“Now, you see, that helps. The mayor wanted to consult with the nurse on the best way of telling them. This was early in the evening, at Gracie Mansion. Mrs. Brennan picked up the telephone. She recognized the mayor’s voice. She started asking questions, and quickly enough figured it out for herself. ‘He’s dead,’ she said. Very quietly. The mayor couldn’t say anything. He waited for her to ask how?—you know, what happened—but she never did. She said, ‘I want to have a doctor present when Jim is told.’ That’s all. She put the telephone down, and then after a moment the people with the mayor—let’s just say I have all this on good authority—could hear Mrs. Brennan tell the nurse to take the call in the kitchen. Her voice was flat. The nurse picked up and she and the mayor discussed the situation, but the other line was never disconnected. Mrs. Brennan could have been listening. Later, when the Mayor replayed a tape of the conversation, somebody noticed that Mrs. Brennan never called the mayor by name or title. Someone else in the room with her might never have known who was on the other end of the line. Also, how quietly she said, ‘He’s dead.’ It’s possible someone else in the room wouldn’t have heard her. Question: Could old Jim have been in the room while she was learning of the death of their son? Could she have concealed her reaction from him?”

“She’s good at it, sure, if that’s what you mean,” Devlin said, “and if his wheelchair was facing away, he wouldn’t have seen any more than the mayor did. Since the stroke, Jim Brennan hasn’t been able to turn his head.”

“How do you know that?”

“When he had the stroke, I talked to a doctor I knew, an A.A. guy. He said the stroke was just too massive for there to be any chance of recovery. ‘Lucky to be alive—or maybe not,’ was the way he put it.”

Devlin realized he was staring at Levine. Even with Jack Brennan running for the Senate, Harry Levine didn’t know enough about the Brennans to be close to the truth about old Jim’s condition, in spite of the fact that he hadn’t been seen in public in seven years. For Devlin, that spoke volumes about what remained of the Brennan power. If the Brennans didn’t want the truth known, they could suppress it from people as important and centrally located as Harry Levine. Devlin didn’t envy Levine. It took cold blood to put a spy in the boss’s office. Devlin had seen Brennan’s cold-bloodedness for years. Cold-bloodedness was no way to be remembered. “Nightclub” Devlin was bad enough.

“Now I’m ready to see Octavio Lopez,” Levine said.