I cut Goodwin off.

“Look, Don, I’ve got no comment and I need to go. I’ve got another call.”

I pushed the button before he could take a third swing at getting me to discuss my employment situation.

“This is Jack McEvoy,” I said after switching over.

Silence.

“Hello, this is Jack McEvoy. How can I help you?”

Call me biased but I immediately identified the person who replied as female, black and uneducated.

“McEvoy? When you goin’ to tell the truth, McEvoy?”

“Who is this?”

“You tellin’ lies, McEvoy, in your paper.”

I wished it was my paper.

“Ma’am, if you want to tell me who you are and what your complaint is about, I’ll listen. Otherwise, I’ m-”

“They now sayin’ Mizo is’n adult and what kinda shit is that? He did’n kill no whore.”

Immediately I knew it was one of those calls. Those calls on behalf of the “innocent.” The mother or girlfriend who had to tell me how wrong my story was. I got them all the time but not for too much longer. I resigned myself to handling this call as quickly and politely as possible.

“Who is Mizo?”

“Zo. My Zo. My son, Alonzo. He ain’ guilty a nothin’ and he ain’t no adult.”

I knew that was what she was going to say. They are never guilty. No one calls you up to say you got it right or the police got it right and their son or their husband or their boyfriend is guilty of the charges. No one calls you from jail to tell you they did it. Everybody is innocent. The only thing I didn’t understand about the call was the name. I hadn’t written about anybody named Alonzo-I would have remembered.