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“It was in all the papers,” said the cop at the precinct.

Let’s see about that.

I Google away, and the hits on Frank Delmonico’s name number more than a thousand. Jeez, Louise! Some of the sites are the venomous rantings of bloggers, but most are indeed news stories — all archived — from the city’s papers. The pages never turn yellow on the Internet.

I click on one site, then another and another. Not all of them include a picture, but when they do he’s always wearing that same gray suit. His dark, intense eyes are unmistakable. It’s him, all right. And each and every article confirms what I still can’t bring myself to believe.

He’s been dead for over three years.

The more I read, the more I realize why the police don’t like talking about the guy. Cocksucker, indeed, and that’s putting it mildly.

Delmonico was a highly decorated officer with over twenty years on the job. He was also on the take for at least ten of them.

And that’s just for starters.

I keep clicking on sites until I find this one piece in the New York Times that lays the gory story out in grand detail. The article must be twenty-five hundred words.

Delmonico had gotten in bed with the Russian mob, protecting their interests in drugs and prostitution, as well as helping to launder money through the poker rooms of several Atlantic City casinos. The worst part was what happened when two young detectives from his precinct got close to linking one of his Russian comrades to a homicide in Queens. Delmonico whacked both detectives. Did the job himself.

What’s more, he arranged it so he’d be the lead detective in the investigation. There was just one hitch. Delmonico thought they were alone in the alleyway when he pulled the trigger on the two detectives. He never saw an old Hasidic man who happened to be looking out a nearby tenement window. But the man in the window sure saw him.

Still, it seemed everyone thought Delmonico would get away with it — including most in the DA’s office. It was the word of a veteran detective against that of an elderly man with admittedly bad eyesight. Speculation had it that the only reason the case went forward was that a nervous mayor didn’t want to seem soft on police corruption, especially two cold-blooded murders.

But in the end, it was the Russians who proved even more nervous. A week before the start of the trial, Frank Delmonico was shot twice in the head at point-blank range. The gun used was a Makarov, a Russian-made 9 mm. Just in case that wasn’t enough of a “message,” there was something stuffed in Delmonico’s mouth. A big black rat.

But that rat wasn’t the real kicker.

At least from where I’m sitting.

Hoping to avoid the reporters and cameras camped outside his apartment in Queens, Delmonico had decided to check into a hotel. That’s where they found his body.

At the Fálcon.

There was even a photo of his body being carried out in a long black bag.

Chapter 89

I STAND UP from my computer, having had more than enough of this. I’m woozy and in a daze. If Frank Delmonico’s no longer alive, whom have I been talking to the past few days?

Impulsively, I reach into my pocket and pull out Delmonico’s card. I think back to when he handed it to me outside the hotel. I can picture it clearly.

Wait.

That’s it!

I rush to my darkroom and the pictures lining nearly every inch of wall space. I shot so many that morning outside the hotel. I covered every angle twice over. All the commotion. All the people. Police, paramedics — there’s no way he could’ve escaped my lens.

Grabbing my loupe, I begin to search. It’s my own desperate version of Where’s Waldo? I move left to right across every photo, looking for that gray suit, those unmistakable eyes. Where’s Delmonico?

I can’t find him in any of the pictures.

So what do I do? I start over. I go slower, inch by inch, top to bottom. The sweat from my face and arms is sticking to the photo paper. My head is throbbing; my eyes are killing me.

C’mon, where are