I had the chance to maybe send my superintendent to prison for a long time

“Honey, a Detective Schwartz called. He wants to speak to you right away.”

It was a hot summer day in 2002, and my wife was terrified. I’d just gotten back from a 25-mile run, getting ready for the NYC marathon. I was dehydrated and exhausted.

“He knew everything about us. Our social security numbers, where we work. Everything.”

At that, I was alert, wide awake.

I was living in NYC with my wife and our two sons, a baby and a toddler. The dot-com bubble had crashed, and tech jobs were scarce. The only work I could find was in Hempstead, NY (about a 30-mile drive into Long Island). To deal with the commute, I’d bought a little gray Mitsubishi Lancer (the cheapo model, not the souped-up sports version).

My life was simple. Get up at 4:30 for a quick 4-mile run, commute, work, fight through rush hour traffic to get home, make dinner, watch a little of the Yankees game, go to sleep. Weekends were all about taking the kids to the playground or the Bronx zoo, and trying to fit in the miles needed for another 5-borough November jaunt. I didn’t have time or energy for mischief.

“He said you’re in a lot of trouble.”

What? Okay. I had nothing to hide, must be a mistake. I’ll call the detective and clear up any confusion. If he knows everything about us, he must know we’re not criminals. I’d never even gotten so much as a parking ticket in the city.

“Your car was used in the commission of a violent crime in the Bronx last Saturday. We have a description of your car. It’s a little gray Mitsubishi, right? They gave us your exact license plate. The perpetrators were Hispanic. I’ll tell you this — if you matched the physical description, you’d be on Riker’s Island right now, waiting for a grand jury hearing.”

Wait, no. That wasn’t possible. We’d gone to the Hayden Planetarium that day. The night before, I’d gotten a parking space right in front of our building. That never happens, and I remember how much it hurt to leave that space to go pick up my Mom and my niece at the 125th street Metro North train station. I charged the admission to the planetarium on my card at the museum kiosk. We had a wonderful day, and I dropped my Mom and niece back at the train station afterwards. It seemed like an incredible karmic reward when I got another parking space right in front of my building when I got back.

Nobody moved my car. Nobody else ever drove my car but me. I was sure of that.

But no. According to this man, this voice on the phone, it was my car, and I needed to be more forthcoming. The detective started calling me every day, going back over the details, and it was getting uglier. Did I want to be considered an accessory in the case? If I hadn’t lent the car to someone, maybe somebody had borrowed it without me knowing. There was still a way out for me. He just needed a name.

“Who had access to your car?”

I’m not proud of this, but a Thought popped into my head. Pablo. Our superintendent had the keys to our apartment. I had a set of spare keys on my dresser. Technically…technically he could have taken the keys, borrowed the car, returned it, and then snuck back in to my apartment to return the keys without me ever knowing.

But no. No. It just wasn’t conceivable that anyone could have taken my car and found the exact parking space afterwards. And I’m five-foot-five on a good day. Pablo was at least six feet, 240 pounds. If he or anyone had adjusted the car seat or the mirrors, I would have known it.

If you don’t think you’d ever lie to the police to please the police, to protect your freedom, to protect your family…maybe you’re right. But I can tell you this: The pressure they put on me was laughably weak by a lot of standards. Nobody broke in my door in the middle of the night and dragged me out of my building in handcuffs. It was just a couple of weeks worth of phone calls. And I was still sweating it. Even given this mild treatment, it was still really hard to keep this ridiculous possibility to myself.

And I finally had enough. I snapped at him. “How can I help you, detective?”

“That’s the question. How can you help me? You’re running out of chances.”

Almost in desperation, I went back at him. You keep telling me you have a great description of the car. Did they mention the “baby on board” shades on the rear windows?

“That’s a good tip. I’ll get back with the eyewitnesses.”

Long story short, the detective did some actual follow-up, and the car turned out to be a little gray Mitsubishi RX-7 (a sports car with some real getaway power). My car was exonerated and I was off the hook.

This raises the real question. What if I’d given Pablo’s name to the detective and mentioned his theoretical access to my spare keys? Other than that I’d never be able to look at myself in the mirror? There’s no way to know. You’d like to think that the police would have figured out it was another dead end. But I’ve been watching “The Innocence Files” on Netflix, and I’m less positive than ever that justice would prevail.

That series makes one thing clear. Once a stupid cop (and they’re not all stupid, but the stupid ones do a lot of damage) comes up with a theory about a crime, that’s the end of it. Their work revolves around finding or creating the evidence needed to support that theory.

That makes no sense, you might argue. Investigations are about following the facts to a logical conclusion.

Maybe that’s true, but consider this. Once the cop was presented with the evidence that my car wasn’t involved, that’s the end of the whole Ken Festa connection, right? Wrong. Because the witness had provided my exact license plate number, the detective never let go of the idea that my license plate was at the scene of the crime.

His final theory was that someone had taken both of my license plates, used them in commission of the crime, and then screwed them back onto my car afterward. That’s just dumb. The simplest explanation — which was that somebody had gotten the number wrong and the little gray car match was a coincidence — apparently never occurred to him. Whatever, I wasn’t going to argue with him. I just wanted to get off the phone and put this crazy episode behind me.

There are a lot of innocent people in prison who never got that opportunity.