The furnishings of the room are designed so that there is nowhere to turn: the bareness itself is an accusation. Two or three chairs, near always wooden. A simple desk, generally one with a shallow drawer: no sense of heft or hidden things. In the drawer, a few sheets of paper and a simple pen. A two-way mirror on the far wall, plain, unadorned. Nothing to be used as a weapon: no folding chairs or glass or sharp pencils. No cups or coffee machines. No distracting posters on the walls. A carpet is unlikely, but if it exists, it’s monotone. The baseboards painted the same color as the walls. The light is often fluorescent and hard, though there is sometimes a table lamp that the detectives turn on when the truth starts to emerge: it softens the light, takes away the edges, redeems the room.
The camera is positioned high enough that it is not the first thing seen, but those who pause in the doorway — so often the guilty — glance upward at it. There is much to be interpreted from the eye-flick: fear, defiance, insolence, disdain. Often they try to sit with their backs to the lens but the detectives are quick to redirect them to the other side of the table. The detectives count the amount of times their interviewees look up at the camera: the more they do so, the more likely they are to lie.
Others — so often the innocent — go immediately to sit down, as if they want to protect their truth, keep it tight, hold it in its own little universe for a while, put their arms around it. Theirs is a searing gaze into the lens: a mixture of plea and terror.
There are times the detectives leave the interviewees alone in the room. They watch, then, through the two-way mirror. It is nearly always the guilty who wave up at the camera: a fuck-you defiance. Some go to the corner underneath the camera to try to hide from it. In some stations there is a second camera set up in the opposite corner, though sometimes it is just a dummy, a second eye.
The room is nearly always sealed off from sound, though the camera itself is wired to pick up all noise. For backup the detectives also use a recorder.
When Pedro Jiménez is hauled in for questioning he displays a curious cocktail of innocence and guilt. He arrives in a suit jacket and blue shirt and white chef pants, a sad garage sale of a man, fifty-seven years old, a little isthmus of hair in the center of his forehead. He is thin, but gone a little to jowl, an autumn of skin upon him. He stands in the doorway and glances around but doesn’t look up to the camera, rather turns toward the Latina detective as if beseeching her to make sense of the room. Her hair is dark, her eyes are dark, her clothes dark too. She wears a simple gold chain around her neck. She touches Pedro’s elbow and guides him toward the seat at the bare wooden desk. She is followed moments later by another detective, a pale white loaf of a man who takes his chair to the end of the table. He places the chair backward, puts his chin on the rest, leans close.
Hemmed in, Pedro glances up at the camera as if he might be able to see his own reflection in the glass, then looks back down at his hands upon the tabletop. Surprisingly he pulls from his pocket a pair of reading glasses, though there is nothing in front of him to read.
When he perches the glasses on his nose he seems like a different man, not a scruffy dishwasher anymore but something of the disheveled librarian about him.
The female detective speaks to him at first in a Spanish that seems as if it has been scuffed and rolled on the streets of the city. The date, the time, the exact location of the interview. Is he aware, she asks, that their conversation is being recorded? He has not been arrested, but the word yet seems silently attached to the end of her sentence. She knows that he is a family man. She’d like to help him out. She’s not interested in his immigration status. She is friends with a lot of people in the Costa Rican community, she is from the islands herself, born in the D.R., moved here when she was two years old. She is easy, chummy, open, her body turned sideways in the chair. She knows that he has a past but everybody has a past, isn’t that right, Pedro? Pedro nods, a slight shine behind his spectacles. The detectives stop to whisper in English and then Pedro tells her that he understands perfectly, he’d be happy to do the interrogation in either language. She says that, yes, Rick, her partner, is a bit rusty. We appreciate it, Pedro, she says, we really do. Still, she maintains a lilt to her questions, as if her English has just swum through the Caribbean. She is interested in clean slates, she says. She avoids the word murder. It is an assault, a serious assault, a tragedy really. Is he aware of what happened? Yes. Has he heard anything come along the grapevine? No. Some people just lose it, you know? I suppose so. Did you ever lose it yourself, Pedro? No, I’m a quiet man, I live a quiet life. You live in Brooklyn, yes? Yes. Where? You know, Coney Island. What’s it like living out there, Pedro? Gets windy sometimes. That’s funny, gets windy, you hear that, Rick, it gets windy in Coney Island, Pedro’s a comedian. I’m not trying to be funny, Mami. Just kidding, Pedro — so, how long you been working in the city? Twenty years. How long in Chialli’s? Four. Four? Yes. Hard to look after a family on a dishwasher’s salary? My wife, she’s dead. You get by? I get by. You got a daughter? Yeah, Maria. Maria’s married? She just got divorced, she’s looking for a job. She got laid off? Yeah, she got laid off a couple of months ago. She got kids? Two. That’s a tough life, Pedro, divorced, two kids, just got laid off, want some water, Pedro? No. You look like you might need a drink of water.
He adjusts the glasses on his nose. She leans forward, the male detective leans back. It is as if there is some sort of swinging pulse in the room, the bodies, like rhyme, dependent on one another.
