was shoved into the other one.
On the ride to the garage under the FBI building, I contemplated the charges they could throw at me: conspiracy, manslaughter, fleeing a crime, hiding evidence. And those were merely the charges I could think of. The FBI and Justice Department have all those highly imaginative guys with Ivy League degrees who are geniuses at thinking up charges. No doubt they could do better than me.
We parked in an underground garage and then took the elevator to an upper-floor interrogation room. Jimmy hung around while a new guy entered the room. He had that weaselly look of the professional interrogator: long, skinny face, deadpan, droopy eyes, and a mouth with no wrinkles around the edges, like he never smiled or frowned or had orgasms. He walked hunched over, with his chin protruding out and a big, beaklike nose that poked suspiciously through the air.
He sat in front of me and said, “I’m Special Agent Michaels. Do I need to read you your rights?” Belafonte, the traitorous prick, leaned against the wall. It didn’t take a genius to figure out why Belafonte remained in the room. I’d made my confession to him, and his presence was to remind me I’d already spilled the big beans, so let’s not niggle over the gravy.
I shook my head. “Already done.”
He leaned toward me like this was some kind of melodramatic moment. “We have you on tape admitting you killed a man in Washington and two men in your apartment parking lot earlier this morning.”
“All that’s true,” I admitted, since it seemed damned silly to deny what I’d already admitted.
He leaned back and stroked his chin. “However, we have a bit of problem here.”
Technically, we didn’t have a bit of problem. I did, and not a bit of a problem, a mountain of a problem. I said, “I know.”
He continued in a perfectly dry tone. “The problem, Drummond, is nobody reported any deaths. Unless you want to count a lady who got shoved off the subway platform at the Fourteenth Street station this morning. Only the D.C. police caught the guy who did that. Or would you like to confess to that killing, too?”
“What are you talking about?”
“What I just told you, Drummond. No dead guys showed up near your apartment building. And no dead guys showed up near Miss Mazorski’s apartment, either. So what the hell’s going on here?”
“That’s impossible. This morning, at my apartment, the police came. I was interviewed by a detective. He took my statement.”
He was nodding, like, Yeah, sure, tell me more, convince me.
I said, “I’m not jerking you around. I walked out to my car and two guys approached me with a knife and gun. It was meant to look like a robbery, only it wasn’t. It was a hit.”
He was still nodding, only now he was biting his cheek. “And what happened to the bodies?” he asked, scratching the side of his nose, like, Gee, no shit, throw in a few Nazi spies and quit boring me?
“A meat wagon got them. It was an Arlington County Hospital ambulance. I watched them load the bodies.”
“What time?”
“Shortly before eight.”
He nodded at Belafonte, who nodded back and left.
“And tell me about that second attack,” he ordered.
“It happened right around the corner from Miss Mazorski’s apartment. Around nine-thirty… maybe ten. She was walking to her car and a guy who was made up to look homeless went after her with a butcher knife.”
“And you stopped him?”
“Only barely. Actually, she nailed him with some pepper spray and that blinded him.”
“And you what? You shot him?”
“No. I stabbed him.”
He was doing that head-nodding routine and scratching that big goddamn nose again, and I wanted to reach across the table and jackslap him. He was trying to be grating, and even though I knew that, and knew I should rise above his provocation, I was emotionally entangled.
I took three long breaths, then grinned. “Okay, asshole, I’ve got a surprise for you.”
“I love surprises. What do you have?”
I reached into my pocket and whipped out the trusty Bic pen that was crusted with dried blood and specks of gray matter around the tip.
I tossed it on the table between us and announced, “This is the pen I killed him with. I stuck it in his eyehole.”
It was one of those moments when you wished you had a Polaroid camera. He stared down at the pen but refused to touch it, partly because he knew better than to get his fingerprints on it, and partly because it grossed him out.
I couldn’t resist. “I believe it’s your turn, Special Agent Michaels.”
The door opened and Jimmy Belafonte, the big skunk, walked in. He looked at Michaels and shook his head.
I said, “What is this bullshit, Belafonte? You’re not allowed to talk to me? You checked with the Arlington police and they confirmed they didn’t investigate the double killing? Is that what you were signaling him?”
“That’s what it meant,” he admitted, avoiding my eyes, which was a good thing because they would’ve caused his whole body to explode in flames. He added, “And there’s no bodies in the Arlington County morgue.”
“So this is really weird,” I said, as much to myself as them. “Look at the blood on that pen,” I ordered Michaels. “If I’m lying, whose blood and brain matter is that?”
He stared at the pen. “You tell me.”
It was my turn to shake my head. Interrogators are taught to never, ever lose control of the interrogation, no matter what. That “you tell me” was his half-assed attempt to regain the upper hand. I was now asking the questions and his procedures said he couldn’t allow that.
“It belonged to a guy who was hired to murder my co-counsel.”
“And where’s his body?”
“How the hell do I know? We ran off before anybody came. But the cops came to the killing in my parking lot. I talked with them and I saw a meat wagon, and I’ve dealt with enough cops to know they were the real thing. The detective was named… uh, Christ, I can’t remember his name. But I can describe him.”
Michaels’s nose was sticking in my face. “No need. We already know what he looks like. A middle-aged detective in a suit who asked a lot of questions, right?”
I rubbed my forehead. I fought the temptation to tell him what a stupid ass he was. This wasn’t easy. “Somebody tried to murder me and Miss Mazorski because they want to keep the lid on something we discovered.”
“And what would that be?” he asked, and from his tone I knew there was no way in hell he was going to believe a word I said, much less the exorbitant tale I actually had to tell.
I pushed aside my reservations and said, “We discovered that my client, Bill Morrison, is probably being framed for treason. We talked to a lot of people and left a lot of impressions in our wake, and somebody wants to erase some of those impressions.”
“Uh-huh,” he said dismissively. “Let’s get back to these guys you killed. Who were they?”
“I don’t know.”
“You didn’t check their wallets? Didn’t get their names?”
“I said I don’t know.”
“But you told Special Agent Belafonte you knew things.”
“Have you been listening to me?”
His expression did not alter the slightest bit. “You mean about the three dead guys that don’t exist?”
I gripped the edge of the table. I gave him my screw-you look. “Michaels, let’s rearrange the bidding here. They were professional hits.”
“And their bodies disappeared? Come on, Major, you’ve got to do better than this. Help me out here. Convince me you killed these three guys.”
Michaels and Belafonte exchanged quick glances, and while I wasn’t sure what they meant, it was so
