“Do you know what he did for a living?”
“No.”
“I do. I read his rap sheet. He started out selling cocaine on the street, but pretty early he learned that what he was really good at was taking care of the people who didn’t pay or the ones who were trying to work the same neighborhoods, or people who weren’t afraid enough of him or his boss, Rogoso. By the time he died, he had been a full-time bodyguard and killer for at least five years.”
“We didn’t know about any of that,” said Irena.
“This is odd. I assumed that my detectives would have told you what we know about you already. We know that you’ve been working for Rogoso for a year or more, because your names have been mentioned by people we’ve talked to for that long. You carry drugs to the sellers and money back to Rogoso. You were in Malibu last night. Either you killed Rogoso and Alvin and Chuy, or you were there and know who did. Which is it?”
“Neither,” said Irena. “We know nothing.”
“I’d like you to think about things for a while. You could be convicting yourselves of three murders. Or you could be putting yourselves in front of a lot of guns. Whenever a guy like Rogoso dies, there are a lot of people who believe there must be a lot of money hidden someplace. You don’t want them to think you’ve got it. There are also relatives of Rogoso who just lost a lifetime of living off him.”
“Are you going to make sure they know about us?”
“My job is to try to keep people from dying, not get them killed. If you get charged with murder, though, there’s no way it won’t be in the papers.”
Ariana was hugging herself and rocking back and forth, staring straight ahead. The sight of her seemed to weaken Irena. “How do we avoid that?”
“I’ll tell you what I need from you. I need the name of the man who pulled the trigger. I don’t know why you haven’t told us yet. Maybe he paid you to set those three up, maybe you just happened to be there when it happened, and you owe him because he let you leave. I don’t know. But if you tell me, I’ll try to keep you from being charged as accomplices. If you don’t, then the DA may decide to charge you with the shootings. One of the things that will strike him is that you both had brand-new guns in your purses. You must have thrown away the old ones on the same night. I’m going to give you a chance to think.” He stood up, beckoned to Detective Serra. “We’ll be back.”
As soon as the door closed, the two girls moved closer, leaned together. “He means it,” said Irena.
“I know. Shh!”
“He really does. You want to go to trial for murder? We don’t have any money for good lawyers. They’ll lock us up forever.”
Ariana had tears in her eyes. “But we can’t.”
“Why not? We met the man once. We don’t care about him.”
“But we owe him” Ariana said.
“We do not. There wouldn’t be any problem if it weren’t for him.”
“He didn’t do anything. They were about to kill him. He didn’t even bring a gun with him. All he did was fight back. He had to, and then he let us live. We were the only witnesses, and he knew we worked for Rogoso. If he had killed us there wouldn’t be anybody left to tell on him. But he didn’t. He even gave us the keys to the car so we could get away.”
“They weren’t his to give. And maybe he was smarter than we were and knew the car would turn out to be a curse. Maybe he set us up on purpose so we’d be blamed.”
“You know that’s not true. He even waited and gave us time to get far away before he set the fire.”
“He’s an old man, not a little boy. He knew what he was risking. Nobody made him do it.”
Outside the room, in the smaller one that was marked “Cleaning supplies,” Lieutenant Slosser and Detective Serra watched the television monitor and listened to the voices, amplified by the microphones all over the room. “Say it,” he whispered. “Say the name.”
Ariana said, “It was my fault more than yours. He took the gun out of my purse. I’ll take the blame.”
“I don’t want either of us to take the blame. Why should we throw ourselves away, especially for a man we don’t even know? And he’s a pig. He got rich by making women strip and then turn tricks in those private rooms.”
“What are you talking about? A year ago that’s what you wanted to do.”
“I changed my mind.”
“You got a better offer, more money just for carrying things.”
“And I let you in on it too, didn’t I?”
In the next room, Detective Serra said, “They’re off the subject. Do you want me to go back in and remind them they have to come up with the name?”
“No, thanks, Louise,” Slosser said. “This could take a while. I want them to get so used to the interrogation room and the predicament they’re in that they forget we’re out here listening. You can go back to your other work.”
“Thanks.” She went out the door and closed it.
Ariana said, “Why don’t we make a story up? Why can’t we say ‘We met a man named Stanley in Wash, he drove us to Malibu, and argued with Mr. Rogoso.’”
“Then what?”
“Just what really happened. Make it all the same except the man’s name. Mr. Rogoso told Chuy and Alvin to kill him, but he snatched the gun out of my purse. It was self-defense.”
Slosser’s face was close to the screen, his jaw working. “The name, honey. Time to say the name.”
Ariana said, “I wish I could talk to him. I could explain why we have to do it.”
“What would you say? Hello, Mr. Kapak. This is your good friend Ariana. I’ve got something to tell you that’ll just kill you.”
Slosser stood up. He left the tape running and walked back toward the big open office where the detectives had their desks. Nobody had told him anything to his face yet, but the big turn had occurred. He knew.
30
AT JUST AFTER NOON, Manco Kapak lay in his bed in a troubled sleep. He dreamed he was in a field with golden stems and fat seeds of grain. He knew he was young again, and back in Hungary. He was with Marija. She was studying music in Budapest, but he was only posing as a student. He was the right age—twenty-two—and he had acquired the bohemian look that students had, the workman’s clothes, a pair of round sunglasses that he wore all the time, a modest beard.
He had told her and her friends that he was studying political science, because it seemed to be a subject that had no particular agreed-upon content, no specific books that everyone had to read. It was also one of the dangerous subjects that implied membership in one of the opposition groups. But since he was on no lists of students and never attended a lecture, he felt secure. He and Marija were both Romanians—he from Bucharest and she from a village not too far away where he had relatives—and he suspected that much of what he had to offer was a cure for homesickness, a chance to use her own language.
She sometimes asked him why he never spoke about his studies, and he answered that he learned more by listening than by talking. He said that at his age, all he would be doing was repeating the words of his professors anyway. He would speak and write his own opinions when he had learned enough to have a right to them. When the others in their set heard this, he gained a reputation for wisdom and humility.
But in his dream he didn’t feel the contentment of those summers. He knew a great many things that none of the others knew, because he wasn’t only Claudiu the student. He was also Manco Kapak at age sixty-four. Camping in the wheat fields was sure to disappear with the summer, and anyone would know that, but he knew that it would disappear forever. All of it—the smell of the plants that somehow clung to Marija’s hair, the finger-touch of the gentle breeze, the steady sound of the chatter of their student friends, uncaring as the chatter of birds—was going to be obliterated. He knew that it was going to turn into a nightmare place. He tried to tell all of them that it was time to go, but his voice turned thick and slow, and he couldn’t draw in enough breath to speak loud and strong. The others didn’t seem to hear him. He had to save Marija, so he picked her up in his arms.
