“Yeah.”

“You’re unusually quiet.”

“Sorry,” Herbert replied. “I was thinking about what you said.”

“And?”

“Like Mr. Jelbart, you’ve got a point. I just don’t happen to like it,” Herbert told him. “Is that what we do for a living? Risk our lives so we can settle for a compromise?”

“It seems that way,” Hood said.

“It doesn’t seem right.”

“I agree,” Hood said, “but that’s the ante when your opponents are ready to risk their lives. Besides, in our business a trade-off that prevents a war is still better than a loss.”

“I don’t know,” Herbert said. “I never respected football teams that went for a field goal and a tie. That’s not what champions do.”

Hood chuckled.

“What’s so funny?” Herbert asked.

“Your choice of words,” Hood said. “When I was mayor, there was a small bronze plaque in city hall. It was a quote from Daniel Webster that read, ‘This is a hall for mutual consultation and discussion, not an arena for the exhibition of champions.’ I believe that.”

“You would, Paul. You have the patience for talk,” Herbert said. His tone was not disparaging. He admired Hood’s diplomacy.

“Talk works,” Hood said. “If you’re doing that, you probably aren’t killing each other.”

“I can do both.”

“Only if you’re screaming, not talking,” Hood said.

Hood was right about that point. The problem was, Herbert had always liked his way of doing things. It worked. Hood made it sound bad.

“Anyway, it isn’t patience,” Hood went on. “Talk is my weapon of choice. It worked well with voters and with my kids. Now it’s a part of me. I couldn’t change if I wanted to.” He added pointedly, “None of us can.”

Finally, there was something Herbert could agree with.

Hood said that he would call Lowell Coffey and bring him up to speed. Herbert thanked him and hung up the phone. He sat back and thought about what Hood said.

None of them could change.

Hood was right about that. But with that comment came Paul Hood’s tacit acknowledgment that he accepted Bob Herbert as is. That gave Herbert a little wiggle room. He had not been told, expressly, to stay out of the investigation and interrogation.

What it did not give Herbert, immediately, was a place to put his fist. He was furious with Jervis Darling, with the polite but recalcitrant Peter Kannaday, and with the coddling mentality in general. Herbert understood talk. But to be honest, he still preferred war. It took less time and it resolved disputes a lot quicker. Nor were the casualties any heavier, really. Just quicker. The combatants lost to bullets what they would have lost to endless raids and corrosive debate.

Herbert noticed Loh staring at him.

“What are you thinking?” he asked her.

“I agree with you,” she said.

“About?”

“A stalemate,” she said.