CHAPTER 32

Hearing Pick’s voice on the phone reminded Sussman of the handful of fistfights he’d fought as a kid. The grown-up responsibility of confronting others with their wrongdoing was eerily comparable to punching another boy in the face. So he found himself curiously relieved that her call had nothing to do with the embezzlement, a subject that she apparently found too trivial to bring up. She was concerned instead for the welfare of the knife-brandishing bruiser whose mug shot he’d more or less identified. Pick seemed to think that targeting him or anyone else for the American Gulag was unforgivable. He could get ten years, she said.

“Where’d you get that?”

“From someone who knows. The sentences they hand out get really crazy. I’m finding out. I wouldn’t want that on my conscience.”

“You didn’t identify him?”

“Of course not.”

He was stunned. True, the cap had hidden the top half of the man’s head, but those squinty eyes, the smashed nose and giant shoulders all matched precisely. There couldn’t be two people in a million who’d be mistaken for this guy. Sussman wasn’t even sure why he’d left room for doubt. He’d told the police he was 80 percent sure. “But I’ve been thinking,” he said. “If he walks away he could really hurt somebody next time.”

“So you want to put him in preventive detention the next ten years?”

Sussman was no stranger to the world of muggers and thieves. He’d grown up in a neighborhood teeming with half criminals. When they were kids they might shovel neighbors’ walks one day and commit petty thefts or extortions the next. Whatever opportunity presented itself. Most kids drifted away from shortcuts. Others grew into full-fledged bandits and thugs, some of them mob-connected. It didn’t take much of a breeze to bend kids like them one way or the other. Scientists, schoolteachers, killers. There were endless possibilities on Chicago’s South Side. But whatever happened, you didn’t call the cops to solve your problem. Sussman’s father let a pickpocket go free at the racetrack. Yet he was a poker player who pounced on the weak like a hungry rattler. His dad read Kant, Buber, and Schopenhauer, but he did so secretly, as though it were shameful.

“You know I’ve spoken with the mortgage company,” Sussman told Pick, “and some others.”

“What’s that got to do with the kid?” she shot back.

“Not a thing, but I think it’s worth mentioning, don’t you?”

“Sussman, I . . . just can’t talk about any of that now. Try to understand.” There was a bit of a tremor in her voice. It didn’t quite make up for the lost five million bucks, but it was a start. Of course there was a 60 percent chance she was playing him. “I’ll see you at the line-up,” she said.

So she’d be there too. He drove without enthusiasm through bright sunlight to the police station, less than eager to see the giant with the mustard skin. The cops had him wait ten minutes in a fair-sized room that looked like an insurance office except most of the people working in it wore police uniforms. Pick said hello as though their relationship was unstrained and natural.

“You know, you could have at least paid the dog walker,” he said. She ignored the remark with remarkably impressive dignity.

Eventually the Jewish cop, Rosen, came in and escorted him without Pick to the same little room with the one-way glass where he’d viewed Bento several weeks earlier. So it wouldn’t be a traditional line-up after all. As Sussman and Rosen seated themselves at blond-wood student desks, the giant, in a blue jail jumpsuit, entered the little room on the other side of the glass and seated himself in the plastic chair. He looked like a sorrowful bulldog. It was him, all right, only without the giant braid or the knife. Suddenly Sussman heard him say, “Get away from me.” It came through a little speaker near the ceiling that Sussman hadn’t noticed before. Apparently the suspect was obeying instructions from someone Sussman couldn’t hear. “Get away from me,” the giant said again—the only words Sussman had heard from the intruder. But the suspect used a voice tone you’d use to state your address. He repeated it twice more in the same bored manner.

“What do you think?” asked Rosen. “Want to see him with the baseball cap?”

“Sure.”

Rosen picked up a mic and spoke softly into it. The giant donned a red Angels cap that had been sitting on the table.

“It was pulled down to the tops of his ears,” said Sussman. Rosen relayed more instructions, and the giant pulled the cap lower.

“Well, you sure this time?”

Sussman tried to suppress a smile. “No.”

“What does that mean exactly?”

“I’m less sure now than I was before. The memory could be fading, but there’s a good chance this isn’t the guy.”

Rosen looked skyward. “Is something going on here we ought to know? Let me tell you, the man who broke into your home is extremely dangerous. He’ll do it again. You can count on it. To somebody who could get hurt or killed. You want that on your conscience?”

“You take care of your conscience, I’ll take care of mine.” At which point Rosen informed him the hulk in question had been busted for a carjacking in the Valley that would put him away for years. Which meant Sussman could rest easy. The guy wouldn’t go out there and chop up a family of Quakers.

“I hope it wasn’t something we said that influenced you,” Rosen said, his tone suddenly solicitous. “Maybe somebody rubbed you the wrong way. Something like that.”

“You mean like the blue meanie who treated me like a suspect?”

“Is that what happened?”

“My ability to recognize or not recognize your suspect had nothing to do with anyone’s attitude,” Sussman said. It felt good to say that because it was pretty much true, unlike most of what he’d been saying.