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“You’ll at least give it a try.”

It didn’t come out as a question from Cantor.

“I’ll think about it,” Marty said.

Cantor said, “I want to give you a big kiss.”

“Maricón,”
Marty said.

Now here he was, back in Fulton, sitting in the parking lot, waiting for Richie Collins to finish his autograph signing inside.

It was noon when Collins came out a side door, looking like one of the scraggly-assed kids who should have been in the line, wearing a Megadeth T-shirt, faded black jeans, and sneakers that looked so new Marty wondered if he’d bought a pair inside. Marty started to get out of the car, then had to wait because some girl had beaten him to Richie Collins.

Marty instinctively reached into the backseat for the camcorder he kept there. He had started carrying it when he started doing
Chronicle.
You never knew with celebrities. It made Marty feel like a peeper sometimes, one of those celebrity-page photographers hanging around outside the hot clubs, even places like Elaine’s, hoping to get some movie star acting like an asshole. Doing some asshole thing.

It was Houghton who had suggested Marty buy the thing and keep it in the car. And then one day Marty was on the side of the Plaza when a bellhop told him Michael Jackson was coming out. Long before the shit came down with Jackson and the kids. Marty had the tape rolling when Jackson came out with his entourage, carrying the seven-year-old. It seemed like nothing at the time.

Marty filed the tape anyway.

And had it for
Chronicle
the night the kid in California charged Jackson with molesting him.

Marty held the camera in his lap, shooting through the windshield, the lens just peeking over the top of the dashboard. He hit Record, making sure to keep himself and the camera still, watching the whole thing like it was some silent movie.

The girl was almost six feet tall and had long blond hair and wore black leotards with a long lemon-colored T-shirt that barely covered her ass. She was standing by a Jeep Cherokee that Marty assumed belonged to Collins.

Seventeen years old, Marty figured. Eighteen tops. He knew he was getting to be an old bastard. He’d watch the college games on
television sometimes and the cheerleaders would look younger and younger to him. When he was a kid, did they ever look to him like someone’s daughter?

This one was sure a baby, though. Daddy’s big
chula
girl, sexy in her black tights, looking for trouble on Saturday morning.

Marty had heard that with Richie Collins, the younger the better. Art Berkowitz, a funny kid who covered the Knicks for the
News
, told Marty one time at the Gold Coin, “Richie spends more time in cars with high school girls than the driver ed instructor.”

Collins ducked his head and smiled.

The girl was doing most of the talking.

Collins laughed a couple of times.

She made a slow move of brushing her hair out of her face.

Marty Perez thought to himself: I better get him now or he’ll be in the car with her and gone. And his pants are going to be around his ankles before he hits the first stoplight.

He hit Stop on the camcorder, which he placed on the floor in the backseat. Then he got out of the car and walked toward them, tossing his cigar away. “Hey, Richie. Richie Collins.”

Collins and the girl both turned around at the same time, a little startled, like Marty was a cop shining a flashlight into the backseat. Marty wasn’t paying any attention to the girl now, he was watching Collins.

Collins started shaking his head before Marty got up on him, very casual.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” Collins told him.

“Okay, Richie?” the girl said in this pleading voice, ignoring Marty. “Is that okay?” She tugged on his arm.
“Okay?”
She seemed nervous at being seen, but she wasn’t leaving without an answer from Collins. Whatever the question was.

“Okay,” Collins snapped, yanking his arm away, still watching Marty. “I told you it was okay. You’ve still got the number? Call me in about an hour.”

“There’s no need to get mad, Richie,” she whined.

“I’m not mad.” He patted her big hair. “I just have some business I got to take care of all of a sudden. It won’t take me long. Now,
good-bye!
” He patted her on her ass, which seemed to make everything all right, as far as Marty could tell. She got into her car, a red Nissan, and drove away.

“Cute girl,” Marty said. “Your niece?”

“Just a kid from Fulton High with a runaway crush.”

“I noticed.”

“Hey, Perez, I’m loved by kids of all ages, what can I tell you.”

Marty said, “Tell me what age, give an old man a thrill.”

