MILLER STOOD AT HIS DOOR, waiting. He didn't smile. He didn't offer a hand. He was Captain Miller.
He closed the door behind us.
“Trouble parking?” he said.
“Yeah, but that's not why I'm late.”
He looked at my shirt. “Why are you late?”
“Because I've made the most awful mistake.”
He did not speak or move.
I said, “Do you have a tape recorder going here?”
“No. Do you want one?”
“No, I don't want one. And I don't know whether to believe you.”
“I wouldn't lie to you.”
“Yes you would.”
He smiled slightly. He opened a desk drawer.
I looked.
A tape recorder was running. The handwritten label on the cassette read, “Albert Samson: Scum Front,” and gave the date.
“Kill it,” I said.
He turned the machine off.
“The tape,” I said. I put out a hand.
“Why?”
“In case it's voice-activated.”
“Ah.”
He took the tape from the machine and passed it to me.
“You swear on your mother's Bible and Wendy's wedge that there's no other recording of any kind going on here?”
“I swear. You didn't give me time to set up anything cute. And besides,” he said, “you're a friend. Why should I need more than one?”
I pulled a chair over to the window behind his desk. I sat and put my feet up on the sill.
Miller turned his own chair and we shared the view of the Market Square Arena parking lot.
“I thought about trying to bullshit you,” I said.
“Oh yeah?” He waited.
“They came to me, Jerry. I was just sitting at home, minding my own business, and they came to me.”
“Why?”
“Because of the bomb they left in the Merchants Bank Building.”
“The one that wasn't there?”
“Somebody took it. They wanted me to get it back.”
“Why you, Al?”
My woman had asked the same question. I repeated what I had been told, “Because I work alone.”
Miller said, “So what happened?”
“They said if I didn't look for their bomb, then nobody would.”
“Oh yeah?”
“They said I was the only chance of keeping whoever took it from using it and maybe killing somebody.” I turned to him. “I hear there was a guy hurt in the explosion.”
“Yeah. They don't think he'll die, though.”
“Well, that's something.”
“So why didn't you come to me?” he said.
“They were very edgy. They were looking for any sign that I was going to the cops. They followed me around and threatened me. They've got a lot to lose if they're caught and they needed to convince themselves they could trust me. I don't know. Yes, I could have come to you and set them up. But finding the missing bomb seemed more important. So I didn't. Instead I made them promise they wouldn't leave any new bombs while I was on the case.”
“And?”
“I got a message this morning saying they had 'recovered' their 'missing package' and no longer required my services. I thought they'd found it and set it off.”
We sat, quiet, for a moment. I knew what he was going to ask. I said, “I can't tell you who they are. Not yet.”
“I don't believe this,” he said.
“I'm sorry.”
“You're protecting them? Terrorists? Do you know what's going to happen to you?”
“They didn't blow the building up. The people who took the missing bomb—”
“How the hell do you know that?” He shouted at me, though he was speaking barely louder than a whisper.
I said, “I know these people now. I don't believe they did it.”
“And who did?”
“I don't know.”
“You been working on it . . . how long?”
“A few days.”
“Do you have any leads? ”
“I have a lead.”
“And are you going to tell me about that? ”
“No. I give it to you and it goes out of control.”
He shook his head. “I don't understand,” he said.
“What don't you understand?”
He swiveled to face me. “Do you seriously expect me to let you walk out of here?”
“I think you should,” I said.
“Why's that?”
“Because if you don't, my lead will evaporate and you won't have any idea how to get to the people who set off the bomb.”
“Because you won't tell us what you know?”
“I won't tell you anything.”
“Even though you'll spend the rest of your life in jail.”
I shrugged.
“Jesus God!” he said. He shook his head. “What kind of world do you think you live in, Al? Don't you have any idea what you're playing with here? You'll be lucky if all that happens is that you go to jail and they take your license. Terrorism carries the death penalty in this state, you know.”
“Am I a terrorist now?”
“If they don't get somebody else they can prosecute.”
“Well, all I know is that I have a good lead on the person who picked up the bomb from the Merchants Bank Building.”
“It's a good lead now? A minute ago it was just a lead.”
“I believe I know someone who can virtually identify the person who took the bomb.”
“Virtually identify? What does 'virtually identify' mean in English? Does it bear any relationship to what I understand by the concept of identification?”
“It should.”
“And I'm supposed to let you walk out of here?”
“I think that's your best bet.”
“And I am supposed to carry the can if you come up empty?”
“Jerry,” I said, “did you tell anybody that I was coming in?”
“Of course I did,” he said.
“Your secretary maybe. But did you tell anybody why? What I said on the phone?”
He sighed. “No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn't think you'd find the atmosphere of fourteen guys with the devil in their eyes and their guns up your nose conducive to constructive communicative intercourse.”
“And you also didn't think—after all the help you've given me over the years—that you should share a chance to crack the biggest case of the decade.”
He said nothing.
“You haven't run out of ambitions, have you? You think you might make a pretty damned good Chief of Police, if anybody ever decided to give a black guy a shot at it. Don't you?”
“I'm what you might call a dark horse,” he said.
I laughed.
“What you laughing at, man?”
“I'm laughing because until just then I wasn't absolutely sure you didn't have another tape recorder running.”
He laughed too.
We both laughed.
And then I put my feet back on the floor and walked out.