"Yeah, right."

They watched him leave, the curious, the disinterested. He heard laughter resume behind the door, more natural, relaxed with the intruder gone. He walked into the slashes of rain toward the subway entrance; sleet made long dark streaks on his uniform.

"Hey, whitey."

He glanced up, saw a kid, about nine or ten. He was hanging out of a tenement window two stories up: dark face, round Afro, a dark indistinguishable presence. The kid disappeared for a second, then bounced up and heaved something out of the window. "Go fuck yourself, whitey."

Patrick veered to avoid the rock, slammed into a row of overflowing garbage cans. Some unidentifiable soft matter, colorless, shapeless, squirted from a torn plastic bag and onto the leg of his pants. He stood in the rain scraping the stuff off his trousers with a scrap of torn cardboard. Then he glanced up, caught the kid grinning down at him.

"Hey, baby," Patrick called out softly and without rancor, "you go fuck yourself."

The kid stared for a minute, uncomprehending, then his face split into a wide grin and he disappeared from the window with a loud yelp of laughter.

THIRTY-THREE.

PATROLMAN PATRICK O'MALLEY WAS assigned to the 25th Precinct in the northeastern portion of Manhattan just before the borough narrowed into a sliver of land which was separated from the Bronx by the dirty Harlem River. He was assigned to a patrol car and his partner was Patrolman Jimmy Hughes.

Patrolman Jimmy Hughes had been well built when he was in his twenties; he was showing signs of impending obesity at thirty and would be a fat slob by the time he was forty. He had six years on the job, a wife, three kids, and a house in Syosset, Long Island. He had quick-moving eyes which darted constantly on the alert.

"See that nigger over there? The one with the gimp leg? I busted him twice for indecent exposure. I mean, twice, and me in uniform, so how smart could the bastard be? Watch this now, he'll wave to me like we was old friends. Hey, Gimp, you been behavin' yourself?"

The crippled man turned toward the patrol car, squinted, leaned forward, recognized Hughes and nodded vigorously. "Ain't been doin' nothin' at all, officer. No sir, stayin' on the outside, that's me."

"Yeah? Well, watch yourself."

Hughes rolled up the window and said to Patrick, "Ain't that hot stuff? I busted that guy one good shot, almost knocked the balls offa him, the second time I took him in. And he smiles when he sees me like we're old buddies. Yeah, and he better, all right, he fucking well better."

For nearly two months, Hughes instructed him in the lay of the land and the customs and mores of the natives and it boiled down to a few basic, essential facts.

"Let 'em know who's boss. Let 'em see you, ya know, increase your visibility at all times. Let 'em know you're right on top, know what I mean? Christ, during the riots in '64, we did some pretty damn good bustin' up."

Hughes adjusted his cap and leaned back, grinning over memory. "Jeez, I got some black mother-nigger sonuvabitch I been looking to get my hands on. Ya know, one a' them fresh bastards with the wise-guy way of movin'. Jeez, they got a way of movin' their asses, it says, 'Fuck you, buster,' as clear as you'd wanna hear it said. So I been looking to catch this mother fucker at anything. You know the type; you can just tell he's N.G. but you can't get 'im. And so, when the riots was on, I just started to walk toward the sergeant and Christa-mighty, beautiful! There's this black-assed bastard just turning the corner and he walks smack into me and he's carryin' a tape recorder. And the TV and radio store is in the direction he's comin' from and there we are and he ain't so smart-assed now, see, there's just me and him and the sergeant's back. He starts talkin' real quick. 'Hey look, officer, this here is mine. See, I just been tapin' some of the things on the street, like to maybe sell it to the news people, you know?' Oh, shit, I took him so fast it was pathetic. He didn't know what the fuck hit him. Jeez, you wanna get a guy good, one quick one in the balls, then you come up with the end of the stick right in the mother's throat and then he's yours. I mean, then you do whatever the fuck you wanna do, you got dead meat at your feet. Funny thing about that nigger though. I don't know what the hell it was between him and me but we both knew we'd have to meet up someday and have it out. I'm sure as shit glad it was me had the upper hand because he'd as soon cut my throat as look at me." Hughes scratched along the back of his neck. "And for no good reason, you know?"

"Was there any possibility that the tape recorder was his?" Patrick asked.

