And Gerrity! Gerrity had said he had never heard of Nelson, and then he’d asked again to confirm what Devlin had said originally about Nelson. Why? What had been on Gerrity’s mind? Devlin had volunteered Nelson’s name. If Gerrity had never heard of him, why the curiosity? Gerrity was suspicious? What was he suspicious of?

One step at a time. Devlin was going to have to keep his head clear of speculative scenarios, his scenarios were usually not only speculative, they were self-destructive. He had Nelson on tape, period.

He had to test his memory. A lot was going to be asked of it in the next hours. He was going to have to remember the details of unpleasant and painful events, some made worse by the happy, even gaudy moments preceding them.…

Like everything that had ever happened between Maryellen Brennan and him …

The question his cousin Alice really had asked was, “Come on, you’re not going to be one of those guys who’s always an asshole about women, are you?”

Emphasis on the always.

He was remembering, all right—a ’37 Oldsmobile, summers in Sussex, Pamela, years and years before the only time Maryellen and Alice ever met. When?

Fresh out of the Army and the Police Academy, young Frank Devlin had no trouble finding women. He was a good-looking guy, gaining confidence with every experience. Women were everywhere, eager and attractive, intoxicated with opportunity. After three months in Central Harlem, he was moved, put in plainclothes, and assigned to street narcotics—the lowest level, busting people for selling reefers and carrying hypodermics—but he didn’t have to tell that to the women he was meeting. In the early sixties, people liked cops, and narcotics were still a mystery. So what if he was telling God’s truth when he murmured to a woman, “There really isn’t a whole lot to talk about?” On the infrequent nights he arrived home at dinnertime, the conversation was never about where he had been the night before, or the night before that.