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the “San Diego Slavery Slaying,” and they’re camped all over it, 24/7.
    “I talked to my dad. He says you can get me off.” This the kid directs at me.
    “We’ll do whatever we can. But there are no guarantees. We can’t do anything unless we know everything. That means everything you know. If you withhold information from us, even something you might not think is important…then you’re just wasting our time. You can bet the cops will find out about it—that is, if they don’t already know—and when they start dropping surprises on us in court, there will be nothing I or anyone else can do to help you. Understand?”
    He swallows, then nods, not something hip or cool, but vigorous, like someone who suddenly realizes that the threads of security, whatever it is that tethers him to this life, are far thinner than he ever realized. “Yeah. I told you everything I know. Really,” he says. “I didn’t do it. I swear.”
    “All right.” We lecture him on jailhouse etiquette, not to talk to anyone—guards, cellmates, even family—about events in the case. Anything told to them can be repeated in testimony on the stand. Even family members can be forced to testify against him. “You talk only to us, Harry or myself, that’s it.”
    “Somebody in the jail wants to talk about the weather, fine. Sports, feel free. But anything having to do with your case, with Scarborough, with race relations in general, you’re a mute,” says Harry. “If you have to, swallow your tongue. If we’re in trial and somebody asks how it went in court, you don’t know.”
    “I understand,” he says. “I talk to nobody. Only the two of you.”
    “And your buddies, the ones you may have talked to before the event, don’t talk to them at all,” says Harry. “As far as you’re concerned, they don’t exist. If they come visiting during hours, you don’t want to see them, and you don’t want to be seen talking to them.”
    “What do I tell them?”
    “You don’t tell them anything. If they call the jail and want to talk to you, you don’t take the call. If they show up in the visiting room and you see them, you don’t sit down. You turn and you walk. Anything you tell them can be used against you. It can be twisted for whatever reason and end up being your word against theirs as to what was said. Worse than that,” says Harry, “the cops may be listening in. Friends have been known to wear wires. Just figure that if any of these old friends show up to give you moral support, and you talk to them, you may as well have a heart-to-heart with the D.A., because you probably are.”
    He nods nervously, in the stark realization that he is alone, a dying man in a desert, with only me and Harry to toss him the occasional drop of water.
    Harry and I start collecting our papers and notes, the photos go back into my briefcase.
    “I need to know one thing,” says Arnsberg.
    “What’s that?” I ask.
    “They aren’t serious? They don’t really wanna…well, you know…”
    I stop with the briefcase and look at him. “No, I don’t.”
    “I mean, they’re not gonna really execute me?” he says. “They’re sayin’ that just to put pressure. Right? They’re thinking squeeze hard enough and I’ll do a deal. That’s it, isn’t it? Sure. That’s gotta be it. Scare me and they figure I’ll confess, tell ’em I did something I didn’t do. I can understand that. I mean, I won’t do it. I mean, confess to something I didn’t do. But I understand it. It makes sense.” In half a second, his eyes flash from me to Harry and back again.
    At this moment I wish his father were not my friend, that instead I was dealing with the child of a stranger, where my only psychic connection to the outcome would be just the blood that ordinarily oozes from my pores whenever I stand with a client to hear a verdict.
    “Carl. I can call you Carl?”
    He nods.
    “Carl, I want you to understand this because you’ll save yourself a lot