She positioned herself on the stool next to me and crossed her legs with that sound of nylon and surveyed the long room-bar running the length of one wall until a step up into a dining s.p.a.ce at the very back. Small tables along the other wall. A few booths just to the left of the entrance. Dark wood, ferns and neon liquor signs throughout.

"My G.o.d, Max. The place hasn't changed in ten years." She smiled. "I feel like a college girl."

Just two blocks from Jefferson Hospital, Moriarity's was a favorite of the nursing and medical students and was mostly filled with a younger crowd.

"You never went to college, Meagan," I said.

She smiled and her eyes stayed bright.

"I feel like a college girl," she repeated and then ignored me for a few beats. "Get me a Merlot will you, Max?"

She waited until she'd had a taste and then asked: "So, how often do you get back, Max? Keep in touch with any guys from the old days?"

"This is actually the first time I've been back to the city since I left, Meg. With my mom gone, there wasn't much reason."

She gave me a look of sympathy and then realized it was misspent on me.

"So this inquiry about Colin O'Shea is strong enough motivation to get you here?"

I have never been one to answer questions without thinking about my response first. I was even more careful with Meagan, who had always been a verbal chess player.

"It's a favor for a friend," I finally said.

To her credit, she saw the answer as a blocking move and let it pa.s.s.

"And what have you come up with so far?" she said, moving right to the business at hand.

"Since both your case and the one in Florida have to do with women, I'm kind of surprised by the opinions women have of O'Shea," I said.

"Ah, you talked to the ex?"

"Yeah."

"Same old Max," she said with that smarter-than-you smile. "You have to see their eyes, right? Tell if the truth is there?" I looked straight into hers.

"She doesn't think the guy that she was married to for what, six years, was capable," I said.

"Right. But she didn't mind filing a domestic abuse charge against the guy to justify divorcing him so she could run off to Cherry Hill with her boyfriend the pharmaceutical salesman."

"According to her, the abuse wasn't physical," I said and caught the flavor of defense in my own voice.

"No s.h.i.t," Meagan said, flatly.

"What? You don't believe it?"

"Oh, I believe it," she said and then turned to face me again. The look felt like an a.s.sessment. I must have pa.s.sed.

"I dated him a few times, years ago, when he was trying to make SWAT."

Maybe she thought it was a confession that was going to shock me. But even if O'Shea hadn't already told me, I'm not sure I would have reacted. I took a drink, like it had nothing to do with me.

"He never made the team?" I said.

"Too aggressive. Not enough patience. Thought it was all gung ho s.h.i.t. He was one of those who could never find the balance."

"He ever get aggressive with you?" I said. "I mean in a personal way?"

She gave me one of those "Who, me?" looks.

"You of all people, Max," she said. "He got p.i.s.sed off once and raised a hand."

"And?"

"I slapped him first when he hesitated."

"And his reaction?"

"He apologized. Said he would never have actually hit me," she said. "Like I would have let him."

"Christ, Meg," I said. "And now you think he's capable of whacking some poor grocery store clerk to cover up a s.e.x scandal out on the beat?"

One of the sweater guys nearby looked over. Meagan smiled at him and raised her eyebrows. I signaled the hostess that we were ready to sit down for dinner and paid the bar bill.

Meagan was true to her word on answering any questions I had about the departments' and internal affairs' investigation into the Faith Hamlin case. While we ate she described how IA isolated the officers on the differing shifts and found discrepancies in the night crews' stories of how often they stopped at the market and who had actually been the last to see Hamlin. Although good cops usually have well tuned bulls.h.i.t detectors when they're talking to mopes on the street, it doesn't mean they're good liars themselves. Despite the polygraphs that three of the cops had pa.s.sed, Meagan's investigators had done searches of all the officers' homes and cars, looking for any sign of Hamlin or DNA that could have indicated she'd been transported, dead or alive, by any of them. Nothing. They also crunched the time lines down on each man, making them give details on their whereabouts during every minute that they weren't on duty from the time Hamlin was last seen. Two of the guys were married and took the biggest hit. The media was all over the story. No one escaped being flayed in public. But O'Shea took the brunt. He was the only one who refused to cooperate. He stonewalled. He'd told them to charge him or leave him the f.u.c.k alone. He demanded a search warrant be served on his home and vehicles. He knew enough about the law to argue to a judge that the department had no evidence of a crime, that Faith Hamlin could have done anything from simply walking away from the embarra.s.sment of the situation to throwing herself off the Ben Franklin Bridge. There were no indications of a crime and no body. Though she might have had the mind of a thirteen-year-old, Hamlin was legally an adult.

