CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The interview room had the acoustics of a tin can — every scrape of chair-leg exaggerated, every breath recorded by the ceiling mic.
Tommy stared at the one-way glass as if he could see through it, wiry body perched on the edge of the chair, fingers worrying the paper cup like it might confess before he did.
Marcus set a folder down, sat opposite, left the chair’s back legs just off the floor so it creaked when he moved. He didn’t look at the glass. He looked at Tommy. “Let’s start simple,” he said, voice even. “Full name?”
“Tommy.”
“Last name.”
A beat. “People call me Tommy. But he calls me Man Friday.”
“Who’s he?”
Marcus waited. The ceiling vent made a patient hiss.
“I’m Tommy Rodrigues,” he muttered finally. “With a ‘s’.”
“Age?”
“Forty-one, maybe?”
“And you were sleeping in the church.”
“I’m watching the place,” Tommy said quickly, as if that part he knew how to say. “Keeping it from getting tripped. Kids’ll rip the copper out if you let ’em. The Reverend, he—”
“Is he the one who calls you Man Friday?” Marcus asked.
Tommy’s gaze skittered to the door, then to the cup again. “I’m innocent,” he blurted.
“Of what?”
“Whatever it is you say I did.”
Marcus stifled a smile. “What about trespass?”
“I just—” Tommy lifted both hands, a reflex surrender. Dirt rimmed the nails; the skin was rough from cold. “I use the church for shelter. That’s all.”
“You ran,” Marcus said.
“Yeah, because you came at me,” Tommy said, a flash of temper. “Big guys in coats, I thought you were—”
“Gang-bangers or junkies,” Marcus finished, bored. “We’ve heard that one. We identified ourselves.”
“I didn’t hear you.”
“You heard enough to head for the side door.”
He opened the folder. A photograph of the buff-colored notebook lay on top, its curled pages captured mid-fan. He turned it so the image faced Tommy. “This yours?”
Tommy chewed his lip. “Never seen it.”
“Good,” Marcus said. “Then you won’t mind us checking it for prints, DNA…”
“Wait.” Panic cracked through the bravado. “It’s just names. That’s all.”
The door opened with a soft whisper. Kate came in with a second coffee and no smile. She took the chair beside Marcus, angled slightly toward Tommy so he had to turn his head to avoid her. She didn’t offer the coffee.
“Tommy,” she said, cool as a scalpel. “I’m Special Agent Valentine. I don’t have a lot of time for fairy tales. You’re going to tell us about the list.”
“Ain’t mine.”
“It’s in your handwriting,” Kate said. “It was found with your belongings. Next lie, you’re out of freebies.”
He swallowed. The muscles in his jaw moved like he was grinding stones. “It’s just research.”
“For who?”
He kept his eyes down. The tendon at his throat jumped.
Kate didn’t raise her voice. “I think it’s a hit list,” she said. “And making a hit list makes you an accessory to murder. You can go down for life for that, Tommy. Even if we never find the person who swings the knife. Do you want that?”
The words landed. Colour rose and fell in his face. For a second he looked twelve.
“I didn’t… I didn’t know,” he said. “I swear to God.”
“Who asked for the names?” Kate asked.
Silence stretched. In the glass, Tommy’s reflection looked smaller than the real man.
“The Reverend,” he said, barely audible.
Marcus glanced at Kate. She didn’t move. “The Reverend who?”
“That’s what people call him,” Tommy said, louder now, like rehearsed. “It’s what he told me to call him. I’m Man Friday, or mostly just Friday. He the Reverend.”
“Where’d you meet him?” Marcus asked.
“Soup van,” Tommy said. “Under the 3rd Avenue Bridge. Thursdays.”
“How long ago?”
“Six, seven weeks.”
“Which?”
“Maybe eight,” he replied, with a grin.
“And he gave you this job?”
Tommy nodded, then added quickly, “Paid job. He pays right away, too. None of this IOU crap.”
“How much for a name?” Marcus asked.
“Twenty for me, twenty for...” His voice died away, but they didn’t push it, for now. They’d circle back.
Kate put the untouched coffee in front of Tommy now. “Drink.”
