“Nothing,” I say. “That’s not how it happened.”

“Really? Well, who is that person?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen that person before.”

“I hear that sentence fifty-five times a day, Otto. It’s never true.”

“The whole tape is obviously a fake. You can fake anything nowadays.”

“That’s true. Technology is amazing. But how about this one?”

She inserts a new tape and then I’m looking at myself inside Kong’s van. “No guns,” I’m insisting. “No one’s killing anybody.”

“Oops,” Nunes says. “Let me fast-forward to the good stuff.”

Then Jagjeet and I are zipping around the Bauhaus hallways like Keystone Cops; we break into Charlie’s room; a curling iron gets shoved down my mouth;69 Charlie and I run through the hallways; I punch out Mr. Picture of Loveliness;70 then Herkimer decks Charlie and sends me into a distant orbit. Nunes slows the tape down to watch the fight. They’re both so fast it’s hard to tell the difference between real time and fast-forward. I miss Herkimer with the gun. I don’t miss with the sword.

During the whole thing Charlie’s face is clearly in focus.

“This look familiar to you at all?”

“Nope.”

“You’ve never seen that woman before?”

“Negative.”

“She’s beautiful, though, isn’t she? I guess if someone loved her, he might do just about anything to protect her.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“So you can’t ID her for us?”

“Sorry.”

“Well, that’s O.K. We’ve tracked her down. She’s a professor right here in Manhattan. Already talked to all her colleagues, her super, her neighbors. Mother’s deceased. Can’t locate her father yet. But her name’s Charlie Izzo.”

“Some name.”

“Mean anything to you?”

“Not at all,” I say over my pounding heart.

I know I shouldn’t keep lying in the face of insurmountable evidence. It’s foolish. I know that. But the only thing I have left is resistance.

“That’s funny,” Nunes says. “Because you say ‘Charlie’ several times on this.”

I shrug.

“You think that could be faked, too?”

“Sure.”

“We thought the same thing. So we’re putting some boys on it today to determine authenticity. It’s not tough. We’ll know in a few hours. I’m not really doubtful what the findings will be, are you?”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I thought maybe you would tell us why the Polecat—I mean, Charlie Izzo—would snitch on herself to exonerate you.”

“How do you know this stuff came from her?”

“Because she said so.”