Collins said, “You got big balls, you know that?”

“
Qué cojones
,” Marty said. “As we say back home.”

“Where’s that, Miami?” Richie Collins said.

“Close enough.”

“I have nothing to say to you.” He reached into his pocket and got out his car keys. Still not moving, though.

Waiting for Marty to make his pitch.

“I think you do,” Marty said. “Have something to say. Even if you think I’m just another newspaper asshole who’s got the whole thing wrong. Even if you think Hannah Carey is just in for some kind of big score, and I’m looking to ride it. Even if you probably want to kick my fat Puerto Rican ass all the way back to the city. You and Ellis, you both probably think I sold you out and went with her because she’s the one who made a better story.”

Collins casually crossed his arms, leaned against the Jeep. Still not making any move to get in. “I told you I have nothing to say to you.”

“You’re here.”

“Only because I’m thinking to myself, Rich,
could
you kick his ass and get away with it? Maybe tell old Marty you’re going to give him a story, then take him somewhere private and beat the living shit out of him.”

“I’ll make you a deal,” Marty said.

Collins laughed. “You got nothing I want. You guys never do.”

“I got the power, babe. The power of the press.”

“You got shit.”

“Richie, listen to me one more minute, then you want to go, go. The
News
has been whacking you all over the place for two weeks. If they see your version in there now, maybe enough people slap their heads and think, Maybe we were wrong.”

“I don’t need you. I don’t need the fish-wrap
News.
I don’t need good ink. You want to know why? Because there’s no case. There’s no case, no charges, this thing is gonna get dropped, so see you later, good-bye.”

Marty said, “Till she sues.”

“She sues? So what she fucking sues?” Richie’s voice got louder. “She loses that one, too. Then she’s gone and you’re back to being a nobody. Fresh and me, we lay low for a while, then we just keep on keepin’ on. It’s why we don’t have to talk to anybody. Not the cops, and especially not you.”

Now Richie Collins reached for the door handle.

Marty said, “Let me ask you one more question. Off the record.”

“One question. I gotta get some sleep. We got in late, game in fucking Milwaukee last night.”

“Marty said, Did it happen the way she says it happened?”

Richie Collins smiled, a broad shit-eating smile, then looked up at the sky. “No.”

“Did either one of you fuck her—with or without her consent?”

“You said one question. I answered it. Now I’m out of here.” He jerked his head in the direction the girl had gone in her hot little red car. “It’s my day off, I’ve got plans.”

“You go ahead,” Marty said. “You keep telling yourself you can ride this out. You want to know where you’re going to ride it out? In Sacramento. Or whatever shit team they can deal you to when this thing
is
all over. You think the Garden brought in DiMaggio to
help
you, Richie? You seem like a smart guy. If they believe you’re innocent, why bring in a hotshot like DiMaggio?”

Collins tried to look bored, but Marty kept going. “I’ll tell you why. Because the big boys think you did it, Richie. They
want
you to be the one that did it. Nobody else is going to tell you this, so I’ll tell you. If DiMaggio comes up with anything, you’re out of here first chance they get.”

“Bullshit.”

Marty thought: I don’t need an editor to play my hand for me, I can play it myself.

Play the trump card.

“You shouldn’t have gone to see her the other day, Richie. Dumb play for a smart guy like yourself.”

Richie Collins, rigid, said, “Who—”

“You mean, who would tell a nobody like me something? She told her brother and her brother told me and now I’m telling you. You got everything going your way and you go and harass the
victim
?”

Collins, defensive now, said, “I wanted to ask her why she’s making this shit up.”

Marty said, “Tell that to the Fulton cops. Or the state’s attorney over in Norwalk.”

“You’re going to put it in the paper?”

“I haven’t decided.”

Collins said, “What are you looking for here, exactly?”

“You don’t want to give me a play-by-play on the whole night, don’t. You want that we didn’t even have this conversation, we didn’t have it. I just want something that could cast some doubt on her version of things. Maybe get people thinking she is making some of this up, like you say she is.”

“The stuff you’ve been printing like it’s gospel?”

