I stared at him.
‘His cousin, Miss Maria Quintero, says that you and Mr Ríos had an ongoing feud and she claims you killed him.’
She was right. I had killed him.
I had asked Tony to email his Deputy Director predecessor stating that he had a lead on how trainers were being tipped off: the groom who looked after Debenture was prepared to talk. That would normally have been me but, due to my feigned illness, Keith had detailed Diego to look after the horse instead.
And because of that, Bob Wade had killed Diego and not me.
‘Where was he found?’ I asked.
‘Where you left him — in a barn, with a pitchfork stuck deep in his chest.’
Bob Wade must have acquired that idea from Hayden Ryder, who had tried to do the same to him at Churchill Downs. But Diego hadn’t been wearing a bulletproof vest or a special agent badge as protection.
‘I’ve already told you, I didn’t see Diego Ríos at any time this afternoon. I was over at the racetrack, not at the barns.’
‘Can you prove that? Do you have any witnesses?’
No, of course I didn’t. I had spent the afternoon trying to be as inconspicuous as possible.
‘So why did you kill him?’
‘I didn’t.’
‘The murder weapon has your fingerprints all over it.’
Hell, I thought. That wasn’t good.
‘All the grooms have used all the pitchforks at one time or another. They will have all our fingerprints on them.’
‘What was the feud between you and Mr Ríos all about?’
I was not going there. It would sound far too incriminating if I told him it was over advances I had made towards his cousin. It was not a feud anyway. A true feud needed animosity in both directions. Diego’s had all been one-way.
I decided it was time I asked for a lawyer. Probably well past time.
‘I want a lawyer,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘It is my right,’ I said.
‘Only guilty men ask for lawyers,’ he responded, and I’m sure he believed it. In his eyes, suspects were all guilty until proved not to be and, even then, he’d probably still have had his doubts.
‘I’d also like to make a phone call,’ I said, ignoring his remark. ‘I think I have a right to that as well.’
He obviously didn’t like it but he shrugged his shoulders in acceptance. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘One call.’
I made it to Tony Andretti.
‘Where are you?’ he asked angrily. ‘There’s been a disaster at the track.’
‘What sort of disaster?’
‘I’ve lost two of my best agents,’ he said gloomily. ‘One is dead and the other is currently in surgery to save his foot.’
‘They were your moles,’ I said to him. ‘Not one mole, but two. Both of them. Bob Wade and Steffi Dean.’
There was a long pause from the other end of the line.
‘Tony?’ I said eventually. ‘You still there?’
‘Yes,’ he replied slowly. ‘I’m still here.’ He sounded shocked. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Positive.’
He was not happy. ‘I wanted you only to find our moles, not kill them.’
‘I didn’t,’ I said. ‘Steffi Dean was shot dead by Bob Wade from a range of about three feet. She didn’t stand a chance.’
‘Bob Wade says an unknown assailant did it, a man with a black goatee.’
No wonder the cops had come looking for me at the hospital. They would have readily believed a federal special agent. Who wouldn’t?
‘Check the ballistics. The bullet that killed Steffi came from Bob’s gun.’
But I wondered if there would be enough of the expanded bullet remaining to test for barrel marks and scratches.
‘Can you get me out of here?’ I asked. ‘The Nassau County cops have arrested me for murder.’
‘I’ll see what I can do.’
He didn’t sound too hopeful or, indeed, particularly eager.
What had he expected? Perhaps he’d thought that I would silently expose his mole, only then for the villain to be discreetly retired from the service, rather than to face the full force of the law. Something nice and quiet that would keep the reputation of his agency intact. Maybe even to accept the death of Jason Connor as the accident that the Maryland Medical Examiner believed it was.
What he clearly hadn’t intended was having to wash FACSA’s dirty laundry in public. For the Nassau County detectives to be investigating the violent death of a special agent under the intense scrutiny of the intimidating New York City media, hungry for another fatal-shooting story, especially one tinged with more than a whiff of official corruption.
‘Can you at least find me a decent lawyer?’ I asked.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he repeated, without giving me much confidence that it would happen.
The thought crossed my mind that maybe Tony Andretti would be perfectly happy leaving me to my own devices, at least for a while. The media scrutiny would then continue to be directed solely at me as the suspect in custody, rather than at him, asking difficult questions like, ‘Why had I been released without charge?’ and, if so, then, ‘Who really had shot Steffi Dean?’
Part of me even worried that he might be quite happy to sacrifice me permanently, for the good of the agency. Steffi was dead and Bob could be declared medically unfit to continue. The cancer would have been excised from the body and no one need be any the wiser that it had ever existed.
The only problem would be what to do with me.
After his magic trick in getting me a Green Card from the State Department within twenty-four hours, I’d put nothing past the resourceful Deputy Director of FACSA.
I spent a restless night in a hot and airless police holding cell, in which the bright overhead lamp never went out and the toilet in the corner flushed itself automatically every fifteen minutes.
My arm throbbed and the stitches itched, but I couldn’t complain about the breakfast.
A segmented metal tray arrived at six o’clock loaded with copious quantities of crisp bacon, scrambled eggs and fried potatoes but, thankfully, with not a single grit anywhere in sight. I ate the bacon with my fingers and the rest with a white plastic spoon — the officer who delivered it having explained that knives and forks, even plastic ones, were considered too sharp to issue to violent offenders.
I was pleasantly surprised, and hugely relieved, to find that Tony had sent a lawyer.
His name was Marty Mandalay and he arrived as I was finishing my breakfast. He was young and brash, with a snazzy three-piece suit and slicked-back black hair, held in place by copious quantities of wax. I wasn’t sure I would have bought a second-hand car from him but his business card stated that he was a graduate of Harvard Law School and I assumed that, in spite of my earlier concerns, Tony wouldn’t have sent me a dud.
‘Don’t say anything at the interview,’ Marty instructed seriously in my cell. ‘Nothing at all. I will answer all the questions for you. Got that?’
‘OK,’ I said, nodding.
‘Not a word,’ Marty reiterated. ‘No matter what I say. Zilch! Keep those lips of yours tightly zipped. And don’t ask to speak to me privately. Trust me. Just sit on your hands and keep schtum. I know what I’m doing.’
‘I’ve got the message,’ I assured him.
‘Good.’
This time, the interview was conducted by the same detective as before but with someone from the State Prosecutor’s office sitting alongside him.
‘Now, Mr Murphy,’ said the detective, ‘let’s start again from the beginning, shall we? Why did you kill the groom Diego Ríos?’
I would have thought a simple ‘No comment’ would have been adequate but Marty clearly had other ideas.
‘My client, Mr Murphy, exercises his right under the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution not to answer that question on the grounds he might incriminate himself.’