Double Agent: What's your favorite music? Kris: Country, mostly. I like all genres, but my favorite is country. And all kinds of rap, except for some stupid nigger shit. Agent: Do you do drugs? Kris: I smoke weed. I'm not heavy into it, but I do smoke. I don't do hard drugs. Don't get me wrong, I've done it all before in my life. I've had my moments, but it isn't my thing. Agent: You ever been arrested? Kris: No. And I've never gotten busted. Agent: Ever been in any kind of physical fight? Kris: Yeah, but it was an accident. It wasn't intentional. Agent: What kind of music do you like? Kris: My favorite country singers are George Strait, Toby Keith, Randy Travis, and Garth Brooks. Agent: Do you know anybody who has committed an armed robbery? Kris: No, man. That was not me. Agent: How about getting caught with crack? Kris: That wasn't me either. My brother did it, but I didn't have anything to do with it. Agent: I need to know if you're a violent person. Can you answer "Yes" or "No"? Kris: I'll answer "No," because I'm not going to start answering "Yes" every time somebody asks me a question. I didn't kill anybody. If I did, I'd say I did. Agent: Who is in the FBI's top ten list of the most wanted fugitives? Kris: That's not important. The only reason you're asking me about that is because you got to try and put me away for something. Agent: What? Why would I try to get you locked up? Kris: I don't know. Because I'm black? You try to put me away and then you find out it wasn't me anyway. Agent: There's an eight-year-old boy in South Florida whose parents were killed when someone opened fire on their car. We have information that there are people in the area who might have some knowledge of what happened. Kris: Maybe I did it. I don't know, because I don't remember what happened. I was shot, but not killed. Agent: What about this man—Elias Diaz—and a woman named Michelle. They were caught on camera robbing a jewelry store and putting a gun to the victim's head, but that's not you. What is the name of the guy in that car? Kris: Who is this man? Agent: You were his passenger. He had a gun. Kris: I don't know him. Agent: And you were in the car with him when you were arrested on weapons charges? Kris: I was never arrested. I had a gun at the time. Agent: When you had that gun, were you in the country illegally? Kris: No, man, I was legal. I had the gun and it was stolen. I still had it. I was locked up at the time. They had me on a gun charge. I was using my car to make a living. Agent: How come you didn't get caught at the time? Why did they let you get away? Kris: The officer got killed before they could find me. But I wasn't there, because I was in jail. Agent: Okay. If I sent you an address and told you to go there and send us information about some people, will you? Kris: When will you let me get back to my life? Agent: Soon. ## EPISODE 7 ## "HOW LONG DID HE SAY?" THE BOOKSTORE AND LIVE MUSIC The Record Store ### THIRTEEN MINUTES TO MIDNIGHT "You still looking for the gun?" Myra asked. "Yeah." "What about the money?" "I'm not finished yet," I replied. "You want to come by and see?" "I'll be here." I hung up and got back into the Mercedes. This time I pulled out and went east instead of north. When I was back on the block that I'd driven by earlier, I pulled into the parking lot and parked next to where I'd left my car. It was midafternoon on a Saturday. The weather had been sunny and clear all week, and a slight breeze blew out of the east. I got out of my car and walked toward the bank. No, my destination was a record store. The bookstore and record store were located in an older redbrick building on the block that is now part of a vibrant Latino neighborhood. The windows were small and the store was closed. A sign out front said it was a family business and the store would reopen in five days. Someone had written a big "X" in the window and crossed the "X" out in red paint, but in a different color of paint, so it looked like something that had been done over and over. It would take me about seven minutes to reach the building by walking north. I walked west and turned onto Cermak, the main boulevard running east and west through the old neighborhood. This was the city street that I'd crossed on my way to my house two days earlier, the night before the first murder. The murder was committed on a street not a block away from where we were standing. It occurred to me to wonder if the murderer had a car parked nearby while he waited to do it. But that was impossible. If I was here at the moment of the murder, then it must have happened in this area. When I first started driving a couple of days ago, I thought I might see a car on this street that was going west, at the moment when the shooter walked to my car to do it, so I could identify him. I could see that he wasn't just anyone. That was also impossible. No one could anticipate everything, and even then there would still be plenty of mistakes. They could be lucky or they could get the wrong guy. But there would be only one victim, not a whole family—and there would be another car in the area, not mine. I would have been looking for a Mercedes, because a black man is still looking for an excuse to stop a Mercedes. The black man would have been too worried about other drivers to stop a car like mine. It had to be a car like mine. There were several white-and-black sedans on the street where the shootings had happened. If I had gone down this street, I wouldn't have seen him. I was sure of that. I continued south, passed where the murder took place, turned east on Loomis, and kept going east until I got to an intersection that led to my house. The store had been on a short street that ran north and south between Cermak and Loomis, the main east-west street that I was looking at now. The streets were narrow, the sidewalks were very narrow, and the houses looked like they had once been part of small farms. Every house was unique, with its own special touches, like the way the house would stick out a bit here, or a flower in a window, or a piece of furniture. Now the street was blocked by the building I was in and an empty lot that used to be behind it. As I continued south, I was looking at the empty lot and the building where I had bought my secondhand Mercedes. I was going south, looking at the lot, and I realized the building used to be in a row of shops. It had been one of four stores that were located on the block when it was still a part of an older, more respectable neighborhood. Two of the stores were clothing stores and the other two were record stores. I went into one of the record stores, and saw there had been only one other record store—maybe there had only been two others at that time. This building had originally been a house, and after a couple of generations it had been renovated and turned into a store for recording music and other things that were related to records. I'm sure there were more stores back then, but the area was a lot quieter then, and the neighborhood changed when the railroad stopped running through here in the 1930s. The blocks were now lined with houses and apartments, and they began changing into apartments in the 1950s. I walked south, passing two more apartment buildings. This was where the main street—Loomis—passed through the neighborhood, as it did now. Then I saw some kids playing in a vacant lot. They stopped and stared as I walked by, and then ran back to whatever they were doing. I went back to the record store and sat down in a chair. I was still looking at the store, looking at the people who'd been in the store when it was open. There were three people who worked there—the owner, and his two daughters. It was closed now. I tried to see if I could imagine what it had been like, how it looked when it was open for business. What was in there? What music was played? Who bought