"Yeah."

"Why doesn't he just bump you?"

"Maybe he knows that if I get bumped, guys like Joe Pike and Lou Poitras will stay with it, and he doesn't want that. He wants to buy time so he can regain control of things."

"But if he gets you jugged, he's got to know you're going to talk. He's got to know we're going to call him in and ask him about it."

I said, "He knows I'm going to be sitting here with a guy like Micelli. He knows I can't prove anything and all it looks like is that I'm trying to dodge the charge. If I'm alive, he's still got control. If I'm dead, guys like Pike and Poitras are a couple of loose cannons."

Micelli made a big deal out of throwing up his hands. "He's wasting our time with this crap. I got tickets to the Dodgers tonight. I want to get there before the stretch."

I said, "Listen to me, Stilwell. D'Muere said he's going for the girl. Even if you guys don't buy my end of it, send a car around to her apartment. What's that cost you?"

Stilwell stared at me another couple of seconds. Then he pushed away from the wall. "Finish up, Paul." Then he left.

Micelli and I stayed in the interrogation room for another hour. I would go through my story and then Micelli would ask me who was my connection and how much was I going to get for the dope, as if I had said one story but he had heard another. Then he would have me go through my story again. The room was bugged and there were probably a couple of guys listening in. They would be taking notes and a tape recorder would be recording everything I said. They'd be looking for discrepancies and Micelli would be waiting for my body language to change. He'd keep trying out scenarios until I seemed comfortable with one, even if it was one I denied. Then he'd know he struck pay dirt. Of course, since I was telling the truth, he wasn't going to get the body language when and where he wanted it. He probably wasn't too concerned about that, though. Time was on his side. Maybe I shouldn't have passed on the lawyer.

After about the sixth time through, the door opened and Stilwell came back, only this time Eric Dees was with him. Micelli said, "You been listening to this stuff?"

Dees grinned. "Yeah. He's pretty good at this."

Stilwell said, "You arrest the guy in the park?"

Dees nodded. "Sure. He's down in cell four."

"Cole said you ripped off his dope."

Dees smiled wider. "Gathered it for evidence, duly logged and checked in."

I said, "Come off it, Stilwell. He knew I was going to be in here. He knew I was going to be talking."

Stilwell stayed with Dees. "You got anything going with these gangbangers?"

Dees spread his hands. "Trying to bust' m. Cole's been nosing around and I tried to warn him off and maybe that's when he got the idea for the dope deal. I don't know. I don't want to talk about an ongoing investigation in front of a suspected felon."

Stilwell said, "Sure."

Dees said, "I've got to go wrap it up with my guys. You need anything else?"

"That's it, Eric. Thanks."

Dees left without looking at me.

I said, "Jesus Christ, Stilwell, what do you expect him to say?"

"Just about what he said."

"Then what are you going to do about it?"

Stilwell grabbed my upper arm and lifted. "Book you on three murder counts and a dope. I think you're guilty as sin."

CHAPTER 20

They took me out into the detectives' squad room and began the booking process. Dees wasn't around, and after Micelli spoke to a couple of uniforms, he and Stilwell left.

The processing cops had already begun with Pike and, as I watched, they used paraffin on his hands and took his picture and fingerprinted him and asked him questions so that they could fill out their forms. He nodded once and I nodded back. It was strange to see him without the glasses. He seemed more vulnerable without them. Less inviolate. Maybe that's why he wears them.

They led Pike away through a hall toward the jail and then they started with me. A uniform cop named Mertz led me from station to station, first using the paraffin, then getting my prints, and then taking my picture. I crossed my eyes when they took the picture and the cop who worked the camera said, "No good, Mertz. He crossed his goddamned eyes."

Mertz picked up a baton and tapped it against his thigh. "Okay, smart ass. Cross'm again and I'll smack you so hard they'll stay crossed."

They took the picture again but this time I didn't cross them.

When Mertz was filling out my personal history form, I said, "When do I get a bail hearing?"

"Arraignment's tomorrow. One of the detectives ran over to the court to get a bail deviation so we could bind you over."

"Jesus Christ. Why?"

"You see the crowding down there? You're lucky they'll arraign you by next Monday."

When the processing was finished, Mertz turned me over to an older uniform with a head like a coyote squash and told him to take me to felony. The older uniform led me back along a hall to a row of four-by-eight-foot cages. Each cage had a seatless toilet and a sink and a couple of narrow bunks, and it smelled of disinfectant and urine and sweat, sort of like a poorly kept public men's room. "No place like home."

The older uniform nodded. Maybe to him it was home.

There were two black guys in the first cage, both of them sitting in the shadows of the lower bunk. They had been talking softly when we approached, but they stopped when we passed and watched us with yellow eyes. Once you were in the cells, there was no way to see who was in the next cell, and no way to reach through the bars and twist your arm around to touch someone in the next cell, even if someone in the next cell was reaching out to touch you. I said, "Which one's mine?"

The uniform stopped at the second cell, opened the gate, and took off my handcuffs. 'The presidential suite, of course."

I stepped in. A Hispanic guy in his early thirties was lying on the lower bunk with his face to the wall. He rolled over and squinted at me, and then he rolled back. The uniform closed the gate and locked it and said, "You wanna make a call?"

"Yeah."

He walked back down the hall and out the heavy door and was gone. One of the black guys in the cell next to me said something and the other laughed. Someone in one of the cells on the other side of me coughed. I could hear voices, but they sounded muted and far away. I said, "Joe."

Pike's voice came back. "Fourth cell."

Someone yelled, "I'm trying to sleep, goddamn it. Shut the fuck up." It was a big voice, loud and deep, and sounded as if it had come from a big man. It also sounded about as far away as Joe Pike.

I said, "D'Muere said he's going for Jennifer Sheridan."

Joe said, "Dees wouldn't go for that."

"Dees may not know. D'Muere wasn't talking like a guy who was worried about what Eric Dees thought."

The big voice yelled, "Goddamn it, I said shut up. I don't want to hear about your goddamn-" There was a sharp meat-on-meat sound and the voice stopped. Joe continued, "Maybe he isn't. Maybe things aren't the way we were told."

"You mean, maybe they aren't partners."

Pike said, "Maybe Dees is an employee. Maybe D'Muere is the power, and Eric Dees is just trying to control him. Maybe putting us in here is part of that."

"Only maybe while we're in, Jennifer Sheridan gets offed."

Pike said nothing.

The heavy door opened and the cop with a squash for a head came back pushing a phone that was bolted to a kind of a tripod thing on heavy rollers. The cop pushed it down to my cell and parked it close enough for me to reach the buttons. "You can make as many calls as you want, but it won't take long distance, okay?"

"Sure."

He went out and left the door ajar because of the phone cable.