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When he was through, Mel said, “I got another bandage in my other pocket. I hope you don’t need to use that too because the next bullet goes in your left hand and you know it’s a bitch to tie on a bandage with just one hand.”

“What the fuck do you want?”

“Where’s Johanna Mudd’s body buried, and where are you holding a living Chrissie Braun?”

“If-if-if you don’t let me go, my people will kill her.”

Mel lifted the barrel of the gun so that it was leveled at Marmot’s face. The man cowered.

“If that’s true you’re as good as dead.”

“Mudd is buried in a church down in the West Village. It’s a—it’s abandoned and the cops I worked with used it to hide the bodies they made.”

That proved Marmot’s collusion. I reasoned that Porker and his friends planned to bury me in that rat-infested pit.

“What about the child?”

“How do I know you won’t kill me after I tell?”

“First,” Mel said, gesturing carelessly with the pistol, “I can’t kill you right off because you might be lying, or maybe the girl got moved while you were crying like a baby on my floor. Second, I’ve been employed to find a dead woman and a live girl. You don’t mean enough for me to kill.”

“I don’t believe you,” the conniving child who lived in Marmot’s heart said.

“Believe this,” Mel replied, now aiming the pistol at our prisoner. “If I don’t have the address and situation of the child in the next three minutes, I will start putting holes in you until either you give me what I want or bleed to death.”

It was an address in Yonkers. If we were to believe Marmot, the girl was guarded by two women he knew. When he’d finished the confession Mel thanked him and walked out of the cell.

“Are we gonna kill this one?” he asked.

“Not unless the girl’s dead or he lied about where she is.”

“You see? If I stay working with you long enough, I might work off nine, ten percent of my sins. I’ll be right back.”

Mel left the room while I stood sentry. After maybe five minutes Marmot made it to his feet, picked up the folding chair, and limped to the door. There he stood waiting to ambush Melquarth.

I hated the man for what he’d done, but still I identified with him. Just days before I was in a similar situation, desperately struggling to survive.

“At least he’s still kickin’,” Mel said from behind me. I was so concentrated on Marmot’s silent monologue of survival that I didn’t hear my friend come in.

He was carrying a small beat-up oak table, resembling a nineteenth-century child’s writing desk; that and a paper folder.

“You need some help?”

“Nah,” Mel said with a shrug. “I like to use my words when I can.”

With that Mel entered and then closed the outer door. Marmot heard something because he raised the metal bludgeon-chair.

“Back away from the door and put down that seat,” Mel’s slightly altered voice said.

Marmot hesitated.

“You got sixty seconds and then I’m’a shoot you through a hole in this door.”

I fingered the scar on my cheek.

Marmot threw down the chair and backed away from the door.

Mel walked in, put the desk down so that it faced the window, and said, “Now pick up that goddamned chair and sit down at this table.”