"A friend of mine died from an overdose of Diablo on the Lower East Side. I wanted to know how she got hold of it."

La Culebra laughed incredulously. "How she got hold of it? You're kidding, right?" He pretended to shuffle through the papers before him. "Let's see... what was the serial number on the bag? I'm sure I have it cross-referenced here somewhere. She did mail in her warranty card, didn't she?"

He laughed some more, only quieting down once he saw no reaction from w.i.l.l.y. "Okay, this is where you tell me I am a monster, a peddler of death, worse than the s.h.i.t on your shoes-the person who killed your friend."

w.i.l.l.y shook his head. "You are worse than the s.h.i.t on my shoes, but you didn't kill her. You were just the delivery boy. If anyone's responsible, it's me."

La Culebra looked at him with renewed interest. "You made this woman unhappy?"

"I married her."

The drug dealer remained silent for a moment before saying, "I don't know how your wife got hold of Diablo. I am sorry she did. I have no retailers outside this neighborhood. Either she bought it up here or someone else did and then gave it to her. I could ask my people if she was the buyer, though. Do you have a picture?"

w.i.l.l.y reached into an inner pocket and removed the photograph he'd taken from her apartment. He hesitated before handing it over, however.

La Culebra set him at ease. "I have a Xerox machine in the other room. You can have that back."

w.i.l.l.y dropped it on the desk between them. "She's the one right in the middle."

The other man picked it up and considered it for a while. When he spoke next, he seemed to be addressing the picture directly. "My name is Carlos Barzun."

w.i.l.l.y watched his face carefully, wondering at this spontaneous admission. "And you tell me that so I'll know who to credit for this act of grace?"

Barzun smiled. "I am a Catholic. I have memories of such things."

w.i.l.l.y smiled slightly. "My name is w.i.l.l.y Kunkle."

"You are not the only person interested in Nathan Lee," Barzun admitted. "I am to report anyone asking about this batch of Diablo."

"Report to who?"

"A customer who paid me a lot of money."

"Did he say to watch for a one-armed cop?"

Barzun paused. The muted sounds all around them slowly filled the silence. "Yes," he finally said.

"And you told him about Lee?"

"Yes, after I heard Lee had been asking about me."

"But you won't tell me this man's name."

"I have to think about that," Barzun confessed. "I am not sure how generous I should be with you. I worry I have already made a big mistake."

He rose from his chair and picked up the photograph. "You are a bad influence, w.i.l.l.y Kunkle."

"I've heard that before."

"Wait here."

Barzun left the room. w.i.l.l.y stayed absolutely still, knowing the fragility of the slender string keeping him alive-a ruthless man's quirky yielding to a tiny spark of sentimentality, as inexplicable as a hungry shark forgoing an easy meal.

Barzun returned and gave the photo back. "If I hear about your wife, how do I tell you?"

w.i.l.l.y gave him the name and address of Riley's store.

Barzun then picked up a small portable radio and spoke into it in Spanish. Moments later, Manny entered the room, still carrying his squat, ugly gun.

Barzun gestured to w.i.l.l.y and told Manny, "Make sure he gets safely to the street."

With Manny walking warily behind him, w.i.l.l.y retraced his steps out of the apartment, down the stairs, and into the lobby. As they both neared the door, the radio attached to Manny's belt uttered a single short sentence, which Manny briefly acknowledged.

As he held the door open for him, Manny said to w.i.l.l.y, "The boss told me to give you the name Ron Cashman."

"Thanks," w.i.l.l.y replied, and stepped back outside.

Chapter 16.

Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens paused on the sidewalk before a newly renovated brownstone on a quiet, leafy residential street on the edge of Brooklyn Heights. The block was essentially empty of people aside from one woman walking a pair of greyhounds in the distance. They could just see the water down one of the side streets behind them, and a bit of Manhattan Island's southernmost tip, now oddly antique-looking with the absence of the World Trade Center twin towers. The air was still and quiet, the perpetual background hum of the city's vitality almost lost to the slight rustling of the branches overhead.

"Fancy neighborhood," Sammie commented.

"Very," Joe agreed, climbing the stoop to better read the discreet bra.s.s plaque mounted to the wall beside the heavy, gla.s.s-fronted entrance. It read, "Liptak a.s.sociates, Ltd."

He glanced back at Sammie. "Shall we?"

"You think he'll be there?"

