September 1970. Devlin picked the lock of Malone’s apartment, slit a small hole in the top of the lining of Malone’s alpaca coat, and planted enough smack to certify Malone as a dealer, and then withdrew. In November Devlin spotted Malone’s lavender Cadillac pulled over to the curb at the corner of Seventh Avenue at Fiftieth Street, outside the old Roxy Theater, and pulled Malone and the alpaca coat out from behind the wheel. Devlin’s partner searched the coat.

“Oh man!” Malone yelled. He was wise at once, knew who had done him, if not how. Devlin stayed away from the courtroom when Malone came up for sentencing; as it was, Malone cursed Devlin as he was led away. That didn’t bother Devlin. The sight of him might have left Malone with an even more bitter memory, bad enough to make him snap—as if two years in Attica would not be bitter enough.

Oh man!

Devlin could hear it still. And here was Malone, fighting the tide of the crowd on Seventh Avenue, hopping around on shoes taped to his feet, mooching spare change. Had Devlin kept him from becoming president? The question of right and wrong intersected in Devlin’s brain with his memory of that Wisconsin apple-knocker’s busted mug and Devlin’s certain knowledge that Malone had done it. One beating too many. Devlin had no problem understanding the impact of the Malones of the world: they caused nothing but pain, which was as close to a definition of pure evil as Devlin could get. In not much more time Malone would have been the perpetrator of a murder—or the victim. All these years later, it was, in fact, a statistical miracle that he hadn’t become one or the other anyway. Devlin had been drinking in those days, too, and it had surely affected his judgement. Maybe Clarence “Bingo” Malone should have thought of such things before laying bare that girl’s facial bones with his fists.

Oh man!

Sure, Devlin thought, make me care.

“Boy, are you daydreaming!”

John. Devlin blinked. John Lord was leaning across the front seat of his old Dodge sedan, looking up at Devlin through the passenger-side window. Devlin had been so lost in thought that he hadn’t seen John’s car roll up in front of him.

“I’m going to park here.” John gathered up some paper bags from the car floor. “Every time I want sushi, you want corned beef. I hate going into Katz’s. Those bars on the windows do nothing for my appetite.”

They began to use the roof of the car as a dinner table. “What did you get for yourself?”

“Lox.”

“Jewish sushi.”

“That’s why I got it. I hope it satisfies the craving. I owe Lee Mistretta. At six o’clock it was my turn, and he took the squawk.”

“Has he said anything to you about Brennan or Lopez?”