Brennan paused, clutching his drink. Maybe he wasn’t used to words like “drooling moron” being applied to him. “It’s been useful to let people think that. After the stroke, I didn’t know how much better I was going to get. I’m ninety percent now. I spent two years in the chair. It gave me a chance to think, reorganize my life, assume a different kind of role. I deal with only a few top people. We have an election coming up that we can win for a change. We have just the boy. You wait and see. I had my lawyers tell the mayor on Tuesday that we wanted to be kept informed.”

He brought his glass to his lips again, his hand shaking so much Devlin could hear the ice tinkling in the glass. “On Wednesday, when Hamilton told our people about the trouble with this Jewboy, Levine, he did it in a way that was too reminiscent of the positions he took at the beginning of his administration—about who was going to steal what, when, and where. The mayor is a ridiculous man who won’t have any kind of constituency in the next election. Even if he manages to hold on to his job until then, he’s ruined, and everybody but a deaf Burmese monk on retreat with his thumb up his ass knows it.”

Brennan shifted his weight from one foot to the other and sighed deeply, blinking. As cool as it was in this room, his forehead gleamed with perspiration. “I have a masseur come in three times a week. It helps. Norberto Torres will have a real constituency in the future. We want to make friends. We want to start delivering to him, so he will deliver for us. He came out to the house Wednesday night.”

He drew a deep breath, allowing his eyes to wander. When he began again, he spoke faster than before. Devlin wondered if he was even interested in what he was saying, he was going so fast. “By then I was sure you were in on killing my son. You had been recruited for the ultimate purpose of taking the fall, but you knew what you were doing. You were active in the plot. I’m still not completely convinced about what you did or did not know. This morning we were presented with another situation. The new official view is that you’re innocent.”

Devlin didn’t believe any of it, but he didn’t want to call Brennan on it. He wanted to remember Liz dying, the awful slash across her throat. “If that’s what you want to call it.”