Kevin considered the cold, hard, evaluating glaze of his brother's eyes and nodded once. He pressed his hand against his burning side, then offered it to Brian for a hard, quick shake. "Count on me, Bri."

"I am counting on you, Kevin."

He watched himself on the late news; watched and listened dispassionately to the smoothly professional way he avoided direct answers to very direct and probing questions. He dozed for a while, heard Mary Ellen beside him in the bed move, reach for the control switch.

"Shall I rum the TV off, Brian? I thought you fell asleep."

"No. No, leave it on for a while. Ill sleep in a while."

She turned, curled beside him, went back to sleep instantly, the way a child does. He adjusted his pillow so that he had a better view of the TV set. His mind drifted, filled with too many thoughts to focus on anything, and then he heard her clear, crisp, professional voice.

"Good evening. This is Karen Day." Pause, dramatic effect; catch their attention. She'd explained it all to him; whatever he'd thought natural was contrived. There was nothing-no pause, no inflection, no gesture, no expression-that wasn't carefully planned. End of pause, announcement: "And this...is your city." Pan on New York; music carrying up and down city streets, through crowds of people, past buildings; the whole spectrum of introduction.

She seemed more vivid on color television than in life. Her lips were redder, fuller; her hair was blacker; her eyes shone with reflected lights and some special eye drops she used to gain just that effect. She faced the viewer directly, unwaveringly. He recognized the red blouse over which she'd knotted a red-white-and-blue scarf with casual elegance. It was flipped over one shoulder; just the right touch.

"I have no guest on my show tonight," Karen Day said carefully, her voice filled with portent. "The guest who was supposed to appear with me tonight is dead. He was killed last night. He was a policeman. His name was Peter Caputo, and according to the New York City Police Department, Patrolman Peter Caputo was killed in the line of duty. Heroically. And so he will be given an inspector's funeral, which is the way the Police Department pays final respects to its heroes. And he was a hero. I don't know about what happened last night, but however he died, Peter Caputo was a real hero in the way he lived." Her long hand fondled a lock of hair, shoved it from her face. "Patrolman Caputo was coming to this show to reveal corruption within the Department he served so well."

Brian felt an electric shock wave jolt the length of his body, then surge full force into his brain. Jesus Christ Almighty. Two things, separately, hit him: First, Caputo had gone to her, was planning to take his charges into the public arena; second, she was using it.

He could hardly distinguish her words anymore; it was hardly necessary. The impact was what overwhelmed him; she was doing it, really doing it.

"...I had spoken to Peter Caputo several times before he convinced me that he was indeed aware of a fantastic amount of corruption within the Department and that..."

He watched her mouth, was fascinated by the false electronic mouth. He caught a glimpse of white teeth, was aware of the familiar gesture when she flicked the edge of her scarf between long, slender fingers. He was fascinated by the strangeness of her long, lovely, familiar face; he thought of her long and elegant body, which had been so giving and had so delighted in taking. He watched her as though she was part of a remote dream which never had been part of his reality. Karen.

"...and so the New York City Police Department and its highest-ranking officers will have a lot of investigating and a lot of explaining to do before we can be satisfied that we have been given the true story of the deaths of Patrolman Peter Caputo and of Professor Martin Osmond."

The telephone rang even before she signed off the air. He hit the remote control, watched Karen get swallowed into a tiny white circle and disappear.

Arthur Pollack in his thin, sore voice said, "Brian, I just watched the Karen Day show. What the hell is going on?"

He hunched over the match, inhaled quickly before he answered. "Arthur, will you give me about two days?" Then, suddenly and totally aware of the urgent need he felt, the need to take things into hand, to get things under his control, he said with undisguised passion, "Arthur, will you trust me for a couple of days?"

"Brian, Brian. I'd trust you forever, but I'm being kept in the dark about too many things and that I don't like. The Commissioner's probably trying to get me right now and I wanted to talk first to you and then to Aaron Levine before the Man reaches me."

"Arthur," Brian said carefully, "don't call Levine."

There was a silence and Brian could picture the worried face, gray, thin; turned-in eyes seeking answers. He heard a long deep sigh, filled almost with a shudder, as though Arthur had been punched in the stomach while in the act of exhaling.

"Brian," Arthur Pollack said finally, "for God's sake, don't leave me stranded."

"I won't, Chief," Brian said. And meant it.

It was three-thirty in the morning and he let his gaze wander over the dimly lit room: the old man's room. It was odd but that was the way Brian always thought of the study. Patrick Crowley owned the room, filled it with his presence even though he'd been dead for nearly twenty years.