"I'd be, if I had an office here. Besides, even if he's not, I wouldn't mind finding out something about him. That's why I didn't call ahead."

They stepped into an expensively appointed, neutrally colored reception room, staffed by an attractive young woman sitting behind a round maple table.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"Hi." Gunther smiled broadly, glancing around for signs of Liptak a.s.sociates' function in life, and finding only nondescript artwork on the walls. "Is Mr. Liptak in?"

She punched a couple of keys on the laptop computer situated slightly to one side of her, placed as if to indicate that she didn't actually type into the thing on any regular basis. "Do you have an appointment?"

"No, we don't. We're here on personal business."

"Is Mr. Liptak expecting you?" she asked, her expression blatantly skeptical.

"No, but I think he'd be sorry to miss us. Tell him we're friends of w.i.l.l.y Kunkle's."

A furrow had appeared between her carefully plucked eyebrows. This was not an approach she approved of. "And you are?"

"Do you have an envelope?" Gunther asked her.

"What?"

"An envelope. I'd like for you to take something in to Mr. Liptak. It'll make things clearer to him."

Irritation replaced by confusion, she opened a drawer at her lap and extracted a single envelope, handing it over without comment.

Gunther took it, placed one of his business cards inside, sealed it, and returned it. "Joe Gunther and Sammie Martens are our names."

Rising slowly, watching them as if they might try to steal the paintings during her absence, she moved over to a closed door on the wall behind her. "I'll be right back."

Sammie waited until the door had closed behind her before asking, "Why didn't you just tell her we're cops?"

"Discretion, for both Liptak and us. It might make him chattier if he knows we didn't fly the flag in front of her highness, plus, I don't doubt she would've given us flak for having the wrong badges."

Sammie accepted that without judgment and made a small tour of the reception area instead. "What do you think they do here?"

"I think if you have to ask, they don't want you on the premises. That would be my guess."

The door behind the desk opened, and the regal young woman reappeared, accompanied by a man who looked downright plain by comparison, although with careful, watchful eyes.

He circled the desk and approached them with hand held out. "Hi. Mr. Gunther, Ms. Martens. I'm Andy Liptak. Why don't you come back to the conference room with me? Much more comfortable there."

Sammie smiled at the neutral phrasing of his greeting. Joe had read the character of the place correctly. As they fell into line behind their host, she also noted with satisfaction the p.i.s.sed-off expression of the beauty queen.

Like most brownstones, this one was tall and narrow, so the conference room right off the lobby had a single window overlooking the street and ran long and thin toward the back of the building. There was just enough room in it for the table down its length and the thickly upholstered chairs lined up around it. Liptak took a seat just off the parental head of the table and motioned to his guests to make themselves comfortable. Gunther sat where he imagined Liptak normally did, with his back to the window and a full view down the middle. It made him think of what it might be like having a small family meal at the Rockefellers'.

Except that Andy Liptak didn't look like any blue blood. With his square, blunt body, stubby hands, and thick neck, he reminded Gunther more of a longsh.o.r.eman than a man of means and leisure.

Liptak started things off. "I wanted to thank you for your under-the-radar approach," he said. "It's going to drive Casey nuts for the next week."

Casey, Sammie thought. Of course.

Gunther laughed pleasantly. "Actually, that was for us as much as for you. We thought she might accuse us of impersonating police officers otherwise."

"She might have at that. Very protective woman. I'm guessing you're here about w.i.l.l.y?"

"Not entirely. Our interest is more Mary Kunkle."

Liptak looked crestfallen. "Christ. I couldn't believe it when w.i.l.l.y told me. I mean, I knew she'd hit the skids. It's one of the reasons we broke up. But it's hard to imagine anyone you once loved could die that way. Really knocked the wind out of me. And, not to get personal, but w.i.l.l.y wasn't too subtle about breaking the news. I guess he told you I got a little p.i.s.sed off at him."

Sammie waited for Gunther to take the lead, which he did by admitting blandly, "Well, it's an emotional issue for him, and we all know how lacking in subtlety he can be. That's actually one of the reasons we wanted to meet with you on our own. I want to make sure his report wasn't colored by his own view of things."

"His view of things?" Liptak echoed. "What's that mean? I thought she was an accidental overdose. He didn't tell me otherwise."

Gunther was purposefully vague, although curious about the other man's reaction. "Oh, that's a possibility, sure. We're also looking to rule out something a little more complicated."

