Gone, Baby, Gone (Kenzie & Gennaro #4)(125)

“Mr. Popularity,” he said, and turned his back to me.

I followed him into his living room, where a book of crossword puzzles sat open on the coffee table in between a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, a half-full tumbler, and an ashtray. The TV was on, but muted, and Bobby Darin sang “The Good Life” from speakers set to whisper volume.

Devin wore a flannel robe over sweatpants and a Police Academy sweatshirt. He pulled the robe closed as he sat on the couch and lifted his glass, took a sip, and stared up at me with eyes that, while glassy, were as hard as the rest of him.

“Grab a glass from the kitchen.”

“I don’t feel much like drinking,” I said.

“I only drink alone when I’m alone, Patrick. Got it?”

I got the glass, brought it back, and he poured an overly generous drink into it. He raised his.

“To killing cops,” he said, and drank.

“I didn’t kill a cop.”

“Your partner did.”

“Devin,” I said, “you’re going to treat me like shit, I’ll leave.”

He raised his glass toward the hallway. “Door’s open.”

I tossed the glass on the coffee table, and some bourbon spilled out of it as I got out of the chair and headed for the door.

“Patrick.”

I turned back, my hand on the doorknob.

Neither of us said anything, and Bobby Darin’s silk vocal slid through the room. I stood in the doorway with all that had gone unspoken and unconfronted in my friendship with Devin hanging between us as Darin sang with a detached mourning for the unattainable, the gulf between what we wish for and what we get.

“Come on back in,” Devin said.

“Why?”

He looked down at the coffee table. He removed the pen from the crossword book, closed it. He placed his drink on top of it. He looked at the window, the dark cast of early morning.

He shrugged. “Outside of cops and my sisters, you and Ange are the only friends I got.”

I came back to the chair, wiped the spill of bourbon with my sleeve. “This isn’t over yet, Devin.”

He nodded.

“Someone ordered Broussard and Pasquale to do that hit.”

He poured himself some more Jack. “You think you know who, don’t you?”

I leaned back in the chair and took a very light sip from my glass, hard liquor never having been my drug of choice. “Broussard said Poole wasn’t a shooter. Ever. I’d always had Poole pegged for the guy who took the money out of the quarries, capped Mullen and Pharaoh, handed the money off to someone else. But I could never figure who that someone else was.”

“What money? What the hell are you talking about?”

I spent the next half hour running it down for him.

When I finished, he lit a cigarette and said, “Broussard kidnapped the kid; Mullen saw him. Olamon blackmails him into finding and returning the two hundred grand. Broussard runs a double-cross, has someone take out Mullen and Gutierrez, has Cheese whacked in prison. Yes?”

“Killing Mullen and Gutierrez was part of the deal with Cheese,” I said. “But otherwise, yes.”

“And you thought Poole was the shooter.”

“Until the roof with Broussard.”

“So who was it?”

“Well, it’s not just the shooting. Someone had to take the money from Poole and make it disappear in front of a hundred and fifty cops. No flatfoot could pull that off. Had to be high command. Someone above reproach.”

He held up a hand. “Ho, wait a minute. If you’re thinking—”

“Who allowed Poole and Broussard to breach protocol and proceed with the ransom drop without federal intervention? Who’s dedicated his life to helping kids, finding kids, saving kids? Who was in the hills that night,” I said, “roving, his whereabouts accountable only to himself?”

“Aw, fuck,” he said. He took a gulp from his glass, grimaced as he swallowed. “Jack Doyle? You think Jack Doyle’s in on this?”

“Yeah, Devin. I think Jack Doyle’s the guy.”

Devin said, “Aw, fuck,” again. Several times actually. And then there was nothing but silence and the sound of ice melting in our glasses for a long time.





35





“Before forming CAC,” Oscar said, “Doyle was Vice. He was Broussard and Pasquale’s sergeant. He approved their transfers to Narcotics, brought them on board with CAC a few years later when he made lieutenant. It was Doyle who kept Broussard from getting transferred to academy instructor after he married Rachel and the brass went nuts. They wanted Broussard busted down to nothing. They wanted him gone. Marrying a hooker is like saying you’re gay in this department.”

I stole one of Devin’s cigarettes and lit it, immediately got a head rush that sucked all the blood out of my legs.

Oscar puffed from his ratty old cigar, dropped it back in the ashtray, flipped another page in his steno pad. “All transfers, recommendations, decorations Broussard ever received were signed off by Doyle. He was Broussard’s rabbi. Pasquale’s, too.”

It was light outside by now, but you wouldn’t know it from Devin’s living room. The shades were drawn tight, and the room still bore that vaguely metallic air of deep night.