John hadn’t finished. “—And if there’s anything I can do to help, just say so.”

Devlin felt a pang of alarm. “What makes you say a thing like that?”

“To be honest with you, Frank, it really does sound like one of those deals.”

One of what deals? Nothing Devlin had done—or had not done—was worthy of the attention of the Chief of Detectives. Devlin was pulling his weight on the Liberty Week project, clearing as many, or as few, Ninth Precinct burglaries, muggings, stabbings, shots fired, and domestic quarrels as ever—the real everyday life of a drug-and-booze-saturated district like the Lower East Side. Two weeks ago Devlin and John had had to use force to subdue a young black man obviously under the influence, swinging a Louisville Slugger at anyone who came near him. The confrontation had been an accident—Devlin and John had been in the next apartment, talking to a kid named Hector about a series of muggings of old ladies—when furniture crashed and a woman began screaming for the police.

With his battered girlfriend begging the two detectives not to shoot the guy, Devlin and John, who never drew their guns, were able to take him into custody. Sure, they had to use kitchen chairs like lion tamers to get the bat away from the bastard, and then had to punch it out with him for what might have been ten minutes before being able to cuff his wrists and ankles. When he wanted to bite, flopping around on the floor like a crazed lobster, the girlfriend got a balled-up pair of socks to shove in his mouth, and later, through the blood caking her teeth, she thanked the two for not hurting her sweetie more than they had. According to the hospital report, sweetie had sustained a broken nose, chipped teeth, cracked ribs—and according to no hospital report, just the partners’ own tally—John Lord had skinned a knuckle and pulled a muscle in his back, and Frank Devlin had caught a fat lip.…

That had been two weeks ago, long enough for the guy or his girlfriend to decide to yell police brutality.

But Devlin didn’t believe it. Such people didn’t file complaints unless they’d been hypnotized by some media-shrewd rabble-rouser. Devlin called the number Mariano had left on the machine, and the telephone on the other end was picked up almost instantly.

“Yeah?”

“Frank Devlin, Mariano—” He stopped because Mariano muffled his mouthpiece and said something indistinct to a third party.

“Devlin, we’ve been looking for you all night. The chief wants to know how soon you can get down here.”

“What for?”

“Ah, we’re not going to discuss it over the phone,” Mariano said. “In fact, you’re not going to discuss this with anybody, know what I’m saying?”