“Mmmm,” I said.

“Good,” he said to himself and clucked. “Awright, you want your info?”

“Pen and paper are at the ready.”

“Case of Heinies better be at the ready, too, Slim.”

“Goes without saying.”

“In twenty-five years,” Richie said, “there’s been one crucifixion in this city. Kid name of Jamal Cooper. Black male, twenty-one, found crucified to the floorboards in the basement of a flophouse in old Scollay Square in September of seventy-three.”

“Quick bio of Cooper?”

“He was a junkie. Heroin. Rap sheet the length of a football field. Mostly small-time shit—petty burglary, solicitation, but a couple of home invasions, too, bought him two years at the old Dedham House of Corrections. Still, Cooper wasn’t nothing but a nickel-and-dimer. If he hadn’t been crucified, nobody would have noticed he died. Even then, cops didn’t seem to be busting their asses on the case at first.”

“Who was the investigating officer?”

“Two guys. An Inspector Brett Hardiman and, lemme see, yeah, a Detective Sergeant Gerald Glynn.”

That stopped me. “They make an arrest?”

“Well, here’s where it gets interesting. I had to dig a bit, but there was a local stir in the papers for a day when they brought a guy named Alec Hardiman in for questioning.”

“Wait a minute, didn’t you just—?”

“Yup. Alec Hardiman was the son of the chief investigating officer, Brett Hardiman.”

“What happened?”

“The younger Hardiman was cleared.”

“Coverup?”

“It doesn’t look that way. There really wasn’t much evidence against him. He’d known Jamal Cooper casually, I guess, and that was that. But…”

“What?”

Several phones rang at once on Richie’s end and he said, “Hold on.”

“No, Rich. No, I—”

He put me on hold, the bastard. I waited.

When he came back on the line, his voice had changed back to its City Desk rush. “Patrick, Igottago.”

“No.”

“Yes. Look, this Alec Hardiman was convicted for another murder in seventy-five. He’s doing life in Walpole. That’s all I got. Gottarun.”

He hung up and I looked down at the names on my notepad: Jamal Cooper. Brett Hardiman. Alec Hardiman. Gerald Glynn.

I thought about calling Angie but it was late and she’d been beat from watching Jason do nothing all week.

I stared at the phone for a bit, then took my jacket and left the apartment.

I didn’t need the jacket. Past one in the morning, and the humidity lathered my skin until the pores felt sticky and fetid and sickly soft.

October. Right.

Gerry Glynn was washing glasses at the bar sink when I entered The Black Emerald. The place was empty, the three TV screens on, but the volume muted, the Pogues’ version of “Dirty Old Town” coming out of the jukebox at whisper volume, stools up on the bar, floor swept, amber ashtrays clean as boiled bones.

Gerry was looking into the sink. “Sorry,” he said without looking up. “Closed.”

On top of the pool table near the back, Patton raised his head and looked at me. I couldn’t see his face very distinctly through the cigarette smoke that still hovered there like a cloud, but I knew what he’d say if he could speak: “Didn’t you hear the man? We’re closed.”