Katrina was guided into the back of one car, and I was shoved into the other one.
On the ride to the garage under the FBI building, I contemplated the charges they could throw at me: conspiracy, manslaughter, fleeing a crime, hiding evidence. And those were merely the charges I could think of. The FBI and Justice Department have all those highly imaginative guys with Ivy League degrees who are geniuses at thinking up charges. No doubt they could do better than me.
We parked in an underground garage and then took the elevator to an upper-floor interrogation room. Jimmy hung around while a new guy entered the room. He had that weaselly look of the professional interrogator: long, skinny face, deadpan, droopy eyes, and a mouth with no wrinkles around the edges, like he never smiled or frowned or had orgasms. He walked hunched over, with his chin protruding out and a big, beaklike nose that poked suspiciously through the air.
He sat in front of me and said, "I'm Special Agent Michaels. Do I need to read you your rights?" Belafonte, the traitorous prick, leaned against the wall. It didn't take a genius to figure out why Belafonte remained in the room. I'd made my confession to him, and his presence was to remind me I'd already spilled the big beans, so let's not niggle over the gravy.
I shook my head. "Already done."
He leaned toward me like this was some kind of melodramatic moment. "We have you on tape admitting you killed a man in Washington and two men in your apartment parking lot earlier this morning."
"All that's true," I admitted, since it seemed damned silly to deny what I'd already admitted.
He leaned back and stroked his chin. "However, we have a bit of problem here."
Technically,we didn't have a bit of problem.I did, and not a bit of a problem, a mountain of a problem. I said, "I know."
He continued in a perfectly dry tone. "The problem, Drummond, is nobody reported any deaths. Unless you want to count a lady who got shoved off the subway platform at the Fourteenth Street station this morning. Only the D.C. police caught the guy who did that. Or would you like to confess to that killing, too?"
"What are you talking about?"
"What I just told you, Drummond. No dead guys showed up near your apartment building. And no dead guys showed up near Miss Mazorski's apartment, either. So what the hell's going on here?"
"That's impossible. This morning, at my apartment, the police came. I was interviewed by a detective. He took my statement."
He was nodding, like, Yeah, sure, tell me more, convince me.
I said, "I'm not jerking you around. I walked out to my car and two guys approached me with a knife and gun. It was meant to look like a robbery, only it wasn't. It was a hit."
He was still nodding, only now he was biting his cheek. "And what happened to the bodies?" he asked, scratching the side of his nose, like, Gee, no shit, throw in a few Nazi spies and quit boring me?
"A meat wagon got them. It was an Arlington County Hospital ambulance. I watched them load the bodies."
"What time?"
"Shortly before eight."
He nodded at Belafonte, who nodded back and left.
"And tell me about that second attack," he ordered.
"It happened right around the corner from Miss Mazorski's apartment. Around nine-thirty . . . maybe ten. She was walking to her car and a guy who was made up to look homeless went after her with a butcher knife."
"And you stopped him?"
"Only barely. Actually, she nailed him with some pepper spray and that blinded him."
"And you what? You shot him?"
"No. I stabbed him."
He was doing that head-nodding routine and scratching that big goddamn nose again, and I wanted to reach across the table and jackslap him. He was trying to be grating, and even though I knew that, and knew I should rise above his provocation, I was emotionally entangled.
I took three long breaths, then grinned. "Okay, asshole, I've got a surprise for you."
"I love surprises. What do you have?"
I reached into my pocket and whipped out the trusty Bic pen that was crusted with dried blood and specks of gray matter around the tip.
I tossed it on the table between us and announced, "This is the pen I killed him with. I stuck it in his eyehole."
It was one of those moments when you wished you had a Polaroid camera. He stared down at the pen but refused to touch