WHITEY SAT UP on the empty desk across from Sean's own with the probation report open in his hand. "Raymond Matthew Harris-born September the sixth, 1955. Grew up on Twelve Mayhew Street in the East Bucky Flats. Mother, Delores, a housewife. Father, Seamus, a laborer who left the family in 1967. Predictable shit follows as the father is arrested on petty larceny in Bridgeport, Connecticut, 1973. Bunch of DUIs and D and D's follow. Father dies of a coronary in Bridgeport, 1979. Same year, Raymond marries Esther Scannell-that lucky bastard-and takes a job working for the MBTA as a subway car operator. First child, Brendan Seamus, born 1981. Late the same year, Raymond indicted in a scam to embezzle twenty thousand dollars in subway tokens. Charges ultimately dismissed, but Raymond is fired for cause from the MBTA. Works odd jobs after that-day laborer on a home improvement crew, stock clerk at Looney Liquors, bartender, forklift operator. Lost the forklift operator job over the disappearance of some petty cash. Again, charges filed, then dropped, Raymond gets fired. Questioned in the 1982 robbery of Looney Liquors, released on lack of evidence. Questioned in the robbery, same year, of Blanchard Liquors in Middlesex County; once again, released on lack of evidence."
"Beginning to become known, though," Sean said.
"He's getting popular," Whitey agreed. "A known associate, one Edmund Reese, fingers Raymond in the 1983 heist of a rare comic book collection from a dealer in-"
"Fucking comic books?" Sean laughed. "You go, Raymond."
"A hundred fifty thousand dollars' worth of comic books," Whitey said.
"Oh, excuse me."
"Raymond returns said literature unharmed and is given four months, a year suspended, two months time served. Comes out of prison apparently with a wee bit of a chemical dependency problem."
"My, my."
"Cocaine, of course, this being the eighties, and that's where the rap sheet grows. Somehow Raymond's smart enough to keep whatever it is he's doing to pay for the cocaine under the radar, but not so smart he doesn't get picked up in his attempts to procure said narcotic. Violates his parole, does a year solid inside."
"Where he learns the error of his ways."
"Apparently not. Picked up by a joint Major Crime Unit/FBI sting for trafficking stolen goods across state lines. You're going to love this. Guess what Raymond stole. Think 1984 now."
"No hints?"
"Go with your first instinct."
"Cameras."
Whitey shot him a look. "Fucking cameras. Go get me some coffee, you're not a cop anymore."
"What then?"
"Trivial Pursuit," Whitey said. "Never saw that one coming, did you?"
"Comic books and Trivial Pursuit. Our boy's got style."
"He's got a shitload of grief, too. He stole the truck in Rhode Island, drove it into Massachusetts."
"Hence the federal interstate rap."
"Hence," Whitey said, shooting Sean another look. "They've got his balls, basically, but he does no time."
Sean sat up a bit, took his feet off his desk. "He rolled on someone?"
"Looks that way," Whitey said. "After that, nothing else on the rap sheet. Raymond's probie notes that Raymond is dutiful in appearing for his appointments until he's released from probation in late eighty-six. His employment records?" Whitey looked over the file at Sean.
Sean said, "Oh, I can talk now?" He opened his own file. "Employment records, IRS records, social security payments-everything comes to a dead halt in August of 1987. Poof, he disappears."
"You check nationally?"
"The request is being processed as we speak, good sir."
"What are our possibilities?"
Sean propped the soles of his shoes up on his desk again and leaned back in his chair. "One, he's dead. Two, he's in Witness Protection. Three, he went deep, deep, deep underground and just popped back into the neighborhood to pick up his gun and shoot his son's nineteen-year-old girlfriend."
Whitey tossed his file down onto the empty desk. "We don't even know if it's his gun. We don't know shit. What are we doing here, Devine?"
"We're getting up for the dance, Sarge. Come on. Don't gas out on me this early. We got a guy who was a prime suspect in a robbery eighteen years ago during which the murder weapon was used. Guy's son dated the victim. Guy has a rap sheet. I want to look at him and I want to look at the son. You know, the one with no alibi."
"Who passed a poly and who you and I agreed didn't have the stuff necessary to do this."
"Maybe we were wrong."
Whitey rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Man, I'm sick of being wrong."
"So you're saying you were wrong about Boyle?"
Whitey's hands remained over his eyes as he shook his head. "Ain't saying that at all. I still think the guy's a piece of shit, but whether I can tie him to Katherine Marcus's death is another matter." He lowered his hands, the puffy flesh under his eyes ringed red now. "But this Raymond Harris angle doesn't look too promising, either. Okay, we take another run at the son. Fine. And we try to track down the father. But then what?"
"We tie somebody to that gun," Sean said.
"Gun could be in the fucking ocean by now. I know that's what I'd do with it."
Sean tipped his head toward him. "You would've done that after you held up a liquor store eighteen years ago, though, too."
"True."
"Our guy didn't. Which means..."
"He ain't as bright as me," Whitey said.
"Or me."
"Jury's still out there."
Sean stretched in his chair, locking his fingers and raising his arms above his head, pushing toward the ceiling until he could feel the muscles stretch. He let loose a shudder of a yawn, and brought his head and hands back down. "Whitey," he said, trying to hold back as long as possible on the question he'd known he'd have to ask all morning.
"What's up?"
"Anything in your file on known associates?"
Whitey lifted the file off the desk and flipped it open, turned the first few pages over. "'Known criminal associates,'" he read, "'Reginald (aka Reggie Duke) Neil, Patrick Moraghan, Kevin "Whackjob" Sirracci, Nicholas Savage'-hmm-'Anthony Waxman...'" He looked up at Sean, and Sean knew it was there. "'James Marcus,'" Whitey said, "'aka "Jimmy Flats," reputed leader of a criminal crew sometimes called the Rester Street Boys.'" Whitey closed the file.
Sean said, "And the hits just keep on coming, don't they?"