Brian nodded as though in final acknowledgment and admiration. The shrewd old son of a bitch had been right; he'd always known the score, the way to get things done. Any goddamn way that would work and that was the only criterion.

There had been, throughout his career, great advantages in being Patrick Crowley's son-in-law but Brian never doubted that most of his accomplishments were his own. He knew who he was and what he was capable of; Crowley provided the opportunities but he'd always come through on his own efforts. And he'd paid a price too. Being Patrick Crowley's son-in-law.

Mary Ellen Crowley, his beautiful doll-like wife, had felt dishonored by the act of sex from the very beginning. More, worse, she felt that she dishonored God. Night after night, she had steeled herself against what she considered an act of sacrilege. Christ, it had been hard. The tears, the actual physical revulsion she'd felt. The clenching of her small fists, rigid at her sides; the final agonized and agonizing submission. He'd tried. He'd really tried, but something indelible had been engraved on her very bones. Her real avocation had been the terrible Crowley-daughter tradition of virgin nunhood.

During the years of their wartime separation, he'd tested himself on more women than he could remember, had felt his manhood assert and reassert itself as something more than animalistic and shameful and repulsive. Yet, on his return, it was to Mary Ellen, no more mature, no more willing or understanding; only more willingly submissive and suffering in silence and totally, ignorantly, hopelessly unaware of the massive insult her submission caused her husband.

They worked it out through the years of their marriage. She submitted with some slightly better grace; he made fewer and fewer sexual demands on her as he found other women more and more accessible.

His son, Patrick, resulted from what was nearly an act of rape, a passion of anger and despair and self-hatred and hatred for her for making him feel ashamed of his natural lust.

He wondered, sometimes, what the old man knew or suspected. It wasn't an area ever to be discussed or approached. The old man seemed satisfied with life when his grandson was born; he made out a will with Patrick Brian O'Malley as his sole heir but his worldly possessions amounted to a few small properties. His heir would never inherit his true wealth: power and the knowledge of how to garner that power and use it.

That had been Brian's inheritance: "Take care of yourself at all times, Brian," the old man had counseled. "Make sure you always have the upper hand because, for the love of God, you never know."

Brian thought about Ed Shea and felt the pain of loss, the emptiness of sudden, unanticipated death. They'd grown in the job together; they'd been friends for all these years and it was incomprehensible to him that he'd never known Ed Shea beyond the surface of his skin.

Tomorrow, he'd confront Ed Shea and force him out of the Department. He'd had the evidence for more than ten years. It was funny, odd, strange, cold-blooded, the way he'd remembered the old man's words, and without any thought process at all, he'd gotten the upper hand on Ed without Ed ever knowing about it and without feeling the slightest qualm. Brian considered quietly that the reason he hadn't experienced any guilt was that he'd never envisioned himself ever, for any reason, under any circumstance, using what he had on Ed, so that made the having excusable.

Ed Shea took two examinations for the rank of captain in the New York City Police Department. Many men took the examination more than once and there was nothing wrong with that in and of itself. What was wrong, in Ed Shea's case, was that he took two examinations at the same time. The first, the official examination paper, was graded a failure and certain measures were taken, secret, illegal measures, and Ed Shea was given a second paper to fill out with the help of some textbooks and some good advice. This second paper, which received a very high score, was then substituted for the original, failing paper.

Brian O'Malley had photostatic copies of both of these examination papers. He had come into possession of them through a lifetime of careful placing of loyalties and favors and accumulated knowledge of the actions of certain strategically placed people who were glad to advise him of certain potentially useful situations.

Brian's eyes closed but he knew he wouldn't be able to sleep anymore this night. Reluctantly, inevitably, finally, he thought of his father. Buried for a hero, killed by a whore. Unmanned by a whore.

The Department had closed ranks, protected his father and his mother and himself and his brothers and sisters and all of his family. It was an action to be expected. Take care of your own because, Christ knows, nobody else will. And because they had all been men too and the thought had always been close to the surface: There but for the grace of God. For all of its collective faults, Brian O'Malley loved the Department as much as he loved his family. He would protect the Department as much as he could, in any way he could, but he would also clean it up as best he could. In any way he could.

He leaned his aching head back against the chair and thought of all the things he had to do, all the people he had to get, all the wheeling and dealing he had to accomplish.

Christ, wouldn't it be great if he could bring it all out into the open, call a murderer a murderer and a thief a thief and a betrayer a betrayer? All clean and open, the way his son thought it should be. But Brian knew that nothing could be accomplished that way. Absolutely nothing.

