So, after yet another tense moment with Detective Blett, Detective James P. Page once again walked silently into the sickly yellow glow of the interrogation room to torment Bicycle Bob. The room contained one steel table directly in the middle of the room; and two wooden chairs facing each other on either side of the table. A two-way mirror filled one wall conspicuously; the other walls were painted a depressing khaki color and were stained with a plethora of unidentified fluids and secretions. There were even a few random bullet holes whose origins no one supposedly knew.
It was almost midnight.
"Oh, God, not again!" Bicycle Bob whimpered when Detective Page entered the room. The officer's shirt shimmered in the flourescent glow; and whereas most interrogators would be loosening their ties at that moment, Page tightened his neatly and snugly against his neck.
"Good evening, Mr. Pesto." Jimmy greeted the mobster with his purr of a voice, and a smile that was halfway between kindness and evil.
Pesto flinched as Page scraped his chair away from the table and sat himself gracefully upon it. He pulled his pack of Marlboros out of his pocket and placed it on the table carefully, almost halfway between himself and the alleged criminal.
Pesto put his head on the table.
"Now, Mr. Pesto," Page began, talking as if he were addressing his young son, "you know we can't have a proper conversation if you don't look me in the eye."
"Aw, shit!" Pesto's voice was muffled by the table. After a moment, he lifted his face to meet his tablemate's.
Earlier in the day, Pesto's dyed jet-black hair was neatly gelled and combed back on his head. Since then, the combination of heat and sweat had caused his heavily greased hair to flop down on both sides, giving his head the shape of a mushroom. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was almost as grey as his interrogator's shirt. His hands were shaking, so he gripped the table's edge to try to keep his extreme nervousness from showing.
The two sat in silence for a long while. Page's face frozen in his kind but evil smile. Pesto was attempting a dignified Mafioso defiance, but failing miserably. He was the first to blink.
"Look, man, I told you, I didn't zatz this Banana kid. I don't know a friggin' thing about it! You can't hold me here forever, man! I got my rights!" Pesto spoke with a classic Little Italy accent, forming his ds and ts behind his top incisors.
"Yes, you do have your rights," Jimmy said agreeably, reaching for a cigarette. He put the cigarette between his lips and lit it with his yellow bic lighter. He took a loud, voluptuous drag, and exhaled the smoke directly into Pesto's face. "Nothing like a Marlboro to calm rattled nerves, eh?" Page asked, settling back in his chair to enjoy his smoke.
Pesto, who had not had a cigarette since he had been nabbed by the Englishmen at lunchtime, almost salivated at the sight and sound. He wished for a moment that he had taken time to enjoy his after-dinner Camel Light.
After he had smoked about half of the cigarette in silence, Page arose from his chair and sashayed over to the two-way mirror. His back to Pesto, Page paused at the mirror to make a few silly faces at whoever might be on the other side, and whirled around just in time to catch Pesto trying to sneak a cigarette out of the pack.
"Ah, ah, a-ah!" Page returned to the table while Pesto retracted his trembling hand. "Mine, mine, mine!" Page gleefully mocked the mobster while pocketing the cigarettes.
"Look. I can't last all night, but you can't neether," Pesto said contemptuously.
"Page nodded his head. "Yep. I can."
"How?" You gotta sleep just like anybody else, right?" A worried, uncertain look crossed Pesto's once proud mobster countenance.
"Insomnia," Page answered simply, smiling triumphantly like a child who had just won a game of checkers.
"Jesus Christ, man!" Pesto was at the bottom rung. "Can't you just let me have a smoke? I'm dyin' hee-ah!"
Page cocked his head to one side and puckered his lips as if considering the plea. He answered. "You do a little song and dance for me, and you can smoke yourself to death right now."
Pesto raged. "I don't know anything about this shit, okay? How many times and ways do I hafta tell ya? Now lemme go, or lemme see my lawyer, or I'll make sure your Limey ass is fried! Yer depriving me of my civil rights, pal."
Page ignored the threat. "You are not telling the truth," he said coldly, then added, "I'll help you out. You didn't kill Mr. DeLong, right? But you know about th Arachnid loan, yes?" Page's fierce eyes burned into Pesto. Pesto's mouth went slack, eyes bugged out of his waxlike skull.
"Don't be afraid," Page's tone changed to reassurance. "I know what you know. It just has to come out of your mouth. If you tell me the truth, you're a free man. With cigarettes."
Bicycle Bob broke.
"They paid up. It was a clean account. That album they put out after the tour, man . . . they made megabucks! They paid us . . . plus interest. Sure, I roughed up the drummer a few times, but they paid in full, eventually. It wasn't my hit, man!" He paused to take a breath. "There," he sighed, "you've got it."
Detective Page was satisfied. He nodded his head, reached into his shirt pocket, and pitched the half-pack of Marlboros onto the table in front of Bicycle Bob.
Bob dove at the cigarettes like a starving soldier on air dropped k -rations. He pausedonly when he realized that something was missing. "Um . . ." He uttered the noise meekly.
Detective Page, the professional smoker, realized his interrogee's dilemma, and bent to stand his yellow bic on the table.
"Be my guest," Page said, and exited the interrogation room.

Detective Plant had been watching with captain Hughie on the other side of the mirror. They both left the observation room to meet Page. "Let 'im go," Page said to Hughie.
