My mind is racing. I go through the whole story from start to finish. I start with Adam. I hesitate before I say what Adam and the rest of my cousins found and what they’re up to. It sounds even crazier than being shot at by a guy with a giant spider tattoo on his face. But by now it’s obvious to me that this big homicide cop is the only thing standing between me and a jail cell. If I can convince him that every word I’m saying is true, I might have a chance to get out of here and go home.
I explain all about David McLean. Carver doesn’t interrupt me. He doesn’t get impatient and tell me to get to the point, that he doesn’t want to hear anything about anyone’s grandfather unless it’s Eric’s. The whole time I’m talking, he sits straight up in his chair, leaning forward slightly to make me think that he’s catching every word I say, and I don’t doubt he is.
I tell him about Buenos Aires and Mirella and Heinrich Franken. I tell him about Curtis and how he crossed paths with Mirella way back when. I say I was hoping that Curtis could help me out with more information. I tell him that’s the only reason I’m in Detroit, that my being here has nothing to do with Eric McLennan. I tell him I don’t even like the guy. I tell him everything. I don’t leave anything out. At least, I don’t think I do. My main goal: to convince Detective Carver that, despite what he knows from my record and from the circumstances in which he met me, I am basically a law-abiding citizen.
When I finish, Carver says nothing. Minutes tick by.
“That’s it?” he asks finally. “That’s everything?”
“That’s everything.”
I say it not because it’s true. It’s not. Not exactly. There’s one little thing I don’t tell him. It’s not that I want to lie. What I want is for him to believe me. And it worries me that if I tell him this one thing, it’ll make him take another hard look at me and decide to charge me and lock me up. I don’t tell him about seeing Duane in Eric’s garage, and I pray in my own way that it won’t come back to bite me in the butt.
Carver gets up and leaves the room again. He’s gone for a long time, during which I put my head down on the table and try to catch a little sleep. It’s crazy, I know. One minute I’m so jumpy I’m like a perpetual-motion machine. The next, I’m exhausted.
Carver shakes me, hard.
I sit up. My neck is stiff. My mouth is dry. My stomach is rumbling.
Carver slides a can of pop in front of me. I snap it open and gulp greedily. He has a cup of coffee for himself. He sits down, again with the file folder.
“I’ve gotta tell you, Rennie,” he says. “I’ve had a lot of people sit in that chair over the years, and a lot of them—most of them—have started by telling me cockamamie stories about how I’ve got the wrong person, how it couldn’t possibly be them. If I was inclined, and I’m not, not even remotely, I could write a book. Seriously. You wouldn’t believe the nonsense I’ve heard. Frankly, some of it is downright insulting. I didn’t get here by being the dumbest cop on the beat.”
That bad feeling I’ve had ever since I was put in this room gets dramatically worse.
“Your story, son…” He shakes his head. “It’s the cockamamiest one I’ve ever heard, I kid you not. A grandfather with secret identities and a bunch of passports. Hidden money. Coded notes. It wouldn’t even make a good novel. It’s too crazy.”
“But—”
His hand slashes through the air and makes me bite my tongue.
“Nobody would believe it,” he says. “No cop I know. No sane jury member. Even a rookie defense attorney would advise you to come up with something better.”
The soda in my belly starts churning like an ocean in the middle of a hurricane.
“If it wasn’t for that thing you pulled off in Iceland,” he says. He flips open the file folder, and there are some pages printed out from the Internet. About me. In Iceland. About what happened there. “And these guys—they’re your cousins, right?” He flips the pages. There’s a small article about my cousin Bunny, who got himself into a scrape with some gang members. Thank you, Bunny. There’s a news item about Webb too, from some little newspaper way up north. “That whole idea, some guy leaving a video and sending his grandsons on these crazy missions—that’s cockamamie too. But it looks to me like it’s not the stories that are nuts. It was your grandfather. No offense.”
“None taken,” I say.
He leans back in his chair and studies me. “So you’re here trying to track down what your grandfather had to do with some Nazi, huh?”
