"Nope. It just scares the h.e.l.l out of me that I might have a genetic predisposition to go down the same road. I'd like to avoid that if possible."

"Well, give yourself a pa.s.s on this one, partner. Did it for the greater good. We nail Dylan O'Grady's a.s.s to the wall, it'll wash away all sins." She gave Stacy a rough one-arm hug and pushed her toward the kitchen. "Make coffee."

"Place stinks."

"That's Dylan," said Adele.

(unintelligible) "You know that? Stinks? Like rotten marmalade."

"Kid won't wash up."

"What kid? He's over forty! Jesus! Your legs broken? You can't turn on the hot water tap? Have a little respect for yourself."

"Make an appointment; I'll get a Molly Maid."

"That's Louie?" Stacy asked.

"Probably."

"Never any place to sit around here."

"Move some stuff."

"No place to sit, nothing to eat or drink. You run a cla.s.s operation."

"You want food, look in the fridge."

"Have you looked in your fridge, Louie?"

"There we go. It's him."

"You know what's in there? You've got creatures living in the pork fried rice."

(long break in conversation, sounds of things being moved, dropped to the floor, television turned on, Jeopardy audible in the background) "Jeopardy. 7:30 to 8," Stacy said. "We might get the date from the episode."

"Yeah right: when did they ask the two-hundred-dollar question about Nairobi?"

"No. Seriously. That's the College Championship. You could track it down."

"You watch that show? Probably get all the answers, don't you?"

"Mostly."

(long silence) "What the h.e.l.l are they doing?"

"Watching Alex Trebek."

"f.u.c.k, how many hours of this we have to wade through?"

"You had a visitor, last week."

"Here we go."

"Yeah, it's a store. People come in."

"You had a visitor up here." (chair being moved) "My partner dropped by for a chat, didn't he?"

"Whoa. This is at least seven years ago," Adele said. "Dylan's still a cop."

"You got this place under surveillance now?"

"No. He told me. We're partners. We share information."

"Sure you do."

"Says he came by to ask about a p.a.w.n ticket from a crime scene. p.a.w.n ticket for gold badge or something."

"Oh yeah."

"Well?"

"What about it? I didn't have it. I said I didn't know what he was talking about. I said check my records."

"Did he?"

"He looked. What's he gonna find?"

"Listen close. He had a p.a.w.n ticket. It had your name on it. It had a date on it. You lent that Abramov s.h.i.t twenty bucks for a piece of jewellery."

"Va.s.sili." Stacy was making notes.

"That thing. Wasn't jewellery, a little badge or something."

"What happened to it?"

"He came around later, said he wanted to sell it outright. I gave him another twenty."

"So where is it?"

"It's nothing to do with your thing."

"Where is it?"

"It's safe. It's put away."

"One more time. Where. Is. It?"

"All right. I'll get it. You don't have to start acting like King Kong."

"Say what?"

"Just wait a minute, take it easy, wait a minute."

(more silence, more Jeopardy) "He didn't like the King Kong reference."

"Sounds like a dangerous man."

Adele stopped the tape. "So this is at least seven years back." She was working it out. "After the DOA in the park. After Paulie picked up the diamonds, went back the next day and got the blue one and the p.a.w.n ticket."

"Which led him to Louie Grova."

"And didn't tell his partner about it until after."

"And Dylan isn't happy about it."

"Why tell him at all?"

"Get him thinking, maybe?"

"Paulie's suspecting Dylan already. Of what? Killing Abramov?" She started the tape again.

"What are you doing out there, Louie? Fighting with the garbage. You're gonna lose."

"I'll be there. Gimme a minute."

(more noises, aspect change, Dylan has moved away from the mic.) "Is that it?"

"What'd I tell you? It's nothing."

"You dumb s.h.i.t."

"What? Couple of grams."

"Eighteen carat?"

"Fourteen."

"Probably eighteen. And what's this? Little crest. See that? You know what you got here. Sure you do. This is part of the chain. Any more pieces?"

"Va.s.si needed some cash."

"Va.s.si, is it? Old pals by now. Worked out a secret handshake yet?"

"He wanted to go away."

"Yeah, we'll that's too bad. He never made it out of town."

(long silence) "What do you care about a little pin? You got the biggest share."

"Oho!" Adele liked that one.

"What's the matter with you? I don't care about this piece of c.r.a.p. My partner smells misconduct. He's on the trail, a.s.shole. He's a hound dog."

"What's to find out?"

"There's nothing to find out unless you do something dumb, like get caught with any of this stuff around. Where's the rest of it?"

"I don't have any more." (sound of slap, yelp) "I don't have any more. I wish I'd never seen any of it. From the start. What did I ever get out of it?"

"You did all right. You got your share."

"f.u.c.ked my life is what it did."

"I'm taking this."

"Aw Jesus, Dylan . . ."

"Okay, O'Grady's identified, for the record." Stacy made another note.

". . . give me a break. At least give me the forty dollars."

"Give you a couple of broken thumbs you get me jammed up. My partner comes around to see you again, you keep your mouth shut."

"Don't you guys work together any more?"

"Mind your own business. He shows up again, you let me know. Don't wait for me to find -" (tape ends) "d.a.m.n. Nothing substantive," Stacy said.

"Maybe not, but interesting s.h.i.t. Paulie was playing Dylan seven years ago. He tracked down Louie. Connected him to Abramov. Dylan had it right: Paulie was a hound dog. If he smelled something, he wouldn't let it go."

Stacy printed "#1-seven years ago?-O'Grady/Grova" on the label and set it aside. "Ready for another one?"

"Maybe we should send out for a pizza.

Eleven.

Thursday, March 24 Around 3:30 a.m., Adele went into the bedroom, took off her cop shoes and crashed. Stacy stayed awake for another hour, cataloging and labelling, making notes and approximate timings, fast-forwarding and rewinding her way through the four ninety-minute ca.s.settes. Six hours of random sounds, half-audible hockey games, reality shows, laugh tracks, long stretches of relative silence punctuated by bodily noises, tires squealing, sirens pa.s.sing. The actual conversations (ba.n.a.l, vulgar and at least sixty percent unintelligible) totalled eighteen minutes and twenty-three seconds. Several of the main players were clearly identifiable: Louie Grova, on all tapes; Dylan O'Grady (all except 6); Sergei Siziva (tapes 3 and 5) and Yevgeny Grenkov (briefly, in the background on tape 3). The problem was that, in addition to being an inept audio engineer who had evidently hidden his microphone under a couch cushion wrapped in a sock, Darryl had neglected to number or date the recordings. Stacy had no way of pinning down whether the reference to Viktor Nimchuk on tape 3 took place before or after the reference to what might have been Paul Delisle's handgun on tape 4, or when the meeting between Dylan and Sergei Siziva on tape 6 happened. Evidently Darryl hadn't been on the job the night his stepfather had died, or for that matter, the day Sergei Siziva took possession of Paul's .357 Smith & Wesson revolver. Those tapes might have tipped the balance. Sadly, either they didn't exist, or Darryl was saving them for dessert. With what they had so far they could allege motive, indicate opportunity, deal with denials and interpretations, but without physical evidence, without a murder weapon, a blood trail, fingerprints, or something they could hold up for a jury to gaze upon, they'd have a hard time getting a conviction.

"You up all night?" Adele helped herself to a slice of cold pizza.

"I got a few hours on the couch. There's coffee."