So, I’d like to talk about the restaurant, Pedro. Whatever you want, Mami, I’ve got nothing to hide. You can’t remember anything unusual happening that day, like anything to do between you and Dandinho, because we heard a thing or two, let’s be honest, let’s be fair here, Pedro, we heard you had a little bit of puñetazos? He glances upward at the camera but holds a pursed tightness to his lips, shakes his head, no, that argument with Dandinho, that was nothing, Mami, nothing, they have a fútbol pool among the employees, you know, a little betting gig, and there was a — what do you call it? — a question over a Corinthians game in Brazil, a dispute, just a bit of fun, nothing to it. Was there anything else Dandinho said to you? No. You sure? I’m sure. And where did you go then, Pedro? The bathroom. But isn’t that the busiest time of day, the lunch shift, Pedro, what are you doing going to the bathroom then? I was taking a shit. You were taking a shit? Yes. That’s all right, Pedro, everyone takes a shit, but are you sure that shit of yours didn’t get any snowflakes on it? Snowflakes? Did you go out the employee exit by any chance, maybe to get a breather, Pedro, maybe to have a smoke? I don’t smoke. But did you go out, maybe pick up your jacket, maybe pick up your hat, and take a little breather outside, through the employee entrance, out the steel door to Madison Ave? I didn’t go anywhere. Just went back to washing dishes? Yeah. Pearl diving they call it, isn’t that right, Pedro? I suppose. Why do they call it pearl diving? Listen, I’ve got a job, I’ve got two grandkids, I don’t know.
There is, in the questioning, a moving cadence, sometimes delivered to the point of the desired information, at other times looping in discursive swirls, designed precisely to disguise.
That’s something we wanted to talk to you about, Pedro. What? About Maria. Maria? You know, her getting divorced, losing her job, coming back in to live with you in Coney Island. She wanted to save money. Did it put some pressure on you maybe? No. Because Maria, she had a good job — where was it she worked again? — what was it she said to us, Rick? You talked to Maria? Of course, we talked to Maria. Maria’s got nothing to do with any of this. Any of what? What are you doing talking to Maria? Any of what, Pedro? Nothing. Nothing? She’s a good girl, is all I said. Of course, she’s a good girl. Then leave her out of it. To be honest, Pedro, well, she had a lot of things to say. Maria wouldn’t say nothing bad about me. Of course, she didn’t say anything bad about you, she’s crazy about you, la niña de sus ojos. So what’s the problem? No problem, Papi. Then what am I doing here? You know the Barner Funds? The what? Maria was working for the Barner Funds. Yeah, what about it? What do you think of the Barner Funds? She had a good job, she liked it there, that’s all. That’s all? That’s it. It didn’t piss you off, Pedro? No, why should it? Even when she got fired? That’s a couple of months ago, I told you. What do you think about the bosses there, Pedro? Nothing, none of my business, never thought about them. Because Maria told us that she was bringing a lawsuit against the Barner Funds for wrongful dismissal, did you know that? Sure. And what did you think? Bueno, no big deal. And you know that guy Elliot Mendelssohn? Huh? He’s the son of the guy that got punched outside your restaurant? Yeah. You’ve got to forgive me here, Pedro, but this guy Elliot, he might’ve, I don’t know, he might’ve stepped in between Maria and your son-in-law a few months ago. I don’t know what you’re talking about. You know what I mean, before she got fired? What? That’s just what we heard, that he might’ve just had a bit of a wandering hand with Maria, that they — sorry to say this, Pedro, you’re a father, and fathers don’t like to hear this shit, mothers don’t either, trust me, but fathers for sure don’t, right? What the fuck. What I’m saying, Pedro, is they made further acquaintance a couple of times in a hotel in Stamford, where this guy Elliot lives, up there in Connecticut, with his wife and kids, he’s got a fondness for hotels, Pedro, do you know what I mean, are you hearing me, Pedro, is anybody home, knock-knock, who’s there, are you hearing me, Pedro, is anyone there? I don’t know what you mean. You don’t? No, I don’t. Maybe you felt something bad about the Barner Funds, like maybe this guy Elliot was exploiting her, maybe he was dabbling a little too much? Maria never did that, Maria’s a good girl, Maria was married. Don’t get me wrong, Pedro — this guy Elliot he’s a prime-rib asshole, we know that. I don’t know him, never met him. Maybe he was suggesting to Maria that he was going to make her rich, but then he turns around and fires her? I said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Maybe he was whispering sweet nothings. I never heard of him before. Maybe the jury’ll buy that story, Pedro? What story? You being a father and all, you punched his father? I didn’t punch no one. Are you sure about that, Pedro? I swear to God, Mami. You can call me Carla. I didn’t punch no one. Maybe you didn’t mean to hit him so hard, just an accident, like? I told you, I didn’t touch him. Maybe pushed him over? No. You want that glass of water now? Are you telling me that I need a lawyer? Look, we’re not trying to nail you here, Pedro. I have the right to a lawyer, I know that. You certainly do, but what we’re trying to do is help you here, that man who died, he was a judge once, Pedro, Brooklyn Supreme Court, and the way things are looking, you’re going to need us on your side. I didn’t punch no one. ’Cause, me and Rick here, we’re on your side.