He felt the waves of exhaustion across his forehead and way deep along the crown of his skull, and when he exhaled, a sound very much like a sob came from Brian's throat, or deeper, from his chest. The sound surprised him, seemed to drain and empty him.

And then he filled with a strange, calm sense of wonder at his lack of anger. All the years of his youth, he'd been trying to live up to an image of a man who never even existed, had been a myth, a fiction. There was something comforting in finally knowing that his father had been an imperfect human being like everyone else. Just before drifting into a deep, short, dreamless sleep, he wished that his son could accept him for what he was too.

FORTY-THREE.

IT TOOK KEVIN O'MALLEY less than twenty-four careful discreet hours to come up with Juan Jesus Rodriguez. He noted in the arrest record that Rodriguez was due for sentencing on Morrison's arrest within three weeks. An additional, heavier narcotics rap in the interim could send the bum away for fifteen to twenty years.

Kevin located his man without much difficulty. They were creatures of habit, this breed. They hung out in certain locations, they didn't wander too far, stayed where they felt familiar and reasonably safe, among their own kind. At 2 A.M., Kevin took him in the hallway of the tenement where Rodriguez lived. Startled, the slightly built man thought at first that he was being mugged. He threw his hands into the air, swallowed a cry of fright with a gasp, offered himself without resistance as though to purchase mercy.

Then, in the dimness, his small, shrewd dart eyes saw Kevin O'Malley's policeman face, recognized with certain hard knowledge that he was once again in the hands of the police and he was literally terrified of what this unknown one might want of him.

Johnnie Morrison, impeccably dressed in a navy blazer with brass buttons, expensive turtle-neck sweater, dark-gray slacks, carefully flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve and by his every studied gesture showed distaste for his surroundings. He was deliberate about showing absolutely nothing else; not apprehension, not even curiosity, just calm, respectful if somewhat disdainful interest in whatever it was that Deputy Chief Inspector Brian O'Malley was up to.

Morrison received the telephone call in the middle of a deep and erotic dream and he regretted the interruption. The Chief said abruptly and without explanation that he was to come to this location, a dingy dump of a trucking office on the West Side. The Chief specified he was to arrive within thirty-five minutes and Johnnie Morrison, always careful, made it on time.

The legend on the dirty glass door spelled out "The A-OK Trucking Corporation" and Morrison hadn't the slightest idea who the hell the office belonged to but it was immediately clear to him that the location was selected because it afforded the utmost privacy and whatever was going to pass between them required this kind of setting.

Morrison ducked his head forward over his lighter, blew out smoke from the back of his throat and looked up sharply as two men came from the inner office.

Kevin O'Malley had a discreet but definite grip on Juan Jesus Rodriguez and he helped him to step rapidly into the room and to confront Johnnie Morrison.

"This the man?" Kevin asked tersely. Apparently, he applied some greater physical pressure on the man, for there was a gasp and Kevin said louder, "I didn't hear you. Talk."

"Yes, yes, si, yes, that's the man," Rodriguez said quickly.

Deputy Chief Inspector Brian O'Malley turned from his perch on the corner of the cluttered, battered old desk. "This is the man who what?" he asked. "Spell it out."

Juan's voice was dry and his tongue clacked but he spoke quickly and clearly with the weight of a pound of pure heroin held over him. "This here is the man who arrested me last month. And took my gun away from me."

Brian's eyes moved to Morrison, fixed on Morrison, caught the uncontrolled paling, the tension, the doomed awareness of what was being done to him. He spoke to Rodriguez but looked steadily at Morrison. "Tell me the make and caliber of the gun this officer took away from you when he arrested you for possession of narcotics. Tell me the registration number."

Rodriguez reeled off the make, the caliber and the serial number.

"You ready to testify to this in court?"

Kevin moved suddenly and Rodriguez' head bobbed up and down. "Yeah, okay, sure, yeah, Christ, you break my arm there."

Brian jerked his head and Kevin took Rodriguez from the room.

Johnnie Morrison's lips barely moved as he said, "That fucking little shit."

Brian said coldly, "That fucking little shit can connect you to a double murder, Morrison."

Slowly, Johnnie Morrison inhaled, exhaled, studied the smoke before his eyes, fingered the diamond ring on his pinky carefully, then looked up at Chief O'Malley and shrugged slightly. It was a gesture of acceptance, nonchalant, an almost elegant acknowledgment of his predicament. It was a mild salute, one operator to the other. He turned his situation over in his mind, examined it minutely, quickly, expertly for possibilities. In spite of the heavy, thick, lumpish roiling of his intestines, he felt reasonably calm. He knew that something could be salvaged, some bargain struck. Hell, that was why they were meeting in this shithouse of an office instead of at the district attorney's.

