'They're negative.' He paused. 'Benny's started singing. He's saying Davila dealt.'
'I should think people might consider the source on that one,' I said. 'Benny doesn't exactly strike me as a reliable narrator.'
'I agree with you,' Marino said. 'But some people are trying to paint Davila as a bad cop. There's a rumor they want to pin Jane's murder on him.'
'That's crazy,' I said, surprised. That makes absolutely no sense.'
'You remember the stuff on Jane's hand that glowed in the Luma-Lite?'
'Yes.'
'Cocaine,' he said.
'And her toxicology?'
'Negative. And that's weird.' Marino looked frustrated. 'But the other thing Benny's saying now is that it was Davila who gave the knapsack to him.'
'Oh come on,' I said with irritation.
'I'm just telling you.'
'It wasn't Davila's hair found in the fountain.'
'We can't prove how long that had been there. And we don't know it's Gault's,' he said.
'DNA will verify it's Gault's,' I said with conviction. 'And Davila carried a.380 and a.38. Jane was shot with a Clock.'
'Look' — Marino leaned forward, resting his arms on the table — 'I'm not here to argue with you, Doc. I'm just telling you that things aren't looking good. New York politicians want this case cleared, and a good way to do that is to pin the crime on a dead man. So what do you do? You turn Davila into a dirtbag and nobody feels sorry for him. Nobody cares.'
'And what about what happened to Davila?'
'That dumbshit medical examiner who went to the scene still thinks it's possible he committed suicide.'
I looked at Marino as if he'd lost his mind. 'He kicked himself in the head?' I said. 'Then shot himself between the eyes?'
'He was standing up when he shot himself with his own gun, and when he fell he hit concrete or something.'
'His vital reaction to his injuries shows he received the blow to his head first,' I said, getting angrier. 'And please explain how his revolver ended up so neatly on his chest.'
'It's not your case, Doc.' Marino looked me in the eye. 'That's the bottom line. You and me are both guests. We got invited.'
'Davila did not commit suicide,' I said. 'And Dr. Horowitz is not going to allow such a thing to come out of his office.'
'Maybe he won't. Maybe they'll just say that Davila was a dirtbag who got whacked by another drug dealer. Jane ends up in a pine box in Potter's Field. End of story. Central Park and the subway are safe again.'
I thought of Commander Penn and felt uneasy. I asked Marino about her.
'I don't know what she's got to do with any of this,' he said. 'I've just been talking to some of the guys. But she's jammed. On the one hand, she wouldn't want anyone to think she had a bad cop. On the other, she don't want the public to think there's a crazed serial killer running through the subway.'
'I see,' I said as I thought of the enormous pressure she must be under, for it was her department's mandate to take the subway back from the criminals. New York City had allocated the Transit Police tens of millions of dollars to do that.
'Plus,' he added, 'it was a friggin' reporter who found Jane's body in Central Park. And this guy's relentless as a jackhammer from what I've heard. He wants to win a Nobel Prize.
'
'Not likely,' I said irritably.
'You never know,' said Marino, who often made predictions about who would win a Nobel Prize. By now, according to him, I had won several.
'I wish we knew whether Gault is still in New York,' I said.
Marino drained his second beer and looked at his watch. 'Where's Lucy?' he asked.
'Looking for Janet, last I heard.'
'What's she like?'
I knew what he was wondering. 'She's a lovely young woman,' I said. 'Bright but very quiet.'
He was silent.
'Marino, they've put my niece on the security floor.'
He turned toward the counter as if he were thinking about another beer. 'Who did? Benton?'
'Yes.'
'Because of the computer mess?'
'Yes.'
'You want another Zima?'
'No, thank you. And you shouldn't have another beer, since you're driving. In fact, you're probably driving a police car and shouldn't have had the first one.'
I've got my truck tonight.'
I was not at all happy to hear that, and he could tell.
'Look, so it don't have a damn air bag. I'm sorry, okay? But a taxi or limo service wouldn't have had an air bag, either.'
'Marino
'I'm just going to buy you this huge air bag. And you can drag it around with you everywhere you go like your own personal hot-air balloon.'