The rain had stopped and the streets had dried to black semigloss, but here and there on Queens Boulevard potholes filled with rain flashed under the wheels. This was Harry Levine’s own car, a Peugeot with one-sweep wipers that Levine operated with an intensity that bordered on mania. Out of the house, Levine was turning into the chief of detectives again. When Devlin said that the last two weeks with Maryellen fifteen years ago were mostly a blur, Levine snapped that that sounded like bullshit.

“We were on a bender,” Devlin explained. “And not the first one. This started the week after Labor Day. Maryellen and I had taken a place out on the North Shore, figuring that with the reduced rates we might also get peace and quiet. We needed that, because our problems were getting worse and worse.”

“What problems?”

“Booze. She was speeding. She’d smoked a lot of hash that summer. I didn’t know whether I was drunk or sober. The way we dealt with each other would have turned us into nervous wrecks anyway. She would do things to enrage me, and I never knew where the hurt was coming from next. I did a lot of yelling and breaking things. In addition to all our other problems, we were snake-bit. Nothing worked right. The place we rented had a view to the west, and the setting sun poured in at the hottest time of day. We went out for lunch and little flying bugs attacked her sandwich so relentlessly we had to abandon the table. She’d put on so much weight that she’d taken to wearing a nightgown from the bathroom to the bed, then taking it off once she was under the sheets. I was supposed to pay no attention. She was miserable with herself, and that didn’t make me less jumpy. More than anything else in those days, I was jumpy. I was falling apart.”

At Sixty-third Drive the traffic light stopped them and a patrol car crossed their bow.

“Is this car known?”

“Nah,” Levine said. “When I’m in this car I don’t want to be known. You’re talking about the week after Labor Day. What does this have to do with two weeks later?”

“It was like watching a plane crash. You can see it coming, there’s nothing you can do about it, and then for a long time afterward you’re dogged by the agony of the moment. I’d just made detective, working out of Manhattan North. You remember my boss, a good guy—”

“Yeah, what’s-his-name. I know who you mean.”