“Work with me, Rich, is all I’m saying. It helps me, it helps you.”

Collins smiled. He nodded his head like, yeah, now all of a sudden this makes sense. “You’re telling me you’re willing to give her up?”

“A man’s got to eat, Richie,” Marty said, smiling right back.

Richie said, “Follow me.”

DiMaggio loved it when they would big-guy him.

“Big guy, you better be sitting down when you read the
Daily News
,” Ted Salter had said, sounding pretty chipper for seven-thirty in the morning. He sounded like he’d been up since five. He was the type. Guys like Salter wanted to jam up every day, already planning for the day when they got fired. Or had a stroke. Or dropped dead. Didn’t anybody in New York sleep late anymore?

“You’re awake?” he added almost as an afterthought.

DiMaggio said, “I’m awake. And I’ve seen the paper.” He’d just finished reading the
News.
The front page had the story about how Hannah used to date A. J. Fine and all the details of her first time with him, including the other woman. The front-page headline was
SHE
’
S SO FINE
.

Marty Perez wrote it, but not as one of his columns, with his picture. They ran a little box with it that said “News Analysis,” whatever that meant.

Salter said, “You think it’s true?”

DiMaggio said, “Yes.”

“What does it do to the investigation?”

“Nothing,” DiMaggio said. “Maybe in court if they ever get to court. But what she did with Fine has nothing to do with what happened with Adair and Collins. It doesn’t mean she deserved to get raped.”

“If she did get raped.”

“If she did.”

“What does it do to you?” Salter said.

“I’m where I’ve been since I got here,” DiMaggio said. “Hyland—he’s the Fulton cop, good guy, by the way—he keeps saying he’s got no case. Maybe he’s right. But I talked to him last night, and he told me the state’s attorney over in Norwalk wants to be attorney general next time. I forget when next time is. Next year or the year after. He thinks this can be a big score. So he’s turned up the heat on Hyland. He
wants
to make formal charges against your boys. And he wants to make them now. So if I’m going to come up with something to make this go away for you, I better do it.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” Salter said. “Are you coming up with something for old Uncle Ted?”

“I’ve been working the bars up there, looking for somebody who remembers seeing anything. Her story is that she was having a drink at this place Gates, then went over to another place, Mulligan’s. But no one can remember her, they just generally see players in those places. They also can’t place which night of the week it was. It’s a year, remember. There were always women around these guys. Hannah’s a good-looking blonde, it doesn’t exactly narrow things down.”

“Listen,” Salter said, “I wasn’t calling to bust your balls. I’m calling because she’s going to be at the Garden today.”

“Who?”

“Hannah. She and her brother and her lawyer, what’s-his-name with the dead muskrat on his head, are meeting with a couple of our West Coast movie guys at ten o’clock.”

“Movie guys?”

“What can I tell you? They don’t wait out there. They go. Especially when they find out Fox is interested already, Warner Brothers. Even the guys with the mouse ears.”

“Let me get this straight,” DiMaggio said. “You, meaning Fukiko, employ the two guys she says raped her.”

“Check.”

DiMaggio said, “And me.”

“Check.”

“And now you are talking to
her
about doing a movie.”

“Talking. Not doing. You ever been to Hollywood? Big difference between talking and doing. Big difference between making a deal and doing.”

DiMaggio, fascinated, said, “You don’t see any conflict of interest there?”

“
You
say conflict of interest.
I
say we’re just protecting our flanks here. Seeing the big picture, no pun intended. Hey, don’t turn this into ethics class, big guy. I just thought you’d want to know. Maybe when she’s done, you could accidentally bump into her. You said you were having trouble getting in touch with her.”

“I don’t think she’s going to want to talk anymore. Especially after today.”

“She’d be crazy to, if you think about it.”

DiMaggio said, “Unless she is crazy.”

“What does that mean? You told me they did it.”

DiMaggio didn’t say anything. He knew that any kind of silence scared the shit out of Salter.

When the silence stretched on too long, Salter said, “You’re saying now they
didn’t
do it?”

“I’m a very open-minded person.”

“Bullshit,” Salter said. “What’s going on here?”