I asked, “Didn’t those dicks come up with anything?”

He smirked again. “I’m gonna give you the benefit of the doubt that by ‘dicks’ you mean detectives. They did, actually. Several eyeball witnesses saw that red sports car hauling ass from the scene. Mud-smeared plates, fore and aft. A bearded guy with a pony tail, which is what you saw, right?”

“Right.”

“Not enough to identify him.”

“Not enough to identify him. Anything else?”

Pat sipped more coffee, nodded; beyond the windowed walls the bullpen murmured with slow-moving but constant activity.

“Yeah, there is,” Pat said. “We know the guy turned left on Lex and sideswiped that newsstand on the corner. Paint samples were gathered, so if the right red Ferrari gets itself found, out of those 320 or 417, we’ll have our man.”

You had to know Pat as well as I did to pick up on the sarcasm in his tone. I felt sure the NYPD would dig into this hit-and-run with a victim out of the hospital the next day—just as soon as they got through tracking down the Star of India that was stolen in 1964.

I wasn’t saying anything, because I knew something Pat didn’t, or anyway had forgotten. But my silence and my expression were enough to jog his memory.

Eyes narrowing, he said, “That’s the newsstand on the corner of Lexington and 44th.”

“Is it?”

“That little midget they call Billy Batson, who runs the stand, he witnessed another hit-and-run, what? Twenty years ago?”

“Did he?”

“Kind of a pal of yours, isn’t he?”

My shrug maybe tried a little too hard. “I pick up my magazines there. By the way, all midgets are little.”

“Thanks a bunch for the intel.”

“No trouble.”

Pat sighed. “Y’know, Mike—most detectives hate coincidences. I hate coincidences. But you seem to thrive on them. Hell, you seem to attract them.”

“You mind if we change the subject to something besides what a disappointment I am to you?”

“Do I have a choice?”

I leaned forward, set my empty coffee cup on his desk. “Is there a number where Casey Shannon can be reached? You told Velda that he’s shacked up with some old honey of his somewhere in the Florida Keys.”

Nodding, Pat said, “That’s what his last partner, Chris Peters, told me…but Chris also said Casey left specific instructions he didn’t want to be bothered.”

“Meaning he didn’t leave a number. How about an address?”

“Not that I know of.” The gray-blue eyes narrowed. “Why?”

I sat back in my chair. “Shannon said he ran into Vincent Colby during the course of two separate suspicious-death inquiries.”

“I remember that conversation,” Pat said, nodding again. “But he didn’t indicate Colby was a person of interest, much less a suspect. I thought you said you were working for his old man—Vance Colby, the Wall Street big shot.”

“I am.”

“So whose side are you on in this thing?”

“What thing?”

Pat closed his eyes. Then he opened them and said, “Sorry. I should have remembered that you’re only interested in truth and justice.”