He slammed down the phone and made a jot on his pad even as he

gave Kyle another accusatory stare.

“You don’t care about the file cabinet, do you?” said the old man.

“This is something else. The bastard son on a quest to learn the truth

about his long-dead father. And you think I have it, or at least some of

it. And you may be right.”

“How did my father die?”

“I heard it was his heart.”

“Were those his slips?”

“No. Your father didn’t gamble. At least not on football or the

horses. Toth was the bettor. After your father died, Toth took over

some of the matters your father was working on for me. And over the

years he discovered a predilection for wagering.”

“Was he any good?”

“Terrible.” Another waft of smoke, a wave of the cigarette. “They’re

all terrible. That’s how I can afford the wives.” He looked up to the

painting with the breasts. “Eleanor is dead, roaring at the devil in hell, I suppose, but I’m still supporting all the rest. Thanks to fools like that wily Hungarian, I’m on my fourth. In fact, Toth owed me two arms and a leg before his death, which meant he was screwing me more thoroughly than my current wife. But he said he had a way to pay me off,

which was good, since Frank had already broken three of his fingers.” “Ouch.”

“It happens. Laszlo said he found something, something of your

father’s that was going to get him off my hook and out of his stinking

law office for good. A file that he said had vast worth. He called it the

O’Malley file.”

Kyle nodded, as if it all made perfect sense, which it actually was

starting to. He didn’t understand everything yet, but suddenly he

knew that O’Malley’s name wasn’t O’Malley and that as soon as he

got out of here, he was giving that fake O’Malley a call.

“I was hoping it was this file that you were bringing to me,” said

Tiny Tony.

Kyle thought a moment. “If there was a file of great worth, why

would I be bringing it to you?”

“You don’t know?”

“No.”

The phone rang, Tiny Tony answered it. “Even. How much?

Done.” He hung up, scribbled in his book, flashed another accusatory stare at Kyle.

“Why do you keep looking at me like that?” said Kyle. Sorrentino stared a bit more and considered the question. “It’s just

that I see him in you. There’s something in your face, in the way you

hold yourself. It’s uncanny the way the dead continue to haunt us.

The son of Liam Byrne,” he said, shaking his head. “Funny thing is,

all this time I didn’t know the son of a bitch had any kids.” The phone rang. Tiny Tony stared at Kyle from behind the desk

as it rang again and then again. Finally he answered the phone. “Hold

on,” he said into the handset, and then put his palm over the mouthpiece. “Listen, Kyle, I need to take this in private, you understand.” “Sure,” said Kyle, rising.

“We’ll meet again, I promise you, and I’ll answer all your questions then. Meanwhile, I’ll do what I can to try to find that file cabinet you’re so interested in. There are some possibilities I need to

check out.”

“I’d appreciate that. Thank you.”

“We’re going to get along famously,” said Tiny Tony Sorrentino.

“Just like your father and me. I can tell. We’re going to do business

together. I am certain. Write down your phone number, and I’ll give

you a call.”

Kyle leaned over the desk and scribbled his cell number on a proffered piece of paper and then, to be safe, Kat’s number, too. “If you

can’t get me on the cell, the second’s where I’m staying now. I’ll be

waiting.”

Tony watched him as he headed for the door to the outer office. “Kyle, can I give you some advice? As a dear friend of your father’s? I don’t think it wise for you to go out the front door. You

humiliated my men, which was quite impressive but isn’t calculated

to make lasting friendships. Perhaps it would be better if you avoid all

three by going out the rear. There is a door to the alley behind that

curtain that would be safer.”

“Thanks,” said Kyle.

“It’s nothing. We are almost family, you and I. Now go, and be

well, and I’ll be in touch.”

Kyle nodded at the old man, stepped toward the curtain and pushed it aside, revealing two doors, one open, leading down a set of stairs to a basement, and the second closed, leading, Kyle assumed, to the alley. As he opened the second door, he could hear the old man

behind him barking into the phone, “Willis. Seven to five. Done.” Kyle looked around, stepped past a few scattered trash cans into an

empty passageway leading to the alley. When he reached the alley, he

turned to the right, only to see Vern, in his purple velvet sweat suit.

Vern was standing in front of him, holding a baseball bat in one hand,

pounding it into the palm of his other.

Pound. Pound. Pound.

CHAPTER 20

HENDERSON AND RAMIREZ were at a crime scene when they got the call from the hospital. The crime scene was sordid and familiar and tragic: a little girl on a stoop, a shooting a block away, a stray bullet finding a stray target. For Ramirez this was new and wrenching; for Henderson its very commonness was one of the things shoving him toward retirement. There had been a plague of such killings in the city the past couple of years, as if the cruel calculations of nationstates had descended upon the streets.

The scene had been taped closed, the blood spatters had been marked, but in a crime like this the victim had nothing to do with the solution, so the blood didn’t matter. While the uniforms were going door-to-door asking about the shooting, well down the street from the bloodstains Henderson and Ramirez were standing behind the rough line defined by little number placards, each denoting a found cartridge, and trying to figure out where the shots had been headed so they could maybe figure out who was being targeted so they could maybe figure out who was doing the shooting and why.