Hughes looked blank. "What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

Word had gone out on O'Malley, of course: son of a deputy chief inspector. But the kid seemed okay, didn't invoke his father, in fact, rumor was around that they didn't see much of each other. O'Malley had his own apartment and whatever the truth was the old man didn't seem to interfere, and everyone practically forgot who his father was. The fact was, it was the kid they became a little wary of.

On the day that the P.B.A. delegate announced to the cheers of the men being turned out that they had not only been granted permission to wear the little enamel American flags over their shields as part of their uniforms, but that the President of the United States himself had congratulated the man who brought the matter to a court decision, O'Malley's reaction was peculiar. The delegate noticed that he was the only guy on the shift without a flag pin. He figured maybe the kid was a little cautious, what the hell. In a gesture of good will and friendship, he approached the tall, quiet blond patrolman.

"Hey, Pat, I got something for you. Had an extra and I noticed you don't have no flag," Savonese, the delegate, said and handed him a flag pin.

Patrick held it in his hand for a minute, wordless, while Savonese waited for thanks. Finally, he said, "Tell you what, Savonese, let's put it here, okay?" He pinned the flag to the sleeve of Savonese's jacket.

"What are you doin'? Hey?"

It was hard to tell what the hell went on in the kid's mind. He kept his voice soft and his face devoid of any expression. Patrick patted Savonese's shoulder a few times, then said, "You've been wearing it on your sleeve for years, right? So that's where it belongs."

By the time Savonese got the insult, O'Malley was out of the ready room and standing for inspection, calm, detached, remote.

It wasn't the first time he'd insulted the flag. Word had gone around that O'Malley considered it stupid to have a little flag attached to the patrol car.

"We're an American police department in an American city in an American state. We're all citizens or we couldn't be on the job, so what's the point?" O'Malley was reported as saying.

The men in the precinct began to watch him. If he couldn't understand a thing as basic as displaying the flag, if that had to be explained to him, the guy needed straightening out. If it wasn't for his old man, he'd have been straightened out by now.

The fact that he'd served in Viet Nam was all to his credit, but the fact that he never mentioned it, that they found out about his service only through his record, was puzzling. Another mark against.

Patrolman Jimmy Hughes didn't have much to say about O'Malley; the kid seemed to be a good cop, backed him up the few times it was necessary, but he never really said anything, you know?

Actually, Patrolman Hughes talked enough for both men and never really seemed to notice that Patrick hardly ever answered him.

"Jeez, you know, I no sooner get the fuckin' snow thrower paid for, the wife starts on me. Now I gotta get an electric lawn mower. I tell her, let the kid move his ass a little this summer, do him good, but her friend next door, she's got an electric with one of them little seats on it, ya know? I'll tell ya, it's one helluva responsibility. Lucky thing I got this friend in the Twelfth Precinct. See, he kinda gets a break on all this here equipment. Jeez, he got me my snow thrower about fifty per cent off list price." Hughes winked and grinned. "Know what I mean? Jeez, this guy got more business going for him. I gotta get after him for the mower."

They were dispatched to the scene of a hit-and-run on 112th Street and Lenox Avenue. By the time they arrived, a small crowd stood clustered around an old woman who was bleeding from the mouth.

"Put in a call for an ambulance, O'Malley. I'll have a look-see."

By the time Patrick joined his partner, Hughes had determined that the woman was in serious condition. He leaned close to Patrick and whispered, "Jesus, watch out, O'Malley. She lost control of herself and crapped all over the place. Christ, just our luck."

She was an elderly black woman dressed in a neat dark dress and an old black coat. Her legs, encased in heavy cotton stockings, stuck out beneath her dress and were shoeless. One of the two black men who squatted beside her held the shoes, which were bent and twisted to the shape of her feet. The other man held her head in his hands and kept whispering to her.

Patrick got to his knees, touched her face lightly with his fingertips and determined that she was conscious. He flipped out his clean handkerchief and applied pressure to the cut mouth. "You got something to rest her head on?" he asked without taking his eyes from the woman's face. "Yeah, good, fold your jacket, that's fine. Listen, I want you to let her head down real easy, yeah, yeah, good." His face went close to the woman and she blinked at him and moaned softly. "Hey, you gonna be just fine, okay? You hear, we're gonna get you all fixed up, okay?"

Hughes looked down at them, notebook in hand. "Hey, get her name, Pat, for the aided card. What's your name lady? She conscious or what?"

Her voice was stretched and thin. "Annie Jackson."