He turned his candid slate eyes on Brian, held his hands palms up, questioningly.

"Okay, Chief. What is it you want?"

"We're going to do some house cleaning, Morrison," Brian said.

Aaron Levine took off his uniform jacket and hung it on the rack in his office. The collar left marks along his throat; it had always been just a bit too tight and he had felt slightly choked all through the funeral service, but he had stood at military attention along with the others and was, as always, impressed by the precision and impact of the ritual.

There was so much work to do that he didn't know where to begin. The mayor had acted swiftly in response to the television allegations of widespread corruption. He appointed an interim committee with which Aaron would have to work. He'd tried to speak to Ed Shea, to ask Ed what the story was, but Ed had avoided him at the funeral service. In fact, he'd looked sick. Aaron thought back to Brian O'Malley's request that he look into allegations of a pad in Caputo's division. He'd turned it over to Ed Shea directly because Aaron learned a long time ago that there were certain people you let handle things for themselves; they leave you alone, you leave them alone. Now, for the first time, he wondered, without much emotion, if Ed Shea had been on the take.

It used to be a patrolman would shake a shopkeeper down for five, four of which was passed on to the sergeant and distributed from his hand up. Okay, hell, the shopkeeper got an extra bit of protection, an extra presence. Usually they didn't complain about it; it was like death and taxes, inevitable. But this whole ritualized thing that was being alleged on TV and in the newspapers and on the radio, it could split the Department wide open. Aaron Levine, for one, did not particularly care one way or the other. His main goal had been to just stay in place long enough to get out at three-quarter pay. He'd never touched a dirty dollar, did his best to stop it when he could, either through direct action or a word to the wise. Like a word to Ed Shea. And if Ed Shea was someone wise, God, Aaron couldn't understand a man like that. And this whole thing with the young patrolman they buried today, Peter Caputo. How his death could be caught up in this whole corruption allegation was beyond Aaron.

The buzzer interrupted his thoughts and he depressed the button on the intercom. A nervous patrolman's voice advised him, "Chief O'Malley is here to see you, sir."

"Oh, yes. Yes, send him in."

Aaron stood up to greet Brian O'Malley, who pointedly ignored his outstretched hand. Aaron immediately felt guilty of some terrible offense, some mistake in some unknown code. God, these hard Irish faces; no matter where he encountered them, under what circumstances, they made him feel an intruder.

Wordlessly, O'Malley took a large manila envelope from beneath his arm, opened it, withdrew some lined legal papers which were covered with small neat words: entries, listings. He dropped the sheets to Aaron's desk.

"What is this, Chief O'Malley? This something for the meeting we have with Chief Pollack this afternoon?"

O'Malley dropped into the chair in front of Aaron's desk, leaned back, pressed the sole of one shoe on the edge of Aaron's desk. His face had a frozen, waiting expression, tight and expectant.

Aaron just glanced at the first page, skimmed the second, knew immediately what it was: a complete record of Aaron Levine's career in the New York City Police Department. A line-for-line report of where he was assigned, what tour of duty, what scheduled hours of work, and aligned with that information was a complete rundown of the time, days, hours that Aaron Levine spent in various institutions of higher learning. During working hours, on city-paid time, in violation of not only departmental regulations but in the commission of fraud involving enough money to be classified a felony.

Aaron sat down behind his cluttered desk. His hands moved restlessly over the papers; stupid questions filled his head relative to how this information had been put together so precisely. How could they always manage to compile things when he found it so difficult? What did any of this have to do with him, now, at this time, at this point, after all these years?

Finally, O'Malley pressed with the sole of his foot and the heavy desk moved just slightly, just an inch or so, but enough to make Aaron look up.

"Put your papers in, Levine," O'Malley said quietly. "Get going on it today. Advise Chief Pollack you're retiring at the meeting today."

Aaron spread his hands over the record of his life. Why at this particular point? His mouth opened, but there were too many questions and not enough protestations. O'Malley's eyes were dark and cold. He rubbed his thumb under his lower lip for a moment, considered Levine, seemed to be giving great thought to something, then finally said, "I really don't believe you know what the fuck has been going on. I really think you've been nothing but a goddamn patsy but the shit is going to hit the fan and my job is to keep it from flying too far. We're all going to have to testify before the mayor's commission, Levine. Now if all you want to be accused of is extreme incompetence"-he jutted his chin toward the documentation of Aaron Levine's double life-"you get your papers in. I don't care what the fuck you tell Chief Pollack. Tell him you feel you've let the Department down by not being on top of this whole pad deal. Tell him you got an ulcer or a sudden urge for country living or whatever the hell else. But get your papers in today."

