The nun at the desk eyed him again as he passed. Opening the door to the parking lot, he expected to see a car full of DiBennedetti hoods waiting for him, but there was no one, just the grand vista he had enjoyed before he had gone inside for his very last look in his life at Maryellen Brennan. A waste of a human soul. Intellectually he knew he was not responsible for what had happened to her, but he felt something else. Wrong, and as crazy as she was. And just as wrong was the idea that she had any control over her behavior. She didn’t, and he had to accept the things he could not change.

He sat in the car awhile. He expected to pick up a tail as soon as he rolled out of here. If DiBennedetti knew Maryellen was shithouse nuts, he probably had an informant here in the convent. John Lord hadn’t liked Devlin’s plan, but he had agreed that it was probably the only one that would work. This was another cigarette opportunity, the last one Devlin might get for hours—or worse, for the rest of his life—but he still didn’t want to smoke. He didn’t know why. What had been desire was now almost revulsion, and consciously he had done nothing to bring about the change.

He sat back. He didn’t want to think of Maryellen, but her face rose up, fourteen years on her own personal treadmill, obviously worse, much worse, episodes.…

He yelled out loud. He saw Maryellen flashing from perky, to enraged, to the verge of tears, images of her as she was, and he still wanted to believe something. Who are you? Devlin had made the connections back to Maryellen through Liz Becker. Mrs. Weinstein by virtue of four months of marriage. On the telephone this week she’d said she’d been in therapy and it hadn’t done her any good. Who are you? When he hadn’t understood the Brennans, he had chalked it up to his own inexperience, indefinitely deferring judgement on the whole self-satisfied mob, including himself. Of course he hadn’t wanted understandings, hadn’t wanted to make judgements. Don’t bother me with facts, I’m too busy reaching for what I want.

Devlin was closer now to anything he might have wanted back in the sixties, but he felt no special sense of irony. Contrary to what Maryellen’s father may have imagined, Devlin had never given the Brennan money that much thought. In due time, he’d expected his Brennan connections would open doors in the N.Y.P.D., that’s all.…