Two minutes into it he was wide awake. According to Howard Clury's military records, the deceased detective had graduated from the Naval Demolition School at Coronado, California, then served as a demolition specialist in South Vietnam, 1971-1972.
He went out, ostensibly to get coffee, but he was so excited he didn't bother to stop. Instead he walked rapidly down to the Battery, and then just as rapidly back to Police Plaza. It was after seven when he signed back into the file room. Clury's personnel folder was just where he'd left it, on the long wooden table beneath the fluorescent lamp.
Approaching, he was seized by a throbbing anticipation, which reminded him of the excitement he'd felt perhaps a half dozen times in his career when he knew he was about to turn a case around. He thought: Thank you, Netti, for steering me to this.
There were no autopsy photos of Clury. The explosion had blown him into pieces. So, how had his body been IDed? By fragments of clothing, Janek learned-wallet, watch and ring, and, most decisively, a segment of bridge- work authenticated by his dentist. No fingerprints had been taken; evidently no fingers had survived. Janek found that curious. He also found it curious that Clury's wife, Janet, from whom he'd been separated but not divorced, had come up from Florida to attend his funeral, then signed papers authorizing cremation of his remains.
Janet Clury, as survivor of an officer killed on active duty, had been the beneficiary of a substantial lump-sum widow's payment plus pension.
Janek sat back. He wanted to think the implications through:
Certainly someone had been blown up inside Clury's car. But was it Clury?
If it wasn't-as the twice-used bomb signature suggested-then what was the connection between Clury's faked-up death and the Mendozas?
Timmy Sheehan's investigators had theorized that Clury had been blackmailing both Mendozas. Tania had told Janek that Clury had been working for Edith Mendoza, collecting information on Jake's infidelities to strengthen her hand in a planned divorce suit.
But suppose neither of these stories was right. Suppose Clury (who had worked for Jake Mendoza a year before) had played a part in Edith's death. Suppose he'd been paid to kill her. Suppose afterward he set up Metaxas, then arranged his own disappearance.
If that's what happened, Janek analyzed, Mendoza couldn't finger Clury.
If he did he'd also implicate himself. But now that Mendoza was stirring things up in Cuba, Clury might have reason to fear that his nine-year-old charade was about to be exposed.
Clury never met me. Maybe he thought he could scare me by bombing my car.
It was a wild theory, he had to admit, but perhaps it would stand the test. For instance, suppose Clury had had some other reason to want to disappear. If, Janek decided he could discover that, then maybe he could clear up a couple of other little dangles that had baffled anyone who had ever attempted to clear Mendoza-such as whether Phyllis Komfeld's claim that she had forged the Metaxas note was fact or fantasy, and, if fact, whether Komfeld had been killed to keep her from talking or because some drugcrazed burglar got carried away.
It took him hours to get to sleep, and, even then, he didn't sleep well.
He kept waking up with new combinations to be examined.
The great problem of Mendoza, he understood, was that no one who had looked into it had ever been able to figure out the sequence and the "whys."
What had been the motives of the principal players?
What, in the huge body of investigative material, was coincidental or extraneous?
Where was the entrance to the overgrown trail, which, if followed, would lead from a reasonable beginning to a plausible end?
If he could locate that path and clear it out, he might be able to trace a coherent story.
He fell asleep around two, but then was awakened at four by the harsh grinding of garbage trucks collecting refuse in front of bars and restaurants on Amsterdam Avenue. The sound reminded him of the relentless grinding of Mendoza through the years. The mills of the gods, he thought. Then, quite suddenly, he was seized by an idea.
He checked his bedside clock. It was four-thirty. If he got up he'd have sufficient time to shave, shower, tape on a microphone pack, then dress and taxi over to Cort City Plaza with perhaps a half-hour cushion before meeting The Dark One as he emerged for his morning constitutional.
At Cort City, waiting for the dawn, he asked himself again why Dakin had chosen to live in such a place. Either he's shallow and empty as the development, or he's so lonely he needs it as a refuge from his demons.
At exactly six Dakin stepped out the front door of his building, face grim and taut, body angled forward. He took a half-dozen aggressive strides before he noticed Janek. Then, acting not at all surprised, he gestured awkwardly with his hand.
"You again." Dakin's yellow eyes sliced Janek up and down.
Janek, falling into step beside him, asked: "Clury was dirty, wasn't he?"
"Hub? What's that?" Dakin cupped his hand over his ear. "Better walk on my other side."
Janek didn't change position. "Last time you told me your hearing was better on your right. Now you're telling me to walk on your left. Cut the bullshit, Chief, and answer the question. Clury was dirty and you were on to him. You'd have taken him down, too, if he hadn't gotten himself blown up."
Dakin showed a tight, sparse smile. "Practically had my hands on his balls." He puffed his cheeks. "Another inch, I'd have had him in a nutcracker."
Bastard! But Janek knew he would have to apply some flattery. He desperately needed Dakin's knowledge.
"Was Clury dealing?"
"Naw! Too smart for that! He was tipping them off, a double agent.
Most all of them are, you know-our brave undercover narcs!" Dakin's sarcasm was palpable; he was not a subtle man. "You know that. They're all slime snakes. Otherwise they wouldn't be so happy in the slime."
"How'd you get on to him, Chief?"
Dakin smirked. "I had my own agent in place. He'd penetrated the same group. But my guy was after something else." Dakin ma dea little squirting sound. "Oh, old Howie was raking it in, though we never found any of the loot. I figure his widow got hold of it, stashed it away. You know how it is in IA? When the suspect dies it's ' closed." That's policy," he added, in case Janek didn't know.
"What'd you have against Timmy Sheehan?" Dakin snorted. "Another slime snake."
"But you could never make the case, could you, Chief'?
So you thought you'd make up a case. Isn't that what you did?"
Dakin broke his stride. "What're you talkin' about?"
"I'm talking about Phyllis Komfeld."
"Ancient history. You already beat me on that. Why bring it up again?"
"I'm bringing it up because there's a lot more to it."
"Such as?"
"You tell me."
Dakin strode two steps before he spoke. "You've been in my old files, haven't you?"
"I've seen a few things," Janek bluffed.
"What're you trying to prove, Frank? I'm out of the Department. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"
"I want to hear the story from your own lips."
"One of those, are you?"
"We're both one of those, Chief. We like a good confession. Today I'm here to hear yours."
"What the hell! Woman comes to me with a good story. No point wasting it. So I put it to use."
"She IDed Clury, didn't she? But Clury was dead. So -you convinced her to finger Timmy. What I don't get is how you did it. They didn't look alike at all." Dakin smiled. "Komfeld was nuts. I could've gotten her to swear to anything. Told her there might be some reward money in it if she could make the story stick."