Hughes leaned over heavily. "Okay, Annie, where do you live?"

Patrick smoothed a stiff lock of gray hair from her lined forehead and bent his face close to hers. "Hey, Miz Jackson, don't cry." The woman tried to say something. Patrick turned toward the black man nearest him. "You catch that? What'd she say?"

The black man, young, about Patrick's age, with a scarred fighter's face, leaned over the woman and his tough face went soft. He whispered to Patrick, "She all upset 'cause she messed herself up. She ashamed somebody might know about that."

Patrick realized now, suddenly, why Hughes hadn't brought the blanket from the car. He had assumed it was an oversight "Hey, Jimmy, get the blanket."

Hughes said, "Look, the ambulance will be here in a minute."

Patrick turned abruptly to the black man who held the old woman's shoes. Tersely, he said, "There's a plaid blanket in the back of the squad car. Get it for me, okay?"

Carefully, without moving her, they covered her and Patrick whispered into her ear, "Don't you worry about a thing now, you hear?"

She nodded and he could see she was in grave pain. He heard Hughes's voice, taut and demanding.

"Anyone seen what happened? Anyone seen the old lady get hit?"

"I seen it," the man beside Patrick said. "Some punk kids out joy riding in a blue Ford, but you never catch up with them. They probably dumped it by now. Man, this poor old woman, she went ten feet in the air, didn't you, Mama?" There was a sudden edge of panic in the man's voice. "Hey, officer, she done gone out like a light. Hey, she okay or what?"

Patrick reached for her wrist, then his hand went inside the coat to her bony chest. Nothing. He leaned his hand on her chest, applied pressure, released. Again. Again. Again. There was a flutter, a quiver, a rasping sound from between her parted lips, but it stopped as suddenly as it had begun.

Patrick pulled off his jacket, which was hampering him, bent to the woman and began breathing into her mouth, pressing her diaphragm: forced breath in, forced it out Again, the faint soft sigh, the attempt to breathe, to live. And all the time, inside his head, Patrick could hear his own voice saying, "Gonna he just fine there, Mama. You gonna be just fine."

By the time the ambulance arrived she was breathing, painfully, raspingly, but breathing. The attendants lifted her carefully and Patrick watched as they put an oxygen mask over her face. He turned at a touch on his shoulder.

It was the fighter: face ugly, thick-lipped, face of a loser, brown eyes reddened and watery. "Here's your jacket, officer."

"Oh, gee, thanks." Patrick put it on, brushed vaguely, buttoned it. The man picked up Patrick's hat from the curb and handed it to him. Patrick wasn't even aware that he'd dropped it. "Thanks." He put it lightly on the crown of his head, then pulled it forward into place.

"Hey, officer," the man said thickly, then couldn't find words. He reached out and took Patrick's hand in a tight grasp. "You a real man, baby," he said and then he walked away.

Hughes revved the motor the minute Patrick got into the car beside him. For once, he was quiet. Patrick caught the tense stiff set of Hughes's jaw, the throbbing along the temple, but he didn't say anything.

At the precinct, they gave the information to the desk and details to the detectives, who weren't very impressed but had to look into the matter whether it impressed them or not.

Patrick went into the men's room to wash up and was surprised at the blood on his face. He washed it away, rinsed his mouth, remembered the blood taste of the woman, the death he tasted inside of her, sucked out of her, the life he breathed into her.

She'd gone into shock; if he hadn't breathed for her, she'd have died. Right then, there, in the gutter, she'd have died. Jesus, he had actually tasted death and he'd blown and breathed it away. He felt an elation and joy he couldn't quite contain.

"Hey, listen you," Hughes said. His eyes surveyed the area, made certain they were alone.

Patrick blotted his face with rough brown paper towels, rubbed his hands and tossed the wad of paper into the wastebasket. Hughes's face was quivering and his lips were dry.

"What's your problem?" Patrick asked quietly.

"Listen, don't you never pull that kind of shit on me again, you got that?"

The taste of death was still in his mouth and he regarded Hughes coldly and dispassionately, watched him work up to voice-stretching tension, watched it all come bursting out of the man, growing fuller and larger because he refused to act.

Hughes's face was a deep, dangerous red. The heavy folds of his cheeks shook and his eyes went from Patrick's face to the mirror directly behind him, back and forth.

"Don't you never send no fucking nigger into my squad car. Don't you never go right past me, right over my head, and send one a' them apes into my car or so help me Christ, I'll break your ass!"

