Willie took one further precaution. With Arno’s help, and using a candle that he warmed and flattened on the radiator, he took the unconscious man’s prints by pressing his fingers against the warm wax. He then placed the candle behind a pile of old documents in the office closet, and locked the door. The man wasn’t carrying a wallet or any other form of ID, which Willie thought was odd. He knew that the cops would probably print him, but he also understood that Louis might want to make some inquiries of his own. To further assist Louis in any such endeavor, Willie told Arno to take some pictures of the guy, using his cellphone. Willie’s cellphone didn’t take photos. It was so low-tech that it made a tin can on the end of a piece of string look like a viable alternative, but that was just the way Willie liked it.
Both Willie and Arno played their parts to perfection when the cops arrived: they were honest men faced with the threat of harm and, possibly, death, who had fought back against their aggressors and now stood, shocked but most definitely alive, in the center of the small business they had so determinedly defended. It wasn’t far off the mark either. The cops listened sympathetically, then advised them both to come down to the station the next morning in order to make formal statements. Arno asked if he was going to need a lawyer, but the detective in charge told him that he didn’t think so. Off the record, he said that it was unlikely any charges would be pressed even if the mook died. No DA liked prosecuting an unpopular case, and Arno was in a position to offer an ironclad self-defense plea. The next step, he said, was to identify the gentleman in question, since the only items in his pockets were gum, a roll of tens, twenties, and fifties, and a spare clip for his gun. Willie and Arno did their best to look surprised at this news.
Willie reckoned they were 99 percent done when a pair of new arrivals, one male and one female, entered the garage. They both wore dark suits, and when they showed their IDs to the patrolman at the garage door he looked over his shoulder when they had passed and mouthed the word “feds” to his colleagues inside, as if they hadn’t already guessed who the visitors were.
Willie’s face had been taped up by one of the medics. The medic had reset Willie’s nose in his office, thus saving him a trip to the hospital, and it was now throbbing balefully. Added to the nausea that he was still experiencing from his hangover and the comedown from the adrenaline rush of the fight, Willie was having trouble remembering the last time he’d felt so bad. Now, as he sat on a stool beside the busted Olds, Arno nearby, he watched the two agents approach and, with a dart of his eyes, signaled to Arno that there was trouble on its way. Willie was no expert on law enforcement, or the niceties of jurisdiction, but he had lived in Queens long enough to know that the FBI didn’t show up every time someone waved a gun in an auto shop, otherwise they’d never have time to do anything else.
The man was black and introduced himself as Special Agent Wesley Bruce. His partner, Special Agent Sidra Lewis, was a bottle blonde with piercing blue eyes and a set scowl on her face that suggested she believed everyone she met in the course of her work was guilty of something, even it was only of thinking they were better than she was. They separated Arno and Willie, the woman taking Arno into the back office while Bruce leaned against the hood of the Olds, folded his arms, and gave Willie a big, unfriendly grin that reminded him of the way the gum chewer had smiled before Arno had knocked the smile from his face with a chunk of wood and metal.
“So, how you doing?” asked Bruce.
“I been better,” said Willie, which were just about the first completely honest words he’d uttered since the cops had arrived. He got the feeling that big old Special Agent Wesley Bruce here was well aware of that fact.
“Looks like our two friends picked the wrong guys to mess with.”
“I guess so.”
“You say they were looking for a car?”
“A car, and money.”
“You got much money here?”
“Not a lot. Most people pay by check or credit card. We still get some that like to work with cash, though. Old habits die hard around here.”
“I’ll bet,” said Bruce, as though Willie was not talking about cash payments but something else entirely. Willie tried to figure out what that might be, but there were so many possibilities from which to choose, legal and illegal, that he was spoiled for choice. Finally, Willie made the connection: like everything else that night, it was about Louis and Angel. The understanding did not affect his demeanor, but it made him dislike Special Agent Bruce even more than he already did.
In the meantime, Bruce gave Willie the hard eye. “I’ll bet,” he said again. He waited. Willie could hear Arno’s voice coming from the office. He was talking a lot more than Willie was. In fact, Special Agent Lewis appeared to be having trouble just getting a word in.
Welcome to my world, thought Willie.
Eventually, Bruce seemed to realize that Willie wasn’t about to break down and confess to every unsolved crime on the books, and resumed his questioning.
“So they wouldn’t have raked in a whole lot of money for their trouble, even if they had managed to get away with it.”
“Couple of hundred maybe, including petty cash.”
“Lot of grief for a couple of hundred. There must have been easier pickings for them.”
“We don’t have a camera.”
“Excuse me?”
“Security cameras. We don’t use ’em. Most places do now, but we don’t. Maybe they figured we didn’t have them, and thought, what the hell, let’s try it.”
“Desperate times, desperate measures.”
“Something like that.”
“They strike you as desperate men?”
Willie considered the question. “Well, they weren’t friendly. I don’t know from desperate.”
“I mean, they strike you as the kind of men who needed money?”
“Everybody needs money,” replied Willie simply.
“Except our friend who got his head stoved in had four or five hundred in cash on him, not to mention a very nice gun. Doesn’t strike me that he was hurting enough to take down an auto shop for a double century.”
“I got no insights into the criminal mind. That’s your department.”
“No insights into the criminal mind, huh?” Bruce seemed to find this funny. He even laughed, although it didn’t sound natural. It was as if someone had written the words “Ha. Ha. Ha.” in front of him, then held a gun to his head and told him to read them aloud.
“What about the car?” said Bruce, when he was done laughing.
“What about it?”
“According to what you told the police, they drove here, and the other, uh, ‘alleged’ thief got away in the same vehicle. Why would they need a car if they already had one?”
“Could be they were planning a robbery and wanted something that couldn’t be linked to them.”
“Would have meant killing you and your buddy, then, just so you couldn’t identify them or the car.”
“Well, that’s why one of them ended up wearing a hammer instead of a hat. Look, Mr. Bruce-”
“I prefer ‘Special Agent Bruce.’”
Willie stared at Bruce impassively. There was a moment of strained silence between the two men, until Willie sighed theatrically and continued.
“Special Agent Bruce, I don’t understand what your problem is here. We didn’t get a chance to make these guys a cup of coffee so they could sit down and explain their motives to us. They came in, busted my nose, told me what they wanted, and you know the rest.”