"So what does your gut tell you, Meagan?" I said when I ran out of questions. "Colin killed her and dumped her over in the Jersey Pine Barrens?"

"I don't have the kind of instinct you always seem to think you have, Max. h.e.l.l, he could have chopped her up and stuck her in a barrel. It's been done before. And by guys a lot smarter than him. He might have had nothing to do with her. None of the other three ratted on each other. They just came clean," she said, not letting the conversation spoil her appet.i.te for the veggie wrap she worked her way through.

"But you know the old saying: If you got nothing to hide, why not talk?"

"s.h.i.t," I said, shaking my head because she knew better and every cop worth a d.a.m.n knew better. A lot of people went to jail for crimes they didn't commit because they talked when they should have shut up. The only thing that let some cops and prosecutors live with that was the belief that it made up for the crimes the guy did do.

"So, Max. Speaking of talking," Meagan said, folding her napkin and resting her chin on the backs of her hands. "What have you got for me?"

I didn't hold out on her. I gave her the details of my meeting with O'Shea, including his admission that he'd dated a couple of the bartenders that had gone missing. I told her he'd been working private security and even detailed his partic.i.p.ation in the alley fight.

She smiled at a thought, but didn't comment.

"Do you have an address for him?" she said.

"I'm sure detective Richards has an address, but I wasn't exactly tailing the guy, Meg."

"They have a trace on his phone or surveillance of some kind?"

"Not that I know of. As far as I know they're in the same bind you were in. No crime, no warrants, no taps or manpower."

"I don't know, Max," she said, folding her napkin on the table. "If that's all you have I'm not sure this was much of a trade."

I took my wallet out of my pocket without looking up at her, guessed at the bill total and put a few twenties on the table and slid my chair back.

"Yeah, it's not going to get you any captain bars," I said, getting petty by matching the dig.

"Oh, the jealous good ole boys' club got your ear already," she said.

"Hey, you've always been a mult.i.tasker, Meg. You find out what happened to your girl and get promoted for it, more power to you," I said, letting her lead the way out.

On the sidewalk the drizzle had stopped but it felt ten degrees colder. Meagan waved at a taxi that was parked across the alley in front of the Walnut Street Theatre. I opened the door for her and again she put her hand on mine.

"I was kidding with that trade comment, Max," she said.

"I know," I lied, knowing she had only been half kidding.

"It really was good to see you," she said and took a strand of her hair and carefully pulled it behind her ear and smiled. "Will you call if you get anything more from O'Shea that will help us, you know, with the girl?"

"You'll be the first," I said, and this time the kiss did not surprise me. It felt dry and perfunctory and did not even leave a warm spot on my chilled cheek. The next morning I flew back home to Florida.

CHAPTER 13.

He was in her apartment, lying back on her bed, his work boots on the thin chemise bedspread, watching her get ready for work. Her face moved in and out of the mirror on top of her cheap dresser as she crimped her eyelashes and applied shadow and took particular care with liner. She caught him in the reflection and said: "What?"

"I'm just amazed at the work you put into all that when your eyes are already so beautiful."

"Yeah? How do you think we keep them so beautiful? We cheat," she said, smiling at him without turning around.

The few weeks they'd been together had been good. Sure he was kind of private, didn't like to stay and hang out with any of the other regulars at the bar when her shift was done. Didn't like to talk much with the other patrons and had pointedly asked her not to let anyone else know he was a cop. He said he had to be careful because it was like that situation with that prison a.s.shole who scared the s.h.i.t out of her that night in the bar when she saw him flash his badge. He said it should be a secret between them because he could get caught up in off-duty stuff like that and then he'd end up being liable and it made sense the way he explained it.

"If I let that other pencil d.i.c.k get his a.s.s whipped and then his f.u.c.king lawyer gets onto it and starts saying: You're a cop, why didn't you step in and stop it?

"Then the department attorneys get on me: Why are you getting involved when you're off duty? Was the guy a physical threat to you or others?"

Better to just scare the guy off, he said. He'd catch that idiot on the street someday and he'd be glad to do some a.s.s-kicking when he was in uniform and it was his turf.

