“Come on, Suit. I asked you about Cissy Hathaway and you looked like you just swallowed a squirrel.”
Simpson smiled. It was a complicated expression, Jesse thought. Uneasy, proud, confidenfal, evasive. He would not have thought Suitcase could feel that many things at the -same time.
“Suit,” Jesse said, “you been
plonking Cissy Hathaway.‘
‘
There was a long pause while Simpson looked around the room as if he were thinking about escape.
Then Simpson said, “Yes, sin I have.”
a horse in his life, but he had seven pairs of cowboy boots.
He liked the height they gave him. With his feet up on his desk he was admiring a new pair he was wearing for the first time, made from rattlesnake skin. He took a Kleenex from a box in the bottom left drawer of his desk, and robbed a small stain off the toe of his right boot. It looked like a splash of coffee had dried on there. While he was doing this a uniformed deputy came in.
“Nice boots,” the deputy said.
“Rattlesnake.”
“I could see that. I got a guy downstairs, Charlie, wants to talk with somebody about the guy got blown up on Route Fifty-nine a while back.”
“That’d be me,” Charlie said.
He crumpled the Kleenex and put it in the wastebasket under his desk. Then he swung his boots down and stood up.
“Tell you anything else?” Charlie asked.
They started down the corridor to the elevator.
“Nope.”
“What do you have him for?”
“Armed robbery. Him and another guy tried to knock over the bank at the shopping center down on South Doug-
“You got him good?”
“Talk about a bad day,” the deputy said.
“Two of our guys walked in on him, going to cash their paychecks.”
Charlie Buck smiled.
“So he hasn’t got much room to
bargain.”
“He’s a lot of priors, He’s
looking at twenty, easy,” the deputy said.
They got in the elevator and started down.
“What’s his name?” Charlie Buck
asked.
“Matthew Ploughman. Says he’s from
Denver.”
“He in the interrogation room?”
“Not yet. I didn’t know if you’d
want o talk with him.” I’ll go in,“
Charlie Buck said. ”You bring him to me.“
The interrogation room was small with gray cinder block walls and no windows, and only a one-way observation port in the door. There was a shabby maple table and two chairs.
A’s.ign on the wall read “Thank You For Not Smoking.”
Charlie went to the far end of the room and leaned on the wall. He waited silently while two deputies.brought Ploughman in and left, closing the door behind them.
Ploughman was short and scrawny with a long beard and a lot of hair. His eyes were small a, nd close together and his nose seemed insufficient compared to the rest of his face. He stood, not sure whether to sit, just inside the closed door.
“You got a smoke, man?” he said.
Buck nodded at the sign on the wall.
“Sit down,” he said.
Ploughman pulled out one of the chairs and sat, his clasped hands resting on the table edge.
“What have you got for me?” Buck said.
“I can help you with that bomb killing on Route Fifty-nine.”