He latched onto it like it was permission to breathe. Steam fogged his next words. “He said it was just a survey. Who works Sundays. Like… like a church project. He cares about the Sabbath. That’s his thing.”
“What kind of thing?” Kate asked.
“He talks about rest,” Tommy said. “How people forgot how to stop. How God says stop. And how bosses make you work anyway. He said it was wrong. I figured he was gonna… I dunno… write a letter to the paperth. Shame a few guys.”
“The Reverend,” Marcus said, flipping a page. “Describe him.”
Tommy made a face like concentration. “Short guy, umm… black, never missed a dinner. Kind of a high voice…”
“Bullshit, Tommy. You’re lying.”
“I ain’t!”
“Last chance.”
Tommy sighed, cornered. On his face, they watched him make a deal with himself.
“He’s tall. Kinda craggy face. Long silvery grey hair. Pale blue eyes.”
Marcus and Kate exchanged a glance. “Good,” Kate said. “You’re doing really good, Tommy. Does he have an accent?”
“Sometimes. Some words. Sounds Southern sometimes.”
Kate watched him closely. “What do you really think he’s doing with the names?”
“I don’t care,” Tommy said, too fast. Then, softer, “Didn’t care.”
Kate slid two photographs across the table — crime scene stills, Brennan and Kellerman’s hands nailed and spread, the glossy print flattening the blood to a dark wax. The room temperature seemed to drop.
Tommy recoiled, chair scraping. “Jesus.”
“Not Jesus,” Kate said. “Two people who were alive until the person you call Reverend decided otherwise. Look at their hands. Look at their throats. You helped him pick them.”
“I didn’t—” His voice cracked. “Lady, I didn’t kill nobody.”
“You helped,” Kate said. No heat, just fact. “And help is enough for a long, long prison stay, Tommy.”
He stared at the photographs like he could will them to change. When he looked up again he had the desperate shine of a man who’d sprinted to the cliff edge and found no more ground.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
“Everything,” Marcus said. “Start with how.”
A shaky exhale. “My idea,” he admitted, a flicker of pride lighting through the fear.
“The delivery guys. DoorDash, Grubhub, the bike boys… they know who’s in the office on a Sunday.
If you tip right, they’ll tell you. That’s how I did it.
I’d hang near Kenzo, near Chop Chop, near that salad place on 56th — catch ’em when they came out the lobby.
Or on the cornerth where they all wait up.
Twenty bucks for a name and a floor number. Twenty bucks for me. Easy.”
Kate’s gaze didn’t soften. “Who handed you the money? Who do you report to?”
“Reverend.”
“Anyone else on his crew?”
Tommy snorted, as if the question was ridiculous.
“Where do you meet him?”
“Under the bridge… we walk on a ways if there’s people there. Once he came here, to my crib.”
“When’s your next meeting?” Kate asked.
“Friday,” Tommy said. “So I can get him names in time for Sunday. He’ll text me.”
Marcus leaned forward, elbows on the table. “So you knew what he was planning.”
The line hit; Tommy flinched. “No,” he said, too fast. “No, I thought… I thought he was gonna scare ’em. Put a note on their desks, I don’t know. Spook ’em into staying home with their kids. I thought it was like that.”
“But you know now,” Kate said, tapping the photos with one finger. “You’ve seen the news.”
He shook his head fervently. “I don’t read the papers. Don’t got no TV. I swear I didn’t know till you showed me just now. I swear on my mom.”
“Your mother alive?” Marcus asked.
Tommy swallowed. “Thomewhere.”
They let the silence sit.
“I can help,” he burst out, almost pleading. “I can go on Friday. You can hide close, jump him when he comes. He won’t suspect me.”
Marcus and Kate exchanged a short look. The kind that said, ‘We’ll talk about it’ without saying a word.
“It’s noted,” Kate said.
“Please,” Tommy said. “I didn’t mean for anybody to die. I just wanted… twenty bucks a name. That’s dinner for a week if you know where to look.”
Marcus closed the folder. “How do you communicate with him?”
Tommy stared at him. “Like we’re doing now,” he said, slowly, carefully, as if to a stupid child.
"If you have to make contact with him," Marcus said patiently.