She liked that about him, too. He wasn't like the wimpy guys back home or the bar clowns who were all mouth. He told her some stories about suspects who fought him on the streets. He was aggressive in bed, too. But she wasn't complaining. They'd had s.e.x here in her apartment the first time and she was a little frightened by how intense he was, but she'd had an o.r.g.a.s.m like nothing she'd ever had in the past. He was strong and bold in the way he took her. It was exciting. After that they'd done it at night on the beach, once in the pool after he'd slipped the lock to the utility room and turned the underwater lights off. They'd even done it in the backseat of his car one night out somewhere in the Everglades where there weren't any houses or traffic.

She looked at him now, stretched out on her bed. She didn't like the boots on her spread but she knew better than to say anything. She found her perfume among the mess on the bureau and dabbed some on. She found him in the mirror. He had that way of kind of dominating a s.p.a.ce when he was with her. Like the time he was getting beer from her fridge while she was letting the shower water warm and she heard him punch on her message machine and listen to the whole tape. Or the time he walked into the apartment before her and scooped the mail off the floor and went through each letter before putting it on the counter. Yeah, it was all junk, but she called him on it anyway.

"What? You afraid I'm going to see something from your boyfriend in Minneapolis?"

"That would be a trick since I don't have a boyfriend in Minneapolis," she'd said, and it was the truth.

"You'd better not," he'd said and then slipped his hands around her from behind and nuzzled her ear just like he was doing now.

She looked at him in the mirror. It did feel good to be wanted. Then he slipped his hands up from her waist and cupped her breast over her blouse.

"Come on, baby. You know I gotta get to work," she said.

"Yeah?"

He put his mouth on her neck and started unb.u.t.toning her top b.u.t.ton.

"If I'm late again Laurie's gonna kill me."

"No she won't," he said, working on the next b.u.t.ton.

"No? She fired Roxy just last week. Though it was probably because she was always drunk by the time her shift ended."

"So let her fire you," he said, and now he had himself pressed up against her from behind and she could feel him getting hard against her. "You don't need to work there. I'll take care of you."

"Oh, you're gonna keep me barefoot and pregnant?"

He was unfastening the front snap on her bra and she put her hands on his to stop him and he did that cop thing where he suddenly spun his wrists and grabbed hers and in a split second he had her arms locked up behind her. With her shoulders pulled back, the bra snap gave way and when he pulled her elbows tighter together her b.r.e.a.s.t.s came out of the fabric. In the mirror both of them could see that she was now excited, too, and she thought: OK, I won't fight it. Just this once.

CHAPTER 14.

My flight landed at Palm Beach International and I found my truck deep in long-term parking. When I opened the door, a wash of stale air spilled out. It was eighty degrees in the sun. Compared to Philly, the humidity felt like it was at ninety percent. Welcome back.

I tossed my travel bag into the pa.s.senger seat and then rolled up the new coat and stuffed it behind the seat where it might stay for another twenty years. I rolled down the windows and headed east, my cell phone in my ear and feeling anxious to talk with Billy. When I got to his office and he opened the door I realized that I looked like a slob, but then next to William Manchester, Esquire, most men fell to some level of slobdom.

Billy was dressed in a two-thousand-dollar Armani suit that was a dark, deeply woven color. The fabric contained shades of black and gray and held a textured shadow that could only be named subtle money, or unmistakable cla.s.s. His short-collared shirt was such a brilliant white against his mahogany skin that the contrast was like a razor cut. I sat down on the leather couch in my blue jeans and crossed my legs like a gentleman, exposing the sweat socks tucked into the newly scuffed work boots I'd bought at the Army/Navy store in Philly. I balanced a saucer and cup of coffee on my knee and watched him move like I'd fallen into a d.a.m.n magazine ad. My mouth may have been slightly open.

"D-don't stare, M-Max. I've seen you l-look that way at a b- blue heron out near the Glades and it's very discomforting."

"Ain't no bird got nothin' on you, partner," I said, almost whistling.

"We have b-been invited to a p-political fund-raiser downtown this evening," Billy said, snicking up the fabric of his trousers by the sharp creases as he sat across from me.

"Ah," I said. "If you can't beat them, join them?"

"No. As Diane would s-say: You beat them by joining them."

"The woman's got smarts," I said.

"We shall see."

Billy picked up a file and opened it in his lap. He was done explaining himself.