“We can do that. Where?”

“Ralph Ciulla’s basement. And remember that pickax you found in Stanford Quick’s car?”

“We still have it.”

“Maybe you should bring it along.”

“What the hell’s down there?”

“Unfinished business,” I said.

It was Monica who drove us into the city. I didn’t know who’d be looking for us, but I figured, even in the rental car, they’d be less likely to identify us with a pretty woman at the wheel.

When we reached the Walt Whitman Bridge, I called Beth on her cell. It was time for her to play decoy. Earlier she had gone to the railroad station, picked up a green-and-white cab, and been cruising around the city. The driver didn’t know what he was in for, but I figured the police protection and the hundred Beth slipped him would cover it. Now, while we headed over the Delaware, she headed to the western mouth of the Tacony-Palmyra Bridge.

As we drove north on I-95, Beth phoned in her reports. It was like a parade, she said, with the police cars, the lights and sirens. McDeiss had even put in a few motorcycle cops for effect. The man knew how to build a phalanx. But there was no effort to stop her, no opposing army of thugs, no shots, no danger. Apparently Rhonda Harris had called off those dogs before Lavender Hill had silenced her but good.

We got off I-95 at the Cottman Avenue exit, took a nice calm drive into the Northeast, circled counterclockwise to the back alley behind Ralph Ciulla’s house. Nothing looked strange, nothing looked out of place. Monica pulled the gray rental car into the spot beneath the little backyard deck.

I got out, patted the heavy metal thing in my pocket as I looked around. Nothing. I stepped to the closed basement door and slowly pushed it open. It was dark inside.

“Hello,” I said softly.

“Hello yourself,” came McDeiss’s whisper.

“Any news from New Jersey?”

“They found the body and picked up four suspects at the scene, including two that matched the descriptions you gave me over the phone.”

“Terrific. All right, give us a second.”

I stepped back, waved to Monica. She climbed out. Then I tapped the windshield, and two figures popped up from hiding low in the backseat. I motioned them out. They scrambled quickly out of the car, as quickly as two old guys bent stiffly at the waist can scramble out of a car, and then slipped through the basement door. Monica and I followed.

When the door closed, the lights suddenly clicked on and we could see the whole setup. Two CSI technicians, with their briefcases. Two uniforms, pump-action shotguns at the ready. Slocum and Hathaway together off to the side. And McDeiss, leaning on the handle of a rusted old pickax, standing smack in the center of the room.

“Welcome home, Charlie Kalakos,” said McDeiss in a booming voice. “We’ve been looking for you for quite a while.”

“I been away,” said Charlie.

“We’re going to have ourselves a chat,” said McDeiss.

“In due time, Detective,” I said. “In due time. But first we have some serious matters to take care of.”

I turned to take a peek at the workbench and then did a double take. Slowly, I walked toward it. The first of the wooden boards that made up the tabletop had been pried off the pipe frame. The front pipes on either side had been yanked forward. I looked inside each. Both were empty.

“How long have you guys been here?” I said.

“About ten minutes,” said Slocum.

“Was the basement door locked or unlocked?”

“Unlocked.”

“Crap,” I said. “Now we know why he was in such a hurry to get to Toledo.”

“Who are we talking about, Carl?” said McDeiss.

“I’m talking about a little guy who goes by the name of Lavender Hill. I didn’t know we were in a race, but he did. He was the one who took care of our friend from Allentown, Detective, and after he did that, and after listening in on his microphone to everything Charlie had to say, he rushed up here to seize the painting. The Rembrandt has been stolen once again.”

“We’ll find him,” said McDeiss.

“I doubt it,” I said. “But the painting all along has been just a sideshow. Hasn’t it, Jenna?”

“All along,” she said.

“Time to take care of the main event? Are all the terms of our agreement still in place?”

“They are,” said Slocum.

“Okay, then. Joey Pride, do you remember where the pit was?”

Joey looked at me and nodded.

“Go ahead,” I said.

He looked around the basement and stepped toward the rear. He cleared some boxes and pointed at a cracked portion of the uneven cement floor. “There,” he said.

McDeiss lifted the pickax and held it toward the CSI guys in the corner. One of them stood and started toward McDeiss when Charlie spoke up.

“Can I do it?” he said. “It’s been haunting me for half my life, that hole in the ground. Can I open it up?”

“Like lancing a boil?” I said.

“Something like that.”

I looked at McDeiss. He thought about it some, looked at the CSIs, who shrugged. McDeiss turned to offer the pickax to Charlie.

“I’ll help, too,” said Joey Pride, pushing away some cartons that were piled around the spot he had pointed to.

Then we all stood back as Charlie Kalakos hoisted the pickax in the air and let its sharpened point drop into the floor. The cement was thin, brittle, it cracked easily under the weight of the heavy metal tool. Charlie pulled it loose and hoisted it again. When he started breathing heavily, Joey took hold of the pickax. One of the CSIs stooped down to lift up the loose chunks of concrete. Then Joey raised the pickax high in the air and let it fall.

Slowly they worked, Charlie Kalakos and Joey Pride, clearing the cement that covered the crimes of their past, blow by blow, bit by bit, as Slocum and McDeiss, Jenna Hathaway and Monica Adair, as all of us looked on, some with stoic faces, some with tears, looked on knowing exactly what we’d find and dreading it all the while.

“I’ve brought him home to you, Mrs. Kalakos,” I said.

“You good boy, Victor,” she said to me. “I knew you do just as I say.”

“I appreciate your confidence,” I said.

The room was dark, the air thick with incense, I was back in the chair, by the bed, where Mrs. Kalakos, as usual, lay stiff and still. And yet there was something very different about her appearance. Where normally her hair was wild and unkempt, this night it was combed and teased and set in place with bobby pins, the twirls at her temples taped to her flesh. Her cheeks held red circles, her lips were brightly painted, with two peaks in the middle of the upper one, and there was lace in her bodice. Miss Havisham waiting for her groom. Yikes.

“So where he is? Where my boy?” she said.

“He’s just outside the room, but I wanted to talk to you about him first.”

“Don’t make me wait, Victor. I’m old woman, without much breath left. Bring him to me. Now.”

“Charlie is very anxious to see you, Mrs. Kalakos. Both excited and scared.”

“What he need to be scared about from such pitiful bag of bones?”

“Because you’re his mother,” I said. “That’s enough terror for anyone. And then, also, because he knows you so well.”

“You try to flatter old woman, Victor?”

“That’s not my intent, ma’am. I just wanted to tell you that your son has been through a lot in the last couple of weeks, especially today. There was another attempt on his life just a few hours ago. And, even more significant, he was forced to dig up something very dark from his past. Something that happened as a result of the robbery thirty years ago.”

“What you trying to tell me, Victor?”

“There was a girl killed.”

“A girl?”

“The Adair child, the one that went missing.”

“I remember.”

“She was murdered by Teddy because she saw them with their stuff from the robbery. Charlie didn’t do the killing, but he knew about it. It was why things turned rotten for your son, why he ended up with the Warrick brothers and ended up on the run. And it is why he’s going to be spending some time in jail now. He knows you’ll find out about it, and he wanted me to tell you first.”