Several minutes passed and Corey Bradford didn’t move from where he stood, staring at the closed door. There was a baffled look in his eyes, as though he was confronted with the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, not one of which fit the other.

Come off it, he urged himself. You keep standing here trying to figure it out, you’ll wind up giggling with your brains all outta joint.

The jigsaw puzzle wouldn’t go away.

Thirty-three years, Corey muttered without sound. For thirty-three years a policeman named McDermott has been out to get the leader of the Third Street Dragons. And then outta nowhere a hook makes a grab, and you’re pulled into the deal. You’re handed the card. You’re handed the badge. You’re given the assignment.

The hook was aimed at you. At you alone. There’s gotta be a reason—

You’re nowhere near the reason, the only thing you got here is a certain creepy notion regarding McDermott. You got the feeling there’s some special connection between you and him, a connection that has you standing here like some goddam statue—

Now listen, for Christ’s sake. You’re just gonna hafta come off it. Only way to look at it is don’t look at all. It don’t mean nothing, and chances are this cat McDermott is way out there on Track 73 with all them other mixed-up, shook-up, messed-up cats who got hit on the head just once too often.

All them sad-faced cats on the Night Squad.

That’s where they are, all right, way out there on 73, that dismal track that aims straight at the booby hatch. And the only stops along the line are the graves.

That’s it, that’s how it is with the Squad, with McDermott. And jim that lets you out, absolutely. Lets you out and takes you clean off the hook. Or to see it another way, to see it like it really is, there ain’t no hook at all. You’re a loner and you can’t be hooked.

Yet in that same moment he had the wallet out and he was looking at the badge.

You make me laugh, he said to himself, and managed to force a chuckle. Then quickly, almost spasmodically, he closed the wallet and put it back in his pocket.

Come on, he prodded the cagey manipulator who was out for gold and nothing else. Come on, let’s haul this freight. It goes west on Addison and south on Sixth to Ingersoll.

Six-seventeen Ingersoll.

***