It was Nelson.

The adrenaline shot through me and I awoke from my lethargic state. His body started to lean, and I knew he was going to try to make a break for it.

“Kid, don’t make me run. It’s too hot,” I pleaded. His eyes hung with me but his shoulders slowly swung around. “Come on, you couldn’t outrun me in a million years.”

He tried anyway.

I flung open the door in pursuit and fell flat on my face. My knees had buckled on the first step. The asphalt burned my palms and the tender skin on my forearms. Scrambling to my feet my head swirled from the quick movements and from the heat off the pavement. For a moment I thought I might vomit.

“Will you stop?” I shouted, but Nelson had no intention of obeying my command. I was more annoyed than anything because despite the head start he hadn’t made it very far down the street. And now I had to run, jog maybe, to catch up to him.

Nelson fumbled with his cell phone. He was a slow runner made impossibly slower when trying to text and run at the same time. My head cleared somewhat and I gave pursuit. I got within five feet of him long before he reached the intersection and by the end of it he was so gassed that I briskly walked up behind him and horse-collared him to a halt.

“Stop with this nonsense, already,” I said and wiped the prodigious amount of sweat off my hand that came from the back of his shirt. “Who are you texting?” I asked but didn’t wait for a reply. I snatched the phone out of his hand and read the latest text: Don’t come home. I didn’t have to read the recipient’s name because I already knew it was Jeanette. “Nice,” I grumbled and handed him back the phone. “Let’s go talk inside. I hope you have air conditioning in that house.”

The living room was mired in an early 1980s remodel. The coffee table and TV console were made of lacquered blonde wood. The floral-print wallpaper bubbled in spots and was starting to peel at the corners near the popcorn ceiling. It harkened back memories of my parents’ living room and getting a lecture for missing curfew.

“Listen, kid, I meant what I said before. I want to help you. If I didn’t, don’t you think the cops would be here right now?”

Nelson wasn’t buying it, and I didn’t think he ever would. He spooked Jeanette with the text he sent her, and if I had any hope of her ever coming back I was going to need him to help.

“Give me your money,” I demanded. Nelson looked at me like I was mad. “Come on, give me your money. Don’t tell me you guys are broke already?” I shook my head, “That rules out that option. Jesus, this is a mess.”

It was the first step from a persuasive selling technique called “controlled drowning.” The idea was to present the subject with several scenarios that all ended in locked doors. By gradually building on each hopeless scenario you could then dangle a solution that they never thought existed. The technique was undoubtedly developed by former Black Ops specialists.

I built an airtight case for gloom. They didn’t have enough money to last a week. They didn’t have the friends or relatives who would be willing to help them. And then add the unavoidable fact that the authorities wanted him for questioning in a murder case. Eventually they would track him down.

“I didn’t do anything to her,” he cried. He tried to elaborate but the words stumbled out in an incoherent babble. The boy rocked in the chair.

“All right, take it easy. I know you didn’t have anything to do with it.” I let him come a few steps back from the edge before giving him another shove. “The detective on the case seems like a reasonable guy but you never know with cops. They’re a stubborn bunch and they got one and only one suspect — you.”

“But I didn’t do it,” he said.

“Sure, but these guys’ job is to close the case. That doesn’t necessarily mean closing it with the guilty party going to jail. We just somehow have to convince these guys that you are innocent,” I said but shook my head like what I had just uttered was a next-to-impossible task.

“How’s the baby doing?” I asked. I needed to ease into this part lest he completely shut down. “What’s his name?” I asked, even leaning back in the sofa to ease the tension.

“Holden,” he muttered.

“Catcher in the Rye fans?”

“Yeah.”

“Great book,” I lied. I thought it was great when I was too young to know better. “You left the father out of that decision, huh?”

“What do you mean?” he asked looking a little hurt.

“I’m sorry. I assumed you weren’t the dad.”

“He’s mine,” he stated.

“Nelson,” I said, leaning back in, “I have no doubt that you can and will be a great father, but you’re not the father.”

“It doesn’t matter who it is,” he said after a moment. It sounded like even he didn’t know the identity of the father.

“No, I get it. But obviously the courts won’t see it our way.”

That one had a greater impact than I thought it would. I had successfully maneuvered the kid to the point of total despair. It was time to bring him back. What was supposed to feel like a moment of triumph instead made me feel ashamed.

I convinced him to meet Jeanette and the three of us would contact the authorities. I would hire them a lawyer and be with them every step of the way. Nelson nodded his head in resigned acceptance to my plan.

There was a knock on the front door. We looked to each other for an explanation.

“Jeanette?” I asked.

“I doubt it,” but there was hope in his voice.

“Could be the neighbor next door,” I said.

We were both wrong.

“Hello,” smiled Detective Ricohr but there was nothing cheerful about it. “Can I come in?” he asked as he crossed into the living room.

Nelson stood by the couch as the Detective and the local police streamed into the increasingly cramped space. Through all the chaos Nelson never took his eyes off me.

“Sit down, son,” Detective Ricohr instructed. “It wasn’t Mr. Restic’s fault. Not intentionally, anyway.” He turned to me. “I took a gamble and put someone on you. I had a feeling you knew more than you let on.”

We all walked out together into the late afternoon sun. It sat low on the horizon and felt hotter than it actually was. The police activity attracted many onlookers from the surrounding homes, including the neighbor on the left. I avoided his gaze but I knew it was directed at me. I was getting tired of disappointing people.

***

Detective Ricohr rode with me on the long drive back to downtown. We were like a couple of travelers forced into intimacy on an oversold bus. There were no TVs to distract us and nowhere at all to escape.

We talked about anything and everything — the sectarian violence in the Middle East which neither of us really understood, the inanity of the Los Angeles highway system where major feeds crossed each other and somehow didn’t have connectors, the wild idea to have the concrete-encased LA river return to its natural state. Detective Ricohr was more of a revealer than me, and I heard all about his various ailments, his divorce from twelve years ago, and the three kids from the marriage. Two things we did not talk about were the weather and the murder case.

I dropped him off on First Street in front of police central headquarters.

“What’s going to happen to Nelson?” I asked.

“We’ll just talk to him for a few hours and see what we can get and then send him home.”

“He probably won’t say much.”

“That’s what everyone thinks. Until they get in there.”

“No, I just don’t think he knows much about the girl’s murder.”

“You said before that you thought the murder and the old man’s missing granddaughter were connected.”

“I think the Valenti girl has the information, not this kid.”

“Do you know where she is?”

“If I did, I wouldn’t be hanging with you.”

“What’s he paying you, if you don’t mind me asking.”