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“How about this afternoon?” I said.
***
“This is crazy,” I said in the car on the way. “What can they possibly throw at me? And why do they think I’ve committed a crime?”
“Whatever it is, Alex,” said Jeff, “they’re not going to do this unless they have some serious evidence. I want you to be prepared.” Jeff had insisted on coming.
“That can’t be true,” I said. “I bet Luca’s just told them a pack of lies.”
But Jeff looked out of the window as we got to the station. “Like I said. Just want you to be prepared.”
I couldn’t remember if I’d even been inside a police station before, but it wasn’t like I expected. The Fraud Squad had its offices at the 19thPrecinct these days. It was a comfortable, clean looking place, with a white linoleum floor and a big, heavy desk.
When we got there, I introduced myself.
“Take a seat,” said the cop at the desk. Jeff and I sat down.
Ten minutes passed, and there was nothing. We waited there, watching people come through. At one point a man passed with a police dog, and it looked up at me with brown, soulful eyes.
“What’s taking him so long?” I said.
“He’s sweating us,” said Jeff. There was a sense of foreboding on his face, and suddenly I wondered if it really had been a bad idea to come here.
Then, Russell O’Rourke came in. He was a big guy—almost as tall as me, and heavy in the shoulders. He looked like a retired boxer. If it weren’t for his balding head and the slight paunch at his stomach, I’d have taken him for an athlete. He had a hard face, weathered and rough, and seemed to be in his late fifties or early sixties, with a straggly half a head of steel-gray hair. He wore a disheveled suit, with a tie that was barely done up. It was raining outside, and his coat was slicked with water. I smelled cigarettes on him as I approached.
“Mr. Lowe,” he said, as I stood up. I reached out to shake his hand and he returned it, with a slow, light squeeze from his big paw. “Thank you for coming in today.”
“Inspector O’Rourke,” I said.
“Detective, please. I’m a detective. Inspector’s just what they call me when I’m sitting in my fancy office.”
He led me down the corridor, and soon I realized that he was taking me to an interview room. He opened a door at the end of the corridor, and suddenly we were in a small, dark room with a light over a table. There was a piece of metal in its center with a hole. I’d seen it before on TV shows. It was where you clipped the handcuffs in if your suspect had been arrested.
I sat down for a moment, but O’Rourke was smart. I could see that from the beginning. He didn’t even give me a chance to get comfortable, and he’d begun speaking before he even sat down.
“You from Philadelphia, Mr. Lowe?” he said, and a chill crept up the back of my spine.
“Wait a minute,” said Jeff. “You’re recording this?”
“Of course. Mr. Lowe agreed to that, didn’t he?”
“I want his Miranda Rights read.”
“Oh, I don’t think there’s any need to do that,” said O’Rourke. His chatty, friendly tone belied his sinister purpose. There was a hard look in his eye, and his posture was still and steady. I realized that this was a guy who could make anyone confess to anything if he wanted to.
“You mean,” said Jeff, “the contents of this conversation don’t need to be admissible in court?”
“Not at all,” said O’Rourke. “Mr. Lowe, I asked you a question. You are from Baltimore, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I said. I felt tense, and my heart rate was slightly elevated. I didn’t rattle easily, but something about O’Rourke’s voice wasn’t right. He was trying to sound casual and spontaneous, but his words seemed rehearsed.
“And you grew up with your mother, is that right?”
I looked at Jeff, then looked away. “Yeah,” I said. “What is this?”
“This is a conversation, Mr. Lowe. That’s what I do. I have conversations. Oh, you can do all the fancy police-work you want. But when it comes down to it, mostly a detective just, well. Has conversations.”
“But you don’t have conversations with innocent men?”
