He couldn’t remember the last time he had been in Eileen’s apartment without her, and he felt like a ghost, outside himself. He went straight to the bedroom and replaced her message tape with his own, rewound it, and pushed the play button. The first message was from Eileen, essentially the same as the one she had put on her own announcement tape. There were two from the guy from the News whose earier call Devlin had not returned. Two from a young woman who identified herself as a producer on Live at Five, the local NBC magazine show. And then the last, a male voice as flat and monotonous as death itself: “You made a mistake talking to my father. Faster than you can imagine, we’re gonna hunt down who you love best in the whole world, and then we’re gonna kill her.”

Devlin headed out, turning both locks after him. Another of the few advantages to being a drunk was knowing where all the public telephones were. There was a bar on the northwest corner of Forty-seventh Street and Forty-eighth Avenue, practically right around the corner. Devlin wasn’t as sure now as he had been in Levine’s company that it had been the FBI that had identified Eileen the other evening. And that would mean that the wrong people would be able to hear Devlin calling John’s number to warn Eileen. They could have that white Lincoln rolling even faster than they had this morning. Morning: Devlin had been going nonstop for fifteen or sixteen hours. And contrary to what Levine had said, he was not exhausted. If anything, Devlin was getting still another wind. He had change ready for the telephone before he entered the bar.

John picked up on the second ring. “It’s me. On my answering machine was a clear threat to Eileen’s life. Brooklyn-based wise guys. It’s my own fault. I called their daddy and cursed their grandmother. Don’t open the door until you see uniforms and I.D.s.”

“She’s sitting right here, Frank,” John said calmly. “Want to say hello?”

“I certainly do.”

He heard the handset being moved. “Hello? How’s your ugly old self?”

“Like horseshit, as my mother used to say, all over town. Were you being followed earlier this evening?”

“I certainly was!”

“Describe him for me.”

“Oh, he was FBI.”

“How do you know that?”