The driver moved away. “You really are one ugly motherfucker, do you know that? Did anybody ever tell you?” The driver gunned the taxi out into traffic again. He blew his horn a couple of times, changed lanes, and then disappeared from view.

Devlin entered the building in a purposeful manner. Even if there weren’t any N.Y.P.D. bulls on the premises, there was bound to be a Port Authority plainclothesman who might have seen his picture, or a private TWA flatfoot whose attention would be attracted to a hesitation or false gesture. Only two clerks were working the check-in counter. Fewer than a hundred people were in view. Lederer would have had to clean up. He had a room somewhere, probably not far from here—a subculture of anonymity surrounded airports. Who would understand it better than Lederer? A quick shower, a change of clothes, gathering up the incriminating evidence, checking the room one more time for anything that might have been left behind. Lederer probably had a pocketful of fully operational credit cards bearing a half a dozen names. He had made a lifelong study of killing people for money. And Devlin had made a lifelong study of people like Lederer, trying to figure out how their minds worked. Criminals weren’t like the rest of the population. Their minds were more primitive, evaluating everything in terms of threats and opportunities. Where was Lederer? How had he perceived tonight’s events? Devlin spotted a plainclothesman, a young black man with a newspaper folded under his arm. He was sitting in a passenger waiting area, smoking, his eyes working the crowd. Devlin continued toward a combination coffee shop-bar, keeping his eyes focused on his destination. If the plainclothesman had been alerted to Devlin, he hadn’t adjusted for a change in clothing. The coffee shop would give Devlin a view of the plainclothesman and the entrance to the building beyond. A television screen showed that the next flight, to Paris, was leaving in fifty minutes. Lederer was not going to Paris. Lederer was not a Paris kind of guy.

Devlin ordered a small container of coffee and moved to a table in the back of the coffee shop. In a few minutes the plainclothesman got up and moved to the other side of the waiting room. All he could see of Devlin was the profile of a guy reading the Post. Hours had passed since his last cigarette, Devlin realized. He wondered if he could turn his mind away from them for a little while longer—a hell of a thing to think about, under the circumstances. The plainclothesman opened his paper, another Post. Weren’t there any other newspapers in town? For all Devlin knew, the morning papers—the News, anyway—had bigger, newer pictures of him. He felt somebody pull up to the table behind him.

“You are one smart motherfucker, aren’t you?”

Devlin didn’t turn around. He knew Lederer’s voice.