“Mullard’s not your snitch?”
“Never heard of him before. I checked the others in the can with the guy, nobody there I knew. It’s kinda strange that Mullard called me.”
“Maybe the cop he usually snitches to cut him loose for lying.”
“Possible. The guy’s a walking ball of nose drool. I had Mullard transferred to a holding cell here, so run on over.”
We were at Delmara’s mid-Miami Division HQ in fifteen minutes. Delmara led us to an interrogation room, a twelve-by-twelve box with bland blue walls, a single table, four simple chairs, and a gray wastebasket in the corner. A horizontal mirror filled one wall, a one-way, behind it a room where interested parties observed conversations. The observation room would smell of coffee and perspiration and tobacco and no amount of cleaning could ever dislodge those signature odors.
The occupant of the interrogation room was a small and twitchy man in his early thirties, his brown hair long and ragged, his cheeks hollow and pocked with acne scars not concealed under the wispy attempt at a beard. His brown eyes were tiny and seemed to operate on independent gimbals, the left one finding me before the right one did.
“These are the guys you need to talk to, Blaine,” Vince said. “Tell them what you started to tell me, and maybe it’ll buy goodwill with the DA.”
Mullard swallowed hard. “It c-can’t g-get out that I’m t-talking or I’ll b-b-be dead.”
Mullard’s fingers twiddled at a button on the front of the soiled black shirt shrouding his bone-thin frame, the body of a man whose primary nourishment was junk food and methedrine. I figured his stutter was exacerbated by nerves and withdrawal.
Delmara put a shiny loafer on a chair beside the man and laid a hand gently on his shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Blaine. Your words will never leave this room.”
“Oh yeah?” Mullard challenged, pointing at the mirror. “Wh-who’s back there?”
“No one, Blaine. These two gentlemen would customarily be watching from behind the glass, but that would be subterfuge, right?”
“Wh-what’s a s-s-sutter-fuge?”
“A cheap trick, Blaine. By having these gentlemen here rather than behind the glass, I’m showing you the only other people who will hear your story.”
The guy was in his thirties but chronologically an adolescent, likely a permanent condition. I’d seen hundreds of Blaine Mullards, directionless, doomed by savage or absent parenting, and assuming the liquid mores of whatever group or gang they found in early teens, their nascent personalities and individualism replaced by a street culture that lacked any concept of responsibility or future.
“I huh-heard you was a good dude, D-Detective D-Del-m-mara. That you might help me slip the beef.”
Delmara shot me a look. “Who told you that, Blaine?”
“I-I-I … it’s just s-something a guy said. I don’t remember his name.”
“Some guy you met in jail?”
“If y-y-you can’t help m-me I guh-got to …”
Mullard started to rise but Delmara’s hand gently pressed the man back into his chair. “OK … so my rep got to you. But you’ve fucked up a bit, my man. Busting into a vehicle in broad daylight, snatching a laptop as a cruiser came down the block.”
“I-I-I …”
Delmara did empathy. “I know how it was … you were hurting and needed to score. The true idiot was the one who left the laptop on the seat, right? An unwarranted temptation.”
Mullard nodded vigorously. “Y-you don’t leave a c-computer laying in puh-plain sight. It’s s-s-stupid. Wh-what’s wrong with p-people?”
“Look, Blaine, I think I can convince the prosecutor that the temptation was too strong. You’ll have to do some time, but weeks, not months, right? Maybe in a program. Clean sheets, hot food, counseling you can sleep through.”
A puppy smile. “Y-y-you’re a g-good dude, Duh-Detective Del-ma-m-mara. Like I heard.”
“But you’ve got to tell the story. That’s the trade.”
Delmara patted Mullard again and sat. Gershwin and I followed. Mullard picked at his beard. “I h-heard this a f-few times. It’s on the street but no one says it ou-ou-out loud. There’s this guy, a p-p-pimp. He had a woman, owned her, she was pure, y’know. Undone.”
“You mean a virgin?” I said.
“Some c-c-chick in her t-teens. Came here in a truck fresh from some Mexican f-farm or whatever. Never even s-saw a dick. The p-pimp was gonna sell her to some guy who paid buh-big bucks for a weekend with the chick. The g-guy wanted t-to open the b-bitch up, y’know.” Mullard gave me a grin like we were conspiratorial children. “Puh-party time.”