“Family…” Cork made a face. “I’ve got six brothers and sisters. Three of them are cops, so you know it’s gotta be bad news right away. We get together every Christmas. It always starts off full of good cheer, but by the end of the evening, more punches are thrown than at a boxing match. Sheez, I’ll take the street over pissed-off siblings any day of the year.”

“What can you do?” Decker said.

“What can you do is right.” Cork sighed. “So you’re bowing out?”

“Since I’m not adding anything, I think that’s the smartest thing to do.”

“So for what it’s worth, I’ll put my two cents in. This is just observation.” Cork was still staring at the pictures. “You know what it looks like to me?”

“What?” Novack asked.

“It looks like Family-”

“I don’t think it’s Family, Bri.”

“I didn’t say it was Family, Mick, I said it looks like Family. Not current Family. Back four, five years when C.D. was still in the business and still aligned with the old man. It’s not one of his, though. First off, C.D. don’t do nothing unless it’s big money, and this guy is obviously low level. Second, C.D. would never, ever clean a mark in a hotel. Too many people, and C.D. don’t attract attention to himself. And third, and this may be rumor, but last I heard, C.D. was out of the business. I’m just saying it looks like one of his. A single shot. Not much blood. No extraneous shit. Clean and simple.”

“C.D.?” Decker asked.

“Christopher Donatti,” Novack answered him.

It took Decker a moment to absorb the words. Only then did a flood of images hit him like an overexuberant wave. Very few of Decker’s murder cases were committed to instant memory: Chris’s was one of them. Eight years had passed since Decker’s last contact with the younger Donatti, yet the details were still as fresh as a brisk wind. The murder of a high-school prom queen, Donatti the lead suspect. He’d been Whitman back then, and though the last name had changed, Decker was sure that the kid had not. Once a psycho…

“The hit looks like it was done by Chris Donatti?”

“It looks like it-that’s all. C.D. hasn’t been tied to anything since the old man had a massive coronary.”

“Joseph Donatti had a heart attack?” Decker asked.

“Yeah, Joey had a bad one.” Cork stared at him.

“Must have missed that one.” Decker swallowed. “When did this happen?”

“About four, five years ago,” Novack said.

“I’m slipping,” Decker said. “So does Chris Donatti run the Family?”

“You mean the Donatti Family? There is no Donatti Family. It dissolved.”

“What happened? Did a rival boot Chris out?”

“No, C.D.’s the one that dissolved it.” Cork stared at Decker. “You keep calling Donatti Chris? Are you on a first-name basis with the guy?”

Decker shrugged. “So what’s he doing? C.D.?”

“We got a problem with him. The problem is he’s a cipher. He don’t talk.”

“What do you mean, he doesn’t talk?”

“Just that. He don’t talk. Complete opposite of the old man. Old man ordered a hit, half the world knew about it. Not C.D. You know after the old man was retired, everyone was waiting to see what would happen. How C.D. would flex his muscle. Then it came-two hits of top dealers in Washington Heights. Bam, bam. Clean as a whistle. In-and-out jobs. Donatti’s M.O. to a tee. So we’re thinking, oh boy, C.D.’s moving in on Dominican territory. Watch out for the war. Then you know what happened?”

“What?”

“Nothing, that’s what happened. While the Doms are scrambling around, trying to reorganize after losing two bosses, someone moves in and pays them all off. I’m not talking about chump change here; I’m talking big bucks. Next thing we know, half of Wash Heights is suddenly Benedetto territory.”

“Chr-C.D.’s father-in-law.”

“You know more about this than you’re letting on.”

“No, I don’t know anything about these events. That’s why I’m asking you.”

“Yeah, Benedetto was C.D.’s father-in-law. So we figured that C.D. went in and divided up the spoils between him and his father-in-law. You know, as a gift to the old man. Except three months later, C.D. and Benedetto’s cow of a daughter are no longer wedded in holy matrimony, and suddenly C.D. is gone. Like vanished off the face of the earth. The old man-Benedetto-he’s got all the territory. So we figured that Benedetto muscled out Donatti, that the kid was either lying six feet under with dirt in his eyes or implanted in a foundation of one of the Camden, New Jersey, rejuvenation projects. The other possibility, of course, was that the guy was in hiding, deciding on his next move. If he’s laying low, we figured-oh boy, another war. So you know what happened?”

“What happened?”

“Nothing, that’s what happened. So we think he’s dead. Then maybe twelve months later-this was about three or four years ago-C.D. pops up out of nowhere. He’s livin’ uptown not too far from here, taking beaver shots of teenage girls-”

“Kiddie porn?”

“Nah, they’re all over eighteen. How do I know this? I’ve tried to bust the guy no less than ten times. His girls are all righteous-for now. He’s got some Supreme Court decisions pending that may put him down for a while, but the guy is a weed. He’ll pop back with something new. For the time being, we know he’s pimping his girls, but we can’t find the chink in the armor. You know why?”

“Why?”

“Because C.D. don’t talk.”

“He and the old man still in contact?”

“Yeah, sure. Since he’s surfaced, we see him visiting Joey every now and then. Nothing too heavy. Outta obligation, I think. Joey adopted C.D. They’re not related. You probably know that.”

“I know that.”

“C.D.’s got no blood family, no friends, no nothing in the way of social connections. What he does have is one of the seediest rags in the business. A twenty- to thirty-page glossy pictorial of young girls-all of them barely eighteen-dressed up as even younger girls who play out every middle-aged guy fantasy known to mankind. You know-teacher/student, patient/candy striper, making it with your daughter’s best friend-”

“Lovely.”

“I don’t know who the fuck he’s selling this shit to, but he must have some kind of market. What started as a cheap, homemade job has blossomed into something with high-quality photographs and advertising. I’m not saying he’s ready for prime-time magazine space, but there are buyers out there.”

“American enterprise.”

“Wanna know what I think?”

“What?” Decker asked.

“I think Donatti gave Benedetto Wash Heights as payment to get out of the Family. The guy is too much of a loner to take orders from higher-ups. Not that he’s exactly come up in the world. If he’s living the good life, he’s hiding it well.”

“Don’t he own the building, Bri?” Novack popped in.

“This is true. He owns quite a bit of real estate around a hundred thirty-fifth in what’s called the Shona Bailey area. The neighborhood has all these brownstones-nice babies, but in serious disrepair. The Bailey was doing real well for a while. It was the darling of the dot-coms. Then the economy tanked and September eleventh hit. Last I heard he’s been picking up the buildings for a song.”

Novack shook his head. “No one ever accused the kid of being brainless.”

“So if I were to look for him, I’d find him uptown around a hundred thirty-fifth?” Decker asked.

“Yes, I suppose, although I don’t know if he’d be in at nine forty-five, Sunday morning. Why would you want to look for him?”

“Because you said the hit looks like one of his. And if he preys on young girls, a desperate fifteen-year-old may be just his kind of meat.”

“I don’t know why he’d mess with underage girls when he has lots of legit babes doing his bidding. Guy’s a pussy magnet-always has been. The kind of bad boy that stupid girls love.”

Not just stupid girls. Decker thought for a moment. “You have his address?”