THERE are ways, using wet towels wrapped around the knuckles or blows delivered with other parts of the hand, of working a body over thoroughly without leaving marks that would provide provable complaint. Linc had experienced the joys of this form of supplementary education the last time he was picked up by the police. His two arrests before that had been when they were called out to the school: first, two days after he was transferred there when the grade bully tried teaching the new kid the lesson on who was boss and wound up with a wired jaw; and second, when he lost patience with a teacher who wanted to hang equal blame on one of the younger kids for defending himself when he got picked on. (Getting rough with a teacher hadn't been really smart, Linc later admitted to himself. They were just stuck with the same stupid rules as everyone else. The problem was, you could never find or get near the people who made them.) On both those occasions he'd ended up being lectured by a counselor who'd probably never been on a street after dark, and had to answer endless dumb questions put by a psychiatrist who assured Linc that none of it was his fault. (Great, Linc had thought. If none of it was his fault, why were they wasting their time with him instead of going after whoever's fault it was?)
And then, the third time, was when he started collecting small-time debts for Marcella's creep—before the day she came home with the puffed mouth and the dark glasses. The cops must have given up on sweetness and understanding then and decided to try a little firmer persuasion, because that was when he got the work-over. So, naturally, he assumed he could expect more of the same this time. When it didn't happen, he decided the reason had to be they wanted something. The explanation came the next morning, in an interview room with a table and several tubular steel chairs, a recorder, and probably other monitoring devices, when Linc faced an interrogator named Breece from the DA's office.
"We didn't set all this up just to send somebody like you down. In fact, we're not especially interested in doing that. You could get off pretty light if you take a sensible line. We know you were working for a collector called Kyle Nass. In case you didn't know, Nass works for a man by the name of Carolton, who runs a line in casinos and loan hustlers. This angle that Carolton is playing has gotten a bunch of kids like you into trouble. That's what we're out to bust." Breece was a big, heavy-set man with a full head of ginger hair, ragged ginger mustache, and eyes droopy like a bloodhound's. He shrugged in a way that seemed to say the rest shouldn't need spelling out, but the script required it. "This isn't the first job you've worked for them. You can give us dates, times, places that we can fit with other details we've got on record. Cooperate, and you could come out of it clean enough to get a real life."
Linc didn't try to disguise his contempt. "What do you take me for . . . even supposing I knew what you were talking about?"
Breece looked away wearily. "They're slime, Linc. You don't owe people like that anything. You didn't buy that Line of theirs about juveniles being protected by special rights, did you? And if you do get nailed, they'll wheel in some big-time lawyer who'll take care of things? Yeah, right. Want me to give you the names of some of the kids they've flimflammed with that horseshit? I'll even let you talk to some of them if you like." Breece gestured impatiently. "Can't you see it's a scam? It's their way of keeping heat away from their own people—the ones they don't want to waste on the nickel-and-dime stuff."
The remark made Linc's cheeks burn. It was saying he was one of the unimportant ones, the expendables—not a professional. "I don't know any Kyle . . . whatever his name was," he insisted. "I just heard it around that this dude Colomada was in a hole for two grand and figured I could make a quick stack by standing in as the collector. Guys like that blab all over when they get under pressure. You hear it all the time."
Breece shook his head. "Not Colomada. He was planted, remember? One of ours. He didn't talk to anyone. You could only have gotten it from Kyle."
Linc shifted his eyes from side to side desperately, as if hoping an answer might appear on the walls. "It was somebody on the inside that I got talking to, who worked there on the accounts."
"Who? Give me a name," Breece challenged.
"I don't remember . . . He didn't tell me."
"Okay, then. You tell me, what kind of account was it? Casino overdraft? Private note? Some kind of loan that Colomada took out with one of the sharks?" Breece waited. Linc had no answer. "It won't wash, Linc. You're going to take the bullet to protect scum. And they're going to walk—which is exactly what they set you up for. You get put in the freezer for the next five years, and they won't even be around. Do you think they're gonna bring you a cake on visiting day?"
Linc stared fixedly at the table. Breece was just trying to put doubts in his head to get him confused. The thing to do was to tune out of all of it and not listen. Be a professional, he told himself, and he'd be looked after. The Man—whether or not it was this Carolton that Breece had mentioned, Linc didn't know—always took good care of his friends. Kyle had said so.