“No, of course not, I just—” I raised hands. “Look, if I’d have done anything crazy, would I have called the police?”

“Sir, you are a material witness to a violent crime, and I’m going to need you to give us a complete deposition. Tonight.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I just want to make sure that this isn’t leading to some kind of arrest. Because if I need to call my attorney—”

As if by divine providence, in sauntered Double Fry, unshaven in a blue Marina del Rey sweatshirt, OP shorts, flip-flops, and Grateful Dead knitted yarmulke dangling off his curly-haired head.

“My client has been waiting for me,” Fry said, in bluff mode supreme. “Anything he has said prior to my presence was spoken under duress and will have to be considered inadmissible.”

Lanterman sighed the sigh of city officials. He had us pegged for a couple of hipsters, wayward arts ‘n’ culture types, and it made him sore.

“Please step inside, gentlemen. So we can all get this over with before midnight?” His slightly agitated insouciance was there to intimidate—and I was intimidated. I turned to Fry, who nodded, and we were on our way.

“What’s happening here?” Fry whispered in the hall.

“I found a guy that got brained,” I said.

“On a job?”

I didn’t have time to answer. Lanterman led us to an open office with five or six desks, all occupied by cops doing intake. As we grabbed seats and Lanterman cracked his laptop, I felt the closing off of breath, the first flashes of panic, and silently posed a question I have often asked myself: Why are some people just so naturally menacing? Why do some seethe in a way that makes you tremble without ever knowing why? Lanterman and I were about the same age, probably from the same city, the same world; we probably grew up hearing all the same songs on the radio. But unlike me, he hadn’t been taken in—not by the melodies and definitely not by the lyrics, those flighty matters of the heart. No, his grip on the facts had not been loosened.

“Ohh-kay,” he said, clicking away at some form. “Let’s start at the beginning. How do you know Mr. Hawley.”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t.”

“Ah. Then what was your business at the shop this evening.”

I looked at Fry who stared right back at me.

I spoke carefully. “I was doing a favor for a family friend. Hawley had visited this friend recently. At his nursing home. And…and Hawley promised a return visit. And when he didn’t show, my friend got worried. And wanted me to see if he was okay.”

I skipped a few details—the thirty-year-old murder case and the nine one-hundred-dollar bills in my pocket.

“I see,” Lanterman said, with a little ring of dissatisfaction. “So you were doing a favor. For an elderly person.”

I shrugged. “That’s right. A family friend.”

Lanterman’s saturnine look said he didn’t buy it. “And what is the name of this…family friend?”

Fry raised a hand. “My client does not have to disclose that information at this time. Mr. Zantz was on a personal errand; let’s just leave it at that.”

“Yes,” Lanterman said, “but this is a violent crime. Mr. Zantz’s friend may be in danger.”

I said, “It’s just that—”

“Zip it, Addy,” Fry said. “My client chooses not to disclose that information at this time.”

Unlike me, Fry knew how to intimidate back—he was like Bugs Bunny in a yarmulke—and Lanterman was starting to boil over.

“Fine. So you arrived at the studio and—”

“Well, nobody answered at first. I knocked but there was no answer. So I went around back.”

“You…let yourself into the shop?”

“Well, my elderly friend has been very concerned. You see—”

“Addy.” Fry raised an eyebrow, pulled the imaginary zipper across his lips.

“Okay, okay,” Lanterman said, sitting upright, clasping his hands before him. They were big neck-snapper hands, and he wanted us to see them up close. He directed himself at Double Fry. “Let’s forget about this…friend for a moment. What I’m trying to establish is—why your client just happened to drive to Mr. Hawley’s studio today of all days. And why he chose to let himself into a building he had never been to before.”

“My client just told you. He tried the front door. When no one answered, he let himself in the back.”

“Yup,” I said lamely. A trickle of sweat was itching at the back of my neck. “And it’s a lucky thing I did. For Hawley, I mean.”

Lanterman took this in. Matter-of-factly, he said, “Mr. Zantz, this is a violent assault, California Penal Code 240 PC, and although we are grateful for your call, you are officially a person of interest. So you’ll want to be as candid as possible.”

I turned to Fry: “Does that mean I’m a suspect?”

He paused. “Not yet.”

“Look, when I got to the back—” I was about to explain that the studio door had actually been half-opened, but I didn’t finish the sentence. All three of our heads turned to watch two men in uniform gently escort a jittery older white man to a nearby desk—I recognized him, the man who lived kitty-corner to Marjorie Persky. He was a wreck now, thin and sallow in a hastily buttoned maroon cardigan, designer dungarees, and pajama shirt—the cops had obviously roused him from sleep. He eyeballed the four tables with suspicion and shot a special flash of disgust Fry’s way. Fry had that effect on people.

“Now what is going on here?” the man said tersely. “I’m too old to be kept up all night, for Chrissake.”

A uniformed Hispanic cop got behind the desk to face him, empathic but very firm.

“Mr. Hawley, I’m so sorry. Your son was taken to the hospital tonight.”

“I already heard that. How long has he been in intensive care?”

“Just two hours, Mr. Hawley. Please have a seat.”

Hawley the senior did as they asked, but he was fidgeting like a man waiting on terrible news. “Now what the hell happened exactly.”

“Your son was brutally attacked.”

The skinny old man transformed—his face elongated like someone who just swallowed a fast-acting poison. But he shook his head, shook it off. “By who?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”

“I…I…I haven’t seen or spoken to Devon in many years. We…aren’t close. Anymore.”

The admission was so awkward, the policeman pinched his lips.

The old man said, “Was it…some kind of thief?”

This returned decorum, the cop exhaled. “We’re still trying to determine that. But it appears that someone hit him over the head with a metal object, likely a pipe.”