“I have the files you wanted. They’re at the Seventy-second Street Marina—on the launch.” To Henderson, John said, “He’s a big boy. Check it out with the chief’s office, if you want. Just get us the car!” He turned to Devlin. “That’s some mess where your nose used to be. You’re right about Harry Levine. When I told him about the letter, he reacted like a kid. ‘I’m going to the office,’ he said. ‘You answer to me.’ You had to love it. He told me to bring the shotgun.” John was peering at Devlin’s nose. “I like what you said this morning about where you would be sitting when you rolled up. If you weren’t driving, you had no slack. When I saw you in the passenger seat—and that bandage—I went to red alert. Instantly.”

Another chill. Devlin was beginning to realize how very close he had come to dying. They could have killed him in Dutchess or Paterson if they had felt lucky about finding the gun. Devlin pushed through to the Lincoln. Sonny’s head rested against the windowsill, his hair sparkling with blue-white fragments of the door window. Sonny had been a split second from not dying, and now he looked like that had been his last thought. Devlin said, “Up in Dutchess County somewhere is Kevin’s shot-up, burned-out Plymouth. In the toolbox in the trunk is a .25-caliber revolver that was used to kill the man and woman found on New York Boulevard in Queens Wednesday morning.” A blue-and-white let out a whoop. “I got the gun in Paterson yesterday.” He turned to John. “What about Eileen?”

“I’ll tell you in the car. Come on.” Henderson took the gun. “You played right into their insanity,” John said. “You stuck your head in the lion’s mouth. You did some job just getting here alive.”

“I out-acted them.” He climbed into the backseat. When John closed the door after him, Devlin said, “Sonny’s gun went off because I was grabbing it. It was one of those things.”

“He shouldn’t have pulled the gun in the first place. I don’t know why the other two went for their guns. I had them, absolutely had them. Sonny? Was that his name?” Now the siren sounded.

Devlin said, “When you came back, he couldn’t let go of the gun because I wouldn’t let go of him.”