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After toying with the suggestion of Dr. Bolinski that he have the Bulletin buy him either a Mercedes or a Cadillac, Mickey had chosen the Buick Rendezvous. A Caddie, or a Kraut-mobile, he reasoned, would piss off most of the people with whom he worked. By that he meant the police officers. It was said-with more than a little justification-that Mickey knew more cops by their first names than anyone else, and that more cops knew Mickey by sight than they did the police commissioner.

Mickey knew that most-certainly not all-of Philly’s cops liked him, and he attributed this to both reciprocation-he liked most cops-and to the fact that he spelled their names right, got the facts right, and never betrayed a confidence.

As he did most nights, Mickey O’Hara had been cruising the city in the Rendezvous when one of the scanners had caught the “possible armed robbery” call. He was then five blocks south of the Roy Rogers on South Broad Street.

“Possible, my ass,” he had said, aloud, then put the gum-ball machine on the roof, glanced in the rearview mirror, and made an illegal U-turn on Broad Street.

When he reached the Roy Rogers, he saw there was a blue-and — white, door open, parked on Snyder, which told him the cops had just arrived, and the possible robbery in progress was probably still in progress, because the cop wouldn’t have left his car door open if he hadn’t been in a hell of a hurry.

He double-parked on Snyder, beside the police car, grabbed his digital camera from the passenger seat, and quickly got out of the Rendezvous. Two black guys were coming out of the restaurant in a hurry. In a reflex action, Mickey put the digital camera to his eye and snapped a picture.

The short fat black guy saw him, raised his arm, and took a shot at Mickey with a short-barreled revolver. He missed, but Mickey, as a prudent measure, dropped to the ground beside the Rendezvous. When he looked up, both of the doers were hauling ass down Snyder Street.

Mickey got to his feet, ran quickly to the Roy Rogers, and went inside.

Just inside the door there was a cop on the floor, facedown, in a spreading pool of blood.

Mickey snapped that picture, and then as he was waiting for the camera to recycle, to take a second shot, realized he knew the dead cop. He was Kenny Charlton of the First District.

Sonofabitch! Kenny was a good guy, seventeen, eighteen years on the job. His wife works for the UGI. They have a couple of kids.

The green light in the camera came on, and he took another picture.

He was about to step around the body when he sensed motion behind him and looked over his shoulder.

A very large black man, in the peculiar uniform of the Highway Patrol, had entered the restaurant, pistol drawn. Another highway patrolman was on his heels.

“I think the doers just ran down Snyder,” Mickey said, pointing. “Two black guys, one short and fat… two black guys.”

Sergeant Wilson Carter turned to the highway patrolman behind him. “Get out a flash,” he ordered.

The second highway patrolman-Mickey knew the face but couldn’t come up with a name-left the restaurant quickly.

Sergeant Carter looked down at the body of Officer Charlton, dropped to his knees, felt his carotid artery, and shook his head.

“Jesus, Mickey, what happened?” he asked.

“I got here just before you did,” O’Hara said, shrugging in a helpless gesture.

There were now the sounds of approaching sirens, at least two, probably three, maybe more.

“They shot somebody in the kitchen, too,” one of the restaurant patrons called out.

Sergeant Carter looked around to see who had called out, and when he did, one of the patrons, a very tall, very thin, hawk-featured black man, stood up and pointed to the kitchen.

Sergeant Carter headed for the rear of the restaurant. Mickey followed him, holding the digital camera in his hand, concealing it as well as he could.

Carter pushed open the door and went in the kitchen. Mickey caught it before it closed and followed him in.

There was a body of a chubby woman, some kind of Latina, on the floor, her head distorted and lying in a pool of blood.

“Jesus Christ!” Sergeant Carter said.

“One of them came in the kitchen,” a young black guy in kitchen whites said. “Manuela was calling the cops. He shot her.”

“They all gone?” Carter asked.

“There was just the two of them,” the young black guy said. “They’re gone.”