That wasn’t it. Eileen would buy panty hose in front of the Pope if she had to. She had decided that special efforts were unnecessary—fussing, she called such efforts, and she had no patience with them.

“If Levine’s successor on this case—What’s his name? That punk! Damn it!”

“Kevin McQuaid,” John said gently, not patronizingly.

“Anyway, if he and his people are looking for me—”

“They are. Look, you’re tired and you know it. I just talked to Kevin. He told me that they went citywide on you with the four-to-twelve. Every cop in the five boroughs is looking for you. Start thinking about this, as tired as you are. The more tired you get, the more likely you are to get careless or make a mistake. Suppose you go up against some kid who misreads a gesture?”

“That’s farfetched.”

“That’s exactly the way it happens, Frank! Do you think you’re going to be able to bail yourself out on this thing? You’re stalling for time, hoping for a break. You should come in before more people get hurt.”

“I haven’t hurt a soul, John.”

“Why was that bookmaker killed?”

“Major would have been killed if he had been talking to you! He was talking to a shield!”

“Ah, but you’re the special shield who’s been fitted with a frame so tight you can’t say cheese.”

“People think I know something. Harry Levine thought I knew something. That’s why he wanted me out on the street.”

“That’s not exactly true, and a non sequitur besides,” John said. “I was there. Harry Levine saw the evidence against you as unpersuasive. He might still think so, but with another man killed, he’d want you off the street, and you know it.”

“I’ll think about what you said. Thanks. I’m really all right.” He hung up and waited for the operator to call back with the additional charges.

“You want over there still, or over here?”

The old lady was talking about the BLT. She was an Asian learning English with a Brooklyn accent. If Devlin could listen to her for ten minutes, he’d have her voice down cold.

And that was how he was going to scam the cops at the Antonucci apartment.

The BLT was served with a pickle and a little paper cup of coleslaw. In the months he was getting sober, Devlin had focused consciously on the small joys of life like a monk saying his prayers, clearing his mind so that the memory, then the reality, of the pleasure of, say, a piece of Bickford’s apple pie, could return to him. Bickford’s was history now, but in Devlin’s mind to this moment, the restaurant chain had served the best apple pie in the history of the world.