DETECTIVE BROGAN CALLED Dino from the prison. “I spoke to both of them. They hate Dressler, naturally enough, and would love to see him go down. I had to listen to them saying they’d been framed, which they all say, but I kind of believe them. That Dressler is a nasty son of a bitch.”
“What about the girl?”
“Well, that’s the thing. Fred Walsh was sure Dressler worked with a female accomplice and identified a photo of Yvette Walker as being her.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think it means anything. The guy’s saying whatever he thinks we want to hear. You know, hoping we’ll put in a good word with the parole board.”
“He didn’t pick her out of a lineup?”
“No, that’s my fault. He wasn’t ID’ing a suspect, just the victim. It was only after he did it I began to doubt the identification.”
“What about the other guy?”
“Paul Peretti is another story. He didn’t know much, but he wasn’t trying to sell me anything. He picked the girl out of a row of five pictures, but he didn’t know that much about her. He’d seen him with her once, but that was it. He’d heard the guy worked with a female accomplice, but he didn’t know if that was her. It’s not that helpful, but for what it’s worth, I consider his opinion solid.”
“Thanks, Detective. For what it’s worth, I consider your opinion solid.”
Dino called Stone and told him what he’d just heard.
“So what do you think?” Stone said.
“As far as I’m concerned, it’s conclusive. It’s the only thing that makes sense. He’s delivering a pizza. He calls upstairs, the girl says sure, bring it up. Well, no one ate any pizza, no one ordered any pizza, the damn thing was a prop. Just an empty box with a few crusts. That only makes sense if they were working together. It also explains the knockout drops. She drugged Herbie so her boyfriend could rip the place off.”
“So what do you want to do?”
“We have to tell him.”
“I’d like to have more proof.”
“We’re not going to get it.”
“Probably not,” Stone said. “When do you want to do it?”
“Let’s take him out to dinner.”
“Really?”
“He’s all alone in that apartment. It can’t be good for him.”
“Okay. Thanks, Dino. I’ll take care of it.”