Ten minutes after Jamilla left to catch her plane back to San Francisco, Kyle appeared at my desk. He looked like a rumpled, tweedy, forty-something professor who had just emerged from his library carrel after days of researching a scholarly piece for the criminal justice journals.
‘You crack the code?’ I asked him. ‘If you did, can I get a flight out of here tonight? I’m catching hell at home for being here.’ ‘I didn’t crack a goddamn thing,’ he complained. Then he yawned.
‘My head feels a little cracked. Like there’s a slow leak or something.’
He rubbed his knuckles back and forth against his skull.