Afterward, I was ushered to a metal folding chair to join Tim and Andy outside the detectives’ office. We were waiting for Felix, the porter, to make his statement before we could hitch a ride back to Manhattan. When I sat down next to Tim, he turned to me and said, “The cops think B did it.” Holy shit.

It was like a Joe Frazier right hook. When the pain faded, I just felt like a patsy. Someone had slipped a magical moron pill into my soup. I was conned, we all were, by Kwan—who never came back from his vacation—and his “brother,” Darryl Littlejohn.

I still work at the Falls. A lot of my job involves deflecting the media (“No comment . . . It’s an ongoing police investigation . . . No, I can’t give you my name”) and answering the phones. We get a lot of crank calls: “When is that nigger Darryl coming in?” But the most disturbing is the old lady who sits on the line slowly chanting “killers, killers, killers” in a raspy voice.

Related:

• Archive: “Intelligencer Features”
• Table of Contents: March 27, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!