“Of course not. I am shocked and appalled at the implication. In fact, I think you and I need to have a rather stern talk about your perverse sense of funeral decorum. Perhaps over a drink.”

She fought not to laugh and failed.

“My name’s Kyle.”

“Lucia,” she said. “Lucia Ramirez. It’s nice to meet you, Kyle.”

“If you want to know the truth, this Mr. Toth isn’t actually a total stranger.”

“Really?” she said.

“Fourteen years ago he kicked me out of my father’s funeral.”

“Fourteen years ago?”

“To the month, in fact. Not that I hold a grudge.”

“And that’s why you’re here on this fine day? Because you don’t hold a grudge?”

“That’s right.”

“Fourteen years ago.” She tapped her chin. “Isn’t that when Mr. Toth’s partner died?”

He looked at her again. He had thought she’d just wandered over, but there was a degree of purpose in her stance, in the way she was staring at him now.

“How did you know that?” he said.

“Was Mr. Toth’s partner your father?” she said.

“Just so happens yes.”

“So that’s your mother sitting beside the widow?”

“No.”

“But that’s—”

“Yes.”

“Ahh, I see.”

“Do you?” He looked at her, caught the intensity of her gaze. “What do you see, exactly?”

“How did your father die, do you know?”

“Heart attack, or so I’ve been told.”

“Told by whom?”

“Well, by Mr. Toth.”

“Did you ever get any documentation?”

“Why would I?”

“Just wondering. You have the time?”

Kyle reflexively checked his watch. It was an old gold thing with a square face and an expandable metal band. “One-twenty,” he said.

“Nice watch. What is it, a Raymond Weil?”

He looked at it again. “No. It’s a Longines. It belonged to my mother. Who are you anyway?”

“When was the last time you saw this Mr. Toth?”

“A while ago, I don’t remember. Hey, what’s going on here? I thought we were mindlessly flirting.”

“Where were you on Friday night? I’m talking late, now. About midnight.”

“That’s the night Mr. Toth was killed, right?”

“That’s right,” she said.

He looked at her a bit more, and then it came to him, wholly and with utter clarity, the way the most obvious things come to you when you finally grasp hold. This wasn’t just a cute girl flirting as she passed the time at some boring old funeral. This was a cop, admittedly a fine-looking cop, but a cop nonetheless, a cop investigating the murder of Laszlo Toth. And Kyle Byrne realized with a shock that he had suddenly become a suspect.

How cool was that?

CHAPTER 9

ROBERT SPANGLER WAS LISTENING to a priest drone on at the

funeral of Laszlo Toth when he spotted the two police officers scanning the crowd. They were in plain clothes, but still, the moment he saw them, he knew, what with their law-enforcement stances—like prison guards on the walk—their sunglasses, their chins. Not to mention their races. The old black man and young Latino woman stood out like messengers from another planet in the sea of white Hungarian trash.

Robert had never before had the opportunity to attend the funeral of someone he’d actually killed, though he’d sat through the funeral and memorial service of Liam Byrne, whom he had tried to kill but who had died before Robert could get a second chance at him. That funeral was an odd experience, especially after it had been disrupted by Byrne’s illegitimate son, who snatched the urn full of the old man’s ashes and darted crazily into the depths of the cemetery. But this funeral was stranger still for Robert, an opportunity only a rare few ever had the temerity to experience. What did it feel like to stand by the open grave of a man whom you had murdered in the coldest of blood?

He took a moment to gauge his emotions, and this is what he felt: disgrace and exultation and boredom all at once. Disgrace at the humiliation that he accepted from her at every turn. In her eyes he was no better than a pet—worse, actually, because her cat was treated with far more respect than was he. Exultation at the act itself, not the killing per se but the execution of it, clean and hard. He had taken his time, he had set the scene, he had laid traps to cover his tracks. Except for a missing cuff link, everything had gone perfectly. It was a lucky thing he didn’t have a taste for the work, because he was damn good at it. And finally boredom, yes, boredom, because, frankly, funerals were boring as hell.

But now, with the cops barging in on the graveside service, he felt something else, too. A shot of fear. Interesting. And strangest of all, he discovered that he liked it.

They were talking, the two of them, off to the side. She had left for a bit to question one of the old-timers who had shown up, and now she was back with her partner, surveying the crowd. For a moment her gaze fell upon Robert like the beam of a klieg light, and even as he maintained his stolid demeanor and stance, he felt something rise within him. A thrill, like being on a roller coaster, the moment at the crest of the initial rise when nothing but the fall is before you. And then her gaze passed on and the thrill disappeared.

He kept watching her as she scanned the crowd. After a moment more with her partner, she headed off, toward a man in a gray suit standing on a small hill beyond the coffin. He studied the man for a moment. There was something familiar about him. And then Robert recognized him. So captivated was he by the ebb and flow of his own emotions that he had turned sloppy and hadn’t seen him clearly, but now he did.

It was the boy who had run off with the ashes, the son of Liam Byrne.

He’d been looking for this Kyle Byrne ever since Laszlo Toth had told him about the missing file cabinet. He needed to learn if this Kyle knew anything about where it might be and what might be inside, but the son had been hard to trace. The only pictures he had were of a younger, thinner figure, a teen, actually, still in high school, photos from the sports pages of the Philadelphia Inquirer. The address that was listed on the Internet was no longer valid; the son had moved out of the house just a few weeks before. A neighbor seemed to remember that this Kyle worked at a place called Bubba’s. He had found the bar and waited there for way too long—there was only so much piss-gut beer he could drink—but the kid had never shown, so Robert had delivered his message to the scrawny black bartender and then left. He had planned to visit the bar after the funeral to sniff out what he could, but he no longer needed to.