Aaron nodded. He watched Brian O'Malley shove himself back from the desk, stand up, shake his head with an expression of disgust and leave the office. Aaron sat at his desk, the work piled up, the demand for reports from the Chief Inspector and the Commissioner and the demands for explanations.

Thirty-three years and he sat surrounded by his own ignorance, finally beaten by them. An odd thought struck Aaron: It was the father, Brian O'Malley, who had made it all possible for him. It was the son, Brian O'Malley, who brought it all to an end.

Brian felt absolutely nothing toward Aaron Levine; for some strange reason, intuition maybe, he believed that Levine knew nothing at all about the corruption within the Department. He didn't even feel anger at Levine's total incompetence, just a vague, hollow sense of disgust.

He caught sight of Ed Shea before Ed was aware of his arrival at the small, intimate Third Avenue spot they'd agreed upon. He watched Ed down the shot, hold his head still for a moment, then react with just a slight, barely discernible shudder. Brian turned toward the bar, held up two fingers, V sign, nodded toward the booth in the rear where Ed sat.

Ed looked up, face neutral, but his eyes gave him away; there was a searching, questioning, puzzled intensity, as though if they remained wordless and if he studied Brian thoroughly, he would find the answers to all the terrible questions he would rather not frame.

The waiter brought the drinks and Ed seemed somewhat surprised, reacted slightly, then tilted his toward Brian, went carefully on this one, needing to keep clearheaded.

"Well, Bri," Ed Shea said, "I'm here."

Brian searched for Ed Shea, for thirty years of friendship, but he was a stranger, curious, expectant, uncertain. Brian rubbed his hand roughly over his eyes, felt the weary exhaustion of too much betrayal, too much realization. He hoped Ed would make it easy for both of them; Christ, it was little enough to hope for at this point.

Brian grasped the tall, cool glass within his palm, studied it for a moment, finally raised his eyes to meet Ed's. Softly, he said, "Throw your papers in, Ed. Today."

That small shudder, as though he'd just downed a powerful shot of raw liquor, uncontrolled, barely noticeable, except that Brian noticed it, took Ed Shea for a second; then he sloughed it off, adjusted his handsome mask, pulled the tight smile, showed the good white teeth, head held to one side, flushed face almost relaxed because he was a pretty good actor.

"Now why would I do that, Brian?" he asked lightly, as though this was all part of banter, a continuation of years of insult, playful banter between friends who knew and could penetrate each other with the confidence of knowledge.

Brian wanted to do two things simultaneously. He wanted to rise from his seat opposite Ed, to strike out at him, to batter his face to pulp, to physically, powerfully, personally destroy him; and he also wanted to throw an arm over Ed Shea's shoulder, clasp him, tell him, "Christ, what a stupid mistake I almost made."

He did neither; didn't move; instead forced himself to become pure policeman, observing the slightest giveaway sign, capable of penetrating, noting, calculating, evaluating the slightest gesture, blink of eyes, movement of fingers, twitch of lips. Coldly, impersonally alert for the reaction, Brian O'Malley said, "We got Johnnie Morrison." There was no reaction, none whatever. "We got him so cold that he is waiving immunity and is willing to testify before the grand jury. It's going to be one hell of a circus, with all the publicity and committees, but it's going to be done the only way we can still at least salvage something, Ed. He's going to detail the whole pad operation. All the way to the top of the heap."

Nothing showed except some slightly relaxed breathing, which confirmed what Brian had somehow anticipated, that Ed Shea had been smart enough, clever enough, careful enough, corrupt enough to keep himself so far removed from the actual operation that when and if it ever hit the fan, he couldn't be touched.

Ed moved his head slightly to one side, shrugged. "I'm sure you'll do the best job for the Department that can be done, Brian."

"I'm doing the best job I can, Ed." He stood up slightly enough so that he had access to his rear trouser pocket, removed an envelope, sat down again. He held the envelope between his two hands for a moment, as though the act of holding it might somehow negate the contents. He felt an actual physical reluctance until he again confronted the man across the table from him. He tossed the envelope to Ed Shea.

"These are photostats, Ed. The original and other photostats are in safekeeping." Brian pulled himself from the booth and gave in to the deep savage urge to strike out. He grasped Ed Shea by the lapels of his suit jacket, leaned close enough to inhale the odor of fear, clenched his hands tightly enough to hold back the violence that pounded through his chest and head and arms. "You put in your fucking papers by this afternoon or so help me God, if I have to lie from here to next Christmas to do it, I'll box you in on the murder of that poor sonuvabitch Caputo."