Dealing with deception

"What the hell is going on? Where the hell is she? Why the hell do you have me bouncing from place to place, all over this city, just picking up crumbs of information – none of which is really even very informative to me? I met up with Partain, you know, and while he gave me some interesting things to think about, why should I believe him? Why should I believe you?" 

I’d been making a list.

"I will answer all of your questions to the best of my ability. Would you prefer that I do so in the order in which you asked them?" The informant calmly pressed the cigarette lighter down, and then turned the radio off. 

"Please." I answered, trying to relax. I reached for my own cigarettes, but I'd misplaced them somewhere.

"Excellent. Have one of mine," he said, and then he lit two cigarettes at once, passing one over to me. How did he know that mine were missing?

"There are a lot of things that I can’t tell you. You’re too much of a liability to the people that I work for if you go public with the information." I didn't ask for much of an explanation about that, since I already had a lot of questions that needed answers. They were  a lot more important to me than how serious the people that he worked for were about keeping their secrets.  I understood that they were serious enough.

"Feel free to provide inquiries whenever clarification is required." 

I noted to myself that his excessively clinical approach to conversation might be useful to me, if I decided to make a play to squeeze more information out of him. I thought, at the time, that I could use an emotional reaction to manipulate him into telling me everything I needed to know. My concern for her clouded my objectivity, though, and I didn’t realize my own limits, much less the limits of the strange man who only wanted to be known as an informant and would only meet me in the strangest places, on his terms, on his time table.

"Don’t worry, I will." I said.