"You think so?" I said. "You think if he's squeezed he won't talk? You think all four of the jackasses he sent to scare me won't testify if they're looking at jail time?"

Miller thought about it. He started to nod and stopped as if it hurt.

"Whaddya want," he said, his voice muffled by the towel.

"Tell me why you framed Alves."

"What makes you think it was me?"

"It's something a cop would know how to do. Especially a cop who was in charge of the investigation."

"That's just speculation."

"You came up with Ellis Alves," I said. "How? Did you investigate another case where Ellis was involved? Did you request and get a printout on known sex offenders, and pick him off that? You think when Healy starts looking he won't find a connection between you and Alves?"

I was guessing, but it was a plausible guess, and I must have been right. Miller took the towel away from his nose and looked at it. His bleeding had slowed down to a trickle. I got a box of Kleenex from my desk drawer and handed it to him. He carefully tore it into small pieces and wadded them and packed them into each nostril. It made him look funny but it stopped the trickle.

"You got a drink?" he said.

His voice was thick like a man with a bad cold.

I took a bottle of Scotch from the drawer and went to the sink and got a water glass. I poured a couple of inches into the glass.

"You want water?" I said.

He shook his head very gently and pointed at the glass. I handed it to him and he took half of it in a swallow.

"You got your theories," he said in a thick voice. "And you can't prove them. And I ain't going to help you prove them. But I will tell you one thing, and you listen, you'll thank me. Leave this alone."

"Why?"

"You don't know what you're into," he said.

"What am I into?"

"Something too big for you."

"What?"

Miller started to shake his head, but that made his nose hurt, and he stopped in mid shake.

"Too big," he said.

"Tell me about the Gray Man," I said.

"Who?"

"Tall guy, gray hair, pale skin, looks kind of gray, when I saw him he was dressed all in gray."

"Don't know any guy like that," Miller said.

He sounded like he meant it. I had listened to a lot of lies and a little truth in my life, and I thought I had gotten pretty good by now at telling which was which. I didn't depend on the skill. I had been wrong often enough to make me uneasy, but Miller didn't sound like he was lying about the Gray Man.

"You got anybody else out there trying to chase me off this case?" I said.

"It's way above me," he said. "Way above me."

"How far," I said.

"Don't know."

Miller stood up suddenly. He held himself steady with one hand on the back of the chair.

"Don't feel so good," he said. "I'm going."

He turned and walked to my door with a little wobble in his walk and opened the door and went out without closing it. I didn't try to stop him. Instead I sat and thought about the interesting fact that the more I learned, the less I knew. Then I got up and went to the sink and let the cold water run over the knuckles of my left hand for a while.

Chapter 32

MARTIN QUIRK CALLED me at ten minutes of seven while I was shaving in the shower. I got out with lather on my face and caught it on the third ring before my machine picked up.

"I'm on the sixth level of the parking garage in Quincy Market," Quirk said. "I think you should come down."

"Can I finish shaving?" I said.

"Sure," Quirk said. "We'll be here all day."

Fresh showered, clean shaven, and smelling manfully of some sort of cologne Susan had given me on my birthday, I arrived at the Quincy Market garage in the middle of a traffic jam. A motorcycle cop was trying to steer traffic away from the garage and since a lot of people who drove in from the suburbs didn't know anywhere to go but Quincy Market, there was a high level of frustration, as people turned into Clinton Street and were waved off by the cop.

When it was my turn, I rolled down my window and said, "Lieutenant Quirk."

The cop nodded and gestured me into the parking garage.

"Park along the right wall there," he said. "Don't pay any attention to the signs."

He pointed emphatically at a Chevrolet sedan and gestured it down Clinton Street.

"And Quirk's a captain now," he said.

"Captain Quirk?"

The motorcycle cop grinned. "Captain Quirk," he said.

I parked where he told me and ignored the No Parking signs like he said and walked back to the elevator and went up to the sixth floor. Since Quirk was the homicide commander, and there were cop cars and cops all over the building, I pretty well knew what I'd find on the sixth floor. What I didn't know was who.

When I got off the elevator I could see the yellow crime scene tape stretched across the far northwest corner of the garage, and a group of cops, mostly in plainclothes, doing what cops mostly do at crime scenes, which is to stand around. There were only a few cars scattered around the floor. Quirk was standing with his back to me wearing a Harris tweed top coat with the collar up. He had his hands in the pockets of the coat and he was looking down at something on the floor of the garage.

The parking garage walls were only about chest high and the wind, funneled through the open construction, was sharp. I put up my own collar. As I approached the group, one of the plainclothes cops said, "Hey."

Quirk looked up and saw me and said, "Let him through," and I walked past the other cops and stood beside him. And looked down. It was a dead man, and his name was Tommy Miller.

"Know him?" Quirk said.

"Yeah. State cop named Tommy Miller."

"He had your address on a piece of paper in his pocket," Quirk said. "You know why?"

"Yeah, but it's a long story."

"Okay, we'll get to it. He'd been punched around before he was shot. You know anything about that?"

"Yeah. It was me did the punching."

"How about the shooting?"

"Nope. Where'd he get it?"

Quirk settled onto his haunches and turned Miller's head to the left. There was a small puffy hole behind his ear.

"One shot?" I said.

"Yep, no exit wound. Slug must have rattled around in there for a while."

"Twenty-two?"

"Be my guess. We're looking for a shell casing."

"Might have been a revolver," I said.

"Un huh."

"Might have cleaned up his brass," I said.

"Un huh."

"State cops know about this?" I said.

"Healy's on his way," Quirk said. "You want to wait for him, make one statement instead of two?"

"Yes.

"Anything I need to know right now?"

"Miller's involved in the case that you got Belson and Farrell assigned to in Cambridge… captain." Quirk's face had no expression. He was as big as I was, and thick. He was hatless, his dense black hair cut short and brushed back.

"I'm really something now," he said.

Across the floor the elevator doors opened and Healy got out. He had on a trenchcoat and a soft hat. He pulled the hat on harder and put his collar up as the wind swirled past him. He was alone. When he got to the crime scene he said, "Hello, Martin."