Leo sat in a padded chair. Bolted into the wall behind it was a folding steel arm with a metal mask at its end which the doctor set up right in front of Leo’s face. She leaned close to adjust the eyepiece so it was touching his nose. Everything he saw looked red in the left eye and green in the right. He could smell her shampoo. She stepped back, turned off the lights, and asked him to tell her where the colors were. Then she hit a lever on her goggles and everything went white and there was a letter chart in front of him. He could read every line but the last two, and they were smaller than any he’d ever seen. She flicked on the lights, pulled the mask away, and wrote more things on the clipboard. She kept her eyes on what she was writing and told Leo he could put on his shirt. Leo buttoned up and watched her write; her forehead had slight lines in it, her lips were pursed in concentration. “I’m a bluesman, actually. I’m joining so I can go play my harps in France. You know, on the weekends.”

She stopped writing and looked at him as if she hadn’t understood a word of what he’d just said. Then she smiled. “Well, have fun. You’re certainly in good health.”

Leo smiled back and was about to mention his mother never having got there herself, that she died young and all that, but the doctor turned and left the room. Leo followed her back to the waiting area where the sergeant sat. He stood, took the form sheet from the doctor, and secured it to a clipboard of his own. “Is he up to snuff?”

“Quite.” Dr. Trudeau smiled at Leo once more, then tapped the pudgy one on the shoulder to follow her.

The sergeant wasn’t chewing gum anymore, which was fine with Leo. They left the room and walked down the shiny-floored hallway.

“Security Interview’s a cinch. An LT will ask you some questions and fingerprint you. Then you see the captain for the oath.” The sergeant reached over and squeeed Leo’s shoulder. Leo thought of Lars, the way he did that a lot.

The lieutenant was a young guy with a soft voice and dark skin like a Greek or Italian, but his last name was Martin. He stood across from Leo at a wooden table beneath what Leo figured was the Massachusetts state flag, and he started fingerprinting him right away. He held Leo’s fingers and rolled them one at a time over an ink pad, then onto a white piece of paper with empty squares marking which finger was which. Leo could feel the sergeant standing somewhere behind him.

“How many felony convictions do you have?” The lieutenant’s voice was calm, almost uninterested, like he was asking Leo how he took his coffee. He dropped Leo’s left hand and started working on the right.