The tank was no Ritz-Carlton—just a jumbo cell with nasty lighting and a concrete floor—but I was pretty damn happy to be there. I mean, if it had been the guys in snorkels who joined me on the boat, I would probably be dead. As it was, I had a nice cozy jumpsuit and a cot to sit on; amazingly, the jail had been built on waterfront property, and there was even a faint smell of the Gulf to cleanse my blood-filled nostrils.
I settled in and looked around. It was still before midnight on a Sunday; business was slow and the place seemed pretty benign—a time-out place for grown-ups needing to restore their grip. A couple of drunks were talking politics. A homeless guy was bragging to no one in particular about how many cans of tuna he could stuff into his pants. A fellow came over to me and started protesting that the whole thing was bullshit, he hadn't exposed himself, he was only peeing. Then he asked what I was in for. I wanted to sound like one of the guys. Casually, I said, "Ya know, criminal trespass, shit like that."
After about ten minutes the lighting started getting to me, and the novelty of incarceration wore off, and I started wondering just how and when I could get out of there. I didn't have to think about it long. Within the hour a guard came in and told me they were taking me downtown.
I guess I struck them as a bourgeois cream puff, because they didn't even bother cuffing me. Just bundled me into the backseat of a cruiser; and away we went. It was getting on to one o'clock by now. Traffic on the boulevard was very sparse.
All that neon flashing at nothing, all those drive-throughs with no one driving through.
At the rickety old headquarters on Angela Street, my escorts nudged me along the handicap ramp then up a flight of stairs. The stairs were narrow and the whole place smelled of warm copying machines. Pallid light came through door panels of ancient frosted glass. Somewhere, someone was typing; somewhere, someone laughed. The building was a warren of tiny offices and alcoves, and you couldn't tell where sound was coming from.
We stopped in front of a door whose flaking letters said detective bureau—homicide division.
Inside, I was handed over to two plainclothes cops who were sitting at scratched metal desks with name plaques on them: lieutenant cruz and lieutenant corallo. The desks took up most of the small space that was not already filled by dented file cabinets and a couple of industrial-size oscillating fans that slowly, mournfully turned their faces side to side. Greasy dust clung to the fans; it looked like Spanish moss.
Pretending to be busy with other things, the two detectives studied me obliquely for a moment. Then Cruz stared at me dead on and said, "You look familiar."
He looked familiar to me too. Tall, burly guy with a funny hairline. Looked like his scalp was too small for his skull, and had been stretched into odd configurations like the tongues on a baseball. He had a dimple in his chin that was impossible to shave; short hairs sprouted from it in a whorl. Suddenly I remembered where I'd seen him. Lefty's funeral, a couple of days before. No, wait a second—Lefty's funeral that very morning. Jesus, what a day.
Hoping to distract him from trying too hard to remember where he knew me from, I said, "You're probably thinking of some other guy who wears an orange jumpsuit."
The two cops looked at each other and agreed that they were not amused. The second cop, Corallo, was muscle-bound but quite short; if he was at the funeral too I might have looked right over the top of him. In any case, his arms were so thick that they couldn't hang straight down, but stuck out from his sides like wings on a penguin. His shirt buttons pulled across his chest and he had sweat stains in his armpits. He had an abrupt and high-pitched voice that sounded like a clarinet. He said, "We could yank your license in a minute, funny man."
I may not be tough, but I don't like being threatened, and my first reaction was defiance. "So yank it. I don't drive that much anyway."
The cops looked at each other again. Cruz said, "Not your driver's license, asshole. Your PI license."
Oh, that. For a cowardly moment I thought: Great. Terrific. Please yank it. Take my license, take my gun, just let me have my life back.
Cruz riffled through some computer printouts on his desk. " 'Pete Amsterdam. Southernmost Detection, Inc.,' " he read. "In business two and a half years. Surprised we haven't met before."
I thought: Where would we have met? The hot tub? The tennis courts? I didn't see why he had to know this was my debut outing. With quiet assurance I said, "I work clean."
Corallo piped, "Not this time, pal. So why don't you tell us what you were doing on that boat?"
I knew my rights, sort of. Calmly, professionally, even collegially, I said, "Sorry, guys. You know that's privileged."