"Why would a Russian kill an American gangster?" Gray asked.
"Maybe with Afghanistan and the Cold War over, he's freelancing. I've got no better guess, but I've been charged with finding out."
"Keep me posted," Gray said. "And during your investigation don't get your sniper pissed off at you. It wouldn't be too healthy."
Sam Owl called from his office, "Bennie can't make it today. Some problem with his mother getting a chicken bone stuck in her throat, or so he says, the lazy bum."
Joe Leonard climbed into the ring and pointed a glove at Gray and Coates. "One of you pasty guys want to spar?"
Gray answered, "You must think Dalton and Ruth Gray raised a complete idiot, Joe."
"I'll take it easy. Pull my punches."
"No way," Coates said.
Leonard leaned against the ropes. "Owen, someday you'll be able to tell your boy — what's his name? John? — that you were in the ring with the future middleweight champ."
Gray stared balefully at the fighter.
"You'll be able to tell him you actually got in a few pops at the legendary fighter. And you need a boxing lesson, I'll swear to that."
Gray jumped up from the seat and shoved his hands back into the gloves.
"That nice tie you been wearing lately, Owen?" the detective asked. "The blue with the red birds in it? Will you leave that to me?"
Leonard laughed evilly. The bridge of his nose had a lump the size of a marble. Scar tissue had begun closing his left ear. He shaved his head every morning. He looked as hard as a fireplug. He widely gestured Gray into the ring like he was gathering sheaves.
Gray slipped through the ropes, raised his hands, and squared himself to the middleweight.
Leonard lowered himself to a stance and danced toward Gray, lecturing importantly, "Now the first lesson to learn about boxing is not to get hit."
His left hand exploded forward, landing like a hammer on Gray's nose. Gray staggered, then collapsed to a sitting position, his legs splayed out. He held a glove over his nose, which began squirting blood.
"Goddamnit, Joe, that hurt." Gray's voice wavered. "That really hurt."
"Hey, man don't want to be hit, he takes up bobsledding."
Gray struggled to his feet. Blood dribbled around his mouth and dropped from his chin.
"And that was just my pretend punch," the middleweight said. "That's the punch I give my kid brother to thank him for bringing me a Pepsi from the refrigerator."
Gray gamely held up his hands again.
Coates yelled from the bench, "Owen, you're a slower learner than I thought."
Leonard came on, speaking from behind his gloves. "Now the second lesson is, Don't ever forget the first lesson, the one about not getting hit."
Leonard feinted with his left and threw his right, a rocket that landed on Gray's nose and blew him off his feet to bounce against the ropes. Again he slid to a sitting position. He shook his head and leaned almost to the mat.
Coates stepped to the ring. "You okay, Owen?"
Gray managed to focus his eyes. He blinked and nodded.
"Your face has lost that little bit of color it had," Leonard said as he helped Gray up. He passed him through the ropes to Coates.
Gray spit out his mouthpiece and wiped away blood with a towel Sam Owl handed him. Owl clucked with disapproval at the spectacle.
"Goddamnit." A moment passed before Gray could pluck another thought from the cotton in his head. "I'm going to sue your ass for something, Joe, as soon as I figure out what."
Leonard laughed again and resumed his shadowboxing. "Pete's going to arrest me. You're going to sue me. I'm in a world of trouble now."
Weaving slightly, Gray followed the detective toward the shower.
Coates said over his shoulder, "You looked goofy in that ring, to put it charitably."
Gray managed, "Not as goofy as you're going to look, you don't find the Chinaman's killer."
Forty minutes later Gray met defense attorney Phil Hampton at the federal courthouse's alley door, where prisoners brought from Manhattan jails entered the building for court dates.
Hampton's first words were "Frank Luca didn't waste any time, did he?"
Gray gave him a pained expression, not far from how he felt. His nose still smarted.
"One day you've got the hottest case in America and the next day you're prosecuting one of my grubby clients." Hampton laughed. "The mighty have done some serious falling."
"Speculating on my career is something I can handle without your help, Phil."
"What happened to your nose? Looks like your girlfriend crossed her legs."
"Let's do some business, Phil."
"My guy is just so much chaff for your office, Owen. You don't need to stick him, do you?"
Phil Hampton rarely practiced before the federal bar. Most of his clients were B&Es, car thieves, snatch-and-grabs, and muggers, all brought up on state charges. Hampton's brother owned Bob's Bonds near the Tombs. On Bob's window: "Let Bob Be Your Ace in the Hole." The brothers fed each other clients.
Hampton resembled a pile of dirty laundry. His coat was askew on his shoulders. His tie was pulled to one side and had a splat of mustard near the knot. His shoes had been scuffed to the leather. His mustache was a haphazard collection of stray hairs. Eager to cut someone off, he worked his mouth even when not speaking.
"I haven't studied the record yet, Phil." Gray had not even looked at the file. He opened it. "Donald Bledsoe. A counterfeiter, it seems."
"Nothing of the sort." Hampton was carrying a battered briefcase. "He's just an alleged passer. Hell, the cops found four bad bills on my guy. Just four bad hundreds."
"We've got the change of plea in five minutes. I need a proffer."
At a change-of-plea hearing the accused usually switched his plea from not guilty to guilty under the terms of a deal with the prosecutor.
"What can I tell you, Owen? Mike Olander is my client's brother-in-law. Bledsoe can't really turn on him."
Olander was a co-defendant. He owned the suspect copy machine.
Gray flipped to the second page — the last page — of the file. "Detective Ames says Bledsoe is going to clam up. I'm not going to do a plea unless I get a proffer."
A Dodge van turned into the alley and approached slowly. A marshal was visible through the windshield and behind him a cage. Buildings on both sides of the alley blocked the daylight.
Hampton said, "My client is afraid of a snitch-jacket."
"I hear that every day. I want the proffer before we get to the change of plea. Tell me all he knows about Olander or I'm going to recommend the charts."
The van stopped in front of Gray. A deputy U.S. marshal climbed down from the passenger side. He wore a ring made of an unmilled nugget of gold, a brown suit with a bulge under his arm, and bell-bottom pants. He was chewing a toothpick. His nose was bent twenty degrees out of alignment, making him look as if he were about to walk off in another direction. He nodded to Gray and stepped toward the rear of the van.
"Can you get him protective custody?" Hampton asked.
"For a lousy paper passer? I'll consider asking the court for something below the sentencing guidelines but only after I've heard what he has to say."
"Jesus, can't you give me anything up front?"
"Phil, you're whining. Give me the proffer first."
The deputy marshal opened the van's rear door and pulled Donald Bledsoe from the cage, then righted him and pushed him toward the alley door.
Bledsoe had spent fifteen of his forty years on this earth in assorted jails and prisons. He stole a car low on fuel. He burgled the house of a man who kept a pistol collection in his bedroom. He robbed a bank, then attempted his escape by running through the bank's closed glass door, knocking himself senseless. And now, hundred-dollar bills that felt like fax paper. He had not once in his entire life as a criminal gotten anything right.