“Fucking guy shot a cop,” Detective Centauro said. “We’re going to let him walk, counselor? I don’t think so.”

Cheswick crossed his hands on the table, ignored Centauro, and smiled at ADA Campbell. “We’re waiting, Ms. Campbell.”

She turned a few more pages of her notes, hoping to find something, anything, on which to hold me.

Cheswick was inside another five minutes checking on Angie as I waited on the front steps, getting enough glares from the cops coming in and out of the building to know I’d better not get pulled over for speeding for a while. Maybe for the rest of my life.

When Cheswick joined me, I said, “What’s the deal?”

He shrugged. “She’s not going anywhere for a while.”

“Why not?”

He looked at me like I needed a shot of Ritalin. “She killed a cop, Patrick. Self-defense or not, she killed a cop.”

“Well, shouldn’t you be-”

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “You know who the best criminal lawyer in this city is?”

“You.”

He shook his head. “My junior partner, Floris Mansfield. And that’s who’s in there with Angie. Okay? So chill out. Floris rocks, Patrick. Understand? Angie’s going to be fine. But she’s still got a lot of hours ahead of her. And if we press too hard, the DA will say, ‘Fuck it,’ and push it to a grand jury just to show the cops he’s on their side. If we all play ball and make nice, everyone will begin to cool down and get tired and realize that the sooner this goes away the better.”

We walked up West Broadway at four in the morning, the icy fingers of dark April winds finding our collars.

“Where’s your car?” Cheswick said.

“G Street.”

He nodded. “Don’t go home. Half the press corps is there. And I don’t want you talking to them.”

“Why aren’t they here?” I looked back at the precinct house.

“Misinformation. The duty-desk sergeant purposefully let it leak that you were all being held at headquarters. The ruse’ll hold until sunup; then they’ll come back.”

“So where do I go?”

“That’s a really good question. You and Angie, intentionally or unintentionally, just gave the Boston Police Department its blackest eye since Charles Stuart and Willie Bennett. Personally, I’d move out of state.”

“I meant now, Cheswick.”

He shrugged and pressed the slim remote attached to his car keys, and his Lexus beeped once and the door locks slid open.

“The hell with it,” I said. “I’ll go to Devin’s.”

His head whipped around in my direction. “Amronklin? Are you crazy? You want to go to a cop’s house?”

“Into the belly of the beast.” I nodded.

At four in the morning, most people are asleep, but not Devin. He rarely sleeps more than three or four hours a day, and then it’s usually in the late hours of the morning. The rest of the time, he’s either working or drinking.

He opened the door to his apartment in Lower Mills, and the stench of bourbon that preceded him told me he hadn’t been working.

“Mr. Popularity,” he said, and turned his back to me.

I followed him into his living room, where a book of crossword puzzles sat open on the coffee table in between a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a half-full tumbler, and an ashtray. The TV was on, but muted, and Bobby Darin sang “The Good Life” from speakers set to whisper volume.

Devin wore a flannel robe over sweatpants and a Police Academy sweatshirt. He pulled the robe closed as he sat on the couch and lifted his glass, took a sip, and stared up at me with eyes that, while glassy, were as hard as the rest of him.

“Grab a glass from the kitchen.”

“I don’t feel much like drinking,” I said.

“I only drink alone when I’m alone, Patrick. Got it?”

I got the glass, brought it back, and he poured an overly generous drink into it. He raised his.

“To killing cops,” he said, and drank.

“I didn’t kill a cop.”

“Your partner did.”

“Devin,” I said, “you’re going to treat me like shit, I’ll leave.”

He raised his glass toward the hallway. “Door’s open.”

I tossed the glass on the coffee table, and some bourbon spilled out of it as I got out of the chair and headed for the door.

“Patrick.”

I turned back, my hand on the doorknob.

Neither of us said anything, and Bobby Darin’s silk vocal slid through the room. I stood in the doorway with all that had gone unspoken and unconfronted in my friendship with Devin hanging between us as Darin sang with a detached mourning for the unattainable, the gulf between what we wish for and what we get.

“Come on back in,” Devin said.

“Why?”

He looked down at the coffee table. He removed the pen from the crossword book, closed it. He placed his drink on top of it. He looked at the window, the dark cast of early morning.

He shrugged. “Outside of cops and my sisters, you and Ange are the only friends I got.”

I came back to the chair, wiped the spill of bourbon with my sleeve. “This isn’t over yet, Devin.”

He nodded.

“Someone ordered Broussard and Pasquale to do that hit.”

He poured himself some more Jack. “You think you know who, don’t you?”

I leaned back in the chair and took a very light sip from my glass, hard liquor never having been my drug of choice. “Broussard said Poole wasn’t a shooter. Ever. I’d always had Poole pegged for the guy who took the money out of the quarries, capped Mullen and Pharaoh, handed the money off to someone else. But I could never figure who that someone else was.”

“What money? What the hell are you talking about?”

I spent the next half hour running it down for him.

When I finished, he lit a cigarette and said, “Broussard kidnapped the kid; Mullen saw him. Olamon blackmails him into finding and returning the two hundred grand. Broussard runs a double-cross, has someone take out Mullen and Gutierrez, has Cheese whacked in prison. Yes?”

“Killing Mullen and Gutierrez was part of the deal with Cheese,” I said. “But otherwise, yes.”

“And you thought Poole was the shooter.”

“Until the roof with Broussard.”

“So who was it?”

“Well, it’s not just the shooting. Someone had to take the money from Poole and make it disappear in front of a hundred and fifty cops. No flatfoot could pull that off. Had to be high command. Someone above reproach.”

He held up a hand. “Ho, wait a minute. If you’re thinking-”

“Who allowed Poole and Broussard to breach protocol and proceed with the ransom drop without federal intervention? Who’s dedicated his life to helping kids, finding kids, saving kids? Who was in the hills that night,” I said, “roving, his whereabouts accountable only to himself?”

“Aw, fuck,” he said. He took a gulp from his glass, grimaced as he swallowed. “Jack Doyle? You think Jack Doyle’s in on this?”

“Yeah, Devin. I think Jack Doyle’s the guy.”

Devin said, “Aw, fuck,” again. Several times actually. And then there was nothing but silence and the sound of ice melting in our glasses for a long time.