“I can only guess,” John said. He was silent a moment. John, another second-generation cop, had come into the department with his father’s reputation preceding him; his father had never even seen a nickel. Back in the sixties, until the life Devlin had been living had blown up in his face, he had played the game, like his father before him—although he had known nothing about his father’s cheap chiseling until he had earned a shield of his own. Devlin’s first beat had been in Central Harlem, and at the end of the first week, a sergeant he had never seen before motioned him over to a squad car and tucked an envelope into Devlin’s breast pocket. Seventy-five bucks. From the numbers operation in the middle of the block, about which he had known nothing. In the thirteen years he had been sober, Devlin had not touched so much as an apple. Some people in the department thought that change in him, as much as anything, had stopped Devlin’s career cold. Devlin was content to let them think what they wanted; when he had changed his life, he had changed it completely. He had started all over again dead broke, and when his father died, Devlin’s own savings—and sports winnings—were above forty thousand dollars.

“Fuck it,” Devlin said. “Tell me what Mariano said to you.”

“He was looking for you. The second time he called, he wanted to know if I had any idea where you were. I said no. Monday’s the night you don’t see Eileen, right?”

“We changed it this week. I was with her today, but I had to run an errand.” Devlin remembered that Cummings had gotten Eileen’s telephone number from John—when? “Mariano’s been calling here, too. I was listening to the messages when you called.”

John said, “At eight o’clock Levine himself called me. That guy never moves his lips when he talks. Very calm. Told me to give a hand in putting you in touch with him.”

Devlin knew Harry Levine the way John knew Mariano. Another guy who thought that the real action in the N.Y.P.D. was at Police Plaza—Centre Street, back then. Devlin had no more evidence on Levine than John had on Mariano, and because he had to guess, Devlin figured Levine had never touched anything. Never told anything, either, at least for much of his career. Once you were close to the top, it was no longer in your interest to turn your back on the misdeeds of brother officers. They weren’t brothers anymore anyway, but children to be praised or punished.

“So you don’t have a clue, either, to what this is about, except that they want me.”

“Oh, they do want you,” John said. “If you can tell me what it’s about, I wish you would—”

“When I find out.”