Scam

door, called one of the cops, gave him the keys. He closed the door, turned back to me. “Now, you.”
    Oh, Jesus. This was it. How bad could he rough me up under the guise of a search? Pretty bad, I’ll bet.
    A shudder passed over me. Was he going to strip me to the skin?
    “Take off your jacket, pass it over,” Belcher said.
    I did, and he went through the pockets, placing the contents on the bed. From one inside pocket, my notebook and pen. From the other, my ID.
    Belcher jerked his thumb. “What’s with the camera?”
    With my jacket off, the camera was now exposed, hanging down at my side.
    “It’s for my job,” I said. “Negligence work. I take injury and accident photos.”
    “Is there film in there now?”
    Sure was. The broken neck and the ugly kneecap. Good god! If he were to expose the film …
    “What’s the matter?” Belcher said.
    “Huh?”
    “You went white. What is it about the film?”
    “Nothing. It’s just pictures I took for my job.”
    “Yeah, well, it sure upset you. Let’s have the camera.”
    “Sure,” I said. “If you expose that film …”
    “Expose it? Are you nuts? I’m gonna develop it, see what you’re so afraid of. Come on, let’s have it.”
    Reluctantly, I took the camera from around my neck, handed it to him. It was a relief when he merely laid it on the bed.
    “All right, empty your pants pockets,” Belcher said.
    Well, that was something. He hadn’t asked me to take off my pants. With a feeling of relief, I took out change, Chapstick, bills, wallet, and passed them over.
    Belcher went through the wallet, inspecting the various cards. He stopped on one.
    “Writers Guild of America East,” he said. “What’s that?”
    “Screenwriters union.”
    “You belong to that?”
    “I had a movie produced.”
    He looked at me. “And you still do this shit?”
    That whole sequence had seemed so natural that in that moment I had doubts. Maybe this guy didn’t know who I was. That I was a friend of MacAullif. The man he hated. The man against whom he had a personal grudge. Maybe he wasn’t out to get me, as I had thought. Maybe he was just another cop doing his job.
    There was a knock on the door and the cop came in. The one Belcher had sent to search my car.
    “Found something,” the cop said. He was young, eager, and, it seemed to me, a trifle apprehensive.
    “Yeah?” Belcher said. “What is it?”
    “You gotta understand, I wasn’t expecting to find anything,” the cop said, “so I may have touched it. I mean, if my fingerprints should be on it. I just put my hand under the front seat, and there it was.”
    “There what was?” Belcher said. “What did you find?”
    “This,” the cop said.
    He held up a plastic evidence bag.
    There was a gun in it.

31.
    “Y OU KNOW WHY YOU NEVER made it as an actor?” Richard said.
    I exhaled into the phone and looked at him with exasperation through the Plexiglas shield in the visitors room in the lockup. “Richard,” I said. “I’m in jail charged with murder. I’ve been waiting for you for three hours. That is not a great opening line.”
    “I got tied up in court,” Richard said. “The city of New York had the stupidity to suggest that a pregnant woman might have fallen down, not due to uneven pavement, but due rather to her increased size.” He shook his head. “Big mistake. Probably double the damages. Not only did I ridicule the position, I even hit ’em with the old sexist joke, you know, where the truck driver almost runs over the pregnant woman, shouts out, Hey, lady, you don’t watch where you’re going, you’ll get knocked down too.”
    “Richard—”
    “You should have seen the jury. I score both ways. I score with the joke because it’s funny. And I score off opposing counsel because I’m attributing it to him.”
    “Richard—”
    “Sorry. I just want to point out, I was having a real good day before you called.”
    “I’m sorry to spoil it for you.”
    “Are you? Well, you know why you never made it as an actor?”
    Good lord. There was no deflecting him. “No, Richard. Why did I never make it as an actor?”
    “Timing.”
    “Huh?”
    “It’s your timing. That’s what actors need, right? Good timing.”
    “That’s comedians.”
    “Same difference. You need timing. And yours is bad.”
    Good lord. Richard must have rehearsed this routine in the car driving out. And knowing Richard, I wasn’t going to get a word in till I heard it. “My timing’s bad?” I