Parker knew, Mackey was both easing their fears and keeping the pressure on. They were all in a civilized conversation now, so their survival seemed to them more likely, so they would gradually find it easier to go along with the program, and eventually to do what Mackey wanted them to do.
Rolling it out, Mackey said, ‘You’re part of the bunch fixed up the Armory, right?’
Henry looked frightened again, as though this were a trick question. ‘Yes, I suppose so,’ he said.
‘You got your father in there with his jewelry business.’
Henry’s lips curved down. ‘Yes, you’d know about that,’ he said.
Parker said, ‘We know about everything, Henry.’
‘You put Darlene here in the dance studio,’ Mackey went on, ‘and every once in a while you come around and dance. So there you are, captain of industry, putting together deals, making it happen. Muriel around for much of that, Henry?’
‘What do you mean, around?’ Henry’s incomprehension was making him desperate. ‘I’m married to her.’
‘Sure, but was she at the meetings? When you and the guys were putting together the Armory deal, when you made the deal with your father, when you made the deal with Darlene here. Muriel in on any of that, Henry?’
‘No, of course not,’ he said.
Mackey spread his hands: case proved. To Darlene, he said, ‘You get my point? I’m here, I’m working, my friend’s along. She isn’t working, she’s just along, like Muriel. She gets bored, she takes a few classes over at your place. She can’t give you real information about herself, because maybe something might go wrong with what I’m doing here, but she’s paying you in cash, so it doesn’t matter what she says. But then you decide, “Hey, this woman is lying to me, I can’t have that, I can’t have some woman come into my dance studio and lie to me, I’m gonna find out what she’s up to, and if I can make some trouble for her, I’ll make some trouble for her.” Just like Muriel might get a little pissed off at you, Darlene, and if she could make some trouble for you, and I bet she could, what do you think? You think you can run a dance studio and have an alienation of affection suit going on at the same time, all in public, all over the cheap crap the press has turned itself into? And no help from Henry, you know, Muriel would be keeping himoccupied, too.’
‘Oh, God,’ Henry said, and covered his eyes with one hand, head bowed.
There was a chair against the side wall, with some of Henry’s clothing on it. Saying, ‘This is gonna take a while, these people are slow,’ Williams walked over to the chair, dumped the clothing off it, and sat on it.
Henry lowered his hand to gape at his clothes on the floor. Darlene said, ‘Even if’
Mackey looked at her with polite interest. ‘Yeah?’
‘Even if you’re telling the truth,’ Darlene said, ‘even if she wasn’t a partof it, she was herewith you, she’s still an accomplice.’
Mackey said, ‘Is Muriel an accomplice? They still have those old blue laws on the books in this state, did you know that? Who knows how many different felonies you two already committed in that bed there, but the point is, is Muriel your accomplice?’
‘That’s absurd,’ she said.
‘You’re right,’ Mackey agreed. ‘And Brenda’s my accomplice the same way.’
She frowned, trying to find some way around this comparison, then impatiently shrugged and said, ‘It isn’t up to me, it’s up to the police. If whatever-her-name-is was morethan just “being around,” they’ll find out.’
‘Oh, but that’s the problem, Darlene,’ Mackey said. ‘It isn’t the police that make trouble for Brenda, it’s you.’
‘It’s up to them now,’ she insisted. ‘If she wasn’t doing anything wrong, they’ll let her go.’
‘But they don’t want to let her go, do they, Darlene?’ Mackey asked her. ‘They told you themselves, they don’t have a single thing to hold her on, but they don’t want to let her go because they’re suspicious of her because they can’t find out who she is, so that’s why they want you to go back tomorrow morning and sign a complaint against her.’
Henry jerked to a crouch, hands clasped together, staring at Mackey as though he were some kind of evil wizard. ‘How did you know that?’
Parker said, ‘I told you, Henry. We know everything.’
Darlene said, ‘They asked me to cooperate.’
Mackey said, ‘To sign a complaint that she made false statements on a credit application.’
‘Well, they were false,’ she said.
Mackey shook his head. ‘It wasn’t a credit application.’
She started to snap something, angry and impatient, but then stopped herself, as though she hadn’t realized till that second what the law had asked her to do. Maybe she hadn’t. She shook her head, rallied: ‘They were false statements.’
‘Not on a credit application. Not a crime.’
Until now, Darlene and Henry had not looked at each other even once, both being too involved with the three men who’d broken into their room, but now they did turn to gaze at each other, a quick searching look will you be any help? and then faced Mackey again. Her voice lower, less pugnacious, she said, ‘I already said I’d do it.’
Parker said, ‘What time you supposed to go in there, in the morning?’
‘Nine o’clock.’
‘So we got three and a half hours,’ he told her, ‘to figure out what you’re gonna do.’
Mackey said, ‘Brenda’s never been in jail before. She’s never been fingerprinted before, that’s why the cops
