We found a parking place down the block and walked till Pat nodded toward the old brick building with the gold lettering on its window.
"Let's go on in," he said. "Just about everybody else'll be there already."
I followed Pat, leaving my bag and my hat in the coat closet. Religious music played just softly enough to be heard but not loud enough to be recognized, and a female employee in her fifties with a white corsage and a trained sad face had us sign in at the book.
A good thirty cops, plainclothes and uniformed alike, were milling, chatting, ranging in age from late fifties to early thirties. Old Doolan had trained a lot of guys— special guys. The kind who had gone into some pretty high places—some on the streets, where the pace was fast and deadly, others up the departmental ladder where the air got thin with politics.
For the cops in the trenches, it wasn't a game that you retired out of. The end usually came with a startling suddenness and with little note of it anywhere. A lucky few stayed alive and slowed down enough so that they went into a desk job, where it was the lack of pace that killed them.
Pat was one of those organizational types who didn't fit the wild-man mold, and had been steered by Doolan into an active but largely administrative role. Doolan was right in that decision, although Pat still could take care of himself on the street.
Me, Doolan had scoped out quickly. As far as he was concerned, I never should have had that early on-the-job army training in the Pacific, a kid who went in lying about his age and came out older than his years. Lousy goddamn hellhole to go to school in, he'd said.
"You learn to kill too young, kid," he'd told me, "and something happens. You can get to like killing—but on the PD, if you have to kill, you make it part of the job and not some emotional damn explosion."
I had a streak that worried him. Doolan had trained me and guided me, but I still lasted less than two years on the department before hanging out my private shingle.
"The rules dictate the action," he told me once.
And, punk kid that I was, I'd just grinned and said, "Yeah? Well, if there are no rules, you have to make your own up on the spot, don't you?"
Doolan had lost me my job. I hated him for it—for maybe a month. Years later, he let me read the memo he put through, advising that the NYPD send me to a desk or cut me loose.
"This is a good man," he'd written, "a brave man, and he has brains. But his emotions dictate his behavior, and he is the kind of unpredictable officer who will cause tragedy for himself and others."
I couldn't challenge that assessment.
Still, he had trained me well—all these years later, and here I was, still alive. One of the walking wounded maybe, but alive.
The sweet smell of flowers sickened me. I said to Pat, "Where are all the bad guys? Aren't they required by their dumb-ass code to come by and pay their respects?"
Pat glanced at his watch. "It isn't eight o'clock yet. They like to make an entrance."
"I'd like to help them make an exit. Why, after so many years, do these Cosa Nostra boys bother with all this ritualistic crap?"
"Tradition—gives 'em a sense of structure and pseudomorality. Whether they like it or not, they're still tied to old-country ways. The young guys hate it, but all of that omertà bull is bred into them, and they can't get rid of it."
"You turned into a regular philosopher, Pat."
"Hanging around you will do that." He nodded toward a little civilian crowd near the simple pine-box coffin. "Let's tell his granddaughter hello ... even though any tears she sheds will be of joy, anticipating what she'll inherit."
"I got no argument with that philosophical insight."
I followed Pat, nodding to some of the cops I knew. One, a captain from uptown, said, "I thought you was dead."
"You thought right," I told him.
He frowned, trying to work that out.
Nearer the coffin, the crowd thinned. Pat fell in line by the mass of floral displays from the police and fire departments, a dozen lodges, and a full wall from old friends. I looked at my own watch. Ten minutes to eight.
A red-headed fading beauty, Anna Marina, Doolan's only grandchild, was putting on her own stage play. Her makeup was dutifully smeared, her dark, church-perfect clothes indicated proper bereavement, but there was no real sorrow on display. Her hulking husband stood beside her, not really capable of showing any decent emotion, unless it was a frustrated desire for a drink. His dark suit was rumpled and he could use a shave.
I had known Anna since she was a kid, but no love was ever lost between us. I saw through her manipulative girly ways, so she was never pleased to see me. Maybe in part it was because I busted her wiseass husband in the chops one night for a lousy remark he made about somebody whose color he felt superior to.
She looked up at me, her mouth tight.
I said, "Anna. Sure sorry about this. Doolan and I were always great friends."
"I'll never understand that. He got you fired."
"It was the right thing. Doolan put me on my path."
Her upper lip curled. "It would be more respectful if you called him 'Mr. Doolan,' or even 'Bill.'"
"Sure. Bill was a mentor to me, and I'll always love him for it. You and I have never been tight, but if you ever have problems..." I glanced at the husband who had sent her to the emergency room more than once. "...just let me or Pat know."
Now I swung my head and stared straight at hubby Harry Marina. He was looking at me and gauging the pounds I'd lost, and taking in the looseness of my collar, and he had a wet-lipped expression like a nasty, stupid mutt wondering whether or not to take a bite out of a puppy.
What the hell. I was trying to keep it friendly, out of respect to Doolan. Anyway, I was an old tiger now, and who knew if I could go up against a big slob like this anymore.
So I just grinned at him and his face seemed to freeze and little white lines formed half-moons around his nostrils and almost unconsciously he pulled back a few inches.
Pat was watching me, his eyes narrowing. I nodded to Anna and walked away.
When we were in the crowd, Pat said, "I'd swear that clown wanted a piece of you."
"You think?"
"Man, you shouldn't grin at people that way. You scared the shit out of him."
I was about to tell Pat I wasn't trying for that kind of action, but suddenly he wasn't there, having paused to speak to somebody—a tall, sandy-haired guy with a narrow, well-chiseled face with light blue eyes and a tan even deeper than mine. The guy's dark gray tailored suit with lighter gray silk tie screamed money, but quietly.
"Mike, meet Alex Jaynor."
Jaynor's hand gave up a good, solid grip.
"I feel like I know Mr. Hammer already," Jaynor said good-naturedly. "My admiration goes way back—you've made for a lot of great reading over the years."
"More fun to read about," I said with half a grin, "than to experience."
"Alex is our new congressman from this district," Pat told me.
Jaynor held up a hand as he gave me his own half a grin. "Don't hold that against me," he said.
"I'm not a voting type myself," I told him.
"Why not, Mr. Hammer?"
"The politicians—it only encourages them."
"Ouch," Jaynor said, still friendly. "I'm hoping there are a few of us these days who might change your opinion, maybe even get you into a voting booth."
"You're welcome to try. Where'd you get your tan?"
"Damn," he said with a chuckle, "I was just about to ask you that." One dark hand gestured to another. "What you see here, I'm afraid, comes out of a machine in a little cubicle—one hour a day, every other day. You've caught me already, Mr. Hammer—just another phony."