been representing us for the last hour or so. Richard was a free man, temporarily. If Belisarius could keep the rest of us out of jail, he was worth the money.
Wilkes didn't want to arrest us, but he wanted to take our fingerprints. I didn't have a problem with that until Shang-Da did. He really didn't want his prints taken, which made both Wilkes and me suspicious. But if Shang-Da wouldn't do it, then none of us would. I told Wilkes if he wanted our prints, he had to charge us with something. He seemed reluctant to do that.
Maybe it was because I'd used my one phone call to contact a cop I knew, who in turn had contacted an FBI agent I knew.
Having a call from the feds made Wilkes jumpy as hell. The bad guys had ambushed us across from the police station. You didn't do a planned attack right next door to the cops unless you were pretty sure they wouldn't spoil the fun. The bad guys had known the police wouldn't help us. They'd said as much during the fight, challenging Millie to call Wilkes, like it wouldn't help. But Wilkes's reaction to the call from the feds sort of clinched it for me. Policemen are very territorial. No federal laws had been broken. The FBI had no business in a simple assault case. Wilkes should have been pissed, and he wasn't. Oh, he made noises like he was angry, and he was, but he should have raised hell, and he didn't. His reaction to everything was just a little bit off -- a little bit less convincing than it should have been.
I was betting he was dirty. I just couldn't prove it yet. Of course, it wasn't my job to prove it. I'd come down here to get Richard out of jail, and we'd done that.
Wilkes finally asked to speak with me alone. Belisarius didn't like it, but he left with the others. I sat at the little table and looked at Wilkes.
It was the cleanest interrogation room I'd ever been in. The table was pale pine and looked handmade. The walls were white and clean. Even the linoleum on the floor was hospital bright. I didn't think Myerton got a lot of use for the room. It'd probably started life as a storage closet. It had been almost too small to hold five of us, but there was room for two.
Wilkes pulled a chair out and sat across from me. He clasped his hands in front of him and looked at me. There was a band around his head where the hair had been pressed flat from the hat. There was a plain gold wedding band on his left hand and one of those watches that joggers use, big and black and utilitarian. Since I had the lady's version of the same watch on my left wrist, it was hard to criticize.
"What?" I said. "You going to give me the silent treatment until I scream for mercy?"
He gave a very small smile. "Made some phone calls about you, Blake. There's a lot of talk that you'll bend the law if you need to. That maybe you've murdered people."
I just looked at him. I could feel my face thinning out, blanking. Once upon a time, every emotion I'd felt had played along my face, but that was a while ago. I'd perfected my blank cop stare, and it showed nothing.
"Is there a point to this conversation?" I asked.
The smile this time was bigger. "I just like to know who I'm dealing with, Blake, that's all."
"Good to be thorough," I said.
He nodded. "I got calls from a Saint Louis cop, a fed, and a state cop. The state cop says you're a pain in the ass and will bend the law six ways to Sunday."
"Bet that was Freemount," I said. "She's still pissed about a case we worked together."
He nodded, smiling pleasantly. "The fed sort of hinted that if you were detained, he might find a reason to have the local federal office to come take a look around."
I smiled. "Bet you really enjoyed that."
His brown eyes went hard and dark. "I don't want the feebies down here messing in my pond."
"I'll bet you don't, Wilkes."
His face tightened, letting me see just how angry he was. "What the fuck do you care?"
I leaned across the table on my elbows. "You should be more careful who you do a frame-up job on, Wilkes."
"He's a fucking junior high