1
“Do you have any idea how much trouble you’re in?” Matteo said, his voice low. He stared at me for a good long while, then clucked his tongue and snapped both latches on his briefcase.
I was handcuffed to a metal ring welded to the top of an aluminum table in an interview room at Pittsburgh PD.
They had pulled me from the house.
It took four of them.
When I wouldn’t leave Stella’s room, they tried to drag me out the door. When that didn’t work, two of them lifted my feet from the ground and carried me. My legs pumped, I kicked and twisted and screamed. At one point, my right foot caught one of the officers square in the gut and he dropped me, the air rushing out his puckered mouth, the fat man staggering back. I kept kicking and screaming even as they shouted out things likeassaultandresistingandtrespassingandinterfering—I didn’t really hear much of any of it. The image of the painting filled my vision, the image of the empty room, the conflicting words of her letter.
They threw me into the back of another police car and brought me here. Then I waited again.
I expected Fogel to appear at some point, but she didn’t.
Only Matteo.
Willy called him.
Apparently my run past the barricades got caught by one of the television cameras, and although you couldn’t see my face, Willy knew it was me.
“If you weren’t a minor, they’d be grilling you right now, you know that, right? You’d be looking at some serious time just for the crap you pulled at the house. If they found a way to tie you to what happened in that place…” his voice trailed off as he shuffled through some papers, retrieved a yellow-lined notepad and pen, a manila folder, and closed the case. “Luckily, you are still a minor, and I’ve been told one of the detectives questioned you at the scene without a parent, legal guardian, or attorney present. That’s a big no-no on their end, and they know it. If I have to, I’ll use that. I’m hoping it doesn’t come to that. They want to talk to you, though. Boy, do they ever.”
He wrote my name and today’s date at the top of the page and leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about this guy in the black GTO.”
“I don’t know who he is.”
“They seem to think you do. In fact, that Detective Fogel seems sure of it. She gave me these—”
He removed a stack of eight by ten photographs from the manila folder and slid them across the table to me.
The man in the pictures seemed tall, thin build, with blond hair. He was maybe in his late forties. In the first two pictures, he was coming out of my apartment building. The third photo was grainy, probably taken with some kind of long-range lens from somewhere across the street from my building. The image centered around my apartment’s window, the one facing Brownsville. The man was standing in my living room, next to Auntie Jo’s chair, his profile visible but blurry. The final two pictures were of the same man—one standing at the driver’s door of a black Pontiac, the other with him behind the driver’s seat. Although the windshield glare partially obstructed the view, his face was visible. I had never seen him before, but I had a pretty good idea of who he might be.
“He’s been in and out of your building,your apartment, numerous times.”
I thumbed at the edge of window photo. “I think he’s the money guy.”
“The money guy?”
“Somebody has been leaving money for me, five hundred dollars a month, since I was a kid.” I told him about the first envelope and the others that followed. “Dunk was the only person to ever get a look at him,” I said. And I told him about that, too.
“You have no idea who he is or why he would give you cash?”
I shook my head.
Matteo brushed at his upper lip. “Well, we sure can’t tell the police about the money.”
“You’re not gonna tell them?”
He snorted. “Hell no. We don’t want them to have anything tying you to this guy.” He thought for a second. “They think he works for Bellino. We want to keep it that way.”
“I don’t see how he could. The money started when we were kids, long before Dunk got mixed up with Crocket and those guys.”
Matteo shrugged. “They’re detectives. Let them detect. They can figure all that out on their own. My only concern is keeping you out of trouble.”
“I don’t want to lie.”
“Omissions aren’t lies. Answer their questions, but keep your responses brief. Don’t offer any additional details. I don’t want to hear anything but yes or no come out of your mouth. If you’re not sure if you should answer something, take a second, collect yourself, give me a chance to weigh in. I tell you to stop talking, you stop talking. Let me control the exchange, got it?”
