Authors: Bernard Schaffer
"You're the one who didn't believe me." Frank
dropped the picture back in the folder and said, "You all right, bud?"
The kid's eyes turned red and started to well up
. All his whiteboy appropriated-street-style collapsed under the weight of the stark reality of his friend being dead. "I've known Jessie since elementary school. We played t-ball together."
"Uh huh," Frank said. "Well, he's dead now."
"I could see that you cold hearted fuck!"
"And you killed him."
"No I didn't."
"Do you know what the charge is for a drug delivery resulting in death is in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania,
son? Murder. Not manslaughter. Not death by misadventure. Murder."
Moses'
s head drooped forward so that his dirty hair hung over his face as he sat there without speaking.
Reynaldo leaned forward and said, "
The best thing to do is let us help you −" but shut his mouth immediately when Frank kneed him in the leg.
After a few mi
nutes, Moses's head came back up. His eyes gleamed with renewed resolve. "I didn't give him that bundle of heroin."
"Sure you did," Frank said. "I've go
t all the text messages you sent Jessie talking about it, and right now the wax baggies that were in the bundle are being processed for fingerprints by the FBI. How much do you want to bet your prints come back on them?"
Moses clutched his hands together, squeezing so tightly that his fingers turned white. "I said I didn't give him th
at bundle! Period point blank, aiight?"
"Okay," Frank said. "We're done here." He handed a confused-looking Reynaldo the file and said, "Get this piece of shit out of my sight. I tried to be nice, I tried to offer help, but instead, all you're sitting there doing is lying to me. Go home, enjoy the rest of your last few miserable days, and at six o'clock in the morning me and a dozen of my best friends are going to dress up like ninjas and kick your fucking house to pieces to arrest you."
"Wait a second," Moses said.
"No, I'm done waiting. I gave you a chance, you said
'fuck you, Frank. I'm not telling you shit. I
want
to go to jail for forty years. I
want
to get ass-raped by black Muslims and white supremacists and Mexican Mafia motherfuckers who can't wait to get their hands on my stupid little cornbread whiteboy suburban ass!'"
"I didn't say that!" Moses cried.
Frank looked at Reynaldo with exasperation and threw up his hands dramatically, "You know what the sad thing is, Officer Francisco? If he said, 'Frank, please, I need help. What can I do to make this right? Please give me a chance.' I would have helped him. I've helped worse people get out of worse things. Instead, he treated me like an asshole."
"Frank?" Moses said. "
Listen, I'm sorry. What kind of help are you talking about?"
"A lot," Frank said
, looking at him from the corner of his eye. "For instance, if you gave him the bundle to sell but not to shoot up with, or had no idea he'd shoot up with it, I think that takes you out of the murder charge. It might still be a delivery charge at most, but there's ways to work around that."
"Can you do that?" Moses said.
Frank cocked his eyebrow and said, "Uh, yeah. We do it all the time. In fact, I'd be willing to write in my report that you came into the station voluntarily, right after you heard that your good friend Jessie Pincher who you used to play t-ball with died of an overdose, and told us that exact same thing. Judges and juries tend to believe people who are up front about what they did wrong, Moses. It makes it a lot more believable when they say what they didn't do."
Moses took a deep breath and lowered his head again.
Frank cocked an eye at Reynaldo, reminding him to keep his mouth shut. This was
The Silence
Frank always told him about. The crucial moment in any interrogation when you've laid out your cards for the suspect and he is taking it all in. If done right, his entire world is collapsing around him and he knows there is no escape. The tiniest interruption could be fatal.
Reynaldo zipped his fingers across his lips and sat motionless until Moses'
s head finally came up again and he said, "I had no fucking idea he was going to shoot that bundle. It was strictly a business transaction. Will you help me?"
"Ok," Frank
nodded. He reached back into the case file and pulled out a yellow legal pad and a pen. He slid them across the table and said, "Write, in your own words, how it was a business transaction. I'm not telling you what to say, but you might want to be real clear how bad you feel that your friend died."
Moses took the pen and stared down at the yellow pad as Frank tapped Reynaldo and said, "We're gonna step out for a minute. You want some water? Coffee? Anything?"
"I could use a cigarette."
"You give me a good written statement talking about what we discussed and I'll get you a cigarette."
"Can I have one now?" Moses whined.
Frank's face hardened
, "I said after. You hear me?"
"All right."
Reynaldo followed Frank out of the interrogation room and clapped his hands together, "I can't believe it! We got him. I’m gonna sink that little prick with a murder charge. You are the man!"
"It's not over yet," Frank said. He looked at Reynaldo and said, "Do you know what you did wrong in there?"
"Yes, boss," Reynaldo frowned. "Never be the one to break the silence."
"I don't care how long it takes," Frank said. "Once, I waited an entire weekend with a homicide suspect, just the two of us sitting there staring at each other. No bathroom
breaks. No food. We didn't even blink. We just stared and stared, two men locked in mortal combat to see who would crack first. It was like two samurai swordsmen facing off, each of them so deadly with their skills that the other can't find a way to attack. After four days, he finally cried out, 'All right, I did it! It was me!' And that case was the reason I was invited to Washington to meet the President for the first time, Reynaldo."
"I thought you said it was a weekend
?"
"It was," Frank said. "A weekend that lasted four days. That's how long weekends were before you were born, Reynaldo. That was back in the days
when we needed four days to get all the fun things done that we had to do."
Reynaldo looked down through the one-way mirror
as Moses set his pen down and folded his hands on the table. "I think he's ready."
He moved to push the door open, but Frank stopped him
and said, "Hang on. What do we do now?"
"We make sure the statement describes the crime and that it's signed. Then we cut him loose and file charges."
Frank nodded and said, "Wrong."
"We arrest him
? I thought you said we weren't doing that."
"We're not, but first we're gonna
wring out the mop."
Reynaldo frowned, "I don't understand."
"You always, always give skells a real good squeeze before you let them go. You'd be amazed at what falls out of them."
"Sounds more like
wring out the mope," Reynaldo said.
"The mope?" Frank looked at him for a moment, then smiled approvingly, "I like that. I'm using that one from now on." He pushed the door open and said, "All right, Mr. Moses. How we making out?"
"I'm done."
Frank
spun the notepad around the table to read it.
Too Who It May Consern
I gave my good frend Jessy Pinsher (Not sure how to spell it) stuff to sell too make MONEY not use. If I had new he wood use it too get hi I wudnt have gave it too him. We new each other since we where kids end I fel terabil about it.
Senserely, Paul Moses
Frank nodded and said, "That's good. One thing though, by 'stuff,' you mean heroin, right?"
"Yeah," Moses said, taking the notepad back. He circled the word 'stuff' and wrote,
HEROIN!!!
above it. He slid the statement back to Frank and said, "Can I go now?"
"You can go anytime you want. I told you that. I
think it's a bad idea though. See, we need to take this case in front of the DA's Office. They're the ones who make the charging decisions."
"Okay."
"I wish it was okay," Frank said. "Unfortunately, they can be hit or miss sometimes. Maybe they need an easy win, something to show the papers they are fighting a war on drugs. Nothing looks better in the newspaper than convicting some scumbag drug pusher who murdered an innocent victim."
"That's bullshit!" Moses cried. "You told me we'd be cool if I wrote that."
"And you are. With us, you're cool. If you weren't, I wouldn't be looking out for you, Moses. I'm just trying to eliminate the potential for any problems down the road."
"Jesus," he whimpered. "What else do you want from me? I'm not being a CI. I'm telling you that right now. I'm not testifying, I'm not setting anybody up, nothing. I buy from
niggers down the city who will kill my whole fucking family, so forget it."
It was one too many n-words for
Reynaldo and he let it show. Paul Moses looked at him with wide eyes and said, "Hey, no offense, man. Are you black?"
"
Never mind," Reynaldo muttered. "Just keep going."
"
I mean, you don't look black."
Frank snapped his fingers, "Hey,
David Duke, pay attention. I'm trying to keep you out of prison, even though we all know which gang you'd be joining for protection now."
"I told you I'm not being a CI."
"Okay, so what else can you do?"
"What else is there?"
Frank shrugged, "I don't know, genius, or else I'd ask you about it. I've had people get major credit for helping us solve everything from armed robberies to burglaries to blackmail. For all I know, you could tell me where a body was buried and clear out a homicide."
Moses
leaned forward and said, "What would I get if I helped you clear a homicide?"
Frank's eyes narrowed,
"Can you?"
"No
," Moses said with a high-pitched laugh.
"Stop yanking my chain and think
!" Frank shouted. "Out of all the people you know some of them have done something at some point that we'd be interested in. Tell me who and what, and I'll tell you if it's good enough."
Moses lifted his eyes toward the ceiling for a moment, then he said, "My neighbor has a pot plant in his living room. You could go over there and probably see it through his front window. He's a real asshole
, always calling the cops about our dogs shitting on his lawn. You should bust him."
"You want me to trade up a heroin dealer for a guy with a pot plant?" Frank said. "
How about, go fuck yourself."
"That's all I've got!" Moses said. He smacked the table in frustration, "You said telling you about Jessie was all I had to do. You guys suck
, man. For real."
"All right," Frank said. He shrugged to Reynaldo and said, "I'll see what I can do with the DA's office. It's not your fault
, but it's not my fault either. Just remember I tried. Officer Francisco, please see this young man out."
"Absolutely," Reynaldo said. "Come on, Moses."
Moses watched Reynaldo get up to lead him away and said, "What if I know a guy who deals in kiddie porn?"
Both Frank and Reynaldo stopped moving and immediately looked at Moses. Frank took a long, deep breath that he let out very slowly before he
waved for Reynaldo to sit back down. "Start talking, son. From the very beginning, and don't leave out a single goddamn thing."
"All right, I don't exactly know him. He's this guy I heard about from a friend of mine who says it's real."
Frank rolled his eyes, "
In other words, a total wild goose."
"I don't think so. My friend watched him pull up a list of files
with seriously sick names.
Evil Child Rape, Anal Kiddie Force, Satan's Lust, Oral Toddler
."
"Enough," Frank said.
"I get the picture."
"He was wigged out. It wasn't like he was telling me about it to brag or anything. He was sick to his stomach."
"What's your friend's name?" Reynaldo said.
Moses shook his head, "No way. I'm not dragging anybody else into this. I'll tell you everything I know about it, and you do what you can from there."
"That's not good enough," Reynaldo said.
"Then I
guess I'm fucked because that's all I got."
"Hang on," Frank said, touching Reynaldo's arm to calm him down. "I want to hear the rest. What's this other guy's name, the one with the files?"