“They did us a fucking favor. Let the FBI spend two million dollars to learn that some imported hitter called his uncle Vic. It could be that simple. Frank Devlin is the key to this thing. He knows.”

“Tell me about it,” Corella said. “We’re turning up even more stuff about him like we sent in after lunch, stuff that goes back thirty years.”

Devlin froze. “Well, there you go,” he said as McQuaid, and hung up.

And turned around to see the old woman staring at him as if hypnotized. She had heard him speaking in two completely different voices. He winked and bit into his sandwich. She gave a nervous little smile and nodded timidly. She was frightened, all right. He’d said something about the FBI. If she suspected he was a cop, she was wondering about the things he had said earlier. The understanding that he was some kind of tough guy was in her eyes. Given where she came from and what she might have seen there, that was enough. Flashing his shield would probably be overkill. He got up onto the wobbly stool again. “Good coffee,” Devlin said in his own voice. “Let me have another cup.”

The old lady withdrew to the little back room. Did she have another phone back there? He couldn’t take the chance, but the wobbly stool gave him an idea—a memory. As a child he had spun on stools like these, and one day he had wanted to see how they worked. The padded top lifted off. The pedestal was hollow. Now Devlin moved quickly and quietly, folding Jack Brennan’s letter in half lengthwise. This seat lifted easily, and the letter slid into the hollow pedestal, wedging itself at the top. Nothing to it. Devlin called good night, left a dollar tip, and headed for the door.