herself in? Could it be so that once she is released she can get back to her drug abuse?