“Thank you,” said Lansky.

“His Excellency tells me he spoke with Señor Reles on the telephone last night, as was his custom every Wednesday evening. The call commenced at exactly eleven forty-five p.m. and terminated at eleven fifty-five. Which would also seem to suggest that the time of death was during the fireworks, between twelve and twelve-thirty. In fact, I am convinced of it. Let me show you why.”

He held out a mangled-looking bullet in the palm of his hand.

“This is a bullet that I dug out of the wall in the study. It looks like a thirty-eight-caliber round. A thirty-eight would be a lot of gun to keep quiet at any time. But during the fireworks, six shots might easily be fired without anyone hearing.”

Meyer Lansky looked at me. “What do you think of that idea?” he asked.

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. Max said you used to be a cop. Kind of cop were you anyway?”

“The honest kind.”

“Fuck that. I mean what was your area of investigation?”

“Homicide.”

“So what do you think of what the captain says?”

I shrugged. “I think we’ve been jumping over one guess after another. I think it might be an idea to let a doctor examine the body and see if we can pin down the time of death. Maybe that will tie in with the fireworks, I don’t know. But that would make sense, I think.” I glanced over the floor of the terrace. “I don’t see any shell casings, so either the killer used an automatic and picked them up in the dark, which seems unlikely, or the gun was a revolver. Either way, it would seem best to find the murder weapon as a matter of priority.”

Lansky looked at Captain Sánchez.

“We already looked for it,” said the captain.

“Looked?” I said. “Looked where?”

“The terrace. The penthouse. The eighth floor.”

“Maybe he threw it into that park,” I said, indicating the Campo de Marte. “A gun might land there in the dark and nobody would notice.”

“Then again, maybe he took it with him,” said the captain.