Dina rolled her eyes and did a huge fake-patient sigh. “OK,” she said, slowing down so that the idiot could keep up. “I’d bet everything I’ve got, which is fuck-all but there you go, that your entire squad doesn’t get sterilized their first day on the job. You work with guys who have kids. They do the exact same job you do. They can’t be letting murderers go all the time, or they’d get fired. Right? Am I right?”

“Some of the guys have families. Yeah.”

“Then why don’t you want kids?”

The coffee was kicking in. The apartment felt small and ugly, harsh with artificial light; the urge to get out, start driving too fast back to Broken Harbor, nearly launched me right out of my chair. I said, “Because the risk is too big. It’s so enormous that just thinking about it makes me want to puke my guts. That’s why.”

“The risk,” Dina said, after a moment’s silence. She turned the wrapper of the granola bar inside out, carefully, and examined the shiny side. “Not from the job. You mean me. That they’d turn out like me.”

I said, “You’re not who I’m worried about.”

“Then who?”

“Me.”

Dina watched me, the lightbulb reflecting tiny twin will-o’-the-wisps in those inscrutable milky blue eyes. She said, “You’d make a good father.”

“I think I probably would. But probably’s not good enough. Because if we’re both wrong and I turned out to be a terrible father, what then? There would be absolutely nothing I could do. Once you find out, it’s too late: the kids are there, you can’t send them back. All you can do is keep on fucking them up, day after day, and watch while these perfect babies turn into wrecks in front of your eyes. I can’t do it, Dina. Either I’m not stupid enough or I’m not brave enough, but I can’t take that risk.”

“Geri’s doing OK.”

“Geri’s doing great,” I said. Geri is cheerful, easygoing, and a natural at motherhood. After each of her kids was born, I rang her every day for a year—stakeouts, interrogations, fights with Laura, everything else in the world got put on hold for that phone call—to make sure she was all right. Once she sounded hoarse and subdued enough that I made Phil leave work and check on her. She had a cold and obviously thought I should feel like an idiot, which I didn’t. Better safe, always.

“I want kids someday,” Dina said. She balled up the wrapper, threw it in the general direction of the bin and missed. “I bet you think that’s a really shit idea.”

The thought of her showing up pregnant next time made my scalp freeze. “You don’t need my permission.”

“But you think it anyway.”

I asked, “How’s Fabio?”

“His name’s Francesco. I don’t think it’s going to work out. I don’t know.”

“I think it would be a better idea to wait to have kids until you’re with someone you can rely on. Call me old-fashioned.”