“There you go,” Levine said. “Not necessarily or completely politics, but something else, and maybe going back in time. All I’m trying to do now is get as much of a lay of the land as I can. The timing of this thing, the instructions I’ve gotten from the commissioner—and Hamilton. Mr. New York. That little prick. I’m confiding in you, for Christ’s sake—I don’t like it. It scares me. The press may be kicking the mayor’s ass all over the city, but Torres as the first Latino commissioner is still untouchable. Where does that leave me? I don’t have to report crimes to the press, but suppose the press decides to turn on me for not reporting the murder of the Democratic candidate for the Senate? How do I cover my ass on a deal like this? Is it possible? On the other hand, maybe it’s being assumed that I’m going to try. I have been on this case longer than you, Devlin, but I can’t help thinking that some people have been on it a whole lot longer than me.”

Devlin stayed silent as the M.E.’s building came into view. Commissioner Torres, with Hamilton behind him, wanted the murder kept quiet. It had taken them by surprise. The mode and timing of the killing was supposed to mean something. Sending a message, the old mob guys used to call it.

Levine said, “So the Brennans are lace-curtain, eh? What type are you?”

“Shanty.”

“What’s the difference?”

“My uncle Buddy used to say that lace-curtain Irish don’t fart in the presence of clergy.”

As they entered the autopsy room, the smell of rotting corpses wrapped around them. Devlin hated dead-body calls. He was glad his family was done with funerals—his family was done, period. Jack and the girl were on adjoining metal slabs, naked. She was pretty, but patches of her were purple. She had been shot in the left eye. Her teeth were bloody, too. The back of her head was a mass of matted hair, bits of skull, and bloodcoated lumps of brain. Death as instantaneous as it was possible to get, as in Lights Out.

Seven other detectives were in the room, all Levine’s boys. Devlin knew most of them—one, he thought, from A.A. No doctors. One attendant.

“Why aren’t these bodies being processed?” Levine asked him.”

“All I was told,” said the attendant, “was that if you wanted more information, you’d have to talk to the M.E.”