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CHAPTER 37

TODAY WAS THE day.

Brady had hired limos for the top brass—Chief Clapper, District Attorney Len Parisi, and Mayor Costanza—as well as longtimers like Cappy McNeil, who had known and worked with Warren Jacobi for almost twenty years at the Hall.

I rode comfortably out to St. Mark’s Church in Claire’s Escalade. She drove and I sat beside her, while Cindy, Conklin, and Yuki took the back seat. I had never seen inside St. Mark’s before but was familiar with its redbrick exterior, the spiked towers, and the stained-glass “rose” window. Richie was telling Yuki and Cindy something about its architecture, but I blocked out his voice and concentrated on what I would say when it was my turn to get up to speak during the service.

Claire parked in the church lot and then we all went inside the church Jacobi had loved.

The five of us slid into a pew in the second row. Jacobi’s flag-draped coffin rested on a bier at the foot of the altar, and a life-sized photograph of him in his dress-blue uniform rested on an easel behind his casket.

I remembered when that photo was taken. It had been a sunny day at a St. Patrick’s Day parade. Someone had taken the photo of Jacobi, surrounded by fellow cops, as a brass band marched down Market Street toward City Hall.

None of us could have imagined that four years later that photo would be facing out over hundreds of mourners who’d come to say good-bye to a dear friend and great leader taken away far too soon.

After about twenty minutes, during which time the church reached capacity, Pastor Casey Elliot climbed a few steps to the pulpit, gently tapped the mic, and began the funeral service by offering a prayer for Warren Jacobi and speaking of our loss. Behind us in the balcony, the organ played, and a choir sang “Amazing Grace.” The chords and the voices filled the church and settled around our shoulders like a blessing. I lifted my eyes to the arches and to the stained-glass windows, and as if on cue, a beam of sunlight broke through the colored glass and painted the floor with a wash of blue and gold.

When the last notes trailed off, Pastor Elliot called upon Muriel Roth, Jacobi’s love and partner of the last ten years. Muriel rose from where she’d been sitting between her two daughters in the front row.