I settled back into a clump of soft pillows, disbelieving. “No way they’re getting away with that. No fucking way.” I was a suspect? I didn’t know what I was suspected of being. An accomplice? But I definitely was a suspect. “Is there a cop outside the door? They going to arrest me?”

He shook his head. “No cops. Well, there’s a few of them out in the parking lot.”

A half hour ago I had been in a wonderful dream. Now I was awake in a nightmare. That’s not the way life is supposed to be. “What’s going on at the shop? How are we covering all this?”

Frankie B. refused to look at me. “There’re two guys been waiting to talk to you. They’ve been coming around the office too.” He picked up the juice box from my tray, punched the straw into it, and handed it to me. “Here. Look, Rol, do yourself a favor, don’t even think out loud. Remember, they’re from the government of the United States. They are not your friends.”

My room filled up pretty quickly with people who were my friends when word got out I was my usual semi-charming self. Jenny was crying. Howie and several people from the Pro showed up. Hack Wilson and Wayne Chang from Light Brigade came in, Hack complaining that I really wasn’t pulling my own weights. It got so noisy in there that when my mother called, she asked if I was having a party.

The first interview took place that night. Rather than Lindsey the Lawyer, Howie had brought in an experienced criminal attorney, Barton Reich. Reich was tall, thin, and proudly bald. He wore humorless thin-wire glasses. Before allowing the agents into my hospital room, Reich preached the defense lawyer’s mantra: You are not under arrest. You don’t have to answer any questions. If you decide to answer, respond as succinctly as possible. Do not volunteer any information. When I interrupt, be quiet.

I smiled, painfully, at this, asking, “Am I really a suspect?”

Reich did not smile. In fact, it looked like he hadn’t smiled within this decade. “At this point they are referring to you as a person of interest. What that means in reality is that they are interested in fucking you over. Mr. Stone, please listen to my suggestions. If you provide the rope for these people, I promise you, they will hang you with it.”

Three men showed up at seven o’clock: two agents from Homeland Security and a D.C. detective. I know I’ve told you that physical descriptions rarely provide an accurate impression of what people look like, but after everything that happened, I think I owe it to these characters to at least make the effort. Generally, these two agents looked like men who had missed the last cut for the FBI. They wore slightly different shades of gray suits, matching white shirts, and monochromatic ties. Both of them were thin. Agent Richard Corbin, who was substantially shorter than his partner, looked amazingly like my vision of a walking inferiority complex. Everything about him was taut, as if he were holding in a feral temper; his face was pockmarked, his receding hairline was cut into a defiant crew cut, and he had an unfortunate habit of punctuating almost every question by scratching the side of his nose with his thumbnail. Let me put it to you this way: he looked like the type of guy you wouldn’t want to have to tell first thing in the morning that you’d just run out of coffee.