Of course they lapped that up and wanted more. There wasn’t anything Montgomery could do about it. “It was the dog who really heard them,” I said. “She probably saw them at my car—that’s why she started barking. You can ask him all about it.”
I gestured broadly at Mr. Contreras, who was standing on the periphery of the crowd with Peppy. Peppy bounded over to me while Mr. Contreras made his way to the eager reporters. Montgomery backed away from the dog and demanded I get rid of her.
“Don’t shoot her, Lieutenant,” I said. “It’ll be on three networks all over the country.”
Dogs make a welcome addition to any picture, especially a golden retriever as beautiful and heroic as Peppy. While Montgomery frowned horribly I told the reporters her name and got her to shake paws with a couple of them. They were naturally enchanted.
I fondled the dog’s ears and listened to Mr. Contreras explain at excruciating length exactly what it was he’d heard and seen. He also told them how the dog had saved my life last winter when she found me bound and gagged in the middle of a swamp. I was glad I wasn’t the one who’d have to listen to it all in order to find one usable comment.
Once the experts had removed the dynamite from the car and whisked it away in a special sealed container, the TV crews departed too. Montgomery’s demeanor changed immediately. He sent Jerry off and informed me we were going downtown for a real talk. A trace of sadism in his expression as he took my arm roughly made my stomach churn. Mr. Contreras pawed anxiously at him, demanding to know what they were doing with me. Montgomery brushed the old man back so roughly, I was afraid he might knock him over.
“Take it easy, Lieutenant, he’s seventy-eight. You don’t need to prove you’re bigger and more powerful.”
“Bobby Mallory puts up with a lot of shit from you I don’t have to take, Warshawski. You button up now and speak when you’re spoken to or I’ll have you in on an assault charge fast enough to make your smug little head spin.”
“Whew, Lieutenant, you been watching too many Dirty Harry movies.”
He yanked my arm hard enough to jar the shoulder socket and hustled me to the car. As he was pushing me inside I turned to scream at Mr. Contreras to call Lotty and get my lawyer’s name from her.
Down at Eleventh Street, Montgomery took me to a small interrogation room and began demanding to know how I’d gotten hold of a supply of dynamite. When it dawned on me that he was trying to accuse me of rigging my own car, I was so furious that the room swam in front of my eyes.
“Get a witness in here, Lieutenant,” I managed to get out in a voice below a scream. “Get a witness in here to what you’re saying.”
He swallowed a triumphant smile so fast I almost missed it. “We’ve got a pretty good case, Warshawski. You’ve been involved in two suspicious fires in the last month. We figure you for a sensationalist. When you couldn’t get the kind of attention you wanted out of those fires, you rigged a bomb up in your car. All I want to know is where you got the dynamite.”
I wanted to jump up from behind the table and seize his long stork neck and pound his head against the wall, but I had just enough reason left to know he was hoping to goad me over the brink. I shut my eyes, panting, trying to force my temper down—the first time I let it go he’d have me in the lockup for assaulting an officer.
“You’ve been hiding behind Bobby Mallory for years, Warshawski. It’s time you learned to fight on your own.”
I felt him moving toward me just in time to back my chair away. The blow he’d aimed for my head got me on the diaphragm.
“I presume this room is wired. Please let the record show that Lieutenant Montgomery just hit a witness in a bombing case,” I shouted.
He aimed another fist at me. I slid from my chair under the legs of the table. Montgomery got down on his hands and knees to pull me out, shouting abuse at me, calling me names out of porn flicks. I scooted away from him. He went flat on his abdomen and grabbed my left ankle. I twisted away and got to my feet on the other side of the table.
Just as I staggered upright Officer Neely walked in. Her professional mask cracked at the sight of a lieutenant on his belly scrabbling around under an interrogation table.
“He lost a contact,” I said helpfully, “We’ve both been down there looking, but he started confusing my ankle with his eyeballs so I thought I’d get out of the way.”
Neely didn’t say anything. By the time Montgomery had climbed awkwardly back to his feet, she had her face composed in its usual rigid lines. She spoke in a monotone. “Lieutenant Mallory heard you were questioning this witness and wanted to talk to her for a few minutes.”
Montgomery glared at her, furious at being caught looking like a fool. I felt sorry for her, her career buffeted by being the wrong person to show up at a bad moment.