Devlin groaned. This was new to him, too. He was going to have to get the letter copied and the copy deposited in a safe place. A dead man’s gossip to his mistress wasn’t evidence in and of itself, but it pointed toward what Devlin needed to protect himself from the mayor and his stooge commissioner. In all the years he had known the Brennans, it had never occurred to him that the brothers and sister had explored their sexual curiosity with one another. Apparently an only child remained ignorant for life about such things. In the fifteen years since he had seen Maryellen, he had had many moments when he had thought that he had never known her, that she had never allowed him to know her, and now he was thinking it again. Filed in his memory was a montage of images of Maryellen, the kind a drunk trots out to excuse a toot, her husky, barking laugh, for instance, or vivid blue eyes looking into his. Devlin could not remember all the occasions he had been in the company of the three of them, the conversation so smooth, polished, and rapid-fire, so cool. Never a hint. How had they handled it inside? Devlin had been in the first or second grade when he’d first realized that he had no idea how brothers and sisters got along with one another. The Brennans had only reacquainted him with one of the great mysteries of his life. Memory wasn’t tricking him now. Jack, Joe, and Maryellen Brennan had been brothers and sister in the same ways he had observed in other families all of his life. The Brennans had been a little wilder about it, a little more extreme; in light of their father’s celebrated lustiness, Devlin really had no reason to be surprised by revelations of their childhood sexuality. The Brennans hadn’t been conventional people, but they had been a family. Now he saw just how much he had been avoiding remembering them as they had been, and why: the hold Maryellen had had on him …

The rain was coming down harder, drumming heavily on the car roof. Devlin wanted to get moving again. His next step was to check out Major’s Brooklyn telephone number, and he might be doing himself a favor if he deferred calling the telephone company until he was actually in Brooklyn. John had confirmed to him that police were looking for him. Devlin had to proceed on the assumption that all agencies that cooperated routinely with the police, like the telephone company, banks, and other government departments, had already been notified to report any inquiry from Detective Frank Devlin. Devlin would have a few minutes more lead time getting to the address that went with Major’s telephone number if he called the telephone company in the area of the number’s prefix. That is, as long as police weren’t already waiting there for Devlin.