'Arlett's going to prove it?'
'They got some good people working out of there,' Quirk said. 'Stegman, Russo.'
I nodded again.
'The other problem is I will have to implicate someone I don't want to implicate.'
'Life's hard,' Quirk said.
'Kid already knows that,' I said. 'I'm trying to make it a little easier.'
'Woodcock?'
'I'm not going to say.'
'What are you trying to do?' Quirk said.
'I'm trying to figure out a way to nab the son of a bitch who had Davis killed, without nabbing the kid he corrupted.'
'You want to do this legal?' Quirk said.
'Doesn't make too much difference,' I said.
'I didn't figure it did,' Quirk said.
'But the kid's got to learn some stuff out of this,' I said.
'Father Flanagan,' Belson murmured.
'So you don't just ace the bad guy and call it even,' Quirk said.
'No,' I said.
'Not like you wouldn't do it,' Quirk said.
'Not this time, at least,' I said.
'You want to tell me the bad guy's name?' Quirk said.
'Informally?' I said.
Quirk laughed a little short laugh with his mouth closed.
'You mean will I tell Arlett?' he said. I nodded.
'No,' Quirk said.
'Okay. Guy named Bobby Deegan. New York wants him for knocking over an OTB parlor. He's been fixing Taft basketball games and was using Woodcock and, apparently, the Davis kid to beat the spread.'
'I heard Taft hired you on that,' Quirk said.
'And fired you,' Belson said.
'And I got in there and stirred things up, and got so close to Deegan that he tried to hit me, and failed.'
'Parking garage on Milk Street?' Quirk said. I shrugged.
'And then he realized that the only people could put him away were the people he'd bought,' I said.
'So he had them hit,' Quirk said. 'Except you figured he'd try for Woodcock, so you had Hawk there.'
'Days,' I said. 'Dumb bastards had waited an hour they'd have had the campus cops to deal with instead of Hawk.'
'Be my choice,' Belson said.
'So you sink Deegan, and he takes Dwayne down with him,' Quirk said.
'If we can keep him alive,' I said.
'He's too hot,' Quirk said. 'Be hard to get anyone to try for him now. I wouldn't take the guards away, but I think you got a little time.' I nodded.
'So what are you going to do?' Quirk said.
'I'll think of something,' I said.
'Too bad you didn't think of it before they killed Davis,' Quirk said.
'Yeah,' I said.
32
WE went back to Quirk's office and teased Arlett for a while and then LeMaster and Delaney took me back to Walford in cuffs and stuck me in the Walford jail as a material witness. I was in for about two and a half hours before Haller came down with a writ and got me out.
The prisons in the state were sleeping four to a cell, but the town jails were as empty and quiet as a church on Wednesday. I alternated my time while I sat on the bare bunk between thinking about women I'd slept with and reanalyzing my all-time all-star baseball team. In recent years I'd replaced Brooks Robinson with Mike Schmidt and Marty Marion with Ozzie Smith. Now and then I wondered how the hell I ended up in jail in a case when I knew what happened and who did it and could probably prove it. But mostly I thought about women and baseball.
When I got back to my office it was late afternoon and raining. I was wearing my leather jacket to keep my gun
