Still, he remained cheerful, relentlessly cheerful. Devlin and others, including some editorial writers, could see the true mirthlessness behind Hamilton’s eyes. As a clown who could let his joke go only so far, Hamilton was perfect for a city whose government had become completely unaccountable to its citizens, a city that was a quadriplegic on life support, alive by definition only. Thanks mostly to Lindsay, who had run for mayor back in the sixties first as a Republican, then for reelection as a “fusion” candidate, there was no two-party system in the city anymore. The Democrats held all the major elective offices in the city, but more important, all the appointive offices, from judges and commissioners—all the way down to the municipal court bailiffs—were in the hands of the five county party leaders. To become mayor, Norman Hamilton had had to secure the leaders’ support, acquiesce to their greed, and now thievery and malfeasance were being uncovered in nearly every city department, commission, bureau, and courtroom. According to the evidence unearthed so far, the only city organization passed over by the plundering politicians was the Fire Department.

For police commissioner, Hamilton had appointed Norberto Torres, whose previous experience had been with the Transit Police, and not very high up, either. As politics, it was a masterstroke, co-opting those black and Puerto Rican leaders who otherwise would have attacked Hamilton at the slightest hint of police discrimination. Hamilton could always claim that he was moving as quickly as possible on the only permanent solution to the problem. Who was to say he wasn’t?

But as a result, as all cops knew, the department was burdened with hundreds of women too small and light for the frequent hand-to-hand combat with quarreling spouses and belligerent drunks the job required. The revised literacy requirements were so low that many new patrolmen couldn’t write a report, and more than a few new sergeants couldn’t read them. Some officers were disobeying orders because they considered them racially motivated, and others were wearing shields solely to prey on dope dealers, because they were dope dealers themselves—as they had been before joining the force. One story the department wanted hushed up had to do with the longtime officer’s resignation the day after his partner’s gun belt fell down around her ankles in the middle of a hot pursuit.