and Bobby’s good-natured if not iron-willed did nothing to help Pollard,
Julie was getting a headache.
She closed her eyes.
“Pollard’s pathetic,” she admitted.
“Want to go back in there and hear him out?”
“All right. But, dammit, don’t tell him we’ll help him until we’ve
heard everything. All right?”
They returned to the office.
The sky no longer looked like cold, scorched metal. It was darker than
before, and churning, molten. Though only a mildest breeze stirred at
ground level, stronger winds were at work in the higher altitudes, for
dense black thunderheads were being hurled inland from the sea.
Like metal filings drawn to magnets, shadows had piled up in some
corners. Julie reached for the switch to snap on the overhead
fluorescence. Then she saw Bobby looking around with obvious pleasure
at the softly lustrous, burnished brass surfaces of the lamps, at the
way the polished oak end tables and coffee table glimmered in the fall
of warm buttery light, and she left the switch unflicked.
She sat behind her desk again. Bobby perched on the edge of it, legs
dangling.
Clint clicked on the tape recorder, and Julie said,
“Frank…
Mr. Pollard, before you continue your story, I’d like you to answer a
few important questions for me. In spite of the bloody hands, and the
scratches, you believe you’re incapable of hurting anyone?”
“Yeah. Except maybe in self-defense.”
“And you don’t think you’re a thief’?”
“No. I can’t…, I don’t see myself as a thief, no.”
“Then why haven’t you gone to the police for help?”
He was silent. He clutched the open flight bag on his lap and peered
into it, as if Julie was speaking to him from its interior.
She said, “Because if you really feel certain you’re an innocent man in
all regards, the police are best equipped to help you find out who you
are and who’s pursuing you. You know what I think? I think you’re not
as certain of your innocence as you pretend. You know how to hot-wire a
car, and although any man with reasonable knowledge of automobiles could
perform that trick, it’s at least an indication of criminal experience.
And then there’s the money, all that money, bags full of it. You don’t
remember committing any crimes, but in your heart you’re convinced you
have, so you’re afraid to go to the COPS.”
“That’s part of it,” he acknowledged.
She said, “You do understand, I hope, that if we take your case, and if
we turn up evidence that you’ve committed a criminal act, we’ll have to
convey that information to the police.”
“Of course. But I figure if I went to the cops first, they wouldn’t
even look for the truth. They’d make up their minds that I was guilty
of something even before I finished telling my story.”
“And of course we wouldn’t do that,” Bobby said, turning his head to
favor Julie with a meaningful look.
Pollard said, “Instead of helping me, they’d look around some recent
crimes to pin on me.”
“The police don’t work that way,” Julie assured him.
“Of course they do,” Bobby said mischievously.
He slid the desk and began to pace back and forth from the Uncle Scrooge
poster to one of Mickey Mouse.
“Haven’t we seen ‘e do that a thousand times on TV shows? Haven’t we
all read Hammett and Chandler?” “Mr. Pollard,” Julie said,
“I was a police officer once-‘ “Proves my point,” Bobby said.
“Frank, if you’d gone to the cops, you’d no doubt already have been
booked, tried, convicted, and sentenced to a thousand years.”
“There’s a more important reason I can’t go to the cops That would be
like going public. Maybe the press would hear about me, and be real
eager to do a story about this poor guy with amnesia and bags of cash.
Then he would know where to find me. I can’t risk that.”
Bobby said, “Who is ‘he,’ Frank?”
“The man who was chasing me the other night.”
“The way you said it, I thought you’d remembered his name, had a
specific person in mind.”
“No. I don’t know who he is. I’m not even entirely sure who he is. But