"What do you mean, 'let him go'?" Plant asked, bewildered. "What the hell happened in there?"
Page sighed. He now allowed himself to be visibly wearied by the lengthy interrogation. "You saw what happened in there. He didn't do it."
"Yeah! Right! Like he was telling the truth. You HANDED it to him!" Robert exhaled forcefully and threw up his hands.
"Believe me," Page insisted, "he is telling the truth. I know. Let him go." He turned to walk alone down the corridor back to the squad room.
"I say let him go," Captain Hughie said quietly to Plant. "Cayce ain't been wrong yet."
"So where does that leave us?" Robert called after Jimmy. "Back at square one?"
"No," Jimmy said, not turning around. His voice echoed down the hallway as he disappeared around the corner.
Robert stood alone, shooting alternate glances toward the interrogation room, where Hughie was already giving Bicycle Bob his official walking orders, and the empty corridor leading to the squad room. He sighed a little, and hurried off to catch up with Page.
He met up with Jimmy walking homeward on the dark, deserted street.
"Hey, partner," Robert said, matching Jimmy's stride. "How 'bout I give you a ride home?"
Indifferent, Jimmy shrugged his agreement. They reversed their direction toward the precinct parking lot. They both wearily climbed into Robert's Duster.
They rode in silence until Robert started to make a turn toward downtown.
"No," Jimmy said, "other way."
"What?" Robert asked, quickly correcting his turn and heading down one more block to take the proper one-way toward mid-town.
"I'm not living home these days." Jimmy's voice betrayed his sadness. Robert said nothing, allowing Jimmy the choice to go on or stop. Jimmy did not elaborate.
"Well, were then?" Robert asked.
"Central Park. West Seventy-second."
They rode some more without uttering a word until they reached an attractive brownstone, not far, Robert observed, from Mick Jagger's place.
Jimmy exited the car, and, since he did not say good night, Robert took it as an invitation to accompany his partner inside. They entered a neatly, but sparsely furnished rental duplex.
Jimmy removed his black blazer and laid it across an eighteenth century repro couch. He turned to Robert.
"Thanks for the ride, mate. I needed it." His eyes were extra puffy, almost closed.
"You want to talk about it?" Robert ventured.
Jimmy lowered himself onto the couch, and rubbed his hand over his face, as if trying to rearrange what was there. "Not much to tell, Robert. Patricia kicked me out. She liked me better as a rock and roll star. She says this cop and gun thing is a bad example for Li'l James."
"You see him, don't you?" Robert asked, concerned.
"Oh, yeah." Jimmy brightened a little. "She lets me see him. He's over here quite often when I'm not on a case." His tone darkened. "I guess she doesn't understand that a bloke needs a change once in a while." He closed his eyes.
"Look, we can get out of this anytime," Robert said, a tinge of regret in his voice. "We can say fuck it right now if we want."
"No," Jimmy said, shaking his head slowly.
"Really. If it's interfering . . ."
"That Banana kid," Jimmy said quietly, "he was me, only . . . better."
"What do you mean?" Robert took advantage to Jimmy's rare willingness to talk. He sat down on an empire-style armchair facing his friend.
Jimmy explained. "I. . . never had the guts to approach my idols the way he approached me. I remember one night, it was sixty-seven or eight, at the Whiskey. Hendrix was there. I just sat there at my table watching him sitting there at his table. I kept on thinking to myself, 'go ahead, go over there and talk to him, tell him how much you love his playing,' but I didn't. I really wanted to, though, but I was too shy, too afraid of rejection. Hendrix just kept on getting drunker and drunker, you know, until his guys had to carry him out." Page paused to swallow thickly. "That was my last chance. I never was in the same room with him again. Sometimes I think if I had just . . . "
Jimmy paused for a moment, and Robert's eyes began to sting with tears as he listened on to the guitar god's story.
"Then there I was, at this bloody shithole of a party as a favor to Cole, with all of these heavy metal thrashers who're no more than walking hairpieces. You know, everybody was either acting cool and ignoring me, figuring that I was Jimmy Page, and I've heard it all before; or laying all this bullshit stuff on me. I was wondering what I was doing there when this kid, this guitar crazed kid comes up to me and tells me how great he thinks I am, and he was really sincere, I could tell. Then he asks me to sign his guitar. You should have seen his face, Robert. He was . . . going off, you know? He could hardly contain himself. I walked away from that party feeling so good about myself, so justified in what I had done with my life. S'whats it's all about, Robert. You know. I really liked that Banana kid, no matter how obnoxious he was. He put my life into perspective. I wanna find the bastard who killed him. I wanna NAIL him. You know?" Jimmy closed his eyes again in exhaustion.
Robert nodded. "Yes, I know," he said quietly. He then rose out of his chair, walked over to his friend, and placed a hand on his shoulder. Page's eyes opened a crack in response to the touch. "We'll talk about the case Thursday. Take a day off tomorrow. Okay?"
Too weary to verbalize his response, Detective Page nodded and closed his eyes once more. Plant left his partner alone in his sterile rental, closing the door quietly behind him. He sighed sadly as he slid behind the wheel of his car, thinking about his own empty flat awaiting his return.


Ever Onward
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