"Is this the only cash you have on you?"
"Yes."
"How much is this?"
"Six hundred forty dollars."
"Six hundred forty dollars." He heard the man repeat it to himself. "In twenties. In an envelope. In your jacket. At one in the morning." The hand turned him around by the elbow. "And that," he said, and pointed the flashlight down at the deposit bag lying on the sidewalk at their feet, "is what?"
Lorenz looked at him for the first time.
The cop was perhaps forty. White, tall, built heavy through the chest and shoulders, with the body of a man who had played football in high school and lifted weights afterward because he was afraid of what would happen if he stopped. His face was broad and pale, with a short reddish-brown mustache, and pouches under his eyes the color of a bruise healing, and his eyes themselves were light, gray or green, it was hard to tell in the flashing light, and they were not angry. That was the thing Lorenz would remember most clearly. The eyes were not angry. They were something worse. They were satisfied, the way a man's eyes are satisfied when he finally finds the leak he has been chasing for a month behind a wall. His name tag said BRODERSEN. His uniform was the dark navy of the Fort Wayne Police Department, and over it the vest, and on the vest the small black square of the body camera, its tiny red light blinking.
"That's the restaurant deposit," Lorenz said. "From Baird's. On Broadway. I'm the sous chef. My name is Lorenz Dimaculangan. The deposit—it didn't go down. It got stuck. Something is in there. Something is in the chute. I was getting it back out so nobody would—"
"So nobody would what?"
"Take it."
Brodersen looked at him for a long moment. Then he laughed, one short breath through his nose, without any humor in it at all.