“Too much of a coincidence. I kept going back to the club and asking questions. Cost me five thousand bucks but finally I found somebody willing to tell me that Dennis Baker and some of his fellow cops ran shakedown scams in the city.”

Duncan explained about a scheme of planting drugs on businessmen or their children and then dropping the charges for huge extortion payments.

“The missing drugs from the One One Eight,” Pulaski said.

Sachs nodded. “Not enough to sell but enough to plant as evidence, sure.”

Duncan added, “They were based out of some bar in lower Manhattan, I heard.”

“The St. James?”

“That’s it. They’d all meet there after their shifts at the station house were over.”

Rhyme asked, “Your friend. The one who was killed. What was his name?”

Duncan gave them the name and Sellitto called Homicide. It was true. The man had been shot during an apparent mugging and no perp was ever collared.

“I used my connection I’d made at the club—paid him a lot of money—to get introduced to some people who knew Baker. I pretended I was a professional killer and offered my services. I didn’t hear anything for a while. I thought he’d gotten busted or gone straight and I’d never hear from him. It was frustrating. But finally Baker called me and we met. It turns out he’d been checking me out to see if I was trustworthy. Apparently he was satisfied. He wouldn’t give me too many details but said he had a business arrangement that was in jeopardy. He and another cop had taken care of some ‘problems’ they’d been having.”

Sachs asked, “Creeley or Sarkowski? Did he mention them?”

“He didn’t give me any names but it was obvious that he was talking about killing people.”

Sachs shook her head, eyes troubled. “I was upset enough thinking that some of the cops from the One One Eight were taking kickbacks from mobsters. And all along they were the actual killers.”

Rhyme glanced at her. He knew she’d be thinking of Nick Carelli. Thinking of her father too.

Duncan continued. “Then Baker said there was a new problem. He needed someone else eliminated, a woman detective. But they couldn’t kill her themselves—if she died everyone’d know it was because of her investigation and they’d follow up on the case even more intensely. I came up with this idea of pretending to be a serial killer. And I made up a name—the Watchmaker.”

Sellitto said, “That’s why there were no hits in the watchmaker trade associations.” They’d all come back negative on a Gerald Duncan.

“Right. The character was all a creation of mine. And I needed someone to feed you information and make you think there really was a psycho, so I found Vincent Reynolds. Then we started the supposed attacks. The first two I faked, when Vincent wasn’t around. The others—when he was with me—I bungled them on purpose.

“I had to make sure you found the box of bullets that’d connect the Watchmaker to Baker. I was going to drop them somewhere so you’d find them. But”—Duncan gave a laugh—“as it turned out, I didn’t have to. You found out about the SUV and nearly got us.”