He sat down across from me, crossed his hands, and slouched over the table. “Listen to me, okay? Myself, one guy, I’ve had to deal with four such deaths in the time I’ve been on the force. All four kids had loving, devoted parents. Starting around 1929, people started tossing out their old iceboxes and the death rate for kids started climbing. There ought to be a law says you have to remove the goddamn door before you can throw it in a dump or leave it sitting out in your backyard, but there isn’t.”

His look invited me to speak, and so I did. “Hers was a broken-down icebox in the backyard of the O’Lunneys. A man was going to come cart it away for them the next morning. The O’Lunneys wouldn’t have harmed a fly. They loved my daughter. O’Lunney had a stroke a few months later, and I swear it was because of that.”

“Game of hide-and-seek?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He mumbled to himself, “Yeah. Hide-and-seek. You have no idea . . . what am I saying? Of course you do.” He fumbled in his pocket and produced a sealed pack of cigarettes. “Smoke?”

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

He put the pack away. “Yeah, it just helps to have them to offer, in my work. I’m cigars myself.” He looked at me. “Ray, you can tell a kid not to do this, not to do that, there are a million ways kids can hurt themselves, and if you made a list of ninety-nine don’ts, you’d still forget to say ‘And don’t put your tongue on the railroad track in freezing weather’ or ‘Don’t put the Philco by the sink when your brother’s taking a bath there’ or ‘Don’t hide in the trunk of the DeSoto when it’s a hundred degrees out and everyone’s gone home.’ The things I run into, Ray. And half the time I’m the one who has to break the news to the parents, and usually they’re the most conscientious people. It’s a miracle any kid gets through life, but most of them do. Other parents ignore their kids, leave them alone while they step into a store to do some shopping, let them play out in the street, and somehow nothing bad happens. Why you? It was just the odds getting played out.”

I took the Popsicle still in its wrapper away from my face. “You have any kids, Bob?” I asked.

“Nah, not me. I’d need a wife for that,” he said.