Doyle considered the information for a long moment before he shook his head and studied the ground.He scuffed the sidewalk a few times with the toe of his shoe, almost like he was trying to pull up the black splotches of petrified gum that pockmarked the city.“We’ve set a precedent for honesty, so I want to tell you what I’m feeling.”
“Okay.”
“Today has made me want to drink.”Doyle raised his head, and the tension in his neck was tight as he swallowed.“But I didn’t work on my sobriety for six years, only to start on day one tomorrow.”
Larkin reached forward and wrapped his hand around Doyle’s nape.He squeezed a little, trying to relax the muscles, but he didn’t have a chance to find the right words of encouragement before a nearby door slammed shut.He looked over his shoulder to see Bridget walking in their direction, toward the corner—the bus stop, no doubt.Larkin dropped his hand and said in a voice that left no room for argument, “Ira, stay here.”And then he sprinted back the way he’d come.“Ms.Cohen—”
“I got called into work an hour ago to pick up half of the second shift and now you’ve made me late.”She took a step sideways, but Larkin mirrored the motion.She did it again, and he followed.“Fuckingmove,” she barked.
“Please allow me to show you a composite sketch,” Larkin said, reaching into his pocket.
“A what?”
“A sketch—a drawing.I want to know if you recognize the individual.”
Bridget took a big and audible breath, like she was resisting the urge to sucker punch a cop, and then dug into her purse.She retrieved a pack of red Newports and warned, while searching through the bag a second time, “I’m walking away the second I light this.”
Larkin brought up the images stored on his Cloud, retrieved the sketch of the Brooklyn shooter, enlarged it, and turned the screen toward Bridget just as she struck the spark wheel of her Bic lighter over and over, to no avail.“Have you seen this man before.”
Bridget made an irritated sound in the back of her throat before looking at the phone.She narrowed her eyes and asked, “Is this some kinda game to you?”
“What do you mean.”
She motioned to the cell with her unlit cigarette.“You know who that is.That’s Ralphie.”
Larkin’s working theory was that Adam Worth became a contact in the criminal underworld sometime around 1988, just after Alfred Niederman got his first taste for the abuse of children and wanted to capitalize on his own sadistic pleasures.Worth had helped make it happen because they had known each other.Niederman had paid in information.And the sort of information an ex-con-turned-janitor could’ve had that’d appeal to a man like Worth?
“I got a prison buddy,” Niederman might’ve said.“Helps his old lady kill broads on the Deuce.”
“My brother-in-law works at a strip club with connections to the Gambino family,” Earl Wagner might’ve said.“He knows about a guy who useta dump bodies in the East River.”
“I had a canary bird,” Vargas might’ve said.“Kept me outta prison.I could do whatever I wanted.”
“I’m not the only one who took bribes,” Noonan might’ve said.“I know a guy from Vice who looked the other way for years.”
Worth didn’t have to know his clients personally.He didn’t even need to have been around when their crimes were first committed.He only needed the knowledge of their corruption in order to sufficiently blackmail them.He’d hold that evidence overhead, like a get-out-of-jail-free card, and promise to make it alldisappear, if only they’d first do him a little favor.
A favor like snuffing out Stolle before he could spill the beans.
A favor like murdering her own husband so she could safely escape.
A favor like hacking up Wagner to reflect the very murders he once covered up.
And all the while, Worth had been there, sowing chaos, little upheavals that, over time, fractured Larkin’s very foundation without his realizing, until it was almost too late.Incidents that had been personal, intimate, invasive: the fax that nearly sullied his professional reputation, the church he’d been married in, letters and packages sent to his former home, his current home—once sanctuaries now robbed of their security—the overreaching attempt on Doyle’s life, the Honda Civic meant to induce doubt.Even though it had all managed to deprive Larkin of sleep for weeks, had stimulated a sort of death-obsessed psychosis in him that was making decisions and justifying reasons on his behalf, Larkin hadn’t broken.
Because he had been through so much more than the sender understood.
But while Larkin was busy being a glutton for psychological punishment, he’d missed realizing that each and every clue had been seemingly marching them toward Ira Doyle’s source of guilt and endless torment, that he had unknowingly opened Bridget back up to a near forty-year-old threat upon her life, and that everything wasall his fault.
Acrid smoke was blown in Larkin’s face, and he wrinkled his nose.He looked at the emblem on Bridget’s shirt—the modern “sonic” eagle head design.
—standing eagle postal badge and the scent of burning clove—
Abruptly, he asked, “Have you noticed a blue Honda Civic following you at home or work.”
Bridget made a face and sucked on the end of her cigarette.
“Anyone new at work—a woman, specifically—fifties, black hair, dyed, she might be wearing a USPS uniform with an outdated patch.”
