"In a sense."
"That's bad, I think."
Paul's hand was on the door to the kitchen. He turned back and faced Rick, his eyes remote, all-seeing of patterns and numbers and what happened to people-other people, including his brother.
A house of smells: laundry detergent, the pink soap in the bathroom, the roast of lamb in the kitchen, Paul's two boys panting and sweaty and eager, the wet football cleats on the counter, the modest perfumery of Mary's neck and arms as she bent close to serve Rick his dinner, the pencil shavings and cigars in Paul's study-which, Rick noticed, had no fewer than five phone lines and what appeared to be a substantial recording device on the desk, as well as a small personal safe behind the woodwork, tucked between the duck decoys, hunting in Mexico having become Paul's newest pastime, which, when you thought of it, was a pretty good way to meet drug dealers, if that was your inclination, which with Paul was not necessarily the case. Not necessarily. You didn't know, almost no one knew, and that was the way he wanted it. Paul was masked and hedged and operating at a double-blind level, not to mention the Cayman Island account and untraceable and no return address and calling number blocked and encrypted private mail drop and forget you heard this and attorney-client privilege and high-speed shredder-yes, right there under the desk, Rick noticed, the spaghetti of paper not carried away in the house trash and entrusted to the New York City Department of Sanitation but, if he knew Paul, which he did, burned in the fireplace three steps away, where a yellow can of starter fluid and a large box of wooden matches sat on the mantel ready to smoke numbers and words into invisibility.
After dinner, Paul drove Rick back to the ferry.
"We've got fifteen minutes," he said, switching off the headlights but keeping the car running. "My boys loved seeing you. So did Mary."
Rick nodded. Paul's sons had climbed all over him, wrestling, pummeling him.
"All right," Paul said. "I found out some other things I wanted to save for after dinner so you wouldn't be too upset. After you called me, I was on the phone for two hours. In fact, that's what I was working on when your ferry came in. I had to talk to some people I usually don't like to talk with." Paul paused, looked at Rick, then back out the window. "When Peck put Christina away, he was still trying to catch up with his father, who was a captain, too. Used to come into my bar. Okay, so the little Peck got his gold shield maybe a year ago and somehow got in with the D.A.'s squad in Manhattan."
"They're good."
"Yes, they are. They certainly are that. Fellows you would prefer to have avoided. I mean, it's amazing for this guy to make the Manhattan squad in his late twenties. There's a little respect for his old man in that. But that can create a problem, too. The other guys don't impress very easily. And nobody's cutting him any slack. He's not making good cases as often as he should. He's not desperate, he's just on the ropes. He's a frustrated guy. We know that. I know people who know that. He's working hard, too. Extra hours. But there's something funny about him, Rick. They don't know what it is. Something is edgewise about him. It's not that he's not smart. He is. Now, how do I know this? I know this because Tony has, in fact, approached Peck. They have an arrangement."
The food felt heavy in Rick's stomach. "What kind of arrangement?"
"Tony goes to Peck and says, I can give you a couple of great cases, no problem, I'll get Mickey Simms to sing his song. But you got to get me Christina. This is what he says to Peck."
"A young detective is not going to go for that."
"Not at first."
"But then he thinks about it."
Paul nodded. "He thinks and thinks and thinks about it, and Tony can tell he is thinking about it because he has a few guys watching Peck's house, just for the hell of it, just to get a vibe off of the situation. Check out the drinking, the wife, whatever. So Peck and Tony meet again. Tony already knows how it can be done. The detective has to figure out a way to change his original testimony against Christina, without being a liar in the first place."
"But wait," said Rick. "He was the one who ID'd her in the truck. He sat up there and said she's the one."
"Correct. That is correct. Now he has to say it was someone else. He has to say he was wrong. That he saw someone else, another woman on a current case who was the real one."
"That's just a lot of bullshit."
"Of course, but identity is a mysterious fucking thing," Paul agreed softly. "How do I know you are you? I mean, I haven't seen you in almost like four years. Here you are, older, with a beard, with a little gray, you weigh thirty pounds less, hair different, glasses, the whole nine yards, and I know it's you. Right? I know it because I just know it. People've put their faith in this for all of recorded time. So Peck has to think this thing through very carefully. He can't just go to the prosecutor who handled the case and say, I woke up this morning and realized it wasn't her. No, that won't do. He has to pin it on somebody. That's the only way to convince the D.A.'s Office. So, as you remember, your whole crew had what, twelve, thirteen people?"
"At the top, sixteen."
"How many women?"
"Two or three, depending."
"Christina was the only one who went down?" asked Paul.
"Yeah."
"But there were a couple of other women around."
"They didn't do as much. They just helped with the little stuff."
"No, but apparently they're still active. Anyway, according to the original complaint, they had about eleven of your crew under surveillance and only made ID on five or six. The rest are what they call 'lost subjects.' They never got names on them. Two were women. Peck decided he could switch Christina for one of them. Just say it wasn't Christina who was in the truck but one of the female lost subjects. Somebody who he'd subsequently come across."
Rick didn't even remember the names of the other women. Patty someone. Girlfriends of the guys. He'd always tried not to know too much.
"The beauty of it is that he is sure the lost subject was around," Paul went on, shaking his head in the dark of the car. "No. That's not the real beauty of it. The real beauty of it is that it makes Peck look like a good guy! So honest that he's willing to lose an old collar that no one would have hassled him about. Also, it helps if the old lost subject has been maybe arrested since then, been hanging out with fuck-ups, whatever. See, the original prosecutors go back and say to themselves, The undercover cop says the real suspect is one slummy chick who's still being watched by Narcotics, somebody who is not exactly an upstanding citizen of the City of New York, and then you've got Christina, never been in prison before, never arrested, was a good student at Columbia before she got mixed up with the bad people, especially that fucking mope Rick Bocca, who they never nailed, and she had a perfect prison record, and that gets into the head of the prosecutor. It eats at him. He has to do something about it. He thinks about it all the time, he talks to his wife about it. He feels guilty, he thinks maybe they were trying to get at you by putting her away. See, these guys have a lot of power. If they really think somebody is innocent, they can get them out in a few days."
"I didn't know that."
"It's true. I checked that out with two different people downtown. All the prosecutors have to do is get the motion before the judge. It happens so rarely that the judge is always going to say yes. The judge knows these guys work their asses off to get convictions and aren't going to switch one unless they are really sure the person is innocent."