‘I don’t understand.’ The man sat back, relaxed though stony-faced. His movement and gestures were precise.
‘Please. It’ll be easier for everybody if you cooperate.’
‘Cooperate? About what? You walk in here, accusation all over your face. Obviously you think I did something wrong. I don’t have any idea what. Give me a clue.’
His indignation was credible. But that was common among the High Machiavellians – expert deceivers – when they were called on lies they’d just told.
Calmly she persisted, ‘Are you trying to purchase property on Solitude Creek north off Highway One, the building and the land the roadhouse is located on?’
He blinked. Was this the point where he would demand a lawyer?
‘As a matter of fact, I’m not, no.’
The first phrase was often a deception flag. Like: ‘I swear’. Or ‘I’m not going to lie to you’.
‘Well, your attorney made an offer for the property.’
A pause. It could mean a lie was coming and he was trying to figure out what they knew. Or that he was furious.
‘Is that right? I wasn’t aware of it.’
‘You’re denying that Barrett Stone, your lawyer, talked to Sam Cohen and made an offer to buy the property?’
The Congressman sighed. And lowered his head. ‘You are, of course, investigating the terrible incident at the roadhouse.’ He nodded. ‘I remember you, Agent Dance. You were there the next day.’
O’Neil said, ‘And you came back a few days later to look over the property you wanted to buy.’
He nodded. ‘You’re thinking I orchestrated the attack to drive the property value down. Ah, and presumably the second attack at Cannery Row was to cover up the motive for the first attack. Make it look like some kind of psycho was involved. Oh, and the hospital too, sure.’
He was sounding oddly confident. Still, what else was he going to say?
‘I have alibis for one or all of the incidents … Oh, but that’s not what you’re thinking, I’m sure. No. You’re thinking I hired this psycho.’
Dance remained silent. In the art of interrogation and interviewing, all too often the officer responds to comments or questions posed by the subject. Keep mum and let them talk. (Dance had once gotten a full confession by asking a suspected murderer, ‘So, you come to Monterey often?’)
Daniel Nashima now rose. He looked both law enforcers over carefully. Then set his hands, palms down, on the desk. His face revealed no emotion whatsoever as he said, ‘All right. I’ll confess. I’ll confess to everything. But on one condition.’
CHAPTER 75
Donnie and Wes were hanging on Mrs Dance’s back porch, huddling in the back, along with Nathan (Neo, from the Matrix) and Vince (Vulcan – no, not the race of the dudes from Star Trek but the X-Man).
Fritos and orange juice and a little smuggled Red Bull were the hors d’oeuvres and cocktails of the hour.
‘So, what’re you? Like grounded?’ slim, pimply Vince asked.
Wes sighed. ‘My mother’s running that case, that thing at Solitude Creek, where the people got killed. And the Bay View Center?’
Nathan: ‘No shit. Where people jumped into the water and drowned. She’s doing that?’
‘And she’s like all paranoid he’s going to come around and mess with us.’
‘Get a piece, dude. Really. Waste him, the fucker shows up.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Wes said.
Vince asked, ‘How’re you gonna play the game, man? Jesus.’
Wes shrugged. ‘I gotta have rides to school and home. But I can still get away. Just have to be careful about it. Not when my mom’s here. But Jon? I can tell him I’ve got a headache or need to take a nap. Get out through my window. I don’t know. I’ll figure it out.’
Donnie waved to Mrs Dance’s boyfriend, Jon, who, Donnie thought, was spying on them, though maybe not. The guy actually seemed friendly enough and sure as shit knew machines: he hacked epic code and showed Donnie how to write script for games. Donnie had this fantasy about taking the Defend and Respond Expedition Service game onto the net, making millions. Where you’d fuck with people in the virtual world.
Yeah, it could be a good game. Mucho more interesting than wasting zombies with machine-guns.
Donnie shifted on the bench and he must’ve winced. Wes noticed. ‘Yo, what’s wrong?’
‘Nothing, bitch. I’m fine.’
Except he wasn’t fine. His father’d noticed the missing bike and, even though he seemed to believe the lie that Donnie had lent it to a friend, he’d whacked him a half-dozen times with the branch for not asking permission to lend out a present. (‘And you know how much it cost?’) He was under orders to produce the bike tomorrow, or face even worse punishment.
And, with Donnie’s father, worse always meant worse.
Big Nathan, who didn’t take as many showers as he ought to, moved his hair out of his eyes. ‘So here.’ He flashed a picture on his Galaxy of a stop sign, uprooted and sitting in Vince’s garage. His mother never used the place. His father might have killed himself in there – that was the rumor – so nobody in the family ever went inside or did anything with it. So it had sort of become their clubhouse.
‘Can I get an amen?’ Nathan asked. ‘Team Two scores.’
Fist bumps.
‘Cool,’ said Wes. ‘How much did it weigh?’
‘Tons,’ Vince said. ‘We both had to carry it.’
‘I could have,’ Nathan said fast. ‘Just, it was long, you know. Hard to get a handle on.’
If anybody could muscle it, Neo could. He was a big fucker.
‘Nobody saw you?’ Donnie asked.
‘Naw. Maybe one kid but we looked at him, like, you say anything and you’re frigging dead.’
Nathan said ‘frig’ instead of ‘fuck’. He’d come around, Donnie thought. Wes had.
We’ll totally fuck you up …
Donnie pulled out the official Defend and Respond game score sheet, illustrated by him personally. Titans, X-Men, Fantastic Four, zombies everywhere. A couple of the hot girls from True Blood.