My father was lying in the road in the wasted final stage of his illness. He had left his oxygen tank on the curb and was gasping for breath. Before I could get into the street to pick him up, a squad car rounded the corner and ran over him. You killed him, you killed him, I tried to scream, but no sound came out. Bobby Mallory, my father’s oldest friend on the force, climbed out of the car. He looked at me without compassion and said, You’re under arrest for creating a public nuisance.

The phone pulled me mercifully out of sleep. I stretched out an arm and mumbled “Is it?” into the mouthpiece.

It was my downstairs neighbor, his voice rough with anxiety. “Sorry to wake you, cookie, but there’s some cops here saying you was involved in a hit–and–run last night. They was hanging on your bell and the dogs were going crazy so I went to see what was going on, and of course Mitch bounces out to see who it is, and the one guy, he starts carrying on about Mitch, don’t I know there’s a leash law in this town, and I says, last I heard you don’t need to keep a dog on a leash in your own home and who are you, anyway, disturbing the peace like this, and he whips out his badge—”

“Did he really say hit–and–run?” I demanded, pushing my sleep–sodden body upright.

“He holds out his badge and demands you by name, not that he could pronounce it right, of course. What happened, doll? You didn’t really hit someone and leave them lay, did you? Not that I haven’t told you a million times not to drive that sports car so fast around town, but you stand up to your mistakes, you wouldn’t leave no one in the street, and that’s what I told the one twerp, but he starts trying to act like Dirty Harry, like I’m scared of some tin–pot Hitler like him, when I beat up guys twice his size at—”

“Where are they?”

Mr. Contreras is capable of going on for a day or two once he’s in full throttle. He’s a retired machinist, and even though I know he worked some fancy lathe in his days at Diamondhead Motors, I can really only picture him with a hammer in his hand, out–driving John Henry, along with any mere mechanical device. “They’re downstairs in the lobby, but I think you better get out of bed and talk to them, doll, even if they’re pissers, pardon my French, not like the lieutenant or Conrad or other cops you know.”