“Hee… hee… hee.” The old man takes a shaky spoonful of his cake piece. “I see you’ve… come to get some tips from the master… Rookie Killer! I’m very flattered, Chief Prosecutor. Yes! Very… flattered.” He swallows. Hard. “I… Excuse the cake. Marcy – you’ve seen her, the nice lady who… wears the… the pink…” He sighs. “…um… the—the pink… thingy – it’s her birthday, you see… And she brought the… the cake.”

I look at my hands. “Yes. Well. I was actually wondering if you could tell me a little about a case you worked on, Mr. Payne.”

“Why, now, which one is that, my dear?” He smiles.

“State vs. Byrde.”

“Hee… hee… Ah, yes. I see. I… understand. To truly learn… from the master, you must first… look at hiss mistakes. Yes. State vs. Byrde. I remember it very well. There was… this glove… that looked like a banana… in a park… She killed him, you know. Make no mistake there, but… It’s difficult, what with the… the fact that the poor guy was a police officer and all, there was… a lot of emotion and…”

I clear my throat. “State vs. Byrde, as in… the murder in Tres Bien.” I extend the transcript to him.

He pats my hand, but doesn’t take the file. “My dear… Winston Payne’s memory is sharp as ever!” He taps his temple. “Yes… Yes, I see… I see… Someone’s finally come… to ask about that. Good… Good. About time, really. I remember it well.” He looks me in the eye, his breathing heavy. “I suppose you know, then? That it’s all fake? Every last word?”

Jackpot. “I had a pretty good idea it was, yeah. These records suggest he was poisoned, but I have reason to believe—”

“Stabbed! Yes, yes, of course he was stabbed, my dear! Yes…” He chuckles. “As I said. Every last word. Save for the names. Well… most of them anyhow.”

“Why don’t we start from the beginning?” I suggest.

“The case was… open and shut. Hee… The waitress was… the only one who got close to him. She had the means to… dispose of the weapon. Everyone else had a near perfect alibi. Easy… Easy as they came! But…”

“But?”

“But there were… parts that… troubled me. They found… a tranquilizer… in the victim’s system. It was also in… his coffee. And, of course, that was obviously the waitress, too. She… made the coffee. But… I didn’t understand why… she’d go through the trouble… of spiking the coffee… with a tranquilizer… and not just use poison? If she… wanted to stop him from screaming…” He gasps for air. “If she wanted… to stop him from screaming… it didn’t do her much help… because everyone practically saw her do it, anyway… right? That… troubled me. Very much. Just like the murder… weapon. We never found it. But that… could have been used against me. Because I knew.”

“Knew what?”

He grins. “Who I’d… be going up against. And I… couldn’t let it happen again. I… couldn’t lose to him. Again. I was… the Rookie Killer. And he was… still… a rookie. I couldn’t… be humiliated again. Hee… hee… So I… Stopped him. I made sure the scene was always… crawling with forensics, so he couldn’t… examine it himself. And I… didn’t let him… talk to the girl… until an hour before the trial. It was… an important interview session… you see. Hee hee…”

I clench my fist. “Right. So he went in with zero information, and lost.”

“Hee… hee… hee… Only so much bluffing can do.”

“But he DID eventually get to talk to her, and he DID eventually get to the crime scene. And when he did, your tactics were good enough of an excuse to file a motion for a re-trial.”

He rolls his eyes. “Who… cares? I won. That… wasn’t my problem, anyway. The re-trial.”

I sigh. “Do you know anything about what happened at it, though?”

“Officially…? No. All anyone ever heard was that… some guy with… uh… Tiger… something.”

“Furio Tigre.”

“That’s the one. That… Furio Tigre. Murdered the guy. And that was… that. For a while.”

“For a while?”

“Hee… until the Cadaverinis approached me. Threw this bag of money… in my lap… and told me… if anyone asked…” he points to the transcript, “THAT’S how it all happened.”

“And you took it.”

He shrugs. “I didn’t… have a choice. The whole Prosecutorial Committee was practically… in the room with me. My… mistake… all on its own had almost caused a huge ruckus. They couldn’t… have that. And they especially couldn’t have… Viola Cadaverini… seen as someone… who… stabs herself while crying. The Cadaverinis were cooperating… with the Prosecutor’s Office… in managing a rival gang. And so they had this… symbiotic relationship… of propping each other up. And this case… was a problem. And it had… to be fixed.”

“So they forged this transcript?”

“It is so, my dear.”

“What about Furio Tigre? Who the hell is Furio Tigre?”

“Oh… he… is a real person. I checked. Later. Arrest records and… everything.” He laughs. “He doesn’t… look anything… like the rookie. Hee… hee… hee.” He wets his lips. “I think… I remember… finding that he was released… just a month after the trial. They said it was parole, but… it’s obvious he was just… some fall guy they pulled off the street. Eh?”

I throw the transcript onto the table between us. “Right. Well. Thanks.”

“I know… he made you, Ms. Cykes.”

“What?”

“I know… who you are. The rookie… You were one of his, right? I heard… he died… in the explosion?”

I find the strength to relax my fist. “Yeah. Yeah, he did.”

“I’m sorry… for your loss.”

“Thank you.”

“He was… good. In spite of everything. Wasn’t he.”

“The very best.”

“Then… I guess… his shadow is… a good one… to lie down in… Hee… Hee… Hee…”