“Too much.”
Yocke snorted. “That’s heresy, Ott! There’s no such thing. Bite your tongue.”
There was a mob at the district jail. Reporters and cameramen crammed the entryway. After Yocke and Mergenthaler elbowed their way to the desk, they found the desk sergeant engaged in a shouting match with a local TV anchorman as the cameras rolled.
“You can’t keep us out. We’re the press!”
“I don’t give a fuck who you are. The only people who get in are people on this list.” The sergeant stabbed the sheet of paper on the counter in front of him with a rigid finger. “You ain’t on it. Now get the hell outta here or we’ll find a cell for you. And turn off that fucking spotlight!”
“This is America!”
“Read my lips, asshole! Out!”
“Mergenthaler, Washington Post.” The reporter slid his credentials across the dark wood at the sergeant, who consulted his list while the TV anchorman made yet another eloquent protest.
“You’re on the list. Through that door over there.”
“I have another guy with me from the Post.”
Yocke displayed his credentials and was waved through as the sergeant addressed himself to the still spluttering TV man: “No. No! No! What part of no don’t you understand?”
Two policemen searched them for weapons while a third checked Mergenthaler’s tape recorder. Then they were led down a long corridor that had decades worth of dirt caked on its dark, once-green walls. Up a flight of ill-lit stairs, through another security checkpoint, through steel doors that slid open as they approached and closed behind them, and past rows of brimming cells. The occupants jeered and shouted obscenities.
The reporters were led through another steel door into a booking room of some sort where a camera crew was busy setting up lights and two cameras. This room had several steel doors besides the one they had entered. One was partially open and Yocke peeked. Beyond was a suite of four cells, padded, cells for psychos. Apparently the cops didn’t want Aldana out in the multiple-occupancy cells with the common criminals.
The network correspondent, whom Yocke recognized but didn’t know, nodded at Mergenthaler, then consulted a notebook while a woman worked on him from a portable makeup box. She combed his hair and squirted hairspray. One of the technicians tested a pin-on microphone as a uniformed cop watched without expression.
Mergenthaler found a spot where he could observe and not be caught by the cameras. Yocke leaned against the wall beside him.
The minutes passed. Five, then ten.
Occasionally someone coughed, but mostly they stood silently. Waiting.
What kind of man was this Aldana? Jack Yocke tried to picture the man he thought would appear, based upon what he knew about him. A thug, he decided. Some sort of hate-filled Latin American barrio bastard who thought Adolf Hitler was the prophet of how to win and rule in the coming chaos. Sounds like the title of a self-help best-seller. Yocke wondered if there was a big book in Chano Aldana’s future.
A darkly handsome man in a gray suit came out of one of the doors. He squinted against the floodlights, then said hello to the TV talker and Mergenthaler.
“My client will be out in a moment. Here are the rules. He has a statement to make, then the TV people get five minutes to ask questions. After they finish, Mergenthaler gets five minutes.”
“I don’t want Mergenthaler here while we’re filming,” the correspondent said.
“When will you run your interview?” Thanos Liarakos asked.
“Tonight probably, and on the morning show tomorrow.”
“I don’t see any problem.” The lawyer frowned. “He isn’t going to scoop you. And you can film while he asks questions, if you wish.”
No, the TV people weren’t going to do that. Under no circumstances were they going to take the chance that Mergenthaler might ask more perceptive questions on camera than their man.
“Show business,” Mergenthaler whispered sourly to Yocke. Speaking louder, he asked, “Mr. Liarakos, do you know what Aldana will say?”
“No.”
“Has he discussed it with you?”
“No.”
“Did you recommend to your client that he hold a press conference?”
“No comment.”
“If the prosecutors ask the judge for a gag order, will you fight it?”
“I never speculate in that manner.”
“Can Aldana get a fair trial here in Washington?”
“I don’t think that he can get a fair trial anywhere in the United States.”
“How much longer do we have to wait?” grumped the TV man.
“I have one question, Mr. Liarakos,” Yocke said. “Jack Yocke of the Post.”
“He with you, Ott?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Are you satisfied that your client has arranged to pay your fee, which reportedly is very high, with money that is not the proceeds of any criminal activity?”
Liarakos frowned. “No comment,” he said crisply, and disappeared through one of the steel doors.
The TV man grinned broadly at Yocke. A trace of a smile flickered across Mergenthaler’s lips.
Time passed slowly. The TV man kept glancing at his watch.
After seven minutes, the door opened and two uniformed cops came out, then two men Jack Yocke took to be U.S. marshals. Liarakos followed them, then a Latin-looking man of medium height wearing a trim mustache. Other cops and marshals followed, but this was the man who captured Yocke’s attention.
As he arranged himself in the chair and the television lights came on, Yocke stared. The man was pleasantly plump, with full cheeks that would turn into saggy jowls in a few more years. He looked like a middle-aged banker who hadn’t raised a sweat since his school days. He was clad in slacks and a short-sleeved white shirt, no tie. He blinked at the glare of the lights and looked around warily as a technician hooked up the lapel mike.
When the technician was out of the way and one of the marshals had been waved out of camera-shot, the correspondent began. “I understand you have a statement to make, Señor Aldana.”
Aldana looked straight at the camera.
“I am Chano Aldana,” he said with a noticeable Spanish accent. “I am your worst nightmare come to life. I am the faceless, starving masses whom you refused food. I am the slave you delivered in chains to the merciless altar of the moneylenders. I am the sick you refused to heal. I am the beggar you turned away from the feast. To me has been given the key to the bottomless pit. And I have opened it.”
The network correspondent stood for several seconds with his mouth ajar, his face slack.
“Señor Aldana, are you guilty of the crimes of which you are accused?”
“You are the guilty ones. Not I.”
“Are you the head of the Medellín cocaine-smuggling cartel?”
“I am a Third World businessman.”
When it became obvious that was the whole answer, the correspondent persisted, “Are you a cocaine smuggler?”
“I have never smuggled cocaine.”
“Your statement seems to imply that people working for you will cause violence if you are not released. Is that what you mean?”
“I meant what I said. Precisely. The people who know of my reputation will tell you that I am a man of my word.”
When Mergenthaler’s turn came and the TV lights were off, he asked, “What did you mean, ‘To me has been given the key to the bottomless pit’?”
“I am He who was thrown out of Heaven. I am He you have kept away from the feast. To me has been given the key to the pit and I have opened it.”