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Burns was breathing easily, only sipping at the coffee now and then.

“Kierin’s shit sets down hard and keeps it goin’ for a good long time,” Burns said. “If I had two hits I’d be well till lunchtime tomorrow.”

“Ms. Goya says that you can help me exonerate Mr. Man.”

“I thought you wanted to get him off death row?”

“Not execute,” I explained. “Exonerate. Prove he’s innocent.”

“Oh.” Burns snickered. “I know a lotta words, but sometimes they get a little mixed up ’cause I ain’t never been to school. Not really. I was in elementary school for eight years, but then, when I just couldn’t graduate an’ I was fourteen they sent me on my way. My moms was already dead an’ I only went ’cause she wanted me to, but then she died and they let me go.… My moms was a nurse one time and she loved roses…”

I wondered if he was playing me.

“I need you to concentrate on what happened to Man,” I said.

“Yeah,” he said. “I could exorate him for ya. I mean…I know what happened and what they planned.”

“Who?”

“Valence and Pratt.”

“You knew them pretty well?”

“Pretty well? I had to suck Pratt’s scrawny dick at least once a week. And he would tell me every time that if I told Valence that he’d kill me. He’d hold the gun to my head while I was suckin’ him. I was always afraid he’d bust a nut and pull the trigger at the same time.”

“I thought Miranda said that Man took you out from them.”

“He did. He did. Three times. But you know I had that junk in my veins, and everything that the brothers had for me needed you to be straight. I tried. I really did. But you know bein’ high’s the only way things make sense in my head. Valence and Pratt knew that. They knew how to keep me right.”

“I don’t think the courts would take something like that as evidence,” I said.

“No, they wouldn’t. No one takes a junkie seriously. Even if I told ’em I was the one set up Manny for gettin’ killed they wouldn’t believe it.”

“You set up A Free Man for Valence and Pratt?”

When Burns looked up at me there was a smile on his face and tears streaming from his eyes.

“Them cops come to me and say that Manny was gettin’ in their business too bad and that they needed to talk to him. That was a code. They knew I didn’t wanna hurt nobody and so they’d say talk when they meant kill.”

I was sitting right in front of him, but he was looking to the right, at a blank wall.

“You did this for them more than once?” I asked.

“They said they wanted to talk to Manny,” Burns continued, ignoring the question. “They said they’d gimme a hundred dollars and I’d be free’a them if I’d tell Manny I had dirt on them and to meet me at the Seagate Pier down on the West Village side.

“I made ’em gimme the hunnert up front and then I called Manny and said exactly what they wanted me to.”

“Did you go there too?”

“Naw. I was at Auntie Hester’s sleepin’ in that same shed where I met you.”

“So you’re the one who set up Mr. Man for the ambush in the West Village?”

“Yeah. Out near the crypt.”

“There’s no crypt around over there,” I said, realizing that I was beginning to talk like the junkie.

“Not no tourist trap fake plaque sayin’ that this was where they buried George Washington or nuthin’ like that, but you better believe that there’s a sure-enough graveyard just a couple’a blocks from where Yollo an’ Anton had me lead Manny.”