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DeMarco couldn’t believe it.

They’d used the warrants granted by the Not-So-Honorable Walter Hoagland, contacted phone companies and banks, and examined the financial and telephone records of the bartender and the barmaid. They were both swimming in credit card debt, and the bartender appeared to be a degenerate gambler, based on his almost weekly trips to Atlantic City. But neither Jack Morris nor Kathy Tolliver had come into money since the Rosenthal case started—at least they hadn’t deposited money in their bank accounts or paid down their credit card debt. If they’d been bribed, they’d been paid in cash—and he had no way to prove that.

Phone records showed that Morris and Tolliver had both received several calls from a prepaid cell phone—but not from the same prepaid cell phone. When Justine asked the service providers to locate the phones that had been used to call the witnesses, she was informed that the phones were no longer in service. Son of a bitch! DeMarco was certain that the person who had been calling Morris and Tolliver from the prepaid phones was Ella Fields—but again he couldn’t prove it.

Livid, DeMarco went to McGill’s and leaned on Jack Morris and Kathy Tolliver again—and they both lied to him again. Kathy claimed that the calls were from her Narcotics Anonymous sponsor, and when DeMarco demanded the sponsor’s name, Kathy said, “They call it Narcotics Anonymous for a reason.” DeMarco told her how much time she could serve for perjury—doubling the amount she’d probably get. He also said she could be sent to jail for obstruction of justice if she was lying. Hell, maybe the DA could even find some way to make her an accomplice to Dominic DiNunzio’s murder, since she was obviously helping Toby Rosenthal avoid going to jail. Tolliver looked for a minute as though she might throw up—but she didn’t buckle.

Morris, on the other hand, wasn’t the least bit nervous. Jack had a lot more grit than DeMarco had expected. He said he gambled a bit, borrowed some money from a shark, and the shark called periodically to hound him for his money. He wasn’t about to tell DeMarco the shark’s name. “The guy might not break my legs for being a little late on a payment, but if I gave his name to the DA’s office, I could be walking on crutches for a month.”

The warrants that he and Justine had worked so hard to obtain hadn’t accomplished anything.

He called Justine to tell her where things stood, and started ranting. He couldn’t find Fields. He couldn’t prove that she’d committed a crime. He couldn’t prove that she’d tampered with the witnesses, or disappeared Edmundo Ortiz, or attempted to kill Esther Behrman. The whole time he was yelling, Justine kept trying to interrupt to tell him something. Finally, DeMarco said, “So I don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do now.”

Justine said, “Well, if you’d shut up for two seconds and let me talk, I’ve got some good news for you.”