White looked up with a clarity he hadn’t shown since they’d pulled him from the cell. “They’re the people who came to your house last night.”

“What people?” Sandy pressed.

The young man looked down at the table and back up at them. “Who’s going to protect me if I tell you what you wanna know?” he asked.

“You tell us what we want to know, and we’ll send you back to Tulsa,” Coletti said.

“I don’t wanna go back to Tulsa.”

Coletti smiled. “You don’t want to go back to the street, either. You think those prisoners didn’t see you walk that hall with me? I guarantee you at least one of them knows these people you’re running from, so it doesn’t matter whether you talk to us or not. People think you did, and that’s enough to get you popped.”

White thought about Coletti’s words, and as he did so, his skin turned gray and clammy and his hands began to shake. “I need to get outta here,” he said as the withdrawal began to creep up on him. “I think I’m gonna be sick.”

Sandy nudged a trash can over to him with her foot. “Don’t get any on the floor,” she said coldly.

White looked at both of them and knew that they were serious. The combination of the sickness and their withering stares made him willing to do almost anything to get out of that room. He was even willing to talk.

“Who was at her house last night?” Coletti asked.

White grabbed his stomach and winced in pain. “Two guys I know from near Kensington and Allegheny.”

“How can you be so sure?”

He hesitated before answering. “Because they went in my place.”

Coletti and Sandy Jackson looked at each other knowingly.

“You’re a part of the legion, aren’t you?” Coletti said.

He nodded. A few seconds later, he opened his mouth as if he wanted to say more, then thought better of it and sat looking around uncomfortably.

“Did they use the dope to lure you in?” Coletti asked as he lit another cigarette and handed it to him.

James White leaned back in his chair and took a short drag. He looked terrified.

“Look, these people have killed at least seven times in the last twenty-four hours,” Coletti said firmly. “The minute you walk outta here, they’ll kill you, too. Now, if you don’t want to go down for those seven murders, or be the next one to die, I suggest you start talking.”

With shaking hands, White took another drag of the cigarette and nervously exhaled the smoke. As it cleared, his mind did, too. For the first time he saw the past four months for what they were, and before he knew it, he was reliving them out loud.