Bloody River Blues

counselor present.
    That was something Crimmins didn’t want. So he had consented to the questioning. He waved the men into seats in his office, sandwiched between the parking lot and the room of dark desks, and rested his fingertip on the mole above his eye. The barrage of questions lasted for an hour. They were handsome black men and looked more like recent business school graduates than federal agents. They seemed like many of Crimmins’s clients (both the legitimate ones and the less so)—clever, polite, reserved.
    But underneath: the personalities of a Midwest dawn in January.
    One asked the questions. The other alternated between staring calmly at Crimmins and taking notes.
    “Could I ask you where you were last Friday night, sir.”
    He hated the sir . The way it fell like a fleck of spit off the end of the sentence showed their contempt forhim. But what could he do? That was an old rule in negotiations—never say anything that can be quoted against you later. If he later claimed harassment, the agent would say, I never called him anything but “sir” . . . Look at the transcript.
    “I was at my office most of the night.”
    “Until when?”
    “About ten. Quarter to, maybe.”
    “By yourself?”
    “Yes. My secretary leaves at five-fifteen every night. I stay late a lot of times.”
    “Is there a guard?”
    “We got guards, sure. But I didn’t see any of them that night when I left.”
    “Is there any way of confirming your whereabouts?”
    “You really think I killed Vince Gaudia?” Crimmins asked, exasperated.
    “Is there any way of confirming it, sir?” the agent repeated.
    “No.”
    “Do you own a Lincoln?”
    “Yes. And a Mercedes wagon. A diesel.”
    “What color is the Lincoln?”
    Crimmins rubbed the bump of his third eye. Why did they hate him so? “Dark blue. But you know that already, don’t you?”
    “What’s the license number?”
    He gave it to them
    “Where was that car on the night we’ve been talking about?”
    Crimmins was hungry. He had bouts of low blood sugar. If he didn’t eat regularly—sometimes fivemeals a day—he would have attacks. He thought with some pleasure that Vince Gaudia never got to eat his last meal the night he died. “I drove it into the city.”
    “And parked it where, sir?”
    “The place I always park it. The garage near the Ritz.”
    “And that’s a Lincoln Continental?”
    “I told you that already.”
    “Actually, no. We don’t know what model. Is it a Continental?”
    “It’s a Town Car.”
    “Now tell me again where you were on that night.”
    Crimmins asked, “Where I was sitting, you mean?”
    “You were in your office, you claim.”
    “I’m not claiming. I was there. I told you that. Didn’t he write it down? I saw him write it down.”
    “So, an associate of yours . . . or an employee could have taken your Lincoln for a drive.”
    Cummings sighed.
    “Why wasn’t your secretary there?”
    “She leaves about five-fifteen every day. I told you that too.”
    The interview went on and on and on and the agents picked over every word that Crimmins said.
    Finally the men stood. They flipped their notebooks closed and gathered their raincoats. Suddenly they were gone, having thanked him for his time.
    He now sat at his desk, staring at the familiar nicks along the side, running his finger over them, feeling the bulge of his gut against his belt.
    The phone rang.
    His lawyer was on the line. Crimmins decided not to tell him about the visit from the FBI. It had beenworse than expected, but if he told the lawyer, the man would have a tantrum that he had spoken to the agents alone. But the issue didn’t come up; the lawyer wanted to talk, not listen.
    “Pete, I’ve got some news. Call me on a safe phone, will you?”
    Crimmins grunted and hung up. He walked downstairs and up the street to the Ritz Carlton parking garage. Without proffering a ticket, he nodded to a young attendant, who scurried off to retrieve the Lincoln. Crimmins looked at it sourly as it rolled up. He gave the boy a bill then got inside and drove out onto the broad street. He lifted the receiver of the car phone, the number of which was changed so frequently that he was 95 percent sure it was a secure line.
    “News, you said.” Crimmins drove leisurely, well under the speed limit.
    “The witness,” the nonfriend and counselor said.
    “Yes.”
    “The witness to the Gaudia hit.”
    “I know that’s what you mean. What about him?”