"I've never seen him."

"Look again, Pellam. That's Peter Crimmins."

"I do not-"

"Look again, Pellam," Monroe said. "He's the man who was in the Lincoln. He's the man responsible for the death of

Vincent Gaudia and for the shooting of a Maddox policeman. He's the man you saw. All we need is your confirmation."

"I can't confirm what I didn't see."

"You're not going to cooperate?" Bracken barked.

"This is cooperation – listening to you two. In fact, it's beyond cooperation. I'm leaving."

It had been a long, long hour.

Peter Crimmins was sweating. His Sea Island cotton shirt was wet in the small of his back and under the arms. The sweat would bead on his chest hair, and when he moved, would press, cold, against the skin. Sweat was gathering too in the deep folds of fat where his waist met his chest. It trickled down his back.

Crimmins knew that at any time he could have asked the agents to leave and then they would either have to let him go or arrest him. But if they arrested him- which they might easily have done-that meant he would have to have his friend and counselor present.

That was something Crimmins didn't want. So he had consented to the questioning. He waved the men into seats in his office, sandwiched between the parking lot and the room of dark desks, and rested his fingertip on the mole above his eye.

The barrage of questions lasted for an hour. They were handsome black men and looked more like recent business school graduates than federal agents. They seemed Wee many of Crimmins's clients (both the legitimate ones and the less so) – clever, polite, reserved.

But underneath: the personalities of a Midwest dawn in January.

One asked the questions. The other alternated between staring calmly at Crimmins and taking notes.

"Could I ask you where you were last Friday night, sir?"

He hated the sir. The way it fell like a fleck of spit off the end of the sentence showed their contempt for him. But what could he do? That was an old rule in negotiations-never say anything that can be quoted against you later. If he later claimed harassment, the agent would say, I never called him anything but "sir"… Look at the transcript.

"I was at my office most of the night."

"Until when?"

"About ten. Quarter to, maybe."

"By yourself?"

"Yes. My secretary leaves at five-fifteen every night. I stay late a lot of times."

"Is there a guard?"

"We got guards, sure. But I didn't see any of them that night when I left."

"Is there any way of confirming your whereabouts?"

"You really think I killed Vince Gaudia?" Crimmins asked, exasperated.

"Is there any way of confirming it, sir?" the agent repeated.

"No."

"Do you own a Lincoln?"

"Yes. And a Mercedes wagon. A diesel."

"What color is the Lincoln?"

Crimmins rubbed the bump of his third eye. Why did they hate him so? "Dark blue. But you know that already, don't you?"

"What's the license number?"

He gave it to them

"Where was that car on the night we've been talking about?"

Crimmins was hungry. He had bouts of low blood sugar. If he didn't eat regularly-sometimes five meals a day-he would have attacks. He thought with some pleasure that Vince Gaudia never got to eat his last meal the night he died. "I drove it into the city."

"And parked it where, sir?"

"The place I always park it. The garage near the Ritz."

"And that's a Lincoln Continental?"

"I told you that already."

"Actually, no. We don't know what model. Is it a Continental?"

"It's a Town Car."

"Now tell me again where you were on that night."

Crimmins asked, "Where I was sitting, you mean?"

"You were in your office, you claim."

"I'm not claiming. I was there. I told you that. Didn't he write it down? I saw him write it down."

"Why wasn't your secretary there?"

"She leaves about five-fifteen every day. I told you that too."

The interview went on and on and on and the agents picked over every word that Crimmins said.

Finally the men stood. They flipped their notebooks closed and gathered their raincoats. Suddenly they were gone.

He now sat at his desk, staring at the familiar nicks along the side, running his finger over them, feeling the bulge of his gut against his belt. '

The phone rang.

His lawyer was on the line. Grimmins decided not to tell him about the visit from the FBI. It had been worse than expected, but if he told the lawyer, the man would have a tantrum that he had spoken to the agents alone. But the issue didn't come up; the lawyer wanted to talk, not listen.

"Pete, I've got some news. Call me on a safe phone, will you?"

Crimmins grunted and hung up. He walked down- * stairs and up the street to the Ritz Carlton parking garage. Without proffering a ticket, he nodded to a young attendant, who scurried off to retrieve the Lincoln. Crimmins looked at it sourly as it rolled up. He gave the boy a bill then got inside and drove out onto the broad street. He lifted the receiver of the car phone, the number of which was changed so frequently that he was 95 percent sure it was a secure line.

"News, you said." Crimmins drove leisurely, well under the speed limit.

"The witness," the nonfriend and counselor said.

"Yes."

"The witness to the Gaudia hit."

"I know that's what you mean. What about him?" Crimmins snapped, angry because there was a 5 percent chance the line was not secure.

"I found him."

"How?"

"I called some favors in."

Called in favors? Nonsense. Nobody owes a leech any favors. "Who is it?"

"A man with this movie company that's up in Maddox."

"Movie company? I never heard about a movie company."

'They're shooting some gangster film up there." His voice was bright with an irony that Crimmins didn't wish to acknowledge.

"Well? Tell me about him."

The man said, "They know he saw who was in the car. Both Maddox police and the FBI. So far, he's been too scared to testify."

"What did he see?" Crimmins asked slowly.

"They're sure he saw the driver," the lawyer said, then added, "There's something else I should tell you. I heard from somebody in the Justice Department that Petersons going after him. He's going to jump on this guy with both feet. He's going to jump on him until he burns you."

A sigh. "What's his name?"

"John Pellam."

"Where's he staying?"

The lawyer hesitated-pehaps at Crimmins's sudden interest in details. Then he said, "He's got a trailer. You know, a camper. He parks it different places but mostly he's staying at the old trailer camp by the river in Maddox. Near the cement plant."

"I thought that was closed."

"Maybe for the movie people they opened it."

"It's deserted around there, isn't it?"

Now the hesitation grew into a long silence. The lawyer managed to ask, "Why do you want to know that? Tell me, Peter."

Crimmins said, "I don't need anything more from you for the time being."

"Line it up for me, Nels," said Ronald L. Peterson, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri.

He sat in a large office, done up in functional sixties design. The furniture was expensive. The desk was solid teak, but you could not tell by looking at its top, which was covered with a thousand pieces of paper. On the bookshelves, filling three walls, were dark, wilted volumes. Moore's Federal Practice Digest. Federal Sentencing Guidelines. Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Case reporters, law reviews, ABA Journals.