“Where’s Benny now?”

“Dead. He built up a rep and started working for the boys. But he was too crazy even for them, too crazy for Scarfo. You had to be son of a bitch crazy to be too crazy for Scarfo. Shot through the head, tossed off a bridge, run over by a truck. They wasn’t taking no chances with Benny.”

“So why were you scared to tell me if he was dead?”

“Because Dante knew. He was still just a pawn boy then, Dante, standing like a nothing behind the counter in his shop, but he found out.”

“How?”

“Joey pulled a watch off the dead guy’s wrist. When he pawned it, Dante asked his questions. Joey didn’t know enough to say nothing. That was how Dante made his way to the top. He knew everything what was happening in the whole of South Philly because of who was pawning what.”

“But why would Dante still care if Benny was dead? I’m missing something here.”

“You ain’t so swift, is you, Victor? It wasn’t important right off, but Dante, he stored it away until it became something that he could use. And he’s been waiting, patiently, for a time to use it. Deep End Benny, he had a big brother, a wimp what meant nothing to nobody except to Benny when we was growing up, or even later, when this whole thing went down. But eventually, Benny’s brother, he made good, damn good. And when the time comes, Dante is going to take the info and turn it into a free pass out of whatever trouble he gets into with the law. See, here’s the thing. Our boy, our friend, the guy what Joey and me, we was altar boys with, it was Deep End Benny Straczynski.”

Chapter 60

IT WAS ALL coming into focus, what had happened twenty years ago and what was happening now, it was all coming into focus. The only question was what to do about it.

“I can’t tell you,” I said as Slocum and I drove back toward the hospital, where my car was parked. “We were lawyer-client.”

“Did he pay you?”

“I’m treating it as privileged. But he’ll tell you everything as soon as he can. I made sure of that. Do you have a meeting set up?”

“The feds are guarding their time like a jealous lover. But, day after tomorrow, McDeiss and I have been given a couple of hours to question him about twenty years ago.”

“Good. That should give me enough time to find out what I need to find out.” My query had been sent to California, but no telling how long before I heard back, and I had a quicker way of finding out the truth. “Make sure you ask him in detail about what actually happened to the body. And make sure you ask him who it was who hired him.”

“Interesting?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Will I want to hear the answer.”

“Oh, no.”

“Damn it. I got a big enough headache as it is. Did anything else happen up there? Did you say anything to get him upset?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, you. He looked a little peaked when he came down the stairs.”

“Did he?”

“Oh, yes.”

And Slocum was right, he did. Derek Manley was positively pale when he followed me down the stairs, his eyes bulging, his hand shaking ever so slightly. It was like I had passed him a virulent flu with the utterance of one simple word.

I had thought long and hard about whether I should pass that word along. I didn’t want to do Dante’s bidding, and I considered telling Slocum about what Dante had asked me to pass along before I climbed those stairs, but in the end I decided to handle it as I handled it. Whatever game Derek Manley was playing, he thought he could see all the angles. Dante was using me to tell him that there were angles he hadn’t anticipated, dangers he hadn’t sidestepped. It wasn’t up to me or Slocum or the feds to decide what risks Manley was willing to take. Derek Manley was a big boy, he was making the decisions, he should know the price he would have to pay, what precautions he would have to take. So after he had told me all I needed to know, and I told him what I thought had happened that night twenty years ago, I also told him I had a message from a friend, and I leaned over and placed my lips to his ear and whispered the single word.

His face, when he heard that word, was like a time-lapse film of the wilting of a flower, an ugly bulbous flower, true, but still a flower, losing its bloom in the blink of an eye.

“Magnolia.”

It took me a while to figure it out. Was it code? Was there a particular tree? Was it the name of one of Manley’s strippers? Gentlemen, get ready to open your hearts and wallets for the jolt from Georgia, a walking heart attack who puts the hospital in Southern hospitality, the one, the only, Magnolia DeLight. It took me a while to figure it out, but I did, finally. And Manley himself had given me the clue. For Dante, in a desperate situation, would have threatened Manley at his softest point. And the only soft point Manley appeared to have was a son, in troubled health, stashed away somewhere in New Jersey. All it took was a quick look at the atlas and there it was, between Barrington and Somerdale, between Kirkwood and Runnymede, the little hamlet of Magnolia, New Jersey. Dante was threatening Manley’s boy, and he was using me to do it. But you tell me if Manley didn’t deserve to know.

“Where are you heading now?” said Slocum as he dropped me off in front of the hospital’s parking garage.

“Home. To sleep. Perchance to dream.”

“You sure?”

“I could use some.”

“Look, Carl, I respect that you promised Manley not to tell us what he told you. I don’t know if privilege is really attached, and we could probably get a judge to force it out of you except that we’ll hear it from the horse’s mouth soon enough. But whatever he told you, if it really did have something to do with that fire the other night, you should let McDeiss and me take care of it.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “You’re the pros.”

“Yes, we are.”

“And I’m basically a coward.”

“That’s one of the things I most admire about you.”

“Much appreciation,” I said, “though you shouldn’t slight my ignorance. That deserves your admiration too. Along with my general lack of physical prowess.”

“Not to mention you’re as ugly as the wrong end of a dead dog.”

“Thank you for that.”

“So you’re going to go home now, right?”

“Right.”

“To sleep?”

“Heaven knows I need it.”

“Good. I’ll be in touch.”

I watched as the Taurus drove away, then wandered around the parking garage looking for my car, which didn’t bother me much since I decided I would wait a bit before I drove out anyway, just to make sure Slocum was gone. While I waited I called a number Derek had given me, 609 area code, and gave the woman on the other end of the phone a message I didn’t understand: “That time on the way to the beach, it’s that time again.” Then I called Beth. There was no answer so I left a message on her machine, saying I had news, big news, and I would tell her everything tomorrow morning at Lonnie Chambers’s funeral.

Slowly I backed out of my space, followed the painted arrows down the ramps, paid my fee, all the time checking my rearview mirror. I kept checking it even as I pulled out of the lot, turned right and then left and then right and then left again, driving through the narrow North Philly streets as if through a maze, making sure I wasn’t followed. Satisfied, I headed south, not up Broad, where I would be expected to drive, but up Nineteenth, again checking behind me. I would go home to get some sleep some time that night, just as I had told Slocum, but not just yet. I had someplace first to visit. See, it was all coming into focus, and it was focusing on one man. Up Nineteenth, across the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Around Rittenhouse Square, and then again up Nineteenth until I found a parking spot.

“What the ’ell do you want?” came the familiar voice over the intercom speaker.