Sobering up, he had walked around Sunnyside, visiting places where he had played as a child, some of which he had not seen since World War II. He had seen the school, J.H.S. 125, when he had taken Maryellen on a tour of his old haunts. By then someone had settled with spray paint a score with a teacher Devlin could remembering hating, and the spray paint was still there, twenty-five years later: VOORHEES SUCKS. Years later, when Devlin called it to Eileen’s attention, she said it was funny, just how a tyrannical teacher should be remembered. When Maryellen had seen it, she had reacted in the opposite way, angry and even hurt for the hapless Voorhees. “You can’t help it if you’re that way,” Maryellen had said. “That’s exactly the point.”

Yes.

He heard a siren coming this way fast. The trick was not keeping his eyes off the window, but off the old lady. The sound had made her lean back and watch out of the corner of her eye; if she felt the need to be seen minding her own business, she could do it instantly. A war refugee’s cunning. She would see Devlin’s eyes if they shifted to her, and maybe she would regard his interest as suspicious. In her position, Devlin would: he had no legitimate reason to be interested in her reaction to the police. As the car flashed by, the boiling red lights bright in the rainy late afternoon shadow, Devlin let himself take some notice of it. The old woman saw, and when he brought his head around again, she was ready for his comment.

“All the time, these days,” he said.

“I don’t go out at night no more,” the old woman said. “Too dangerous. Makes me crazy.”

Devlin was curious about the police. “You never know,” he said as he got up from the stool. “You can’t be too careful, know what I mean?” He thought the rain on the window would make it difficult for him to see what was happening. Not at all. “See? It’s just up the next block. Two cars, and here comes a third.” They had the Falcon—how? How had they learned of it?

The shlub at the scene of Major’s murder had seen Devlin drive off in the Seville. No. The people who had heard Devlin leave the message concerning Sal on Eileen’s machine and had sent the young Latino to Eileen’s door last night must have figured out that Devlin had gone to Sal’s for another car. When they found the Seville, Sal had had to tell them what Devlin was driving. In Devlin’s mind, the question of who had tapped Eileen’s telephone was settled: cops. Federal cops, most likely, or even, given the story that was circulating about Devlin and Jack Brennan, some kind of federal-local task force.

Your tax dollars at work.