Free The Anonymous Source by A.C. Fuller Page B

background.
    “Said they’d seen a kid buyin’ from me who might be connected to 9/11. Wanted me to wear a camera for a few weeks, see if I could catch him buyin’. Man, how any of my customers could be connected to 9/11, I don’t know. Plus, how are they gonna press a terrorist if all they have him on is buying a twenty sack? But it sounded like a get-out-of-jail-free card, so I said, ‘what the hell.’“
    Alex stopped pacing when he heard himself speaking on the recording. “It’s possible the guy they were after was related to a suspected terrorist. Maybe they wanted to leverage your guy to get to the family member overseas.” Hearing his own voice made him feel like he was being watched.
    Downton continued. “Maybe, but it wasn’t my business. I was lookin’ at ten years, so I did it. It was a tiny black box I clipped to the inside of my jacket. Front looked like a button. They told me to click it on when I started workin’ and click it off at the end of the night. Wore that thing for a couple months.”
    “Did you get the cops’ names? They’re supposed to show you a badge and ID.”
    Downton laughed. “It’s not TV. When two guys in a cop car pick you up, they don’t read you your rights or anything. You just get in the car.”
    “Did they take you to the station?”
    “Nah, man. Just drove around. Black one drove and the white one told me the deal. Dropped me off at the park ‘bout a half hour later like nothin’ happened. Next day, they outfitted me with the camera in the bathrooms on the south side of the park. Every Monday after that, they’d come get the camera, then bring it back ‘bout an hour later.”
    “How did they know if they got their guy?” Alex asked.
    “Oh yeah, forgot about that. They asked me to keep an eye out for Arabs. ‘Sandniggers’ is what the white guy called ‘em. He would do the bit like Joe Pesci from Casino . You know that movie? The part where Pesci’s selling the diamonds? The white cop was Irish or something—all freckled—and he’s trying to do an Italian accent like Joe Pesci. He was a racist asshole, but it was right after 9/11. Anyway, I’d tell ‘em if I thought I’d had any Arab customers and when I’d seen ‘em.”
    Alex did squats, using the pole to keep his shoulders level. “So how’d it end?” he asked on the tape. “Why didn’t they come for the recorder once Professor Martin died?”
    “They just stopped showin’ up. Didn’t make no sense. I figure it’s an expensive camera, why wouldn’t they want it?”
    “When did they disappear?”
    “Musta been about mid-December, end of the semester, because I remember my crowd was thinnin’ out.”
    “Why’d you keep recording?”
    “Only did another couple weeks. Didn’t know if they’d show up again. After that prof got killed, I put the camera away and that was it.”
    Alex reached a hundred squats and began pacing again, using his abs to rotate side to side.
    “So why now?” Alex’s tone in the coffee shop had turned harsher. “You could have gotten Santiago off earlier if the video shows what you say it does.”
    The tape played chatter in the background. Neither spoke for a full minute.
    “Thought about that hard,” Downton said. “I mean, what was I supposed to do? Figured I probably broke laws about privacy or somethin’, plus there’s the dealing. In my line of work, you never look for attention.”
    Alex slid the pole back into the bag and placed it in the closet. He sat on the bed as he listened to himself asking Downton a question. “Then why not mail the video to the police anonymously?”
    “Truth is, I’m not sure what’s on it. Don’t know how to use the thing, but I know it didn’t go down like the police have been sayin’. Plus, you think just mailing in a video would get the kid off? Once the police have their guy, they run with it no matter what evidence shows up. And once they seen the video, they’d come lookin’ for me.”
    “Then why