You hear it most when politicians who live in places like Hyannis Port and Beacon Hill and Wellesley make decisions that affect people who live in Dorchester and Roxbury and Jamaica Plain, and then step back and say there isn’t a war going on.

There is a war going on. It’s happening in playgrounds, not health clubs. It’s fought on cement, not lawns. It’s fought with pipes and bottles, and lately, automatic weapons. And as long as it doesn’t push through the heavy oak doors where they fight with prep school educations and filibusters and two-martini lunches, it will never actually exist.

South Central L.A. could burn for a decade, and most people wouldn’t smell the smoke unless the flames reached Rodeo Drive.

I wanted to sort this out. Now. To wade through it all, in the car with Angie, until our places in this war were clearly defined, until we knew exactly where we stood on every issue, until we could look into our hearts and be satisfied with what we saw there. But I feel this way a lot, and everything always ends up in circles, coming back to me with nothing solved.

I said, “What’re you going to do, right?” and pulled to the curb in front of her house.

She looked at the front page of the paper, at Jenna’s body. She said, “I can tell Phil we’re working late.”

“I’m fine,” I said.

“No, you’re not.”

I half laughed. “No, I’m not. But you can’t come into my dreams with me, protect me there. So, otherwise, I can handle it.”

She was out of the car now, and she leaned back in and kissed my cheek. “Be well, Skid.”

I watched her climb the stairs to her porch, fumble with her keys, then open the door. Before she got inside, a light went on in the living room and the curtain parted slightly. I waved at Phil, and the curtain fluttered closed again.

Angie entered her home and shut off the light in the hallway and I drove off.

***

The light was on in the belfry. I pulled to the curb in front of the church and walked around to the side door, acutely aware of the fact that my gun was sitting in the police-station evidence room. There was a note on the floor as I entered: “Don’t shoot. Two black men in one day will give you a bad rep.”

Richie.

He was sitting behind my desk when I entered. He had his feet up and a Peter Gabriel tape going on my boom box, a bottle of Glenlivet on the desk and a glass in his hand. I said, “Is that my bottle?”

He looked at it. “I believe so, son.”

“Well, help yourself,” I said.

“Thank you,” he said and poured another shot into his glass. “You need ice.”

I found a glass in my drawer, made a double. I held up the paper. “Seen it?”

“I don’t read that rag,” he said. Then, “Yeah, I saw it.”