Stranahan was feeling better; Timmy knew something. Stranahan could tell from the eyes. It had come back to him.

Gavigan said, “Mick, that girl had the finest nipples I ever saw. I meant to thank you.”

“Anytime.”

“Like Susan B. Anthony dollars, that’s how big they were. Same shape, too. Octagonal.” Gavigan winked. “You remember the Barletta thing?”

“Sure.” A missing-person’s case that had turned into a possible kidnap. The victim was a twenty-two-year-old University of Miami student. Victoria Barletta: brown eyes, black hair, five eight, one hundred and thirty pounds. Disappeared on a rainy March afternoon.

Still unsolved.

“We had our names in the paper,” Gavigan said. “I still got the clipping.”

Stranahan remembered. There was a press conference. Victoria’s parents offered a $10,000 reward. Timmy was there from Homicide, Stranahan from the State Attorney’s Office. Both of them were quoted in the story, which ran on the front pages of the Herald and the Miami News.

Gavigan coughed in a way that startled Mick Stranahan. It sounded like Timmy’s lungs had turned to custard.

“Hand me that cup,” Gavigan said. “Know what? That was the only time we made the papers together.”

“Timmy, we got in the papers all the time.”

“Yeah, but not together.” He slurped down some ginger ale and pointed a pale bony finger at Stranahan. “Not together, bucko, trust me. I save all the clippings for my scrapbook. Don’t you?”

Stranahan said no.

“You wouldn’t.” Gavigan hacked out a laugh.

“S o you think this Mafia guy got it out of the papers?”

“Not the Mafia guy,” Gavigan said, “but the guy who hired him. It’s a good possibility.”

“The Barletta thing was four years ago, Timmy.”

“Hey, I ain’t the only one who keeps scrapbooks.”

He yawned. “Think hard on this, Mick, it’s probably important.”