“Afraid not,” I say. I can’t stop crying, but I’m not making a sound, just wet tears filling my eyes so I can’t see straight. “Did you ask her brother? Jimmy Silver? Silver Chambers, that is? Rick Chambers, Connie’s old man, he married Martha Silver Chambers after Paul Silver got whacked, and adopted Martha’s boy Jimmy. Sure as fuck you must know Jimmy Silver, right? I mean, they pay you to do something over here, don’t they?” I’m looking right at Fitz, knowing I’m going too fucking far.

Fitz looks at me like he’s going to smack me. Then he does. He hits me pretty fucking hard, my head rings through the hangover fog, and I taste blood through the day-old whiskey coming up my throat. I swallow.

“We think she was killed in some sort of, you know, love triangle,” he said. “So maybe you could tell me, Jake. What was your relationship with Conrad?”

I close my eyes. “We were lovers.”

The pigs all mutter under their breath, saying shit about faggots and pansy perverts.

“Seems she had another lover, do you know anything about that?”

“I think she was seeing some woman.”

“A woman?” More chuckles from the pigs. “You know this dyke’s name?”

“Mickey something.”

“Michelle Dubois. Works up at the airport. Smokes big cigars.”

“Sure. I never knew her.”

“Do you think Michelle might have wanted Conrad dead? Might have been some sort of lover’s quarrel? Some sort of sick—”

“Consuela confessed, didn’t she?” I say. “She confessed to something, didn’t she? Told you she had the murder weapon? And you fuckers sent her home, knowing she’d be whacked, leaked the information to Jimmy, fucking had her snuffed, all because it’s easier and pays better than getting off your asses to prosecute her.” I stop all of a sudden. I’m killing myself and I know it.

The cop is stone-faced. He acts like he hasn’t heard me at all, which is lucky for me.

When he does answer, he speaks very slowly, as if talking to a child. “Do you think this Michelle might have wanted her boyfriend dead? Some kind of lover’s quarrel?”

Boyfriend?

I wait a long time, finish my cigarette, and snub it out before answering that one.

“I wouldn’t know anything about that, Sergeant. But Michelle didn’t seem like the violent type. Even if she was a union man.”