Our little team spent the rest of the day pumping the airwaves full of chatter about my engagement party, giving directions to Vince’s house and reminding people of the time. And just after lunch, our coup de grâce. Sitting in my car in front of a Wendy’s, I used the handheld radio and called Sergeant Doakes one last time for a carefully scripted conversation.

Sergeant Doakes, this is Dexter, do you copy?

This is Doakes, he said after a slight pause.

It would mean a lot to me if you could come to my engagement party tonight.

I can’t go anywhere, he said. This guy is too dangerous.

Just come for one drink. In and out, I wheedled.

You saw what he did to Manny, and Manny was just a grunt. I’m the one gave this guy to some bad people. He gets his hands on me, what’s he gonna do to me?

I’m getting married, Sarge, I said. I liked the Marvel Comics flavor of calling him Sarge. That doesn’t happen every day. And he’s not going to try anything with all those cops around.

There was a long dramatic pause in which I knew Doakes was counting to seven, just as we had written it down. Then the radio crackled again. All right, he said. I’ll come by around nine o’clock.

Thanks, Sarge, I said, thrilled to be able to say it again, and just to complete my happiness, I added, This really means a lot to me. Ten-four.

Ten-four, he said.

Somewhere in the city I hoped that our little radio drama was playing out to our target audience. As he scrubbed up for his surgery, would he pause, cock his head, and listen? As his scanner crackled with the beautiful mellow voice of Sergeant Doakes, perhaps he’d put down a bone saw, wipe his hands, and write the address on a scrap of paper. And then he would go happily back to work—on Kyle Chutsky?—with the inner peace of a man with a job to do and a full social calendar when he was done for the day.

Just to be absolutely sure, our squad-car friends would breathlessly repeat the message a few times, and without fucking it up; that Sergeant Doakes himself would be at the party tonight, live and in person, around nine o’clock.

And for my part, with my work done for a few hours, I headed for Jackson Memorial Hospital to look in on my favorite bird with a broken wing.