We went through the file together. The medical report held few surprises. Death was attributed to massive hemorrhaging from multiple wounds resulting in excessive loss of blood. I guess you could call it that.

I read through witness interrogation reports, made my way through all the other forms and scraps of paper that wind up in a homicide victim’s file. I had trouble paying attention. My head was developing a dull ache and my mind was spinning its wheels. Somewhere along the way Durkin let me go through the rest of the file on my own. He lit a fresh cigarette and went back to what he’d been typing earlier.

When I’d had as much as I could handle I closed the file and gave it back to him. He returned it to the cabinet, detouring on the way back to make a stop at the coffee machine.

“I got ’em both with cream and sugar,” he said, setting mine before me. “Maybe that’s not how you like it.”

“It’s fine,” I said.

“Now you know what we know,” he said. I told him I appreciated it. He said, “Listen, you saved us some time and aggravation with the tip about the pimp. We owed you one. If you can turn a buck for yourself, why not?”

“Where do you go from here?”

He shrugged. “We proceed in normal fashion with our investigation. We run down leads and assemble evidence until such time as we have something to present to the district attorney’s office.”

“That sounds like a recording.”

“Does it?”

“What happens next, Joe?”

“Aw, Jesus,” he said. “The coffee’s terrible, isn’t it?”

“It’s okay.”

“I used to think it was the cups. Then one day I brought my own cup, you know, so I was drinking it out of china instead of Styrofoam. Not fancy china, just, you know, an ordinary china cup like they give you in a coffee shop. You know what I mean.”

“Sure.”

“It tasted just as bad out of a real cup. And the second day after I brought the cup I was writing out an arrest report on some scumbag and I knocked the fucking cup off the desk and broke it. You got someplace you gotta be?”

“No.”

“Then let’s go downstairs,” he said. “Let’s go around the corner.”

Chapter 14

Chapter 14