Matteo is looking at the cuff of my coat.
"Donovan."
"Yeah."
"You have a dead man's blood on you, Detective."
"Ah, hell."
I look at the cuff. The blood has dried into the dark wool and has been hiding there for thirty hours. It has stopped hiding now that someone has named it.
I do not take the coat off.
Matteo watches me not take the coat off.
"You are going to wear that coat to her apartment."
"I am."
"You are going to wear a coat with a dead man's blood on it to the apartment of the woman you love."
"It seems that way."
"Donovan."
"Yes."
"That is the most Queens cop thing I have ever seen."
"What would you do?"
"I would change my coat."
"That is the most SEAL thing you have ever said."
He laughs.
I laugh.
Alessandro does not stir.
I leave.
22
SEAN
The SUV is where Matteo said it would be.
The napkin is in the cup holder. The address is in Matteo's handwriting. DUMBO. 47 Washington. 4F. The bell does not work. Call up.
I drive.
The drive is twenty-two minutes through Wednesday evening traffic, not the traffic of a city that has had a war end in its Hudson Valley at sunrise. Nobody on the BQE knows what happened on Vittorio Moretti's old hunting estate at 6:31 a.m. Nobody knows forty years of architecture ended on a piece of land in upstate New York while they were still asleep.
I know.
I sit in the SUV outside 47 Washington at 9:11 p.m. with the engine off and a napkin in my hand. I read the address three times.