“If there’s an emergency I gotta draw a cross on the wall under the bridge, and he’ll find me the next day, whatever it is. He knows where I stay, anyhow.”
“What kind of emergency?”
Tommy shrugged. “Ain’t been one.”
Kate sat back in her chair. “What do you think of him?”
“Think?” Tommy looked almost bashful, flattered, as if nobody had asked him what he thought at any point during the last four decades.
Which was probably true. “He’s… he’s like a priest, but not with a church.
He talks in this… in this way, like he maketh a picture pop in your head with his words.
And when he talks to you, he looks at you like another proper person, you know?
And it’s like he knows everything about you. Knows it, and don’t judge you for it.”
“Did you ever hear him… preach?” Marcus asked.
“Little bits. About rest. About how men sold their souls to their bosses for a paycheck. How the city eats people. Stuff like that. He’s got the whole dang Bible in his head.”
Kate slid the photos back into the folder. The room felt smaller. “You’re staying here tonight,” she said.
Tommy’s head came up. “No, I can’t—”
“You can and you will,” Kate said. “For your safety.”
“My thafety?”
“You think jail would be safer?” Marcus asked mildly. “Men hear things. Men talk. If the Reverend is the man we think he is, he could get to you from a payphone in Queens.”
Tommy stared at the door again, then at the cup. The fight leaked out of him. “I didn’t think up for this."
“Neither did they,” Kate said, nodding at the closed folder.
He shut his eyes, once, hard, and when he opened them he looked older. “I’ll do it,” he said. “Friday. Whatever you want. I’ll wear a wire. I’ll say the names. Just… just don’t let him know I talked.”
Kate stood. “We’ll figure out the safest way,” she said. “For now, you write down every time you met him, every time, every name you can recall, what shoes he wore, what he smelled like, whether he coughed. You understand?”
Tommy nodded helplessly. “Okay.”
Marcus pushed a legal pad toward him, set a pen on top. “Start at the beginning. We’ll fill in what you forget.”
They left him writing, shoulders hunched, letters large and awkward on the ruled page.
In the corridor, the fluorescent lights made everyone look seasick. Marcus leaned a shoulder against the wall. “He’s useful,” he said, quietly. “Scared enough to cooperate. Dumb enough to think he can improvise.”
“Which makes him bait,” Kate said. She didn’t like the word, even in her head. “But we’re not rushing it.”
“Friday buys us four days,” Marcus said. “We can pull CCTV from all routes to and from the 3rd Avenue Bridge. Plan a sting for Friday, or trigger an earlier meet using their code.”
Kate nodded distantly. Right now, her mind was on prevention: alerting the individuals on the list, and other potential victims without causing the kind of panic that Cox would notice.
Torres fell into step with them, having watched from the other side of the glass. “I’m not happy planning any operation around Tommy. Look at the poor guy. He’ll fold if the Reverend looks at him sideways.”
“It’s a concern,” Kate said. “But let’s concentrate on keeping him alive for now. No disrespect towards the PD, but my experience is that Cox has eyes and ears everywhere. Can we establish some cover story for why Tommy’s here?”
“Key witness in a recent gang-related murder?” Torres offered. “There are three to choose from.”
They paused at the corner where the corridor turned toward the bullpen. The place smelled of ink, old coffee and a blocked toilet.
“You buying his act?” Torres asked.
“I’m buying his fear,” Marcus said.
“He didn’t know about the murders,” Kate said. “Not until today. He’s a can-opener. Cox is the knife.”
Torres studied her face. “You good?”
Kate thought of the photographs. Of the precise, almost tender spacing of the letters carved into mahogany. Of the old ache behind the new case. She kept her voice level. “I’m good.”
“Okay,” Torres said, and clapped Marcus once on the back. “I’ll babysit our man while you two debrief Winters.”
They split. Back in the interview room, Tommy was writing, tongue caught between his teeth, pencil digging hard. On line three, he wrote: Last Friday, four p.m., Soup Kitchen, under 3AB, he wore boots. On line four, he wrote: He said God was tired, needed to rest.
In the margin, in smaller letters, he added: Don’t let him kill me.