“I know who you are. You’re the one who shot that guy in Chestnut Hill this morning.”

“You know a lot about me for a guy I’ve never met,” Mann said.

The cop laughed heartily. “I guess you haven’t learned there aren’t any secrets in the department.”

“Apparently, there’s a lot I haven’t learned,” Mann said, relaxing a little. “That’s why the commissioner’s making me work with Coletti. He says he’s the perfect teacher.”

“You could do a lot worse,” the cop said. “Coletti’s a good man.”

Mann looked at him in disbelief. “They must’ve put you in DPR because you’re crazy.”

“Actually, they put me down here because I broke my foot chasing some kid.”

“Sorry to hear that,” Mann said, sitting back in his chair. He wanted to ignore the cop and lose himself in his thoughts, but his curiosity got the best of him. “So, um, how do you know Coletti?”

“We came into the Academy together back in ’78.”

“Thirty-one years is a long time,” Mann said. “I’m sure he’s a lot different than he was back then.”

The cop shook his head. “People don’t change, times do,” he said in a faraway voice. “And it was a different time when Coletti and I went through the Academy. Most of the cops in Philly were just like us—white, blue-collar guys from row-house neighborhoods. There weren’t many women or blacks, and there was nobody to tell us what we couldn’t do, so things got kinda crazy sometimes.

“There was this one black cadet named Harry Williams who came through the Academy with us. He was short, kinda stocky, but you could tell he was a pretty sharp guy—serious about being a cop. Some of the guys didn’t like that. They thought he was a little too uppity, so while everybody else was making friends, Harry was getting harassed. I still remember this one guy from South Philly kept calling him spade. He’d say it while we were doing a run or something, just loud enough for Harry and a couple other guys to hear. People would laugh and Harry would ignore it, but you could tell he was starting to get mad. Well, it took about a month for the whole thing to blow up. Harry caught the guy by himself and beat him up pretty good. Some of the guys from South Philly heard about it and they wanted to put Harry in his place.

“Naturally, they came to Coletti for help, since he was from South Philly, too. And the day it was all supposed to go down, Coletti was there, only he was standing with Harry. It was just the two of them against ten guys. I’ll never forget what Coletti said when they asked him why he was with Harry instead of them.