Gerrity drew a breath. “You didn’t see the shooting from where you were, did you?”

“I didn’t even see Lopez get out of the van. What I did see was when the other guy arrived, the shooter.”

“I know you saw that,” Gerrity said. “Your eyes were all over him.”

Devlin kept quiet. One thing he was sure of: the yellow-jacketed man had given no sign of recognizing him. Maybe there wasn’t a way to connect them if Devlin didn’t volunteer the information. “You were going to ask me something.”

“Wait a minute.” Gerrity rubbed his chin. “Oh, yeah. How about that? I’d forgotten what it was. You must have seen something on my face. Yeah. What was the name of that guy who called you? You said a name.”

“Nelson.”

“Never heard of him. He called you too early? Nelson?”

Devlin was on the street again by a quarter to eight. A third guy remembered the yellow jacket appearing just a minute or two before the arrival of the van. Important stuff. The shooter’s name was Antonucci, and he was saying he had acted alone. People were arguing the question of whether it was even possible for Antonucci to have acted alone. When had he learned of the Brennan killing? How? How had he learned of Lopez’s transfer from Bellevue? “That’s the kicker,” one cop said, “because it opens a whole new can of worms.”

Right. Devlin never mentioned having seen something familiar about Antonucci. He had known Brennan and Lopez, and that was enough. He wasn’t so nervous now, but he wasn’t all right, either—another, deeper kind of nervousness was filling him, like a tide rushing into a grotto.

From an outdoor telephone, near the parking lot where he had put the car, Devlin called John Lord at the Ninth Precinct. John told him that Lopez’s murder had made the 7:30 news. “And now I find out that you were on the scene—a witness. And you’re already tied into both ends of the original murder. Maybe we ought to talk about this. Maybe we ought to meet somewhere.”

“Is that what you think?”

“Let’s just say I’m wondering.”

Devlin felt his stomach tightening; it was casting a vote for John. John believed something enough to take it seriously. And John hadn’t been told that Devlin thought he knew Antonucci. Devlin was connected to three of the four principals in the case. The only one he didn’t know was the murdered girl, Jane Milburn. “I’ll meet you in that bacon-and-egg joint around the corner on Second Avenue. I’m leaving now.”