Devlin waited, wondering if cops were going to walk through the door while he was holding a receiver to his ear. If he filled his face with a half sandwich, he might look so natural that they’d pass over him. A desperate notion, it showed him only how risky he knew his predicament really was. He wanted to check out the old woman. She was watching him. He waggled his fingers and drew a small, dry smile. Corella came back on the line.

“Yeah, we got a call to that number. Queens, right? One call in January, two minutes long. January is as far back as we can go. We’ve been working on that call to the liquor store on Twenty-first Avenue in Paterson. In New Jersey. We’ve got something, too, we think.”

Was something important about New Jersey to these guys? “Let’s hear it,” Devlin said in McQuaid’s voice.

“This call was in February, before eight o’clock on a Sunday morning,” Corella said eagerly. “That part of Paterson is an old Italian neighborhood, still one of the places the new immigrants settle while they learn the language and figure out what’s going on. After Charlie Lucky organized the mob, Paterson was home base for one of the first dons, Vittorio DiBennedetti, formerly of Brooklyn—”

Devlin stayed in character. “Why are you bothering me with this prehistoric Sicilian vespers shit?”

“The guy’s still alive, kid. Eighty-eight years old. His house is right around the corner from the liquor store, the one on Twenty-first Avenue. The guy who owns it says the store is closed Sundays. He has a kind of part-time manager who has a key, and we’re going to talk to him tomorrow.”

“Who is he?”

“A neighborhood guy. The owner already talked to him. The part-time manager thought he was doing a cranky old man a favor, opening the store for him, but then the phone rang, and the other guy with the old man told the manager to get lost. I’m reading from my notebook now. ‘Going to the front of the store wasn’t good enough for him. I had to wait outside.’”

“Whose quote is that?”

“That’s the owner quoting the manager.”

“Make sure that’s written down. Call all those people and tell them to keep their fucking mouths shut.”

“I already did. The owner told me that the manager said that if he didn’t have his parents to take care of, he’d be on the next nonstop to California. He definitely does not like the position he’s been put in.”

“He shouldn’t do people favors. Anything else?”

“That’s it,” Corella said. “I think DiBennedetti and company made a big mistake there.”