“I don’t got no money.”

Gerry patted the kid’s hip and when he pulled his hand away there was a ten-dollar bill in the kid’s waistband. “Looks like you got a sawbuck you forgot about.”

The kid looked down at his waistband. “Mine?”

“It ain’t mine. Now go get in that cab. Okay?”

“Okay.” The kid sniffled as Gerry led him back out the door, and then suddenly he spun and hugged as much of Gerry as he could get his arms around.

Gerry chuckled. “Okay. Okay.”

“I love you, man,” the kid said. “I love you!”

A cab pulled to the curb outside and Gerry nodded at the driver as he disentangled himself. “Go on now. Go on.”

Patton lowered his head and rolled into a fetal position on the bar, closed his eyes. I scratched his nose and he nipped my hand gently, seemed to smile sleepily at me.

“I love you!” the kid bellowed as he stumbled out.

“I’m moved,” Gerry said. He shut the door to the bar and we heard the taxi’s axles clack as it pulled a U-turn on the avenue to head down to Lower Mills. “Deeply moved.” Gerry locked the door and raised his eyebrows at me, ran a hand through the rusty stubble on his head.

“Still Officer Friendly,” I said.

He shrugged, then frowned. “Did I do that at your school—the Officer Friendly lecture?”

I nodded. “Second grade at St. Bart’s.”

He took his bottle and shot glass over to a table by the jukebox and I joined him, left my shot glass on the bar, seven feet away from me, where it belonged. Patton remained on the bar, eyes closed, dreaming of large cats.

He leaned back in his chair and arched his back, stretched his arms behind his head and yawned loudly. “You know something? I remember that now.”

“Oh, please,” I said. “That was over twenty years ago.”

“Mmm.” He brought the chair legs back to the floor, poured himself another drink. By my count he’d had six shots and there was absolutely no noticeable effect. “That class was something, though,” he said, tilting the glass toward me in toast. “There was you and Angela and that shitbird she married, what was his name.”

“Phil Dimassi.”

“Phil, yeah.” He shook his head. “Then there was that head case Kevin Hurlihy and that other nut job, Rogowski.”

“Bubba’s okay.”

“I know you guys are friends, Patrick, but give me a break. He’s a suspect in maybe seven unsolved homicides.”

“Real nice guys, I’m sure, the victims.”

He shrugged. “Killing is killing. You take a life without cause, you should be punished. All there is to it.”

I sipped my beer, glanced at the jukebox.

“You don’t agree?” he said.

I held out my hands, leaned back in my chair. “I used to. Sometimes, though, I mean come on, Gerry—Kara Rider’s life was worth more than the life of the guy who killed her.”

“Beautiful,” he said and gave me a dark smile. “Utilitarian logic at its best, and the cornerstone of most facist ideologies, if you don’t mind me mentioning.” He downed another shot, watching me with clear, steady eyes. “If you presuppose that a victim’s life is worth more than a murderer’s, and then you yourself go and kill that murderer, doesn’t that then make your own life less worthy than the murderer you killed?”