“Nika,” Plea said. “I’ll send you the report.”

“Do it,” Willis said.

At least he didn’t wink.

“DEA,” Abe said. “Don’t Expect Anything.”

Plea shrugged. “They got bigger fish to fry.”

Abe plunked himself heavily on the corner of Plea’s desk. “I don’t care what perspective you have, half a million dollars isn’t peanuts.”

“Relativity, Abe. Relativity. It’s the federal government, where a fucking hammer costs a hundred and forty dollars. You know their efficiency rate? They gotta cover for every G.S. One through Twelve lifer who wouldn’t do more than an hour’s work in a day for any reason on God’s earth. So they gotta make maybe ten mil on a bust before they justify the overhead.”

“Thank you, Mr. Bargen.”

Plea noted the scar tightening through Abe’s lips. “Come on, Abe, what’s the problem? We got a righteous bust on the Linda Polk murder. We keep getting one a day, we end the year only about two hundred behind.”

Glitsky twisted his face in what he thought was a smile. “What about Cruz? The Cochran thing?”

Plea shook his head. “That’s a suicide/equivocal, not a homicide.”

“The fuck it’s not.”

Plea held up a hand. “Hey. You prove it, I’ll charge it, but I’d never even seen the file before twenty minutes ago. I don’t make this stuff up. You guys tell me what to run with, remember?” He opened the file with a casual hand, perused it a second, closed it back up. “Nothing here gets me out of the blocks, Abe. If it’s somewhere else, get it for me, would you? Otherwise…”

“Cruz was there. He admits it.”

Plea nodded. “And because of that, because you’re a good cop and you asked nice, we looked into it, didn’t we? In spite of no official finding of homicide. Didn’t we?”

Abe didn’t answer.

Plea stared at the sergeant. Maybe he was working too hard. He felt sorry for him. “We got corroboration on the dinner from the waiter. Cruz himself passed a polygraph. His little boyfriend -I took the kid apart, Abe-and once he got over being scared, all he did was provide an even better alibi. He followed Cruz all night, for chrissakes. Thought the guy was running around on him. Couldn’t have cared less about Cochran, just didn’t want Cruz to get all mad at him because he’d been followed.” Bargen paused, scratching his scalp. “Plus, there is no shred of physical evidence. No way we charge him.”

“The perfect crime, huh?”

“Maybe, but I’d say he didn’t do it.”

“He had a motive…”

“So did Alphonse, and he didn’t do it either, unless you don’t believe at least four of your fellow officers who were playing basketball with him, all of whom I’m sure want to protect a sweet and upstanding citizen like Alphonse.” Plea sighed. “And while we’re on it, the last guy with a motive didn’t do it either.”

Glitsky looked a question and Plea said, “Polk. His wife had a party that night. Twenty, thirty people. Polk was there the whole time.”

“I hadn’t even thought about him.”

Plea nodded. “I know. You were too busy with ready-made suspects. Me, I took it fresh, and Polk popped up like a plum.”

“But no, huh?”

“No.”

Glitsky went and sat in Willis’s chair. “What’s your hard-on for this thing?” Plea asked.

“I don’t know. Once in a while my sense of justice gets offended, I guess.”

“You ought to have this job. There’s no justice, there’s just grinding ’ em through. Plea ’em down and move ’em along.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“So why this one?”

He gave it a beat or two. “This one, Plea, is a murder. I’m a homicide cop.”

“That simple, huh?”

Glitsky seemed to be asking himself the same question. His lips tightened again, loosened, tightened. “Yep,” he said, standing up, “that simple.”

The kids were asleep. He lay with his shoes off on the living-room couch, his head in his wife’s lap as she massaged his temples. The television was on in the corner but was muted. It gave the only light in the room.

“I got my ass reamed. Frazelli, not so gently, suggested I just stay off it. It’s Griffin ’s case.”

“But I thought you’d-”

He shook his head. “Nope. Not anymore. That was when Frazelli thought there was new evidence.”

“But why pull back now?”

“Because now, my love, I have suggested not one, not two, but three possible suspects to the same killing within a twelve-hour period. It doesn’t do much for my credibility. Especially since two of them definitely didn’t do it, and there’s no evidence at all with the third.”

“Are you sure it was a murder?” She moved from his temples to the forehead, smoothing the crinkled brow back with the palm of her hand.

“Feels so good,” he said. He’d been awake since whatever time this morning. “I don’t know, maybe it’s Hardy.”

“Is he sure?”

“He’s dead positive now. I just got to wonder. Here’s a guy was good, you know, good. Just a beat cop, but he had a feel for it. Hell, you knew him.

“Then he goes into law and suddenly burns out. Anyway, he lays low for maybe what, six eight years, and now he swings back in action. You got to ask yourself what for? He doesn’t think he’s jerking himself off, I’ll tell you that.”

“But maybe he’s just wrong. Maybe he wants to believe it so bad, he’s making it true for himself.”

“Maybe,” Abe said. “All I know is, I’m off it. I’m still interested, but I’m off it.”

“And you told him that?”

He closed his eyes under her soothing hands. “Yeah. I told him he comes to me with a signed confession, I’ll be delighted. Then I’ll go shove it up-sorry, all worked up.”

“Just forget Griffin tonight, forget all that stuff. They’re not out to get you ’cause you’re black.”

“I’m only half black.”

“Okay, they’re still not out to get you.”

He looked up into her face. “That’s what you think. I’m not allowed the luxury of being wrong.”

She leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Paranoid.”

“Don’t mean they’re not after me.”

She smiled and continued with the massage, her white hands seeming to shine in the dim room against the dark skin of her husband.

THE FIRST message on his machine said: “Dismas. Jim Cavanaugh. Just calling to find out how it all turned out, see if you’d like to have a drink. Give me a call when you can. 661-5081. Thank you.”

The second was from Jane. “I’m just thinking about you. Maybe Thursday instead of Friday? Maybe tonight?”

The last was from Moses, who wanted to know how he was getting along and when and if he was coming back to work.

Hardy threw darts while he listened to the messages. His aim was off. Not that he ever missed the general pie he was half going for, but occasionally he’d miss his number two out of three. It didn’t bother him. He was only throwing to be doing something. If he kept hard liquor in his house, he’d be drinking. Too wired to sleep, he threw darts.

After a while he went around to his desk, two of his three tungsten darts embedded in the I to the left of 20, the last one stuck in the 5 to its right. He’d missed 20 for two whole rounds, something he hadn’t done in five years.

He rewound his machine. Since he didn’t have hard liquor at home, he’d go and have some in a bar. It wasn’t all that late, and Cavanaugh had offered. He didn’t want to go to the Shamrock and have to answer questions from Moses about his progress. He got to the number, switched off the machine, wrote it down and dialed.

A woman’s voice answered. “St. Elizabeth’s.”

“Hello, is Father Cavanaugh in?”

“Just a moment, I’ll get him. Can I tell him who’s calling?”

When Hardy told her, she paused, then said, “Did Father tell you? Oh, I’d better let him tell you.”

Cavanaugh, now at the phone: “Dismas. Good of you to call.”