So you’re not getting a phone call, lady. Wanna get up now, or should I call the marshal to take you to the jail?”
“Jesus Christ,” I said.
“Ah, she speaks.” He sat down, drumming his fingers loudly on the table while I stretched and disentangled myself from my cocoon.
I sat opposite Detective Friday.
“Did you bring me some aspirin?”
He shook his head.
“All right. No lawyer, no aspirin, nothing.”
I held out my hands, palms up. My fingertips were extremely white, almost powdery.
“You see these fingers? I was a gymnast. Do you know how we do all those exercises on the beams and the parallel bars and all that? Sandpaper. Sometimes powder, but mostly sandpaper where I was training. That’s the God’s honest truth. I have no secret identity. I’m not a spy. I’m not in witness protection, nothing like that. Not on the lam. I am simply a retired gymnast with no discernible fingerprints.”
“How come I’ve never heard of anything like that before?” he said. He pulled my right hand across the table and ran his fingers roughly over mine.
“They feel normal,” he said. “Prove it.”
“How do I do that?” I asked. “I don’t carry around my old medals or anything. What do you want for proof?”
“I don’t know…Tell me the name of your coach, or the place you were trained. How about that?”
“It was in Europe, and the coach died a few years ago.”
“Oh, sure,” he said. “A likely story.” He looked at the scars in the center of my palm, then turned my hand over and back again. “What the hell is this?”
“It’s from the ripping,” I said. “See, this hand is the same. It happens in gymnastics.” I showed him the palm of my left.
“I don’t even want to know,” he said. He dropped my hands and looked at me as if I’d claimed the scars were stigmata.
“So we’re back to square one,” I said. “I’d like a lawyer, please. If you talk to my chairman at the university you’ll get a character reference to know that I’m not a terrorist, so hopefully you’ll allow me to have access to an attorney. I have a legitimate U.S. passport and birth certificate…What else can I give you?”
“Let’s talk about what happened to Neville," he said. "Take me through the events of last night, step by step.”
I thought about this. His threat to jail me under the Patriot Act was probably just a way to get me to spill everything about Neville because I’d be so grateful that he wasn’t going to pursue those pesky fingerprint charges. But maybe I shouldn’t fall for that ploy.
“Listen, I want to help you, but I really need some aspirin and a cup of coffee first. Can you arrange that?” I smiled. It was excruciating. “It’s been a long night.”
He grimaced back at me. “Sure, no problem, we’ll get you that in a few minutes. Just take me through it once and I’ll get you that aspirin.”
He opened the file and the notes from Officer Orlosky. “So, what time did you arrive at the residence?”
I repeated my story several more times before they brought me a bottle of water and a cellophane package with two Bayer aspirin whose freshness date was probably sometime in the last century. After I downed the pills, I leaned my head back and sighed. Friday tapped his pencil on the table.
“So,” he said. “What’s your novel about, anyway?”
“Why do you want to know?” I asked.
“Just curious. You said you went over there to talk to Carstairs about it, and we found pages of it scattered all over the floor. I was just wondering what it’s about,” he said.
“It’s sort of complicated…But the quick and dirty summary is that it’s about a ring of art thieves who are peddling stolen treasures that they discovered hidden in these caves deep in the forests of Hungary. Some vagabonds come across these art treasures and one by one, they bring them out and find private dealers to sell them on the black market,” I said. “That’s the basic plot. In the end, they get greedy, and ultimately, they get caught.”
“I think I saw that movie a couple of years ago,” he said.
I didn’t take the bait.
More pencil tapping. “So, what were you arguing about?" he asked. "This Carstairs guy, he didn’t like the story? Or he didn’t like your writing, or what?”
“Look, I don’t know where you’re going with this. We had a difference of opinion on some style issues. I didn’t stab him over it, believe me.” I rubbed my temples. “Can you just let me go? I need to get some real medicine into my system. Have you ever had a migraine, Detective Friday?”
He shook his head, a motion that made me dizzy. “I’m just wondering why your manuscript was all over the floor—it seems like there might have been an argument before Mr. Carstairs was stabbed. And it seems that your book might have been part of it,” he said.
“I can’t explain it,” I said. I put my head down on the table. By then, I was reeling from the nausea and the pain. “Do me a favor, would you?” I asked. “Either turn out the lights, get me some coffee, or just shoot me.” Friday seemed to be considering the last request, but someone knocked on the door and he left the room.
I heard raised voices, but I was no longer fooled by their games. No one was being reprimanded and no one was going to rescue me. When he returned, I asked for a piece of paper and a pen. In clear print, I wrote: “I hereby request the presence of an attorney to represent my interests before the court.” I signed my name, dated the paper, and handed it back to him.
“Really? After all we’ve gone through, this is what you want to do now?” he asked.
“Yes.” I closed my eyes and felt the room spin around me. Clutching the edge of the table, I bent to the side and vomited neatly on the floor, a small puddle of frothy bile with two Bayer aspirin floating in it. Some of it landed on the toe of his shoe. Oops.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” he said. He leaned over to wipe his foot with a tissue. “I’m not getting you any more aspirin, so if you want them, you better pick those up and swallow them again.”
While he was working on his shoe, I stood up.
“I’m leaving now,” I said. “Unless you’re charging me, you can’t keep me here. You know where I live. I’m going home to take some medication. If you want to stop me, you’ll have to shoot me. At this point, I don’t care.”
I put on my jacket and walked to the door. My dramatic exit was interrupted by the locked door, but I stood with my hand on the knob, patiently waiting for someone to open it.
“Isn’t there anyone with a shred of humanity in this entire building?” I asked. After several beats, I felt the door click. It opened.
“Make
