John smiled. “A bureaucrat’s dream. What a mystery! What the hell were you up to? Suppose all the corpses are accounted for. Even so, there isn’t enough of a trail, enough living witnesses, for the real story to emerge.”

“So whoever was responsible for explaining it all would just make up a story to fit the available facts. The can would be tied to my tail.”

“Your dead tail,” John corrected. “Now let me tell you about Antonucci. What year did you graduate high school?”

“1960.”

“Antonucci graduated with you. He was in your class every step of the way. He didn’t drop out.”

The shock was like a concussive wave. Devlin could hear his voice rising. “Why didn’t I remember him?”

“You did! You remembered his face. You knew him. What do you expect of yourself after twenty-five years?”

“More.”

“Are you saying you accept my point?”

Devlin stared off at nothing, trying to ignore John’s Jesuit-trained logic-chopping. Devlin was thinking instead of how he had chosen to see that time of his life so long ago: innocent, even irrelevant. Why Antonucci? What was the point of going so far back in Devlin’s past? And how? How did they, whoever they were, learn so much about him?

“Antonucci’s supposed to have mob connections.”

“My buddy in Levine’s office fed me a little of that,” John said. “Antonucci’s connections are with the very bottom rung of Johnny Gotti’s ladder. His last real job was as a car-parker at that restaurant on the West Side where they’ll cover your license plate while you’re inside—a real cultural breakthrough, that, right up there with television evangelism. Have you heard anything I’ve said?”

“You were talking shit,” Devlin said quietly, even though his thoughts had drifted elsewhere. “The joint to which you refer is mob-owned, as you know, and they’re covering the license plates just to bust balls, just like they keep insisting they’re legitimate businessmen. But you’re right, I was thinking of something Levine said last night. He wanted me to focus on what I knew about the Brennans. That maybe something in the back of my head somewhere would shed some light on Jack’s killing. I was just trying to take the idea one step further—into the area Levine still doesn’t know about, presumably, which is how tightly wired to this I really am. Suppose I’ve been made part of it because someone knows something in my head puts me in the middle? Someone thinks I know something? My God!”

“When are you going to talk to Levine?”

Devlin suddenly thought of Eileen. If the situation was as bad—threatening—as he was beginning to believe, he owed it to her to involve Levine. Yes.