'Okay, so let's recap it here.'

Montgomery watched as Beckett made notes, though they could simply reviewing the recording from the room if verification was required.

'Christopher Spitzer's niece Camilla OD's on some kind of white powder, and though it's known that Julio Robinson is responsible, there isn't enough hard proof to finger him so he walks and the system fails Eva and Christopher.'

'That's right.' Attwood drank more water, shifted in his chair. 'Do you mind if I stand up? I think better if I'm standing on my feet.'

'Fine by me.'

He shoved himself up, drank the last of the water in the bottle and dragged a hand over his face. 'That night, after the court hearing, Eva killed herself. I got a call from Christopher, and he was incoherent, so I called Frank, and John, and George, and we went to Eva's place.'

'She'd hanged herself in the shower,' Beckett inferenced and Attwood nodded.

'Christopher had to be hospitalized, saying he couldn't handle the prospect of no justice for Camilla. He got to thrashing around so bad the nurses had to sedate him. It was an ugly thing. Day after Eva's funeral, I got a call from Cowlan who he'd gotten an annonymous tip on where Julio Robinson and his buddies were going to be, making a big exchange.'

'Cocaine?'

'Yeah, some seriously high-grade stuff. We all made sure we were in on the takedown, all of us and we splintered off from the group, got Robinson alone. We got some lead pipes and started to work him over. It was supposed to be an easy shakedown but somehow the guns got involved and Julio shot George in the knee.'

Beckett began to see the picture. 'So in exchange for covering up what happened, Julio cut you into his business. Still cocaine?'

'No, something new, something with more pop and sparkle. Snorted like coke but buzzed you like ecstasy without the harsh morning after.'

'You tried it?' Montgomery asked, and was surprised when Attwood answered in the negative.

'Too easy to get hooked and Christopher insisted we all stay clean. But it was a moneymaker, no question. Julio said he'd give us each one percent of this new shit he was trading on in exchange for making sure that our investment stayed bountiful or else he'd go to the cops himself and say we started pounding on him.'

The man sighed once more, a routine sound for someone in his position. 'God forgive me, I agreed to it. I didn't think he would follow through and I thought a few months later, we would be putting him away for good. Then about a month later, Cowlan comes to me and gives me an address, with two codes, says I should go here to think things about Julio over.'

'It was a bank,' Montgomery prompted him.

'Yeah, and not just any bank, the Swiss, fucking Exchange. I put in my codes to the little machine drop box and then all of a sudden, there is this case, about the size of an office garbage can stuffed with Swiss francs and a note. It said 'this is your one percent off three weeks. Still want to call it off?'. I closed that lid down, and had the office drone put it back for me.'

'So you all had these accounts, making money from Julio.'

'Yeah, and we would always be around in the neighbourhood, keeping an eye on things. Until Montrose, three years later. I was already a detective in IA by the time Montrose came into the picture. Raglan was a rookie in homicide, and George was in Records by then too. Key people in all these unrelated spots, according to Cowlan.'

'He sounds like the mastermind behind all this,' Beckett commented, and for the first time, saw Attwood flinch like she'd slapped him.

'Cowlan was the man with the plan, like Verbal Kint in that movie. And for awhile that's how we thought of ourselves, like the guys from Usual Suspects.' He shrugged, pointed to Beckett's untouched Coke. 'May I? Probably the last time I'll get to taste one of those bad boys for awhile.'

'Go ahead.'

'Thanks.'

Attwood drank, closed his eyes. 'Montrose started working undercover so when he made detective in the Narcotics Bureau, he would have contacts, guys who knew he would do them a solid if they were in trouble, like Roman Moore. But then Cowlan and Spitzer started getting sloppy, always having the same cars around in the neighbourhood. Montrose was no dummy and he started making notes, taking them to Cowlan himself. Spitzer was getting jumpy but Cowlan was, like you said, the man with the plan, and knew that if Montrose got too close, he had to go.'

'Spitzer was the one who tagged Montrose about the alleged deal going down on Avenue D,' Beckett concluded.

'Yeah, and he had John Raglan wait in his panda around the corner,' Attwood continued. 'Spitzer knew that Cowlan had gotten some hired muscle and was going to offer up the bait to Montrose to go to the scene, and call up his weasel Moore to meet him there. Cowlan looped around back and made sure that he was coming on front from a different direction so that when the shots went off and Spitzer called for all units in the area to assist him, he could be sure the real murderer got out the back way and that only Roman was left on scene.'

'How do you know this, if you weren't there?' Beckett inquired, knowing she wouldn't like the answer.

'Because I helped Cowlan plan it, right down the line so that there would be nothing that could falter.'

You didn't count on Roman Moore, Beckett thought, you left out the human element. 'So Roman got sent up, which gave John Raglan the boost he needed to make detective in Homicide.'

'That's right.'

'Okay, so how do we get from there to my mother and Jarrad Brennan?'

'Your mother,' Attwood sighed. 'God as my witness, that is the moment I'll take to my grave and probably to hell with me too. Your mother was our biggest folly. We never expected her to agree to look into Roman's case, and when she started building a case, we started getting scared. We decided that she had to go, her and all of her colleagues when they started asking for the arrest reports on Roman Moore. George tipped us off that she was nosing around. Stupid bitch.'

Montgomery looked over at Beckett, who had balled her fingers into a fist. 'Easy, Detective,' he murmured to her before refocusing on Attwood. 'You watch your mouth.'

'Anyways, we'd heard about this poppy-runner, Rathbone, who was also a gun for hire, so we pooled our resources and we had Cowlan put the money to him. Only, once the deed was done, he said he wanted double because he knew who we were and doubling his fee for the four lawyers would be the price we paid for his silence.'

Attwood sat down now, as if pouring all of this out had drained him. 'He took care of them in his own style, but the one that didn't go so smoothly was the first one, Johanna fucking Beckett.'

'Listen, you-'

'Detective,' Montgomery warned Beckett sharply.

'He was rusty, which is why she didn't die right away like she should have, and then before Raglan could get to her, along comes Jarrad Brennan.'

'He was murdered too, and his death was made to look like a suicide,' Beckett said, though her temper was thrumming hot. 'Which one of you was responsible for that?'

'Cowlan was in charge of that, got his hired muscle to take care of it.'

'How does Cowlan come by all this hired muscle?'

'He was from the projects, he could turn half a circle and he'd be three-deep in thugs. We never questioned it,' Attwood shrugged, 'since it was quick, clean and untraceable. It got the job done and that's what we needed.'

'Let's bring it back into the timeline, Attwood.' Montgomery could feel his head spinning and his heart sinking at all this information on dirty cops that spewed forth like a filthy fountain of sewage. 'Montrose is gone, Johanna Beckett and her colleagues are gone, how do we get from there to Timo Ross?'

'Ask Cowlan about that, that was his deal, not mine, since Cowlan had the bright idea to make the Camilla account a legacy.'

'How did you bring in Blake Holmes?' Beckett wanted to know, and Attwood smiled at this.

'Blake has a bad taste for the ponies. Always picks the slowest ones, and he came to me, said he was in trouble, and I told him I could help him out in exchange for a few favours here and there. Simple, equally productive. Blake has extra cash on hand, I have another pylon to go to for help when necessary.'

There was a knock on the one-way glass and Montgomery looked at Attwood. 'Looks like we're going to pause again. Want another Coke?'