Milo said, “Appreciate your telling us—”

“What will you do about it, Lieutenant?”

“Here’s the problem, sir. Richard was the first person we looked at but there’s no possibility of his shooting Ursula. Obviously, people of means often hire out but Richard opened his financial records to us, as well as his phone logs, and no suspicious money transfers came up.”

Cohen’s smile was chilly. “You’re serious.”

“What, sir?”

“No recorded transfers? Big deal, Lieutenant. Richard keeps substantial cash on hand and in terms of his calls, what’s to stop him using one of those disposable phones? Which I happen to know he does use, because I’ve seen them in his possession. Cheap little doodads. One time I asked him why he needed them when he had normal phones and he said for backup.”

Milo and I looked at each other. A disposable had come up as a means of controlling Frankie DiMargio.

Milo said, “How much cash are we talking about?”

Cohen said, “That I can’t tell you but it’s not pennies. The way the business works, the importing is done on the up-and-up but once the goods reach here and Richard negotiates with buyers in Chinatown or wherever, it can switch to all-cash.”

“Tax evasion.”

“I’m not a tax lawyer.”

“Who does Richard use?”

“No one,” said Cohen. “He does his own taxes. Which tells you something about his personality, what businessman at his level takes that upon himself?”

I said, “Easier to hide cash.”

Cohen shrugged. “Let me tell you something else: Even when Richard said nice things about Ursula, I always felt that down deep he hated her. Not disliked, hated. His mouth would be saying one thing but his eyes would be communicating something else.”

“Any idea why?”

“Sex, Lieutenant. He was convinced she was sleeping with everyone from the pool boy to the postman. Would gripe to me then explain it away. They were divorced, she was free to do what she wished, she was a woman with needs. I can’t back this up but my feeling was he had longtime performance issues. He told me about Ursula’s sex life—what he believed was her sex life—the first time we met. I thought this is one that could get toxic but Grant and I pulled off a minor miracle. Maybe major because I didn’t think much of Grant, still don’t. But I’ll give him one thing: He listened to his client and Ursula was always about making peace. So we managed to settle amicably.”

“After three years.”

“That, Lieutenant, is a blink of an eye, divorce-wise.”

I said, “Amicable but now Corey’s smirking.”