“I have a picture in my wallet.” I start to reach for it and then stop. He nods. I pull my wallet out of my pocket and show him the copy of the newspaper photo Adam sent me. He looks at it and nods.
“Cockamamie,” he says. “The thing is, Rennie, you have a record. You’ve been associating with a person of extreme interest in an unsolved murder instigated, we believe, by racial hatred. You were at the scene of the murder of a police officer. You’re the only witness, and there are elements of the situation that put you in a very bad light. You understand that, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I’m sure you can understand that all of this makes my lieutenant antsy. Very antsy. He thinks that if I let you walk out of here, that even if I tell you not to leave town, that kind of thing, you’ll shoot back across the border and give us a gigantic paperwork headache when we need you back down here again when and if this case goes to trial.”
I hold my breath. Does that mean he believes my story? Or is this some kind of trick? Is he watching for my reaction? What’s the best way for someone in my position to act? How do I make him believe I’m innocent?
“Now, I guess I could contact your father in Pakistan.”
“Afghanistan,” I say. “Sir.”
“Afghanistan. I could tell him your situation and ask that he come back here.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do that.” I wish it fervently.
“I bet you do.” He sips his coffee. “My father was a military man too. A real disciplinarian.”
“That’s the Major,” I say.
“Is there someone else you can contact? Another family member?”
“What for?”
“To come down here and talk to us. So maybe we can work something out.”
My heart flutters. Is he going to let me go? If he does, is it because he believes me?
“There’s my grandmother. She lives in Toronto.”
He takes a notebook from his jacket pocket and slides it across the table together with a pen. “Write down her name and phone number.”
I stare at the pen. I don’t reach for it.
“I’d rather contact her myself. She’ll freak out if a cop calls her.” Especially a Detroit homicide cop. “She has no idea I’m even down here.”
Carver sits still for a moment. “Okay,” he says. “I’ll get you a phone. You talk to her, and then I talk to her.”
“I have my cell phone,” I say.
There’s a long pause.
“Okay. You call her. You talk to her. When you’re done, you let me know and I’ll talk to her.” He stands up to leave. I can’t shake the idea that he’s setting a trap for me. But I say okay, and I pull out my cell phone and punch in my grandmother’s phone number.
“Hello?”
The voice that answers isn’t the one I’m expecting.
It’s not my grandmother. It’s Ari. I think about hitting the End button—that’s how much I like the guy. But if I want to get out of this police station, I need to talk to my grandmother.
“Hey, Ari. Is my grandma around?”
“Rennie? I thought I recognized your number. Mel’s been expecting you.” That’s my grandmother, Melanie. “To be honest, she’s been worried. Is everything okay?”
See, that’s the thing with Ari. You ask him a simple question—“Is my grandma there?”—but you don’t get a simple, “Yes, I’ll put her on.” No, you get Ari’s take on things. You get him asking you questions, like I even care what he thinks. And I don’t. I don’t care if he and Grandma have been best buddies since before I was born. I don’t care if they visit back and forth—even though Grandma tells me there’s absolutely nothing romantic going on between them. All I know is that Ari gives me the creeps. He asks too many questions. He watches people the way a fox watches a henhouse. And he’s a know-it-all.
“I just need to talk to Grandma, Ari.” I can’t make it any plainer than that.
“She can’t come to the phone right now.”
“Why not? She’s okay, isn’t she?” Then I have a thought. I pray—boy, do I pray—that he’s not going to tell me she’s in the shower. I mean, it’s bad enough that he’s there at her place in the middle of the night. I glance at my watch. Correction: at six in the morning. But if I have to put it all together—Ari, early morning, Grandma in shower—I think I’ll puke.
“She was at her friend Joyce’s last night.” Joyce and Grandma apparently raised hell back in the day. “They had a little too much wine, I think. She’s sound asleep. And it is early. Can you call back later? Or do you want her to give you a shout?”
Before I can answer, I hear a sleepy voice. “Hello?”
“Grandma?”
“Rennie? Is that you?” She sounds instantly alert. “Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Sorry to wake you, Grandma.”
“I’ve been worried. You were supposed to be here by now.”
“I know. Something came up.”
