“So far, so good.” One of their jokes. “So far, so good,” was what the man falling from the Empire State Building kept saying. Now Devlin saw John at the front of the restaurant. “Our minute’s up. I love you.”

“All right, ’bye.”

Devlin caught John’s eye and waved him toward a window table. The Lower East Side was filling with yuppies, blending in with the hippies left over from the sixties, and this earthedout, natural-wood coffee shop on Second Avenue had become a meeting place for both crowds. John fit in, a merry, rosy-cheeked young Irishman, his yellow hair always needing cutting. His ties were loose, his jackets and slacks mismatched. He didn’t give a shit. Devlin had been a long time coming to understand that about John’s generation. They could be up to their butts in mutual funds and second mortgages on second houses, but as long as they held back on the clothing, somehow turning themselves into walking emblems of disdain, they could believe in their hearts that they were not really part of society’s game. Merely playing at it. Devlin loved John, but he believed that about him. John was a terrific cop, but Devlin almost expected to answer the telephone one morning to hear John say he was turning in his gun and shield for a saffron robe in a monastery in Nepal.

They were finished with their eggs when Devlin got to the shooting of Lopez. Now, for the first time, Devlin told someone that the shooter, Antonucci, had looked familiar to him. John put down his coffee cup.

“I just can’t place him,” Devlin explained.

“That’s nearly perfect,” John said.

“I don’t follow you.”

“Perfect would have been if you couldn’t remember him at all, and you could still be tied to him. Suppose you were at a hotel the same time he was? There might be ‘evidence’ you met at the ballpark. Where were you at the time Jack Brennan and this Jane Milburn were killed?”

“With Eileen. Cummings called just after five.”

John frowned. “Cummings. You keep saying that name as if I’m supposed to know it.”

“He said you gave him Eileen’s number.”

“No, not me. Not recently. Cummings? Then you went to New Jersey?”

“Right.”

“Let’s check that out. Cummings.” He stood up. “Give me the change you have, I’m going to make some calls.”

Devlin motioned to the waitress for more coffee. “I should have brought in a newspaper.”

“I don’t think you’re going to be nonchalanting this for much longer.”

“That’s not what I’m doing, kid. I’m trying to stay sane. While you’re making the calls, I’m going to think of something else, like tonight’s card at the Meadowlands.”