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“To testify. To prove that you didn’t do what they said you did.”

“I don’t think I need you for that, Mrs. Summers. You gave me a name and a trail. That’s enough.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“So that’s it?”

“Unless you remember something else.”

“The thing you asked about Detective Cortez.”

“What thing?”

“He had an accent. It was a very New York kind of talking. You know what I mean?”

“I certainly do. Thank your husband for me, Beatrice,” I said, and then I hung up.

12.

I was deep into the cases and not even a day had passed.

I cleared off the desktop in my apartment and on a pink sheet of paper I wrote—Someone in the department was definitely involved in the false accusations against me. At the 32nd a man named Adamo Cortez, posing as a detective, coerced Nathali Malcolm into pressing charges against me for rape. Correct spellings and her testimony are attached below.

After taping Beatrice’s letter at the bottom of the page I placed the pink sheet in the center of the green blotter on the empty desk. This simple act sent a thrill through my scalp and shoulders. Finally it had begun.

Leaving the excitement on the third floor, I took the trapdoor rope ladder from my apartment down into the office below. I usually take the hallway stairs between floors, but that morning felt secret, outlaw.

There was a pulley system to roll the hemp rungs back up and a long pole kept in a far corner to close the trap. I sat at the window in my private office and stared down at the working-class pedestrians being shown up and disdained by the street.

I didn’t say or do anything but ponder for the next couple of hours. I hadn’t had much sleep because my mind could not shut down completely. The lack of sleep and deep disposition of mind caused a descent into a fugue-like state. There was no me but just the details of future blue and pink pages. There was an eggshell with a mustache and a ranger with a pistol in his hand. There was a dark hole that seemed to hold intelligence, and a girl-child all grown up.

The phone pulled me out of the temporary retreat.

“Hello,” I answered, maybe a little dreamily.

“Joe?”

I was still in that faraway place. The voice was familiar but nameless.

I groaned and the vibration brought knowledge.

“Hey, Henri. Yeah, it’s me. I must’a dozed off. What time is it?”

“Three thirty. What kinda shit you into, man?”

“How’s your father?” I asked while trying to remember the e-mail I sent that morning.

“Adamo Cortez,” my caller insisted.

“What?” I said, and then, “Oh…yeah.”

“Yeah. I called in and said that there was a guy saying that he was a CI for a Detective Adamo Cortez. They said they never heard that name; it wasn’t in their files. But a few hours later on, two suits from One Police Plaza came down to the street to see me. The street, Joe.”

“What they want?” I asked, the void receding behind me.

“They wanted to know everything. Everything. Where I met him. What he said. Was it near a video camera?”