“I come into contact with a lot of bad people,” Decker answered. “And most of them know darn well what they’re doing is wrong. They just don’t care. Ask them why they robbed or raped or killed and you’d be surprised at how creative their excuses are. It’s a rare criminal who’ll accept responsibility for his own actions. An evil spirit seems to me to be another way to pass the buck. The devil made me do it, et cetera.”

“Judaism sees it as just the opposite of what you’re saying,” Schulman explained. “Evil is in all of us. So is good. Man has free will to choose either. There is a very interesting midrash about that. Before Mount Sinai the angels asked Hashem to give them the Torah instead of mankind. After all who is better equipped to do mitzvot—good deeds—than an angel? Hashem refused. Mankind was the only acceptable recipient of the Torah because only mankind could elect to honor Hashem. The angels were programmed only for good. It’s no challenge to be good if good is the sole component of one’s makeup.”

Decker took a sip of schnapps and said nothing.

Schulman asked, “Did you have a bad day, Peter?”

“A little on the rough side.”

“Let me ask you something? What do policemen do when they have a bad day?”

Decker smiled. “They get drunk and gripe to one another.”

“This is what you do?”

“Me personally? No, not really, I’ve gotten drunk on individual occasions, but I’m not a big boozer.”

“I can see that,” Schulman said, picking up Decker’s half-full glass. “So what do you do to cope?”

“A lot of us don’t cope too well. The divorce rate among cops is very high.”

“Isn’t there someone who you can talk to?”

“A shrink?” Decker said. “Yes, we have a resident shrink, but hardly anyone uses him—or her, we’ve got a woman now—unless they’re after disability.”

“Es past nisht, nu?” Schulman said. “It just isn’t done if you’re truly a man.”

“You’ve got it,” Decker said.

“So what do you do to keep your sanity?” the old man asked again.

“I ride my horses,” Decker said. “And now I learn, also.”

“Does learning help?”

“Yes, it does. It takes up a lot of my free time so I don’t think about work as much. It preoccupies me.”

“Do you ever pray?”

“In addition to davening?”

“Yes,” Schulman said. “Do you ever feel the need to say tehillim?”

“I can’t say that I have. I’d like to think that God has a reason for everything, but I don’t really believe that. Some bad people have good luck, some good people are constantly behind the eight ball. What’s the point?”