“You should have called. I was about to see if I could contact your father.”
“No! Don’t do that!”
I can’t see my grandmother, and she doesn’t say a word, but I have no trouble picturing her sitting straight up in bed now, her granny antennae quivering.
“What’s going on, Rennie? You aren’t in any trouble, are you? Maybe you’d better let me speak to Mr. Mitron.”
“He’s not here, Grandma. I mean, I’m not there. I’m not in Uruguay. I’m in Detroit.”
“Detroit? What on earth are you doing there?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Uncomplicate it, Rennie.” She sounds flinty now. She’s nearly seventy, retired but far from inactive, and no one’s idea of a grandmother. At least, she isn’t my idea of one. She’s fit and dresses like a million dollars, and no one pushes her around. She’s one of the few people I know who can hold her own with the Major.
I glance at the mirror and wonder if Carver is behind it. Or if anyone else is. I know why I’ve been allowed to make this call, but I can’t help asking something else before I get to the point.
“Grandma, did David McLean ever say anything to you about Argentina?”
“Argentina? I thought you said you were in Uruguay—before Detroit, I mean.”
“I was. But I need to know about Argentina.”
“I don’t think I can help you, Rennie. I want you to come home. Now.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Like I said, it’s complicated. Did he ever seem strange to you, Grandma? Or act strange? Or disappear sometimes?”
“Who?”
“David McLean.”
“I don’t like these questions, Rennie. Tell me where you are. I’ll arrange a flight home for you and call you with the information.”
Okay, there’s no avoiding it now.
“The thing is, Grandma, I’m at a police station.”
“Police station?” She does not like the sound of that.
“It’s okay.” At least, I sincerely hope it is. “There was a mix-up.”
“What kind of a mix-up?”
“Someone got killed.”
“Killed?”
I hear Ari in the background, asking what this is all about and who got killed.
“Rennie, are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Grandma. There’s just been a mix-up, that’s all.” I’m on my feet and walking to the door of the interrogation room. I can’t wait to hand the phone to Carver. “There’s a detective here who wants to talk to you, Grandma.”
“Detective? What detective?”
“His name is Carver. He’s a homicide detective.”
Carver is waiting in the hall, still working on his coffee. When he hears his name, he comes away from the filing cabinet he was leaning against and starts for me. I hand him the phone.
“It’s my grandmother.”
“Name?”
“Melanie Cole.”
Carver takes the phone. “Mrs. Cole? Detective Dan Carver, Detroit Police.”
Then Carver is talking to her. His voice is calm. He tells her that I’ve witnessed something and that because I’m a foreign national and a minor, he’d appreciate if she could come down here and do some paperwork, because they might need me to return sometime in the future as the case progresses and he wants to make sure that’s not going to be a problem. He spends a lot of time with her, and he stays calm and seems to answer most of her questions—although, of course, some of the answers are, “I’m afraid I can’t go into that, ma’am. It’s an ongoing investigation.” But he does assure her that I’m okay.
I guess they work things out, because he turns to me and says, “She plays hardball, your grandma.” He doesn’t explain. He just hands the phone back to me, and the next thing I know, my grandma is giving me a lecture on getting my butt back to my hotel room and staying there until she gets there. “Don’t you even think about not being there when I arrive, Rennie, because I will call your father if I have to.” Translation: She’s angry and—if you want my opinion—a little scared, and she will not hesitate to bring in the big guns (the Major) if I give her even an iota of trouble.
I tell her no problem. I tell her I don’t want trouble any more than she does. That part is true. Trouble is the last thing I want. The part about staying put—well, I came here for a reason, and there’s no way I’m going to let Eric stop me from making a last attempt to get what I want.
Carver makes me hand over my passport and my driver’s license.
“So you don’t get the urge to leave me flat,” he says. “And so you’ll plant yourself in your hotel room and stay there until your granny gets there.”
I sign a receipt for my ID. I sign some other papers. Carver gives me his card, and I agree to check in with him. I give him my cell number so that he can check in with me. I listen to his lecture about doing what my grandma said. Then he lets me walk free.