Levine stood up and reached for his jacket. “And I want you to tell me everything you know about the Brennans. No-holds-barred.” He glanced at his watch; Devlin figured the time at close to midnight. “Come with me. You know as well as I do that old Jim Brennan has more skeletons in his closet than a whole medical school, and that his sons weren’t any different. I want to hear it all, no matter how old, how secondhand. Right now the New York Police Department is about as effective as a high school marching band, but if people think this is the time to take advantage of us, to make use of us, so they can get away with murder, they’re dead wrong. I want to go up to the Medical Examiner’s office, where they’re holding the bodies. Apparently Jack Brennan had more sexual problems than lack of time. Jesus.” Levine stopped at the door and raised his fist as if to punch a hole in it, but then he let his arm drop to his side. “Ah, these motherfuckers! If they’re pulling anything, I’m going to pound it so far up their asses they’re going to look like the balloons in the Thanksgiving Day Parade!”

Devlin had never heard Levine curse before, but he was too busy thinking of other things for the word to register with any more violence than a distant squeal of brakes. Devlin knew nothing about Jack Brennan having sexual “problems.” And Devlin had already told Levine most of what he knew about Octavio Lopez. A bombed-out freak like Lopez couldn’t travel from the Lower East Side to the Waldorf-Astoria—three miles? not much farther—any more than he could dance Swan Lake. Glassy-eyed: all right, chosen by person or persons unknown, but of all the dirtballs in town, why him? And a .38 police special. Harry Levine opened the door and held it, his eyes on Devlin’s as Devlin passed through.

Now Devlin remembered a news item on the car radio last night mentioning Jack Brennan. Yes! About Brennan being unable to attend the cardinal’s dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria “due to stomach upset.” Years ago Devlin had taught “bad clams” to Jack Brennan. “‘Bad clams’ is the best excuse for otherwise unexplainable disappearances,” Devlin had told the Brennan brothers one particularly rowdy night.