36

The small visitors' room was illuminated by six one-hundred-watt bare bulbs, and still darkness clung to the corners. The furnishings consisted of a short wood table hemmed in by two metal chairs, one on either side. I had been occupying one of the seats for eight and a half minutes when two federal marshals escorted a jittery Ron Sharkey into the room.

Dressed in the same clothes as when I'd seen him last, Sharkey was manacled, hand and foot, with a metal band around his lower abdomen. His hand- and ankle-cuffs were attached by thick leather belts to this band.

"Unchain him," I said to the dark-skinned, probably Hispanic, marshal.

He looked at his white partner, received a nod, and then began to undo the four locks that restrained the wan prisoner.

"Twenty minutes," the white officer said.

The marshals then left us.

"Mr.-" Ron began to say, but I pressed a finger to my lips, silencing him.

I stood up, moved the table against a wall, then brought the chairs together so that, seated, we would be side by side but facing opposite walls.

I sat down and gestured for him to join me. Then I leaned over and whispered, "The room is definitely bugged, so we are going to have to whisper."

His BO didn't bother me so much-mostly because his breath smelled like a line of garbage cans behind the greasiest diner on the block.

"I don't understand, Mr. Tunes. They told me that a guy named Macklil was comin' to see me."

"That's just a name I use to keep 'em guessin'," I said.

"Oh. Oh, yeah."

"You're in trouble, Ron. They're gonna keep you in here till your teeth fall out if they don't get an answer."

"They'd kill me if I talked."

"You don't think they will anyway? They know you've been busted. They know you're a user. There's no way they're gonna trust you to stay quiet."

"But they have to believe me," Ron complained. "I haven't said nuthin' to nobody."

One outstanding characteristic of most career criminals is their innate innocence. Their worldview is often simple, founded upon a basic equation of honesty and betrayal. Ron had been faithful to the big dog and expected the same treatment back. The only way to break that logic was to add a new variable.

"I found Irma," I lied in his ear.

He stood straight up and said, "Where is she?"

"Be quiet," I commanded, pulling him by the shirt back into the huddle.

"Where is she?" he whispered.

"I will take you to her, but first you got to get out of here."

"Bring her here to me."

"I don't work for you, Ron. I work for Lewis, and he, for whatever reason, wants you out of here. The only way I can do that is to provide a patsy for the weapons they found in the car you were driving."

"I can't," he whined.

It was my turn to stand up.

It wasn't an empty gesture. I was sick of Ron and his recidivism. I had a job to do, but if the client wasn't willing, then I had to cut my losses. I'd tried to save my victim, but sometimes trying is the best you can do.

Ron grabbed my hand.

"No," he whined.

"I need a name," I said, sitting once more.

"I don't know who the car belonged to," he said. "I got this, this letter."

"In the mail?"

"No. Under the door at Wilma's. Somebody left me an envelope with three hundred dollars and two keys-one for the car door and the other for the ignition. There was a note saying for me to pick up a yellow Chevy that would be parked across the street. I was supposed to drive it to a parking garage in Queens and leave it there."

"Where?"

"I forget where exactly. It was in Astoria… Pixie Parking. Yeah, yeah… Pixie Parking."

"What else did the note say?"

"That there'd be another letter with another three hundred if I did what they said. I needed to make the delivery because I already owed out the money they gave me. You see?" he said. "I really don't know nuthin'."

"If you don't know anything then what are you afraid to tell the feds?"

Sharkey swayed away from me for a moment there. I reached over and pulled him back.

"I asked Wilma if she saw who put the letter there and she looked worried," he said. "I know when she gets that look, so I pressed her. She said that she saw Joe Fleming out on the street walking away right after she found the letter."

"Who's Joe Fleming?"

"He's like a private bank in the neighborhood."

"Does he deal in guns?"

"I never heard about it."

"Does he know that you owed three hundred?"

"I always owe somebody somethin'. Joe stopped lending to me a year ago… right after he broke my arm."

I considered the information Ron had given me. It was a crazy story. In my experience crazy stories were too often true.

"When can I see Irma?" he asked.

"Soon."

"How soon?"

"As soon as I can find a way to get you out of here without getting you killed."

I could hear, and smell, Ron's ragged breath.

"How long can you hold out?" I asked him.

"I'm okay."

"When are you going to need the pipe again?"

"I'm off the crack, man," Ron Sharkey said.

"Bullshit."

"No. I started usin' H 'bout seven months ago. I used that to ease off the speed. And then I slowed up on the H. I'm just, I'm just chippin' now. I can go three days and not hardly even sweat."

The best and worst lies are when we lie to ourselves. My father told me that three days before he was gone for good.

"Hold on, Ron," I said. "I'll be back in under forty-eight hours."

"WHAT WAS THAT SHIT?" Jake Plumb asked me outside the visitors' room.

"What?"

"You weren't supposed to be neckin' in there."

"I don't like microphones."

"Oh no? How do you feel about prison cells? I could throw you in one right now," the agent said. "I could lock you in a room where even a runt like you couldn't stand up straight. I got a dozen judges on my speed-dial wouldn't even blink before signin' the warrant."

It was all true. The government my father railed against had those powers, had been honing them for nearly a century. I was nothing more than a stalk of wheat against Plumb's scythe of justice.

"Make up your mind, then," I said, while sending up a small prayer to the not-God of my father's pantheon. "Because I got places to be-or not."

37

Agent Plumb took no more than a minute to decide to let me go, but it felt like hours. It was stubbornness and not courage that kept me from falling to my knees, begging him not to imprison me.

I was shivering by the time I'd made it back to the waiting room of that human warehouse. Plumb and Galsworthy ran what an adman might call an "instant prison." At any moment almost any American (barring movie stars, publicly acknowledged billionaires, and sitting members of Congress) could be whisked away to that nameless building, en route to one of our satellite Siberias, and kept there until a botched water torture or the shrug of some judge sent them home.

In the waiting room I went straight for the exit, and then stopped.

Any chance you get to risk your life for the cause is as close to a blessing as a modern man can come. My father's words had no political meaning to me, but their truth outshone their intent.

"Excuse me, ma'am," I said to the Arab woman slumped in the chair.

She looked up at me but didn't say anything. Her children-an older girl and two toddler boys-also stared.

"Your husband has been moved to the Federal Detention Center in Miami. You'd probably do well to call down there."

ON THE STREET I went over the talk I'd had with Ron. I always do that-replay the words and gestures of an interrogation. Usually I find something that I'd overlooked; often that something has nothing to do with the information I was after.