Devlin pulled into a parking lot six blocks from South Street and walked the rest of the way to the Seaport, wondering if he should be grateful for having even found a place to park. He had forgotten about the traffic—and the tourists. Under normal summer lunch-hour conditions, the streets of lower Manhattan were mobbed with short-sleeved office workers. Shuffled among them today were cellulited women in shorts and T-shirts, men in shorts and adjustable caps, kids with balloons, kids eating, kids squinting in the sun, more kids than Devlin had ever seen before in this part of town. A fair number of the dads, moms, and kids had festooned themselves with Liberty clothing and trinkets, mostly green polyurethane Lady Liberty tiaras. Sprays of green spikes waggled everywhere in the surging flood of bobbing heads. All these clowns were going to be in the city until Friday, the night of the big fireworks show. By then, all would be covered with Liberty memorabilia—someone somewhere had gotten the idea that this junk would have value someday, if you only held on to it long enough.

New York had a big, bad reputation with the rest of America and this was the reason why: New Yorkers loved to skin Americans. Tall ships, world’s fairs—every ten years or so, the city staged an extravaganza that shook hundreds of millions from American pockets. An out-of-town lady Devlin once dated accused him of having a “New York mind” and he supposed now that this was what she had meant. But it was not his problem: if the Ozzies and Harriets of America wanted to hate New York for costing them so much, it was really only because of the dancing green polyurethane Lady Liberty tiaras; how dumb did you have to be, to buy a thing like that? And then wear it? Better to hate New York than admit it had fucked your ass again.

Steve Loncaric was wearing his collar. He made a show of looking at his watch as Devlin was led by the maitre d’ to their outdoor table. “You had another fifteen minutes. I was beginning to wonder if there had been a late-breaking development that I hadn’t heard on the radio, or seen on television. Or read in the newspaper. I’m sorry about Jack Brennan. And for you. How are you doing? Are you all right?”

“It’s still sinking in.” Devlin sat down. A nice breeze swept up off the water. Loncaric was drinking Saratoga Vichy. Devlin asked for iced coffee. “What time was I due?”

“Noon.”

Devlin winced. He used to show up forty-five minutes late for lunch when he was on a bender and trying to conceal it.