In his passion, he miscalculated or misread Patrick's reaction, and carried along by the momentum of his rage, which instead of subsiding swelled, he shoved his index finger into Patrick's chest and when that brought forth no reaction, verbal, physical, nothing, Hughes, for emphasis, just to be sure he was properly understood, shoved Patrick against the washbowl.

"Any decent man'd be in here vomiting his guts out right now, he put his mouth on that old nigger woman's," Hughes told him.

The taste of death ran down his throat, deep into his gut, into the center of himself, where all the dead and dying kept their counsel, from where they all accused him.

This once, he had defeated it. There had been nothing but a feeling of triumph and this man Hughes had been repulsed by his act, without having even the slightest understanding, conception of what that act involved: the defeating of death.

There were no words, none that could define his act or explain. There was only a powerful impulse, which he followed. With his two hands locked together he swung and smashed Hughes in the face with a force that stunned the larger man, sent him reeling backwards into feet-sliding, skull-crashing helplessness.

Patrick didn't move in on him, just stood, hands at his sides, watched dispassionately, calmly, remotely as the sergeant burst in, looked from one to the other.

"Hey, what the fuck?"

Two uniformed men came, pulled Hughes to his feet; a couple of detectives came, offered Patrick a cigarette, told him to calm down, take it easy, which was funny because he was the calmest one of everybody. They all seemed shaken as hell, as though something really important, really serious had occurred when it was all really so completely insignificant when measured against the fact that he had tasted death and spit it out.

THIRTY-FOUR.

BRIAN WISHED MARY ELLEN would skip the once-a-month, if-we-can-all-get-together Sunday-dinner ritual. She acted as though she didn't catch any tension between Maureen and her husband, Tim Logan. Christ, even their two kids were practically rigid, could hardly lift their faces from their plates.

"Well, why don't you two kids go outside and play on the swings I put up for you?" Brian asked his grandchildren. They turned worried faces toward their mother and she nodded and rose quickly to help clear the table.

He and Tim and Patrick went across the hall into the study for the customary after-Sunday-dinner drink.

"This is a fine old room," Tim Logan mused, exactly as he did every time he entered the study. He was a pompous, fine-cut little bastard and Brian had the feeling he was calculating the worth of every stone in the house, counting and evaluating. He never did understand why his daughter had married him. A computer salesman, for Christ's sake.

"Well, Pat, how's life in the Police Department?" Logan asked his brother-in-law. "Hey, they let you get away with that stuff, kid? Hair's a little on the long side, isn't it?" He gave a short, unpleasant laugh. They wouldn't let you get away with that in the company."

Though Brian agreed about Patrick's hair, there was something so irritating, snide, brittle, condescending about Logan that to his own surprise, Brian said, "I think he looks pretty good. You must be getting old, Tim. You sound like a real old company man."

They all turned toward the door, toward the loud shriek and Mary Ellen's worried voice and Maureen's commotion.

Tim stubbed out his cigarette and said tersely, "Oh, shit, here we go again," and he rushed to see what Patricia, his youngest, had gotten into this time.

"He's a real beaut, isn't he?" Brian said to his son. It was at least one thing he knew they agreed on. He didn't feel there was much safe ground lately. "Well, we haven't seen you for quite a while, Pat. How's it going?"

"Okay. You know."

The steel-gray eyes veiled over, looked right through him, as though he were a shadow. The heavy blond hair suddenly irritated Brian. Maybe it was the way the kid casually brushed it off his forehead.

"What are you doing, letting your hair grow so you'll fit in with the hippies down at the Ninth?"

His son's hand touched the hair along his collar. He shrugged, let his hand fall to the arm of the chair. Of course, his father had been informed of his transfer. They just never mentioned it to each other.

"A lot of the younger guys are wearing their hair longer, Dad. Couple of 'em have real handlebars, too. It's funny, some of them look like pictures of the old-timers. You know, right out of the gay nineties."

"Yeah, but these are the swinging seventies, right?" Brian waited for his son to argue, debate, dispute. The damn kid just shrugged, moved his broad thin shoulders easily, pushed at the hair again, dragged on his cigarette. Okay. He'd take his cue from his son. "Oh, well, what the hell, hair is hair. Fads come and go. You look like you've lost a little weight, Patrick."

"I'm a lousy cook, but really, I'm fine."