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reevaluate this. John’s case is still good with Deveneau. We need to flush out his stash of counterfeit, then roll into his supplier. The locals don’t have a problem with any of this. The cops and the D.A.’s office said they won’t do anything to jeopardize our operation. We’re still in.”
    “I spoke with the D.A.,” Biddleman said, his eyes volleying between them, narrowed and agitated. “Their office is a lot more tolerant than I’m prepared to be.”
    John locked eyes with the attorney. “Why are you pulling this case?”
    “Because you take off through these tunnels while a dozen cops are left to shoot up the place. People are dead, people are injured. Who shot Jeffrey Clay?”
    “Clay? He went nuts, started shooting at the cops.”
    “And now he’s dead, too.”
    “I’m not responsible for the New York Police Department. They can shoot whoever they goddamn want.”
    “Very intelligent.” Biddleman shifted in his chair. “Did it ever occur to you to make your identity clear to the officers, to identify yourself as a Secret Service agent?”
    “What?”
He sat forward, put a hand on Biddleman’s desk. “What the hell was I supposed to do? Stand up, wave my hands, flash my goddamn badge? I’m sitting in the middle of this shit, and you want me to make some damn law enforcement speech?”
    “You put other officers at risk by withholding that information. You killed a guy and then ran away. And that’s exactly what Deveneau’s attorney will say at trial, and the jury will convict us. So it’s over. Don’t go near Deveneau again, and fuck his counterfeit money. That’s all, gentlemen. And I hope I’m very goddamn clear on this.”
    “You’re wrong on this,” John said.
    “That’s all.” Both his manicured hands splayed out before him on the desk, Roger Biddleman watched them from beneath his brow and did not move until John and Kersh were up and out of his office.
    Outside in the hallway, John kicked the bench. The sound echoed down the hall. “What garbage. Can you believe this?”
    “Believe it,” Kersh said. He was patting himself down, searching for a cigarette.
    “Little worm prick. What about me? So concerned with how things look, the perception, didn’t even ask if I’m all right, if I nearly got my head blown off, was I upset, did I shit my pants.”
    “You’re a non-entity. He’s an artist—you’re a paintbrush. Lose enough hairs or he don’t like the feel anymore—he’ll toss you and get himself a new one. And remember,” Kersh continued, a half-smile tugging at his livery lips, “they went to Harvard, not some state school on an athletic scholarship.”
    There were high-heeled footsteps moving down the hallway. The attractive young receptionist poked her head around the corner, most likely startled by the sound of the bench being kicked. After a moment, she disappeared again.
    “You’re full of wisdom this morning,” John said after she disappeared. “You must have taken a good dump.”
    Bill Kersh located his last cigarette and pushed it between his lips. “John,” he said, “it was
magnificent.”

CHAPTER THREE
    T WENTY-SIX-YEAR-OLD M ICKEY O ’SHAY, FIRED up on Thorazine tablets and cocaine, grinned at his reflection in the mirror. For the moment, he was conscious of everything—the ammoniac foulness of the bar’s restroom; the cold porcelain sink basin beneath his hands; the spastic pulse in his left eyelid; the vomit at the back of his throat. There was a steady drumming at the base of his skull. He sucked air in between his clenched teeth, grinned wider, spat into the sink.
    Winner
, he thought, and pushed out the restroom door.
    Jimmy Kahn was curled over the gloomiest corner of the bar, a metropolis of empty and half-empty Guinness bottles in ruin before him. Mickey clapped him on the back, straddled a stool while shaking his head.
    “I been thinking of this fuckin’ song all night,” he said, drumming his fingers against the bar. “I