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here.”
    “How old are you?” Jesse said.
    “Fifteen.”
    Jesse looked at Robbie.
    “You?” he said.
    “Fourteen.”
    “You?” he said to Jencks.
    “Old enough,” Jencks said.
    Jesse nodded. Jencks looked older than the other two. He wasn’t, but he already had the shadow of a beard, and he had muscle definition. Didn’t have to be older. Might merely have grown up quicker.
    “Here’s how it’s going to go,” Jesse said.
    “You better let me call my mother or father,” Earl said.
    Jesse gestured at the phone. Earl stared at it and didn’t call. Jesse hadn’t thought he would. They weren’t scared enough yet, and they didn’t want their parents to know they were in trouble. Yet.
    “Shut up,” Jesse said.
    “We’re going to ask you to wait in separate cells while we question you one at a time until one of you tells us that the three of you set the fire on Geary Street. Then we will throw the book at the ones who held out on us and go easy on the one who cooperated.”
    “Think you’re bad,” Earl said, “picking on three kids?”
    “This the toughest we got?” Jesse said to Simpson.
    “Three of the toughest kids in Paradise,” Simpson said.
    “How you think they’ll do at Lancaster?” Jesse said.
    Simpson and De Angelo both laughed.
    “They were in with the girls,” he said, “they’d be the three sissies.”
    Jesse nodded.
    “You think you’re tough because kids in the schoolyard are scared of you, and you dare do things like torch somebody’s house. Small town tough guys.” He snorted.
    “But when we send you up, you’ll be in with people who routinely carry razor blades in their hat bands, who would cut you right across the eyeballs for a pack of cigarettes, or for the hell of it. They will have you snowflakes for a snack.”
    Earl said, “I want…”
    And Jesse cut him off.
    “I don’t care what you want,” Jesse said.
    “Get them out of here, Suit.” Simpson and De Angelo left with the three kids. In ten minutes Simpson came back.
    “The Hopkins kids are scared already,” he said.
    “I could see it when we put them in their cells. Jencks is the tough one.”
    “Yeah,” Jesse said.
    “I know.”
    “We don’t have too long, Jesse,” Simpson said.
    “One of the parents will come home from work or get a call from a neighbor, or whatever, and they’ll be up here with a lawyer.”
    “We’ll make do,” Jesse said.
    “You got them isolated?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Leave the cell doors unlocked?”
    “Yeah.”
    “They know that?”
    “No.”
    Jesse smiled.
    “Jencks in the farthest cell?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Okay,” Jesse said, “bring him in here. Make sure they both see him on the way by.”
    When Jencks was in Jesse’s office, Jesse nodded Simpson from the room and pointed at the empty chair in front of his desk.
    Jencks sat.
    He met Jesse’s look.
    “You’re not scared?” Jesse said.
    Jencks shook his head.
    “I’m a juvenile,” Jencks said.
    “You can’t do shit with me.”
    “You know one of the Hopkins boys will rat you out,” Jesse said.
    “Nobody’s gonna rat nobody,” Jencks said.
    Jesse smiled and shook his head.
    “You gonna be a bad guy, Snapper, you better learn the business. Everybody rats everybody. It’s only a matter of time and pressure.”
    Jencks leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head and stared at Jesse without speaking. He had on baggy jeans and big sneakers. He wore a Foo Fighters sweatshirt. Jesse assumed that Foo Fighters was a rock group.
    “You’re a tough kid,” Jesse said.
    “I like that. Why I gave you the first shot. You tell me about the fire and you walk.”
    “Even if I did it too?”
    “Two out of three ain’t bad,” Jesse said.
    “Some great legal system,” Jencks said.
    “Here’s how I think it went,” Jesse said.
    “The three of you started out just busting in there because the place was empty. And you didn’t have anything else going. Then you got in there and decided