“He was?”
“If the driver’s side was next to the curb.”
“Oh, yeah, I guess so,” said Armpit. He realized he had to be more careful. “I didn’t notice because there weren’t any other cars around.”
“At five-thirty?” asked Detective Newberg. “Man, I should start shopping there!” She smiled. “The H-E-B by me is jammed that time of day.”
Armpit shrugged.
“So what did he look like?”
“I didn’t get a real good look.”
“You were face to face, weren’t you, when he rolled down his window?”
“I was thinking about the tickets, not what he looked like.”
“Was he white? Black? Hispanic?”
“Kind of black.”
“Kind of black?”
“I think he might have been Iranian.”
Iranian? Where did that come from?
“You think he was Iranian?”
“Maybe part black, part Iranian,” Armpit said. “Now I remember. He said his name was Habib. That’s why I think he’s part Iranian.”
Officer Newberg raised her eyebrows. “Habib?” She wrote the name in her little black notebook.
“Did he speak with an accent?”
“Um, yeah, kind of.”
“An Iranian accent?”
“Yeah.”
“Was he tall? Short? Thin? Fat?”
“Kind of big,” Armpit said. “But it was hard to tell because he was sitting down in his car.”
“How old?”
“Maybe about your age.”
“How old do you think I am?”
He studied her face. “Twenty-three?”
“I’m twenty-eight.” She smiled. “So we’ll say he’s in his twenties. Any distinguishing characteristics?”
“No.”
“Tattoos? Facial hair?”