The city had been hot, but the air here was only warm, if not exactly mild. Bugs were singing everywhere. The house was sheathed in some kind of mustard-colored battenboard, trim and neat against the vivid summer twilight. Through a clear diamond-shaped window in the garage door Devlin could see a chrome luggage rack on the roof of a station wagon. He wondered if he was about to enter a house that smelled of wet diapers; he could be here for hours. Devlin pushed the button beside the front door, but didn’t hear anything inside. A gust of warm, humid air came up as he pushed the button again. The door was opened by a big brunette in jeans and a Mr. Met T-shirt. She was in her late twenties and her long hair looked as if it had not been combed today. Devlin had seen that before. He introduced himself. She let him step inside and then she locked the door. Mrs. Quinn. Irene. She had freckles, and was sheathed in the hot bloom of nervous perspiration. Like many another Irish-American woman in an emergency situation, she thought she had to speak quickly, through her teeth.

“He woke up a little while ago. I’ve never seen him so sick. I’ve seen him bad, but Jesus, not like this. The kids are with my sister. I had to get them out of here.”

The hall was narrow, and Devlin eased himself past her. He felt comfortable with the situation now. His tension was gone, like that of an athlete whose game has begun. He caught a glimpse of the family room: sofas and end tables. No pictures on the walls. Devlin had seen that before, too. With the head of the household hitting alcoholic bottom, life drained out of the family so completely that no one had the moral resolve even to brighten the walls.

“Is somebody in there with him?”

“Mr. Lederer,” she said, and repeated herself slowly so Devlin got the name right. “I missed his first name,” she said. “I’m sorry. He’s the one who made the arrangements for Tom. The place is only about twenty minutes from here, some kind of converted estate off 517.”

Convenient. Devlin liked the Flight Deck route better, when it was possible. Although he knew from observation that not every drunk needed waking up in a city hospital alcoholic ward amid the scum of the earth to get him thinking hard about himself again, Devlin knew from experience that nothing beat the icy jolt of the stink of fifty men, unwashed, drooling, as much dead as alive, moaning their despair and pain, and the knowledge that you were one of them, and belonged in their midst. Devlin’s sponsor had made sure of that. Dandy, Bill Ward had called him. Mr. Snappy Dresser. And worst of all, Nightclub Devlin. A smart-ass caption writer had come up with that in the Daily News in 1970. Frank “Nightclub” Devlin.

“Irene!”