What’s that supposed to mean? “Is Detective Delmonico here or isn’t he?”

He shakes his head. “No, he’s not here.”

“Do you know where he is?”

“Matter of fact, I do. He’s dead. That’s where he is.”

I take a wobbly step back. “What? I just saw him. He came to my apartment.”

The officer leans forward in his chair.

“When was this?”

“A few days ago.”

“I think you’re mistaken, Miss – I don’t think I caught the name?”

“No, I’m sure of it. He was at my apartment.”

He nods, stifles a chuckle. “Oh, yeah?”

How can he be so cavalier about this? “I’m telling you the truth. Actually, I talked to him several times in the past week. He’s very thin. Older?”

The officer leans forward even farther, stone-faced. “Now, let me tellyou the truth,” he says slowly. “Delmonico has been dead for over three years.”

I stand there in stunned silence as the precinct lobby begins to whirl around me. I can feel the blood draining from my head. My knees are starting to go.

“Hey, you okay?”

No, I’m not. I’m absolutely, positively not okay. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same guy?” I ask. “Detective Frank Delmonico? Homicide?”

“Yep. Frank Delmonico.” He mutters something else under his breath.

“What? I didn’t hear that last part.”

“It was nothing.”

“It was obviously something. What was it?”

He glares at me. Who does this chick think she is?

But I don’t back down. I actually raise my voice. “I want to know what you said!”

The cop shrugs. “Hey, if you insist. I said, the cocksucker. ”

As if I’m not confused enough. “Why would you say that about him?”

“You a reporter?” he snaps.

“No. Hardly.”

“All the same, we’re not supposed to talk about it. It was in all the papers at the time. Press has a ball with those kind of stories.”

“I didn’t live here then. What happened?”

“Let’s just say the detective’s not exactly missed around here.”

“Why? I need to hear this. Please? This is very important to me.”

“Because he almost single-handedly brought down this precinct, that’s why.”

I open my mouth to ask how, but he cuts me off. “Seriously, I can’t talk about it. It’s over with. And so is this conversation.”

I begin walking away. Then something occurs to me, and I quickly turn back. “At least let me ask you this,” I say. “Does it have anything to do with the murders at the Fálcon Hotel the other day?”

The officer looks at me with a completely blank stare. “What murders?”

And then – what can I say? – I faint.

Chapter 88

FIFTEEN OR TWENTY minutes later, still dazed and with another good-sized bump on my noggin, I walk a block before I even realize it’s raining. I’m too busy replaying every single encounter with Detective Delmonico in my mind.

Is that where all of this has happened? In my mind?

It’s impossible. Has to be.

I talked to him. He talked to me. He gave me his card. How does a dead man do that?

Wait a minute! Hold on!

I stop short in the middle of the sidewalk, the raindrops feeling icy cold against my face. Pulling Delmonico’s card from my pocket, I rub it between my fingers just to prove to myself that it’s real. It sure feels like it.

“Taxi!”

The first thing I do after rushing into my apartment is turn on my computer. I should be too freaked out, too bewildered to think straight. And yet the obsession to learn the truth about Delmonico – what happened and what is happening – has me focused like never before.

“It was in all the papers,” said the cop at the precinct.

Let’s see about that.

I Google away, and the hits on Frank Delmonico’s name number more than a thousand. Jeez, Louise! Some of the sites are the venomous rantings of bloggers, but most are indeed news stories – all archived – from the city’s papers. The pages never turn yellow on the Internet.

I click on one site, then another and another. Not all of them include a picture, but when they do he’s always wearing that same gray suit. His dark, intense eyes are unmistakable. It’s him, all right. And each and every article confirms what I still can’t bring myself to believe.

He’s been dead for over three years.

The more I read, the more I realize why the police don’t like talking about the guy. Cocksucker, indeed, and that’s putting it mildly.

Delmonico was a highly decorated officer with over twenty years on the job. He was also on the take for at least ten of them.

And that’s just for starters.

I keep clicking on sites until I find this one piece in the New York Times that lays the gory story out in grand detail. The article must be twenty-five hundred words.

Delmonico had gotten in bed with the Russian mob, protecting their interests in drugs and prostitution, as well as helping to launder money through the poker rooms of several Atlantic City casinos. The worst part was what happened when two young detectives from his precinct got close to linking one of his Russian comrades to a homicide in Queens. Delmonico whacked both detectives. Did the job himself.

What’s more, he arranged it so he’d be the lead detective in the investigation. There was just one hitch. Delmonico thought they were alone in the alleyway when he pulled the trigger on the two detectives. He never saw an old Hasidic man who happened to be looking out a nearby tenement window. But the man in the window sure saw him.

Still, it seemed everyone thought Delmonico would get away with it – including most in the DA’s office. It was the word of a veteran detective against that of an elderly man with admittedly bad eyesight. Speculation had it that the only reason the case went forward was that a nervous mayor didn’t want to seem soft on police corruption, especially two cold-blooded murders.

But in the end, it was the Russians who proved even more nervous. A week before the start of the trial, Frank Delmonico was shot twice in the head at point-blank range. The gun used was a Makarov, a Russian-made 9 mm. Just in case that wasn’t enough of a “message,” there was something stuffed in Delmonico’s mouth. A big black rat.

But that rat wasn’t the real kicker.

At least from where I’m sitting.

Hoping to avoid the reporters and cameras camped outside his apartment in Queens, Delmonico had decided to check into a hotel. That’s where they found his body.

At the Fálcon.

There was even a photo of his body being carried out in a long black bag.

Chapter 89

I STAND UP from my computer, having had more than enough of this. I’m woozy and in a daze. If Frank Delmonico’s no longer alive, whom have I been talking to the past few days?

Impulsively, I reach into my pocket and pull out Delmonico’s card. I think back to when he handed it to me outside the hotel. I can picture it clearly.

Wait.

That’s it!

I rush to my darkroom and the pictures lining nearly every inch of wall space. I shot so many that morning outside the hotel. I covered every angle twice over. All the commotion. All the people. Police, paramedics – there’s no way he could’ve escaped my lens.

Grabbing my loupe, I begin to search. It’s my own desperate version of Where’s Waldo? I move left to right across every photo, looking for that gray suit, those unmistakable eyes. Where’s Delmonico?

I can’t find him in any of the pictures.

So what do I do? I start over. I go slower, inch by inch, top to bottom. The sweat from my face and arms is sticking to the photo paper. My head is throbbing; my eyes are killing me.

C’mon, where are you, Delmonico? I know you’re here somewhere.

But he isn’t.

Taking a giant step back, I breathe in deep and try to think. Dead or alive, real or imagined, what does Detective Frank Delmonico have to do with me? I’d never heard of him before, never seen him until that first time at the Fálcon. What does it mean that he wasn’t there when the four bodies were carried out but afterward he was Frankie-on-the-spot, investigating me? That’s something, but what does it mean?