The aroma of the steam and oil coming off the fries was almost enough to make actually tasting them superfluous. Almost. I took a thick, ridge-cut fry, dipped it in ketchup, and bit into it. Ummm. The crisp brown and salted skin crunched and the moist, soft potato melted in my mouth. If there were things I would miss when I was dead, Nathan’s fries would be one of them. If I knew I was going to have a last meal, they would be on the menu.

“Would you like me to purchase beers so that we might drink to the wedding of your daughter?”

“No, thanks.”

“A pity.”

“So, Detective, can we get to the point of this?”

“Jorge Delgado,” he said, before biting into a hot dog.

“What about him?”

He finished chewing. “Let the man rest in peace, Mr. Prager.”

“He’s gonna rest in peace regardless of what I do. He’s dead.”

“But there is his family, his memory to consider.”

“No, not if he killed a woman in cold blood.”

“That may be, but you have been stirring the hive. And even very peaceful bees will sting when they are sufficiently agitated.”

“Just tell me what you’ve got to tell me, okay.”

“ Bon. Good. Let me then speak plainly so that you might understand. Jorge Delgado did not murder Alta Conseco.”

“And you know this how?”

He laughed. “Because I have received indisputable word of this from on high.”

“You and God been chatting lately, have you?”

“No, this comes from an even higher authority, Mr. Prager.”

I understood, of course. “The brass.”

Fuqua shrugged his shoulders. “I could not say.”

“Too bad they didn’t use the overtime money they wasted having me followed around to actually help you find Alta Conseco’s killer.”

“Yes, too bad. As sad as that may be, Mr. Prager, I have already looked into Delgado as a suspect.”

“And…”

“Nothing.”

“In other words, the city needs a hero and Jorge Delgado’s been elected. The brass has been told, probably by the mayor, that no one is going to ruin the coronation. Not me, not anyone. And they told you to tell me.”

“For what it is worth, Mr. Prager, I sincerely do not think Delgado murdered her.”

“Is this your voice I’m hearing or is it the word of the brass gods?”

“My own. Delgado’s name came across my desk almost immediately. He apparently made no secret of his distaste for Miss Conseco. And while his alibi for that evening would not hold up in court, there is no proof he was anywhere near the Gelato Grotto when Alta Conseco was killed. There is not a single piece of forensic evidence linking him to the crime. I have showed his photograph in an array to everyone who gave a statement that evening. Not one of them identified him as a person they saw on the night in question. Not one of the employees identified him. I canvassed West 10th Street on my own time. Nothing. I even had an informal meeting with Mr. Delgado not unlike the one the two of us are sharing at this moment.”

“Funny how none of this turned up in those notes you shared with me,” I said.

“Not funny. Purposeful. The minute I heard about Delgado’s heroics, I made a separate file for safekeeping. I have my ambitions, and ambitions are best served with ammunition to back them up.”

“You’ll go far, Detective Fuqua, but be careful. I had an ambitious friend just like you once.”

“What happened to him?”

“He got too close to the sun and his wings melted.”

“I will keep that in mind.”

“Do that. Did you know Delgado tried to hire someone to hurt Alta?”

“And did this gentleman take the job?” Fuqua asked.

“No.”

“Would you be willing to produce him for questioning on the subject?”

“I don’t think I’d be willing nor would he to volunteer what he knows.”

“In that case, Mr. Prager, I would urge you to let this go, please. There can be nothing good gained. No matter who the murderer of Miss Conseco might be, the fact remains that she and Miss Watson stood by and let a man die.”

“All right,” I said, “you’ve done your job. I consider myself thoroughly warned. I will let the Delgado thing go for now. I don’t need any shit before my kid’s wedding, but I’m not gonna stop looking into Alta’s murder. That I won’t do.”

“That is only fair, I think.” He stood to go, leaving a table full of mostly uneaten food.

“Detective,” I called after him. “I’m curious. What happened to your refrain about all victims being equal in murder?”

“The tune I have just sung to you was not my own composition. My own song is unchanged.”

“That’s right, you have ambitions.”

“I am not ashamed of that.”

“Neither was my friend. He wore ambition like a badge of honor. Problem was, he forgot about the other badge he carried, the one that really mattered.”

Fuqua winced. That stung. Good. Fuck him.

TWENTY-NINE

I’d been warned off cases before and, in the scheme of things, Fuqua had carried it off pretty well. He’d been fairly direct without getting all heavy-handed or nasty about it. There had been no direct threats to me or to the people close to me. He hadn’t gotten cliched by listing the myriad ways the city or state could hurt my business. He didn’t try to bullshit me about it being his bright idea to make me get in line. In fact, I don’t think he enjoyed doing it at all. But he had the curse of ambition same as Larry McDonald. He saw big things for himself and didn’t think clean living was going to get him there. The fuck of it was, he was right. Larry Mac hadn’t climbed so high on the ladder by being a good cop-which he was, mostly. I believed Fuqua believed what he said about Delgado not being the murderer. Now maybe I was willing to believe it too.

That’s the thing about perspective. It had been what, two days since Delgado appeared on my radar screen? And in that short time, his initial appeal had lost much of its luster. Not all of it, most of it. That aria he had been singing to me, while not a faint whisper, was not exactly a siren’s song either. Did any of what Fuqua told me totally eliminate Delgado as a suspect? No, the late Mr. Delgado still had his charms. He’d hated Alta Conseco even before the incident at the High Line. He’d been angry enough to hire someone to maim if not kill her. And in spite of the fact that I trusted that Fuqua was telling me the truth, I was too familiar with the allure of ambition to trust him too much. If he could prove to the brass he had put me off Delgado, at least temporarily, there was probably a big reward-a bump up in grade or a plum assignment-coming his way. Apparently, a lot of powerful people had gone all in on making Delgado the next saint of New York. It wouldn’t do to have your new martyr found with a woman’s blood under his fingernails. Mostly I was clinging to Delgado’s possible guilt because I didn’t know where else to go.

Clinging to him as a suspect didn’t mean I wouldn’t keep my word to Fuqua. I wasn’t going to pursue Delgado until I got the all-clear from the detective. I meant what I said to him, that I didn’t need any shit before Sarah’s wedding. Anyway, by the time Delgado’s temporary sainthood had lapsed and his rep was primed for a bit of tarnishing, I might already be dead. If not dead, then certainly in treatment: losing my hair, my lunch, and my pride. I’d witnessed people go through surgery, radiation, and chemo. A doctor once told me that the kind of regimen I was in for was a kind of slow motion murder. That they sort of hoped the cancer would die before the

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