“It is,” Hormel agreed.

“Harry,” the District Attorney said. “You’ve gone into court with less then this, and won. Peter made a good point. All you have to do is convince the jury that these two were pursued by one of the brightest detectives on the force. A certified hero. If you handle that angle right, you can go for the death penalty and get it.”

“It’s weak,” Harry Hormel repeated.

“Let Harry know when you have them, Matt,” Callis said. “I’m sure he would like to be there when you confront them with the guns.”

TWENTY-TWO

For Frankie Foley, there had been a certain satisfying finality about his meeting with Gerry Atchison in the Yock’s Diner the previous night. He had received his final payment for the hit, and he’d gotten rid of the guns. The job was done.

He presumed that Atchison would safely dispose of the weapons somewhere, probably throw them in the Delaware, or bury them in the woods when he was out playing weekend warrior with the National Guard. It didn’t matter.

Frankie knew that once Atchison had taken the guns, and once he’d gotten out of the diner without anyone seeing them together, everything was going to be fine.

Frankie personally thought that the bullshit Atchison insisted on going through, making him leave the guns in the garbage can in the toilet of the Yock’s Diner, and coming out, and then Atchison going in to get them, was some really silly bullshit. Atchison must have been watching spy movies on the TV or something.

It would have made much more sense for them just to have met someplace, even in the parking lot of the Yock’s Diner, for Christ’s sake, swapped the dough for the guns, and gotten in their cars and driven away.

On the other hand, which was why Frankie had gone along with the swapping-in-the-crapper bullshit, doing it that way had been safer than meeting him in a dark parking lot someplace.

Frankie didn’t trust Atchison. He hadn’t trusted him in the Inferno when he’d done the job, and had taken steps to make sure that Atchison hadn’t hit him after he’d hit the wife and the partner, which would have been smart, which would have made it look like the dead guy on the floor had robbed the place and killed the partner and the wife, and Atchison was the fucking hero who had killed him.

That “dead men tell no tales” wasn’t no bullshit. He was the only guy who could pin the job on Atchison, and Atchison knew it. If he was dead, Atchison could relax. The cops would look for-fucking-ever-or at least until something else came along-for the two robbers Atchison had made up and told the cops about.

Frankie had considered that the reverse was also true, that if Atchison was dead, Atchison couldn’t get weak knees or something and tell the cops, “Frankie Foley is the guy who murdered my wife.” He considered hitting Atchison. It would be no trouble at all. He could have been waiting for him in the parking lot at the Yock’s Diner, put a couple of bullets into his head, and driven off and that would have been the end of it.

Except that maybe it wouldn’t have really been the end of it. The cops would look like even bigger assholes if Atchison got hit and they couldn’t catch who had done him, either. The Ledger was already giving the cops a hard time about that. The cops would get all excited all over again, and maybe they’d get lucky.

Frankie didn’t think Atchison would have the balls to try to kill him himself, otherwise he would have killed his wife and the partner by himself, right? And Atchison didn’t know no other professional hit men, or else he would have hired one of them to do the job, right?

So the smart thing to do-the professional thing-was just stop right where he was. He had been paid to do a job, and he had done it, and got paid for it, and that should be the end of it. Go on to other things, right?

If he did it that way, in a couple of weeks he could go to work in the Inferno, and tell Wanamaker’s what they could do with their fucking warehouse. The word would get out that he had done the job for Atchison, and sooner or later other jobs would come along.

What he would have liked to have done was maybe catch an airplane and go to Las Vegas and see if he would have any luck gambling. Frankie had never been to Vegas, but he had heard there was a lot of pussy that hung around the tables, and that if they thought you were a high roller, they even sent pussy to your room. That would really be nice, go out there, win a lot of money at the crap tables, and get some pussy thrown in for good measure. But that would not have been professional. What he had to do, for a little while anyway, was play it cool.

The cops might be watching him, and they might wonder how come he could afford to quit fucking Wanamaker’s, not to mention where he got the money to go to Vegas. In a couple of weeks, about the time he would go see Atchison and remind him about the maitre d’ job, the cops would lose interest in the Inferno job, and in him. There would be other things for the cops to do.

Neither was he, Frankie decided, going to start to spend the five grand he got right away, get a better car or something, or even some clothes. That would attract attention. When he was working at the Inferno, it would be different. If he turned up with some dough, he could explain it saying he’d won it gambling. Everybody knew that maitre d’s were right in the middle of the action.

Having decided all this, Frankie then concluded that there would be no real harm in going by Meagan’s Bar and having a couple of drinks, and maybe letting Tim McCarthy see that he was walking around with a couple, three, hundred-dollar bills snuggled up in his wallet. Not to mention letting Tim see that he was walking around not giving a tiny fuck that detectives were asking questions about him.

And who knows, there just might be some bored wife in there looking for a little action from some real man. Tim, and if not Tim, then ol’ diarrhea mouth himself, Sonny Boyle, were talking about him to people, telling people not to let it get around, but that cops was asking about Frankie Foley. Tim and Sonny would be passing that word around, that was for damn sure, you could bet on it.

Women like dangerous men. Frankie had read that someplace. He thought it was probably true.

Frankie got home from Wanamaker’s warehouse a couple of minutes after six. He grabbed a quick shower, put on the two-tone jacket and a clean sports shirt, told his mother he’d catch supper some other place, he had business to do, and walked into Meagan’s Bar at ten minutes to seven.

He really would have liked to have had a couple of shooters, maybe a jigger glass of Seagram’s-7 dropped into a draft Ortleib’s, but he thought better of it and ordered just the beer.

Not that he was afraid of running off at the mouth or something, but rather that there maybe just might be some bored wife in there looking for a little action-you never could tell, he thought maybe he was on a roll-and if that happened, he didn’t want to be half shitfaced and ruin the opportunity.

He paid for the Ortleib’s with one of the three hundred-dollar bills he’d put in his wallet, told Tim to have a little something with him, and when Tim made him his change, just left it there on the bar, like he didn’t give a shit about it, there was more where that come from.

He was just about finished with the Ortleib’s, and looking for Tim to order another, when somebody yelled at Tim:

“Hey, Tim, we need a couple of drinks down here. And give Frankie another of whatever he’s having.”

At the end of the bar, where it right-angled to the wall by the door, were two guys. Guineas, they looked like, wearing shirts and ties and suits. That was strange, you didn’t see guineas that often in Meagan’s. The guineas had their bars and the Irish had theirs.