Page 19

That was all he needed to say. I had been him not long before. There were moments when I would have said anything to stop the fear of what might happen next.

“Your mother sent me, Jacob.”

“She did?” One eye opened wide while the other strained for sight.

“You okay?”

“They hit me. They hit me hard.”

“Did you steal that money?”

“Are you going to take me home?”

From the looks of him I would have said he was mid-twenties, but he spoke like and had the manner of a child.

“Not right this minute, but if you answer my questions truthfully, I’ll do my best to prove you innocent.”

That’s when he started crying. He put his head in his chained hands and blubbered. I took the seat across from his side of the detainment table and waited. After a while the crying became fearful and louder. He started yelling and trying to pull himself free from the cuffs that were attached by a chain, threaded through a hole in the table, to a steel eye anchored in the concrete floor.

I remained silent, allowing him to vent. I knew the feeling.

After a while he calmed down and sat up, after a fashion.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured.

“No blame,” I said. “Here you get arrested for something you didn’t do and then they beat you for tellin’ the truth.”

Jacob looked at me with his Quasimodo eye.

I asked, “Why did you take the money out of the cash register?”

“Sheila told me I could.”

“Who is Sheila?”

“A friend I met.”

“Met where?”

“In the park on Bowery. She said her father had a store and that he’d give us some money for dinner. She was very hungry.”

The whole thing took about three hours. I got Officer Zhao to let me see the security tape from the scene. It was obvious that someone off camera was telling Jacob what to do; probably Sheila. And it was likely that she had another friend who lured the counter clerk into a conversation in a back aisle.

The arresting officer’s report said that there was no money found on the suspect. He was only three doors down and the money had already been taken from him.

The detective in charge of the interrogation was Buddy McEnery, a contemporary of mine who took shortcuts every chance he could.

I had a rep too. I liked the ladies and I was a stickler for details. Almost all of my arrests ended up in convictions.

I convinced Buddy to access other security cameras in the area to try to get an image of Jacob leaving.

“I’m sure you’ll get a shot of a girl and a guy or maybe two girls who fooled the kid.”

“He still did the taking,” Buddy, a swarthy Irishman, said.

“Have you talked to him?”

“Sure,” he said, “with this.” He held up his left fist.