“You punch a clock?”
He nodded.
“So I could check your punch out, if I wanted to.”
“What’s this all about?”
“I’m having a little trouble believing you were here on the farm last Wednesday, is all,” I said. “When I’ve got a paper bag with your fingerprints on it, and that bag had a rock inside it last Wednesday that went through somebody’s window.”
“I want to call my lawyer.”
“Whoa, that’s a big turnaround in attitude,” I said. “One minute you’re gonna help us, the next you’ve gotta call your lawyer.”
“Here’s the deal,” Mike said, leaning forward. “You want to call a lawyer, that’s your right. Under the Constitution. But you know what lawyers are like. I know you do, you’ve been around the block a few times. Your lawyer steps in, and then we can’t do anything to help you. See, we’re not so concerned with you, Ed. We’ve read your rap sheet. Unless you’re turning into a firebug in your old age, we’re just looking at you as a way to get to who we want.”
“What do you mean, firebug?”
I sat back and listened, watching Ed’s face for a reaction.
“See, this place where the rock went through the window, later that night a bomb went off there,” Mike said. “The whole place burned down, and a man was killed.”
Ed started looking pretty scared at that point. I was getting the feeling his involvement had gone only so far, and no further.
“We figure the same people responsible for the rock through the window had a hand in the bombing, but that doesn’t mean we expect that was you,” Mike continued. “Must have been somebody behind you, maybe behind the bombing, too. You turn over that guy, we forget about any charges against you for this rock-throwing. Your parole officer doesn’t even need to know. But once you’ve got your lawyer involved, well, it’s harder for us to do that.”
“I don’t know anything about no bombing,” Ed said. “No fire either. This guy just said he wanted to do a little mischief. He had us collect a bunch of horse shit, put it into bags, and then splash it on the sidewalk. The rock was just like a calling card, so’s the people inside knew what it was about.”
“Kind of like a warning,” I said. “Get out before we torch your asses.”
“There wasn’t nothing like that,” he said. “I swear it. You can hook me up to a lie detector, whatever you want. I swear I didn’t know nothing about any bombs, or fires, or anything.”
He looked down at his shoes. “I know I shouldn’t a done it. But this guy, he’s my minister, and he swore it wouldn’t be breaking my parole. Nothing more than malicious mischief, he said.”
He looked up again. “See, I got this ex lives down by Pearl. What with being in the joint, I’m way behind on my alimony, and she keeps threatening to haul my ass into court. I’d been talking to the Reverend about it, and he offered me a thousand bucks to make some trouble for those gay marriage people. That’s enough to make myself whole with her.”
As soon as Baines said minister, I thought about Jeff White, whose Church of Adam and Eve had met at the Plantation. “You got a name and an address on your minister?” I asked.
“Sure.”
I pulled out my notebook and a pen, and handed them to him. “Write it down.”
“You promise you won’t screw me up?”
“You give us the right guy, we forget we ever even talked to you,” I said.
“All right.” He quickly scribbled a couple of lines on a fresh page in my notebook and handed it back to me.
I took a quick look at it, and saw exactly what I’d expected. Reverend White, the Church of Adam and Eve, and the address on Wai’alae Avenue.