1

Ahmad looked like hell.

He also looked like a kid. I knew he was twenty-one. But if he’d been cleaned up and had civilian clothes on, and I saw him in the hallways at my daughter’s high school, I could’ve believed he was sixteen, seventeen years old.

That was what Manny wanted me to see. Manny had a cause. And for some reason, he wanted me to join up. I didn’t understand why. It was unnecessary. Pay me; I do my job. Causes are dangerous; everyone knows that.

Right now, the kid was in an orange jumpsuit, his wrists and ankles manacled, connected by a chain that connected to another chain that wrapped around his waist. He had prison-issue slippers on his feet. He was scared, as scared as I’ve ever seen anyone. And he’d been hurt. He had bruising on the right side of his face, and he had trouble moving, and when Manny reached out to shake his manacled hand, he flinched.

“Easy son, easy,” I said, soft and slow, talking halfway between the way you talk to a person and a wild animal you’re trying to coax to your side.

He looked at me, his eyes dark as the night and wet as the rain. He couldn’t help himself; the tears started to flow. It happens that way, if you’ve been brutalized enough: the first gentle words you hear, the tears start to flow.

“Come on,” I said and put my hand on his arm to lead him to the yellow plastic chair. They’d provided us with three chairs, no table. They’d even taken Manny’s pens away and given him a felt tip for making notes. Pencils were too dangerous. This was not normal. Usually there was a table—bring your own pen, tape recorder, pads.

The CO that brought him in was Leander Peale. He was mostly called Lee, sometimes Leap or Leapy. He worked prisoner escort a lot, and both Manny and I knew him. He was born-again. Saved him from a life of crank before he lost all his teeth. He still rode a bike and had a “Born to Lose” tat beneath his uniform. He used to have an imp with an enlarged penis that said “Satan’s Spawn,” but he’d spent some serious dollars having it lasered off. He was an okay guy. Not an asshole. He knew that we all have to live together; we all have our jobs.

In addition to Lee, in his CO uniform, there were two suits. They didn’t introduce themselves. Manny asked, “Who are you?”

The older one, a homely man with twenty-year-old pits of teen acne still marking his face and thin straw hair, muttered, “Homeland Security,” from between thin, grudging lips. But who knows what that means. When I put my hand on Ahmad’s arm, he and his younger partner, an iron pumper, thick in the chest, both hunched like they were ready to pounce if the kid went berserk or I tried to spring him.

“Back off,” Manny said dismissively.

Ahmad dropped to his knees and put his hands on my leg. He hugged my thigh and wept. “Save me, please save me from these people.”

That was too much for the Homeland Security guys to accept. No crying, no touching, no accusations. So they moved. They were coming for him. Manny got between us and them. He looked at them with the authority of a man who sues people for a living and wins.

“They are beating me,” Ahmad said, both hands now on my thigh, holding on like I was a life raft, looking up at me like I was the key to the kingdom of heaven. “They stick things in my ass. I am innocent. Tell my mother, please tell my mother, I’m innocent. Don’t let them beat me anymore. Please.”

Manny looked at Lee.

“Not me,” Lee said. We have to parse these things. He didn’t say it never happened. He didn’t even say, “He was resistin’,” like he would have if some other COs had been overzealous. In the circumstances, it was as good as jumping on a pine box, pointing a long-boned forefinger, and screaming, “Yes, they did that to him!”

“Alright, this is over,” the older of the two said.

Manny flipped open his cell phone and took the guy’s picture. Then his partner, then one of Ahmad holding my knee and sobbing like a boy who’d just been raped.

“He’s lying,” the older one said. “He’s lying. They train them to say that. And weep and cry.”

“He had to be questioned. What if he was planning more murders? What if it was part of a plot? What about that?”

“Tell me your names,” Manny said. He’s got lots of voices. This one sounded like George Patton on a bad day. “I want names and numbers. Give me some badge numbers.”

“We don’t answer to you.”

“Why don’t we all back off, guys,” Lee said.

“Back way the hell off,” Manny said. “I want to talk to my client. I want the privacy to which he and I are entitled. And I want your assurances this room is not wired. And believe me, if I have any cause to do so, I will see to it that I ask you again under oath. Now, let me talk to my client.”

“Come on,” I said, trying to lift the kid up. He didn’t want to let go. “Come on, you have to sit down and tell us what’s going on.”