“So what if I knew him!” Martel blurted out. “Don’t mean I pinched the dude. I be havin’ nothin’ to do with his murder!”

The glory hallelujah words took a few seconds to sink in. Decker broke the silence. “Great. That was step one…that you finally admitted that you knew Primo Ekerling.”

“I didn’t be knowin’ the mofo.” A long pause. “Mebbe I have had met him once or twice.”

“See, that’s smart,” Decker said. “To admit that you knew him…that’s smart. Because we knew that already.”

“I said I didn’t know him. I just be meetin’ him a couple of times.”

“Met him where?” Garrett asked while looking at his hands.

“I don’t remember,” Martel told him.

Decker took a chance. “Travis, you were at his office. We’ve got your prints in his office.”

Martel’s eyes skated across the jail cell. “Mebbe I was at the mofo’s office once.”

“Maybe?”

“Okay, I had been there just once. Mebbe ten minutes. In and out. The bitch at the desk wouldn’t let me get pass no door. She kept saying he wasn’t in.”

Garrett said, “Why’d you go to Ekerling’s office?”

“’Cause I had not heard from the dude,” Travis said angrily. “He wrote me that he liked my shit and I sent him more shit, nomasayin’? But then I never had heard from him again. He coulda called. How long would that have took?”

“About one minute,” Decker said. “Must have pissed you off.”

Martel waved him off. “You gotta get past the bullshit if you want to be big, nomasayin’? You don’t got a thick skin, you ain’t gonna make it.” He looked around the interview cell. “If I didn’t have a thick skin before I had came here, I got one now. Fuckin’ mofos here dig my shit, though. Once I get out, I got my credentials, nomasayin’?”

“Nice to be appreciated,” Decker said.

“True dat.”

“Must have pissed you off when Ekerling went back on his promises.”

“’Course it pissed me off, but that don’t meant that I whacked him!”

“Then it’s too bad that we have someone who is saying that you did.”

Finally Martel made eye contact. “Say what?”

“That you whacked Ekerling.”

Martel squirmed in his chair. “For the last time, I didn’t whack Ekerling.”

“We have someone who said you did,” Decker said again.

“Then he be lyin’.”

“Interesting that you don’t ask who we have as a witness against you,” Diaz said.

Decker pulled the trigger. “C’mon, Travis. Tell us the whole story. Somebody set you up. You’re taking the rap for someone who isn’t worth it. Who set you up and why?”

“If you got a witness, why don’t you axe him?”

“We have asked him,” Garrett said. “We’ve heard his side, and it doesn’t look good for you.”