“Back at the Waldorf. They have diplomatic immunity. Who knows, maybe they’re diplomats. Their sultan or whatever he is has seven women with him. His boys wanted to get back to the Towers to protect him. Nothing can protect a man trying to fuck seven broads at once. They don’t think much of us, either. Isn’t that a kick in the ass? Twenty years ago these guys were sucking camel dick and glad to get a nice one.”

“Where’s Octavio Lopez?”

“In the prison ward next door. We won’t have any trouble with the blood sample. The doctors say they would have done it anyway, run the same tests.”

“I want him in maximum security as soon as possible,” Levine said. “We can’t have any screwups. Does everybody understand that?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Let’s get it moving,” Levine said. “Nobody’s sleeping tonight.” Gerrity nodded and shouldered past them. Levine turned to Devlin, whose imagination, for a moment, allowed him to see a sleepless night fading into the brightness of dawn on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, heading home. He could see Brooklyn silhouetted against the pale yellow sunrise, steeples, asphalt roofing, and aluminum siding covering the decaying walls. Devlin shivered. Levine said, “The mayor and the chief called the Brennan household. Did you know they have around-the-clock nurses?”

“Old Jim has been in a wheelchair for seven years, and Charlotte must be getting frail,” Devlin said. “The last time I saw her was on television last spring, at a flower show at a church in Brooklyn. She seemed to be moving at a stately pace. It made me think she had invented a way of concealing the fact that she really was slowing down.”

“Is she capable of that?”

“It’s her idea of normal,” Devlin said.