He laid immobile in his bed, his heart pounding so hard he had trouble breathing. When the beating subsided, he rolled over halfway to look at the glowing digits of his clock radio. 3:14 a.m.

Milstein kept seeing the face of the man who called himself Mr. Smith, feeling the hand around the back of his neck and the thumb on his throat, remembering the strength that nearly lifted him off the bench. Milstein wasn’t a big man, but he still weighed 155 pounds. How many men could lift that much one-handed? Whoever the man was, he didn’t look that big, but clearly he was strong. And he had a cocky invulnerability about him. Who the hell was that son of a bitch?

Milstein tried to get back to sleep. He might have dozed off a bit, but deep sleep evaded him. He finally sat up and swung his feet onto the floor. The clock read 4:32 a.m. He ran a hand through his thinning gray hair. His right hip ached. His bladder was full.

He stood up in his undershirt and boxers. The bedroom was cold. He picked up the cell phone from the night table. He stepped into his slippers, lifted his robe up off the floor and shuffled off to the bathroom.

This was going to be a grind, getting through a day without enough sleep.

Just as he was about to empty enough of his bladder to feel comfortable, his cell phone began vibrating in the pocket of his robe.

“Fuck.” He pulled out the phone. Walter Pearce’s number displayed on the caller ID.

“Hang on,” he said.

*   *   *

Walter Pearce filled one side of a small booth in a twenty-four-hour diner located on Trinity Place in downtown Manhattan, his phone held to his left ear.

The diner was within walking distance of One Police Plaza, where his contact at the Real Time Crime Center had been working the twelve-to-eight shift.

He had been in the diner since 2 a.m. calling back and forth to his contact at One PP. His eyes were stinging, he felt wired from too much coffee, and he felt queasy from a greasy serving of ham and eggs with home fries, followed an hour later by an order of pancakes.

As he waited for Milstein to come back on the phone he switched the phone from his sweaty left ear to his right. Tired of holding it, he put the phone on speaker and set it down on the Formica-topped table.

The work for Walter had gone in two parts.

First, finding a contact to do the research he needed. He had done that from home, calling until he had located a detective he’d worked with four years ago named Edward Ronson. Then he’d headed downtown to meet Ronson and tell him what he needed.

Ronson had made a big deal about it, even though they both knew he’d either find what Walter asked for in about fifteen or twenty minutes or he wouldn’t.

Ronson’s main selling point was his availability. Most cops and more than most detectives wouldn’t risk screwing around getting information from the NYPD databases and passing it on, even to a licensed private detective who was a former cop.

Ronson, however, always needed money. He had two ex-wives, two sets of children, hefty bar bills, and a habit of midweek gambling sprees at the Yonkers racetrack slot casino.

Walter made sure to tell him three times what he was looking for and to just print out everything he could find and bring it to him.

The problem was, Walter had no idea when Ronson could slip in his search requests, so he just had to wait. And wait.

When the disheveled detective finally walked into the diner, Walter spotted a large manila envelope under his arm. It looked fairly full. A good sign.

Ronson slid into the booth across from Walter, hatless, wearing a worn suit and a wool overcoat that had seen better days. He dropped the envelope on the table and held out his hand under the table.

“Christ, it’s a shitty walk over here. Fucking cold enough to freeze dog shit out there. Feels like snow any minute. Come on, I gotta get back.”

Walter ignored Ronson’s lack of greeting. He wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries anyhow. He tapped a fold of five hundred dollars in twenty dollar bills against Ronson’s knee under the table.

Ronson slid out of the booth as soon as he had the money in his hand. Maybe he really did need to get back to his desk at the RTCC. Or maybe he had done a lousy job and wanted to get out of there before Walter had time to check what he’d brought and refuse to pay him.

Ronson hadn’t bothered to collate the pages he’d printed out. It took Pearce nearly an hour to sort through everything. When he was satisfied he had something worthwhile, he called Milstein.

*   *   *

Milstein had kept Walter on hold until he had settled in his chair out in the living room.

“Okay,” he said.

“Right,” answered Walter. He picked up the phone, took it off speaker, and spoke directly.

“So I got the information we want. It’s pretty much what I expected. Maybe a bit worse.”

“What do you mean, worse?”

“These are bad people, Mr. Milstein. The one with the neck tattoo is named Ciro Baldassare. He has a long record. Two incarcerations. He’s connected to organized crime. Most of the names I see on his sheets are based in Staten Island. Among other things he’s a bone breaker. His last bit was for assault in connection with collecting money. Don’t know what kind of debt it was, gambling or loan sharking, but whatever it was wasn’t pretty. He broke up two guys pretty bad. Sentence was three to eight. Would have been worse if it hadn’t been two against one.”

Milstein interrupted him. “Okay. Okay.” He didn’t want to hear too many details. He already had enough trouble sleeping. “Anything on the other two?”

“Nothing on the black fellow who passed us. I never got a good enough look at him to describe him. But I got lucky on the one who confronted you at work and took you off in the park. About a year ago, Baldassare got pinched driving a car he didn’t own. That same guy was with him, and went through the arrest process with Baldassare. Nothing came of the arrest, but I have the report. The man with Baldassare then is the same one we saw. His name is James Beck. Very interesting story.”

“Meaning?”

“First of all, he’s a cop killer.”

A chill went through Milstein that had nothing to do with his cold living room.

“What? A cop killer walking the streets; how’s that happen?”

“It’s not quite what it sounds like. About ten years ago, Beck got into a fight in a bar in downtown Brooklyn. I know the place. Used to be a lot of cops went in there. It’s close to the courts and detention complex. It’s the usual mess with cops and booze sometimes. Cop actually got shot in there long time ago, and that pretty much put the place out of bounds for years.”

“Who shot him? This guy?”

“No, no. It was another cop who shot him. I don’t remember the details, but somebody’s gun went off. Hit a guy in the leg. Drunken accident. Just telling you what kind of place it was. Anyhow, apparently this fellow Beck got into a beef and punched out a cop. Cop hit the floor. Busted his skull in three places. Died three days later.”

“Died?”

“Yep. One punch. Dead.”

“Must have been some punch.”

“A hard punch, a harder floor. It can happen if you land wrong. So Beck gets charged with murder. Gets convicted of first-degree manslaughter. Judge sentences him ten to twenty-five.

“That’s hard time. Maximum-security prisons. But Beck appeals. Gets a new lawyer. There’s a lot of background on this, bottom line the lawyer appeals based on procedural errors. Cited all kinds of shit, but mainly he found out the prosecutors suppressed a witness. Another cop in the bar who apparently was willing to verify Beck’s claim that the other guy started it.

“Takes eight years, but Beck finally gets out. Sues for unlawful incarceration and so on. Settles with the City and State for a little over two million bucks. After that it gets shady. Not much information to be found.”