“I just talked to the guy. Jesus! You can’t even talk to someone anymore without someone jumping down your throat.”

“Yeah, you talked to him with a gun up his ass,” she said.

“If I had had a gun up his ass, Marge, I’d have fired it. Then he’d look like what he is—a pile of shit.”

Decker walked into the interview room and unfolded the lone chair leaning against the wall. The place was cramped when occupied by only two people; with five it had become vacuum-packed. The others were squeezed around a metal bridge table, stuffing butts into an overflowing aluminum ashtray. He sandwiched the chair between Morrison and the wall.

Not exactly the executive suite.

“So good of you to show up, Sergeant,” Arlington sneered from the opposite side of the table. “That is your current rank, isn’t it?”

Decker ignored the comment but zeroed in on the man. Arlington was dressed expensively and conservatively—Italian silk navy suit, fine white cotton shirt, navy-and-maroon silk striped tie. His feet were ensconced in crocodile loafers, and a maroon handkerchief blossomed from his breast pocket.

His face was suffused with contempt.

Of what? thought Decker. The surroundings? The police? The indignity of it all?

He became enraged.

The guy’s a first-class scumbag and he’s contemptuous? Decker’s eyes drifted to Arlington’s left, to his lawyer. A white-haired Modigliani, strictly high power. The guy reeked of self-confidence—the kind that had come from years of being kept on retainer. Opening his Mark Cross briefcase, Mr. Long Face took out a pile of papers, a fine-point felt-tip pen, a notepad, and a Sony tape recorder. Not to be outdone, Morrison brought out his own cassette deck. He pushed the pause button and waited.

The last man at the table was George Birdwell, the deputy DA, a bespectacled black Berkeley grad in his late twenties. Good, Decker thought. We’re in fine hands. Birdwell was as conscientious as anyone Decker had ever met and was as sharp as a cactus needle.

Arlington’s lawyer spoke up in a deep voice. “Let’s begin now.”

“Go ahead,” Morrison said, turning on the tape recorder.

“My client has a few remarks he’d like to offer in the hope they may aid in your investigation of the Bates-Armbruster case. Mr. Arlington has come here of his own volition—against legal advice—and in good faith, in order to advance the course of justice. Furthermore, it is agreed upon by all parties present that any information disclosed in said statement may not be used against Mr. Arlington should there be any further legal proceedings pertaining to this matter.” He looked at Arlington. “You may begin.”

The steel man read from a prepared statement: