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“I’m a cop,” he said. “Cops don’t like to sit with their backs to the door.”

“Really?” she asked, not sure if he was pulling her leg or not.

“Really,” he said, then added: “I didn’t know what you drink.”

“I’m surprised,” she said. She had first met him two days before. His Honor, Mayor Jerry Carlucci, who never passed up an opportunity to get his face in the newspapers or on television, reopened a repaired stretch of the Schuylkill Expressway with a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Louise, having nothing better to do at the time, had gone along with the regular crew of cameraman/producer and reporter, originally intending to do the on-camera bit herself.

But when she got there, and saw what it was, much ado about nothing, she had decided not to usurp the reporter. But instead of leaving, she decided to hang around in case the mayor ran off at the mouth again. Mayor Carlucci had a tendency to do that (in the most recent incident, he had referred to a city councilman as “an ignorant coon”) and that would make a story.

She told the cameraman to shoot the mayor from the time he arrived until he left.

The mayor usually moved around the city in style, in a black Cadillac limousine, preceded by two unmarked police cars carrying his plainclothes bodyguards.

A third car had stopped right where Louise had been standing. The driver’s door had opened, and Captain Richard C. “Dutch” Moffitt had erupted from it. He was a large man, and he had been in uniform. The Highway Patrol wore different uniforms than the rest of the Philadelphia Police Department.

The Highway Patrol had begun, years before, as a traffic-control force, and had been mounted on motorcycles. They had kept their motorcyclist outfits—leather jackets and breeches and black leather puttees—even though, except for mostly ceremonial occasions, they had given up their motorcycles for patrol cars; and had, in fact become an elite force within the police department, deployed city-wide in high-crime areas.

In the Channel 9 newsroom, the Philadelphia Highway Patrol was referred to as “Carlucci’s Commandos.” But, not, Louise had noticed, without a not-insignificant tone of respect, however grudging.

Louise Dutton had found herself standing so close to Captain Richard C. Moffitt that she could smell his leather jacket, and that he had been chewing Sen-Sen. Her eyes were on the level of his badge, above which was pinned a blue, gold-striped ribbon, on which were half a dozen stars. It was, Louise correctly guessed, some kind of a citation. Citations, plural, with the stars representing multiple awards.

He winked at her, and then, putting his hand on the car door, rose on his toes to look back at Mayor Carlucci’s limousine. Louise saw that he wore a wedding ring, and then turned to see what he was looking at. Two plainclothesmen were shouldering a path for His Honor the Mayor through the crowd to the flag-bedecked sawhorses where the ribbon would be cut.

Then he looked down at her.

“I’ve seen you on the tube,” he said. “I’m Dutch Moffitt.”

She gave him her hand and her name.

“You look better in real life, Louise Dutton,” he said.

“May I ask you a question, Captain Moffitt?” she had said.

“Sure.”

“Some of the people I know refer to the Highway Patrol as ‘Carlucci’s Commandos.’ What’s your reaction to that?”

“Fuck ‘em,” he said immediately, matter-of-factly.

“Can I quote you?” she flared.

“You can, but I don’t think you could say that on TV,” he said, smiling down at her.

“You arrogant bastard!”

“I’d be happy, since you just came to town, to explain what the Highway Patrol does,” he said. “And why that annoys the punks and the faggots.”

She gave him what she hoped was her most disdainful look.

“I’ll even throw in a couple of drinks and dinner,” he said.

“Why don’t you call me?” Louise had asked, flashing him her most dazzling smile. “At home, of course. I wouldn’t want it to get around the sta

tion that I was having drinks and dinner with one of Carlucci’s Commandos. Especially a married one. So nice to talk to you, Captain.”

She did not get the response she expected.

“You’re really full of piss and vinegar, aren’t you?” he said, approvingly.