McDermott smiled softly, almost tenderly. “I guess that makes two of us,” he murmured. And then abruptly the smile faded and his voice was crisp and technical. “All right, here it is. I heard the talk about that party tonight, with them two hoods barging in and showing guns and so forth. The talk is, you stopped the show and you did it very fancy. So that gets me to thinking—”

“Forget it,” Corey said.

McDermott didn’t seem to hear him. “I’m working with six men, and I need a seventh.”

“Just forget it,” Corey said. He stood up and started toward the door. Then something stopped him. He was thinking in terms of fifteen thousand dollars. Specifically he was thinking that in order to maneuver toward the fifteen thousand, he needed a certain tool.

That certain tool was the badge.

He heard the detective-sergeant saying, “You wanna be reinstated?”

He nodded slowly.

There was the scraping sound of wood against wood as McDermott opened a desk drawer. Then there was the clinking sound of metal hitting wood. Corey turned his head and saw it shining on the desktop. Before he knew what he was doing he reached for the badge and when he had it in his hand he stared at it.

“And here’s your card,” McDermott said.

Corey took the card. He saw his name typed under the printed designation, police department, and stamped slantwise across the card was the lettering. It read “Night Squad.”

Corey muttered, “You had me reinstated before you knew I’d say yes.” He looked at the detective-sergeant. “What made you so sure I’d say yes?”

“I wasn’t sure,” McDermott said. “I was just hoping you would.”

“That grooves it sorta deep,” Corey muttered. “What this all amounts to, you got some special reason for wanting me on the squad.”

McDermott didn’t reply to that. He sat motionless for some moments; then got up from the desk chair and moved toward the window. He stood at the window with his back to Corey Bradford. There’s something missing, Corey thought. There’s something missing here, all right.

The detective-sergeant turned and went back to the desk. He didn’t sit down. He gazed at the desktop and said, “There’s a job I want done. It’s a big one. It’s the biggest on our list. We been on it for years and we’re nowhere. I’m thinking maybe you can handle it.”

“Why me?”