Jennifer DuBois - Cartwheel

“Look,” said Eduardo. He squinted, as if this could somehow correct for the strange psychic parallax that seemed to be at work here. Out the window behind Toledo, the sun was a garish pumpkiny orange. Eduardo was already frustrated and had had to pee for an hour. He should have seated Toledo facing the window, but now it was too late to change places.

“You’ve got nothing to lose now,” said Eduardo. “We know you were there. Your DNA is absolutely everywhere.”

When Eduardo had said this to Lily, it had been a bluff—but this time it was true, and it was maddening that Toledo was acting as though they were playing some game of strategy at which Eduardo might yet be outsmarted. What did he hope to gain from this? Could he be dumb enough to believe that Lily was the one they were completely sure of, and that admitting to having had any dealings with her would be a fatal mistake? Eduardo was not sure he believed in a stupidity so vast. After all, Ignacio Toledo must know that his DNA was everywhere; he must know that his own involvement was so well established that he should be willing to implicate absolutely anyone—including Lily Hayes—for exactly as long as Eduardo would let him try. But instead, Toledo had remained mostly silent, while Eduardo thought with increasing longing of the urinal.

“I wasn’t,” said Toledo.

Eduardo held up his hand. He was trying to stop Toledo whenever he began obviously to lie. “Absolutely everywhere ,” said Eduardo severely. “We know you were there. This is not a question.”

Now Toledo was wringing his hands in a way that seemed nearly animalistic one moment and just generically distressed the next. Perhaps he was thinking of faking an insanity defense; if so, it was a very, very subtle performance. Nevertheless, any such attempt would be problematic, since it would naturally cast suspicion on anything Ignacio Toledo might be persuaded to say about Lily Hayes, which Eduardo still hoped would be plenty.

“What is a question,” said Eduardo, “is exactly what Lily Hayes’s involvement was. Her DNA was also at the scene of the crime, and we’re trying to figure out why. Do you understand?”

Eduardo was beginning to consider the possibility that Ignacio Toledo did not really believe in DNA; it was, after all, very hard to imagine someone so divorced from the modern world that they’d literally leave their shit in a toilet at a crime scene. Eduardo felt slightly deflated at this prospect. It was so cheap to catch a man like this—like winning at a game of football because the other team suddenly picked up the ball and ran.

“This is Lily Hayes,” said Eduardo, pushing her picture across the table. “I’m sure you recognize her.” Eduardo tapped on Lily’s face but did not look at it. He did not like looking at the photo; he did not want to see again the gestures of mortality underneath Lily’s relative youth and health—the gray below her eyes, like thumbprints of news script; the teeth already yellowing, like a sepia photo fading into age. The Lily in the picture thinks she’s escaped the confines of childhood and eluded the claims of adulthood, but she is wrong. Consequence, like mortality, is after her already; it is just over her left shoulder—even though she doesn’t know it, even though she doesn’t feel it, even though it doesn’t yet cast a shadow.

Eduardo leaned forward. He thought he caught a whiff of something vaguely briny, subaquatic, on Toledo, but then it disappeared. “I understand you spent ninety-seven days in jail last year for vandalism.”

Toledo shrugged. “You seem like you’d know better than I would.”

“You must have enjoyed your time there,” said Eduardo. He leaned back and his chair skittered sideways on a broken caster. A faint look of disgust either did or did not flicker across Ignacio Toledo’s face. He yawned, revealing teeth that were strangely small and sharp, like little broken buttons.

“Excuse me, hello?” said Eduardo, rapping on the table. He bit the inside of his lip, willing himself to attention. “Listen. The only thing you can do now is help us understand how Lily Hayes was involved. This isn’t only the best thing you can do for your case at this point. It’s also basically the only thing you can do for your case. This is it. Do you understand? This is the last choice you’ll get to make in all of this. This, really, is the only one.”

At this, something decisive seemed to flash in Toledo’s face—the whites of his eyes grew momentarily larger, perhaps, or then again maybe they didn’t—and Eduardo felt a queasiness that he recognized as the onset of unwanted certainty.

“Do you not believe me?” said Eduardo. “Go ahead and get yourself a lawyer. He’s going to tell you exactly the same thing. I assure you.”

There was another freighted silence. Eduardo tried to breathe shallowly so as not to jostle the mounting pressure in his bladder. And then—finally—Ignacio Toledo began to speak.

“Yeah, I knew her.” Toledo sighed with unexpected theatricality. “We talked sometimes and I sold her some weed once. The night it happened she came by really upset just as my shift was ending. She’d been fired a few days before and I didn’t want Javier to see her and get even angrier, and she seemed to really need to talk to someone, so I offered to buy her a beer. So we went out and, well, it turned into a pretty crazy night.”

“Okay,” said Eduardo. “That’s helpful. Thank you. Did anyone besides you see Lily come by Fuego that night?”

“I don’t think so.” Now Toledo seemed to be working something around the corner of his mouth, though Eduardo couldn’t quite catch sight of it properly—every time he looked at Toledo straight on, he stopped. “I mean, I saw her in the back alley, and I tried to sort of hustle her away. Because like I said, I didn’t want Javier to find out she was there.”

“I see. And then what happened?”

“Well, we went out—”

“Where?”

Toledo looked down and squinted into his lap. When people were lying, they usually rolled their eyes upward—but then again this was widely known by anyone who had regular occasion to lie or be lied to. “I don’t remember,” he said. “A place on Juramento. I can check.”

“That would certainly be helpful. Did anyone see you there?”

Toledo shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, it was really crowded—like completely packed—so I’m sure people saw us, but I don’t know if anyone would really remember us.”

“I see. And you didn’t happen to make any of your purchases with a credit card that night?”

Toledo shook his head.

“Of course not. Go on.”

“Well, anyway, we got really drunk, and then. Well. I know this part isn’t going to make me look so good, but I guess I should probably tell you the whole story.”

“That would indeed be wise.”

“Well, then we smoked some weed and took some paco. And anyway, all this time, Lily was telling me all these crazy stories about Katy, about the kinds of insane sex stuff Katy was into. I mean, I’d seen the girl around a few times myself and that was definitely the vibe I got from her. And somehow we got it into our heads that we should go back to the house and try to get something going with her. The two of us. It was Lily’s idea, really, but I’d seen Katy around a few times and thought she was pretty hot, so I was game. We got there and she was up for it, and things got started. But at a certain point Katy just started freaking out—”

“Slow down. Freaking out how?”

“Threatening to call the people whose house it was, threatening to call the cops. Lily started screaming back at Katy, and then I slapped her, just sort of to calm her down, get her to snap out of it. Then Lily hit her and Katy sort of tried to hit her back, and I was thinking this was maybe still part of the sex stuff, like maybe they did this all the time. I mean, I guess they’d had a pretty crazy fight at Fuego just a couple of nights earlier. I didn’t see all of it, but that’s what I heard. So anyway then Katy came swinging at me and I got in there, too, and, anyway, it was really fast, and like I said—”