“I understand your real name is James White,” Coletti said. “Your fingerprints came back with a couple hits from Tulsa, including a stolen car, just like the pickup you stole from Sixth Street Sunday night.”

“I didn’t steal any pickup.”

Coletti nodded toward Sandy, who walked out of the room and stood with the pickup owner, Frank Kelly, who was watching through two-sided glass.

“Is that him?” she asked, as Coletti grabbed James’s hand and made him hold up the tattoo.

Kelly looked confused and unsure. “I never saw his face because of the hat,” he said. “But yeah, the tattoo on his hand was just like that.”

“Thank you,” Sandy said. “The patrolman will take you home. We’ll call you soon about your truck.”

“Thanks,” he said as a copled him away.

Sandy came back into the room and nodded knowingly at Coletti.

“So the owner of the truck just identified you as the man who pulled a sawed-off shotgun and stole his truck,” Coletti said. “We know you didn’t come here from Tulsa to kill anybody, right?”

The man shook his head vigorously while nervously puffing the cigarette.

“So why’d you come here? Was it the dope?”

“I don’t use dope,” he answered while blowing a plume of smoke into the air.

“Okay,” Coletti said with a skeptical smile as Jackson stared menacingly.

“Does she have to look at me like that?” White asked.

Coletti ignored the question. “Did you know Phillip Little—the guy who died this morning on Cecil B. Moore Avenue?”

“I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I didn’t say you killed him,” Coletti said. “But since you’ve got that demon-angel and verse tattooed on your hand, and both of you like to shoot dope, I thought you might travel in the same circles.”

White puffed the cigarette again, his drooping eyes cutting from Coletti to Jackson and back again. “I didn’t know him,” he said, leaning back in the chair with a nonchalant attitude that set Coletti off.

The detective dove across the table and snatched the cigarette from James White’s mouth. “I don’t have time to play games with you,” he said, grabbing the prisoner’s arm and twisting it until the needle marks showed. “Here’s your choice. You can answer my questions and get outta here, or I can put you in a cell until the withdrawal has you twisted up like a pretzel in the corner.”

The silence in the room was palpable as Sandy and Coletti watched White’s facial expression go from defiant to fearful.

“I can’t tell you anything,” White said with a slight stutter. “They’ll kill me as soon as I hit the street.”

“Who’s they?” Sandy asked.