"You know what the trick to forgery is?" I said as I took the memo and turned it upside down.

"Good handwriting?"

I shook my head. "Gestalt."

"Gestalt."

"You see the signature as a shape, not a collection of singular letters."

Carefully, under his overturned signature, I used a pen to copy the shape I saw above the pen point. When I finished, I turned it around, showed it to him.

He looked at it, opened his mouth, and raised his eyebrows. "That's not bad. Wow."

"And that's my first try, Ray. Think what I could do with practice."

7.

I called Devin again, woke him up.

"Any luck with Ms. Diaz?"

"None. Chicks, man, you know?"

"I can't get Detectives Thomas or Stapleton to return my calls."

"Stapleton was one of Doyle's golden boys, that's why."

"Ah."

"You could see Hoffa having coffee in a diner, and Stapleton wouldn't take your call."

"Thomas?"

"She's less predictable. And she's working solo today."

"Lucky me."

"Yeah, well, you Micks. What can I say? Hang on. Let me find out where she is."

I waited two or three minutes, and then he came back on the line. "You owe me, or do I even have to mention that?"

"It's a given," I said.

"It's always a given." Devin sighed. "Detective Thomas is working a death-by-stupidity in Back Bay. Go to the alley between Newbury and Comm Ave."

"Cross blocks?"

"Dartmouth and Exeter. Don't f.u.c.k with her. She's hard-core, man. Eat you, spit you out, and never even break her stride."

Detective Joella Thomas stepped out of the alley at the Dartmouth Street end and crab-walked under some crime scene tape, stripping off a pair of latex gloves as she went. As she slid out from under the other side of the yellow tape, she straightened from her crouch and snapped one glove clear of her fingertips, shook the white talc off her ebony skin. She called to a guy sitting on the b.u.mper of the forensics van.

"Larry, he's yours now."

Larry didn't even look up from his sports page. "He still dead?"

"Getting more so." Joella pulled off the other glove, noticed me standing beside her, but kept her gaze on Larry.

"He tell you anything?" Larry turned a page of the paper.

Joella Thomas rolled a Life Saver from side to side in her mouth and nodded. "Said the 'afterlife'?"

"Yeah?"

"Ain't nothing but a house party."

"Good news. I'll tell the wife." Larry closed his paper, tossed it into the van behind him. "f.u.c.king Sox, Detective, you know what I'm saying?"

Joella Thomas shrugged. "I'm a hockey fan."

"f.u.c.king Bruins, then, too." Larry turned his back to us and foraged in the forensics van.

Joella Thomas started to turn away, then seemed to remember my presence. She rolled her head back slowly in my direction, looked at me through the dusky gold lenses of her rimless sungla.s.ses. "What?"

"Detective Thomas?" I proffered my hand.

She gave the fingers a quick squeeze and squared her shoulders so that she was facing me.

"Patrick Kenzie. Devin Amronklin may have mentioned me."

She c.o.c.ked her head and I heard the Life Saver rattle against a back tooth. "Couldn't come by the station, Mr. Kenzie?"

"I thought I'd speed things up."

She placed her hands in the pockets of her suit jacket, leaned back on her heels. "Don't like being in a police station since you brought down a cop, that it, Mr. Kenzie?"

"The cells do seem that much closer."

"Uh-huh." She stepped back as Larry and two other forensics cops walked between us.

"Detective," I said, "I'm real sorry an investigation of mine led to the arrest of a fellow-"

"Blah, blah, blah." Joella Thomas waved a long hand in front of my face. "Don't care about him, Mr. Kenzie. He was old school, old boy network." She turned toward the curb. "I look old school to you?"

"Anything but."