Liptak's surprise seemed genuine. He sat forward in his chair, his eyes widening. "You're kidding. That's why w.i.l.l.y was being so cagey."

"How do you mean?"

"Well, he basically sandbagged me. We had dinner together and he spent the whole time letting me go on and on about the old days, milking me about how things had gone between Mary and me, and only at the end did he admit she was dead. I figured it was because he was still p.i.s.sed off she'd moved in with me after dumping him, but now I guess he was fishing, seeing if I might've had something to do with killing her. That son-of-a-b.i.t.c.h. I accused him of being a cop even off duty-little did I know."

"Did he have any reason to think you wished her ill?" Gunther asked.

Liptak became agitated. "No. It was over between Mary and me. I didn't even know where she lived or what she was doing. To be honest, she could've died two years ago and I wouldn't have known it. It's not that I disliked her, but we'd broken up. It was over. I'd moved on."

"Why did you break up?" Sammie asked quietly.

Liptak looked both sad and angry. "I wasn't going to tell w.i.l.l.y this, but it wasn't just the drugs. She was s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around, too. He might be p.i.s.sed at me right now, but back then, I didn't think too highly of him, either. I thought he'd messed her up big time, and that I was the unintended victim."

He shook his head apologetically. "I know how that sounds. I also know it's dead wrong. We all bring a bit of ourselves to these messes, right? I can admit now that I was as much a part of her problem as w.i.l.l.y was, or her mom, or herself, for that matter." He rubbed his cheek with his open palm. "Christ, when he told me about her, it hit me like a ton of bricks. All the denial I'd piled up inside-the way I'd told myself she was just selfdestructive, and there was nothing anyone could do to save her. I mean, that might've been true, but when he broke the news, I couldn't stop feeling guilty."

Gunther was impressed by the big man's candor. How many times had he, too, been caught in a similar web of guilt and self-delusion, and had struggled later to save face?

"Mr. Liptak," he asked, "were you able to tell w.i.l.l.y anything at all about who Mary might have been entangled with after you two broke up? Her drug dealer or dealers, for example?"

He shook his head. "He asked me the same thing. Mary's and my parting was pretty friendly. I didn't know and didn't ask who she was seeing."

Gunther was beginning to run out of questions. The guy appeared so candid about his shortcomings that there weren't many obvious cracks to pry open.

Except for one point of interest. Looking around at the muted but expensive decor surrounding them, Gunther asked, "What exactly do you do, by the way? You seem pretty well off."

Liptak gave an embarra.s.sed smile. "Yeah, well, there're a lot of smoke and mirrors here. I mean, I do okay-it's mostly real estate, to answer your question, and a few businesses-but appearances play a big role. It costs me a fortune to have this office and that debutante outside, but you know what they say about spending money to make money."

"Were you making this kind of income when you were living with Mary?"

Liptak burst out laughing. "No way. I was clueless then, trying to find my footing. Wasn't till after she left that I started to get serious." He paused and added, "Too bad, too. If I'd gotten my act together sooner, maybe I could've saved her."

Gunther pushed himself away from the table, encouraging Sammie to do the same. "Okay, Mr. Liptak. We'll get out of your hair. We might want to talk again at some point, if that's all right."

Liptak got up and ushered them back out into the lobby. "No problem. Call me anytime. If I'm not around, Casey'll know where to find me."

Casey didn't bother looking up from the doc.u.ment she appeared to be reading.

They shook hands on the stoop and Sammie and Gunther returned to the sidewalk.

"What d'you think?" Gunther asked his sidekick.

Sammie thought a moment before saying, "I think it was interesting he didn't ask about the investigation."

For some reason, they found a parking place barely half a block away from the Seventh Precinct house. Gunther got out and scrutinized every sign he could see along the street, looking for the one that would explain this anomaly and make moving the car a necessity. But while several signs were contradictory, none made it clear that he was in violation.

Yielding to the evidence, he walked with Sammie the short distance to their destination. Immediately to their left, the trash-clotted stone base of the noisy, graffitiladen Williamsburg Bridge loomed overhead on its way to Brooklyn across the river. In his admitted limited experience, Joe Gunther had never been to a New York precinct house that wasn't located within similarly bleak environs. As one wizened cop had once put it to him, that way the commute to round up business was kept at a minimum.