It was the nearly part that confused Jessica.

“Yeah,” Palladino said.

“No, he hasn’t,” Jessica said. “I haven’t had the guts to ask him about it.”

“It was a close call for him,” Palladino said. “About as close as you can get. The way I understand it, he was, well, dead for a little while.”

“Then I did hear it right,” Jessica said, incredulous. “So, what, he’s like psychic or something?”

“Oh, God no.” Palladino smiled, shook his head. “Nothing like that. Don’t ever even utter that word around him. In fact, it would be better if you never even brought it up.”

“Why is that?”

“Let me put it this way. There’s a bigmouthed detective over at Central who gave him some shit about it one night at Finnigan’s Wake. I think the guy is still eating his dinner through a straw.”

“Gotcha,” Jessica said.

“It’s just that Kevin’s got a... sense about the really bad ones. Or he used to, anyway. The whole Morris Blanchard thing was pretty bad for him. He was wrong about Blanchard, and it almost destroyed him. I know he wants out, Jess. He’s got his twenty in. He just can’t find the door.”

The two detectives looked out over the rain-swept plaza.

“Look,” Palladino began, “this is probably not my place to say this, but Ike Buchanan went out on a limb with you.You know that, right?”

“What do you mean?” Jessica asked, although she had a fairly good idea.

“When he formed this task force, and gave it to Kevin, he could have moved you to the back of the pack. Hell, maybe he should have. No offense.”

“None taken.”

“Ike’s a stand-up guy.You might think he’s letting you stay at the front of the pack for political reasons—I don’t think it will come as a shock to you that there’s a few assholes in the department who think so—but he believes in you.You wouldn’t be here if he didn’t.”

Wow, Jessica thought. Where the hell did all this come from?

“Well, I hope I can justify that faith,” she said.

“You’ll do fine.”

“Thanks, Nick. That means a lot.” She meant it, too.

“Yeah, well, I don’t even know why I told you.”

For some unknown reason, Jessica hugged him. After a few seconds they broke, smoothed their hair, coughed into their fists, got over the show of emotion.

“So,” Jessica said, a little awkwardly, “what do we do right now?”

Nick Palladino scoured the block—city hall, over to South Broad, over to Center Square Plaza, down Market. He found John Shepherd under the canopy to the entrance to the subway. John caught his eye. The two men shrugged. The rain poured.

“Fuck it,” he said. “Let’s shut it down.”

33

TUESDAY, 9:15 PM

Byrne didn’t have to turn around to know who it was. The wet sounds coming from the man’s mouth—the missing sibilance, the destroyed plosive, along with the deep nasal quality of the voice—said that it was someone who had recently had a number of upper teeth

removed and his nose recently demolished.

It was Diablo. Gideon Pratt’s bodyguard.

“Be cool,” Byrne said.

“Oh, I’m cool, cowboy,” Diablo said. “I’m dry fuckin’ ice.” Then Byrne felt something much worse than the cold blade at his

throat. He felt Diablo pat him down and take away his service Glock: the worst nightmare in the litany of bad dreams for a police officer. Diablo put the barrel of the Glock to the back of Byrne’s head.

“I’m a cop,” Byrne said.

“No shit,” Diablo said. “Next time you commit aggravated assault, you should stay off TV.”

The press conference, Byrne thought. Diablo had seen the press conference, and then he had staked the Roundhouse and followed him. “You don’t want to do this,” Byrne said.

“Shut the fuck up.”

The tied-up kid looked between them, back and forth, his eyes shifting, looking for a way out. The tattoo on Diablo’s forearm told Byrne he belonged to the P-Town Posse, an odd conglomerate of Vietnamese, Indonesians, and disaffected thugs who, for one reason or another, didn’t fit elsewhere.

The P-Town Posse and the JBM were natural enemies, a hatred that ran ten years deep. Byrne now knew what was happening here.

Diablo was setting him up.

“Let him go,” Byrne said. “We’ll settle this between ourselves.”

“This won’t be settled for a long time, motherfucker.”

Byrne knew he had to make a move. He swallowed hard, tasted the Vicodin at the back of his throat, felt the spark in his fingers.

Diablo made the move for him.

Without warning, without a modicum of conscience, Diablo stepped around him, leveled Byrne’s Glock, and shot the kid point blank. One to the heart. Instantly, a spray of blood and tissue and flecks of bone hit the dirty brick wall, foaming deep scarlet, then washing to the ground in the heavy rain. The kid slumped.

Byrne closed his eyes. In his mind, he saw Luther White pointing the pistol at him so many years ago. He felt icy water swirl around him, sinking deeper, deeper.

Thunder clapped, lightning flashed.

Time crawled.

Stopped.

When the pain did not come, Byrne opened his eyes and saw Diablo turn the corner, then disappear. Byrne knew what came next. Diablo would dump the weapon nearby—Dumpster, garbage can, drainpipe. Cops would find it. They always did. And Kevin Francis Byrne’s life would be over.

Who would come for him, he wondered?

Johnny Shepherd?

Would Ike volunteer to bring him in?

Byrne watched the rain hitting the dead kid’s body, washing his blood into the rutted concrete, unable to move.

His thoughts scaled a tangled deadfall. He knew that, if he called this in, if he put this on the record, then all of this was just beginning. The

196 Richard montanari

Q&A, the forensic team, the detectives, the ADAs, the preliminary hearing, the press, the accusations, the Internal Affairs witch hunt, the administrative leave.

Fear ripped through him—shiny and metallic. The smiling, mocking face of Morris Blanchard danced behind his eyes.

The city would never forgive him for this.