“You know who this is?”Jem asked.
“I don’t have to talk to you.”
“You can either talk to me now, or you can talk to me when I kick in your front door.”
“Kick it in?”Tean said under his breath.
Jem tried to squeeze his knee again, but Tean kept wriggling away.
“What?”Kazen asked.
“First of all, relax.I’m not trying to get you in trouble.I just have a few questions.”
After about three seconds, Kazen said, “Okay?”with all the patience of a belligerent teenager.
“Why’d you run?”
“I had Bren’s wallet, duh.I knew how it looked.”
“How’d you get his wallet?”
The silence stretched out.
“Just answer the question, dumbshit.I don’t care what you did.”
“I got it out of his car at the park.”
Jem held back an excited whoop.Score one.Tean straightened in his seat, intent on the phone.
“Why?”Jem asked.
“Because he’s such an asshole.”But then, voice thick with tears, Kazen said, “He could be such an asshole.I wanted to fuck with him.It’s not like I had a plan or anything.I saw his car.I tried the door.It opened.His wallet was in the glove compartment.”
“How many other wallets did you pick up that night?”
Kazen’s silence lasted a beat too long.“None.”
“Bad move.I’ll see you when I kick that fucking door off its hinges.”
“Bruh!”An explosive breath came across the call.“Just, like, a few.”
“That’s your thing?You go to hookup spots and steal wallets?”
“I go, because, you know.But sometimes they leave stuff out in plain sight.And you know they won’t call the police.”
And, Jem suspected, they didn’t call the police if they went to the park to meet a twenty-year-old, and he extorted them, or threatened them, or robbed them at knifepoint.But that, as far as Jem was concerned, was somebody else’s problem.
“How many did you get that night?”
Again, a silence that lasted a moment too long.
“You have got to get better at this,” Jem told him.
“I don’t know, man.That was, like, a week ago.”
“I want you to look at the IDs.”
“I don’t have them.I throw the wallets away.I just take the cash.”