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Vinny Gorgeous digs up.”
    When Alfano called back a few minutes later, Boff put him on speaker again.
    I asked around, Frankie. Apparently this guy has some ties with the Colombo Family. Something about co-owning tenements. Couldn’t nail it down any more specific.
    “Thanks, Vinny. I owe you.”
    No, you don’t. If it weren’t for you, I’d be dying in some ratty prison hospital instead of my home. Make sure you drop by before I drop dead. Alfano cut the connection.
    Boff nodded. “Okay, I think we need to check this Sorriano guy out,” he said, looking at Cassidy.
    “I agree,” the old reporter said.
    “I’ll try to hook up with the mutt later today,” Boff said.
    Cassidy thought for a minute. “As for me, I’ve got a good contact in the Colombo family. I’ll drop by his social club on Arthur Street and break bread with him.”
    Boff nodded. “Then I think we have this slumlord covered.” He looked at his computer screen for a moment. “The second story Nicky wrote that’s potentially promising is this one where a WASP stock broker with Goldman Sachs was frequenting prozzies in a Harlem cat house owned by a drug dealer.”
    “Yeah,” Hannah said. “One of Nicky’s informants tipped him off to that. So Nicky poked around and found out most of the girls were underage. The broker eventually copped a plea and testified against the dealer.”
    “I remember that one,” Thamel said. “The guy was a low-level trader. Got fired over the incident. Then his rich father cut off a trust fund he’d set up for him. Nicky was busy on a new story by then, so he asked me do to a follow-up on the guy. What I found out was that shortly after he ratted out the dealer, the guy was beaten to within an inch of his life. Presumably by thugs sent by the dealer. Nicky’s story ruined this guy’s life.”
    Cassidy shook his head. “No. The mutt did it himself by losing control of his prick. It wasn’t Nicky’s fault.”
    “Mike,” Thamel said, “guys like that never take blame for their own mistakes. He would’ve shifted the blame to Nicky.”
    The men all nodded, but Hannah had her doubts. “I’m not so sure this guy’s a suspect,” she said. “I mean, if he lost his job and his trust fund, how would he have had enough money to hire a hitman? That story broke months ago. Let me Google him and see what I can get that’s more current.” After a couple minutes, she looked up. “You can cross this dummy off.”
    “Why?” Cassidy asked.
    “The dickhead’s dead. Hanged himself two months before Nicky was killed.”
    Boff shut down his laptop and closed the lid. “All right,” he said, “we’ve got one suspect. I’ll have a chat with Sorriano, hopefully today. If we end up scratching him off, we go back and concentrate on the dead cop. I know this was largely a waste of time, but we need to be sure Nicky wasn’t killed for a story he’d already written. Not the one he was working on.” He signaled for Alexis and handed her his credit card.
    “Whoa!” Cassidy said. “Alexis, give him back that card. Frank, this is my house. You’re my guest. Put it on my tab.”
    “Sure, Mr. Mike.”
    Thamel checked his watch. “I’ve got to get back to the office,” he said. “It was great seeing you, Mike. And thanks for the lunch.”
    After Thamel left, Boff chatted with Cassidy and the redhead for awhile before taking off, too.

Chapter 10
     
    Boff decided now was the time to bring his information broker, Billy Wright, into the case. He called Wright when he left the pub and asked him to see what he could dig up on Sorriano. Later in the afternoon he drove to his ex-DEA partner’s computer repair shop in Williamsburg.
    In order to get himself in the proper frame of mind for dealing with Wright, he slid a CD of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire” into his car’s player. On the ride over, he thought about his ambivalent feelings in working with the guy.
    The upside was that Wright was a computer