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“Officer Pooh,” Blanton said sharply. “How did this man get this mark on his face?”
“The detective in charge struck him, sir,” Poux said. “After he put on the cuffs.” She looked so absolutely upright and military I had to stop myself from whistling “The Stars and Stripes Forever.”
Blanton closed his eyes and sighed. Revis merely said, “I think you can take the cuffs off him, Poux.”
Poux stepped smartly over to me and I held up my wrists. She unlocked them and, just before she turned away, I winked at her. She didn’t wink back.
“Thank you, Officer Poux,” Revis said. “You can return to your duties.”
Poux marched off, and I stepped forward into the space she’d been in. “Pleased to meet you,” I said to Revis as she turned to look at me. “My name is Dexter Morgan.”
“Would you be willing to answer a few questions, Mr. Morgan?” she said.
“Of course,” I said.
They led me into the hotel’s dingy little lobby. It was far enough from the blast that it hadn’t been damaged. Considering the state of the rotting old furniture, that was neither believable nor fortunate. The old couple who ran the place had turned off the television. He sat in a moldering overstuffed chair with an expression on his face he must have learned from Edvard Munch, while she bustled back and forth with a pot of coffee and a stack of Styrofoam cups.
There was a small couch that wasn’t totally repugnant, and Revis motioned me to sit. She sat facing me in a straight-backed wooden chair. Her partner, Blanton, stood behind her, to her left, clearly giving her the lead. “That was your car that blew up, Mr. Morgan?” she said.
“Rented,” I told her with a charming, self-effacing smile.
As good as it was, the smile may not have worked, judging by her next question. “Did you blow up the rental car, Mr. Morgan?”
“No,” I said.
She just nodded. “The detective thinks you did it.”
“Yes, he would,” I said.
“That was a pretty big bomb, Mr. Morgan,” she said. “Who put it there?”
“I don’t know,” I said. And in all honesty I didn’t really know. I had a couple of very good guesses, but that was really none of the FBI’s business. Of course, they thought it was.
“If you had to guess, who do you think did it?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “it is a rented car. It could be aimed at the last person who drove it. Or even, you know. Some kind of mistake.”
“A mistake,” Blanton said, with sharp skepticism. “Somebody put a bomb like that in the wrong car?”
I shrugged. “It could happen. This is Miami.”
“Mr. Morgan,” Revis said, “that’s a little hard to believe, isn’t it?” She raised one eyebrow. “Even in Miami?”
“A couple of years ago, only a few miles from here,” I said, “a man was killed when a chunk of frozen sewage fell from a passing airplane and crashed through his roof.”
“Why did the detective hit y
ou?” Blanton said abruptly.
“He doesn’t like me,” I said.
Blanton just looked at me, but Revis snorted and said, “That was my first guess.”
“Do you know why he doesn’t like you?” Blanton said. “Or is that more frozen sewage?”
I hesitated. I suppose a real human being would have plunged right into the long and twisty tale, full of confidence in the forthright integrity of two upstanding federal agents and the noble system they represented. Unfortunately, I knew better. Everyone has a hidden agenda, and it is never, never, never what it looks like on the surface—which is, of course, why it is a hidden agenda. Revis and Blanton might decide to help Anderson in order to secure better local cooperation, which would show up on the monthly report and cause a budget increase, resulting in longer coffee breaks for the entire Bureau. There was no way to know. And so there was also no way to know whether telling them all was a good thing.
“Mr. Morgan?” Revis prompted.
