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"Why'd you come?" he asked.

"I wanted to talk to you, but I'll be damned if I will while drinking alone."

"I'm not so sure that drinking is what I need to be doing just now."

"And the pain of feeling sorry for yourself is sharper when you're stone sober, right? And you like that?"

"What the hell," Matt said, and poured himself a drink.

"I see you have your uniform out," Chief Wohl said. "Does that mean you're going to report to the 12^th on Monday?"

"It means I'm thinking about it," Matt said.

"Which side is winning?"

"The side that's wondering if I can find anybody interested in buying a nearly new set of uniforms, size forty regular," Matt said.

"You going to ask me if I want to sit down?" Chief Wohl said.

"Oh! Sorry. Please sit down."

"Thank you," Chief Wohl said. He sat in Matt's chair and put his feet up on the footstool. Matt sat on the window ledge.

"I told Peter that I think he's wrong about you needing the experience you'll get-if you decide to go over there on Monday-at the 12^th," Chief Wohl said. "Incidentally, Peter feels lousy about the way that happened. I want you to understand that. It was out of his hands. That's one of the reasons I came here, to make sure you understood that."

"I thought it probably was," Matt said. "I mean the commissioner's decision."

"Reaction, not decision," Chief Wohl said. "There's a difference. When you decide something, you consider the facts and make a choice. When you react, it's different. Reactions are emotional."

"I'm not sure I follow you."

"Right or wrong wasn't on Czernick's agenda. What he saw was that Jerry Carlucci was going to be pissed off at Peter because of your little escapade with the Detweiler girl. He wanted to get himself out of the line of fire. Hereacted. By jumping on you before Carlucci said anything, he was proving, he thinks, to Jerry Carlucci, that he's one of the good guys."

Matt took a pull at his drink.

"You're not going to learn anything," Chief Wohl said, "if you decide to go over there on Monday, hauling fat ladies with broken legs downstairs-"

Matt laughed.

"I say something funny

?" Chief Wohl snapped.

"I'm sorry," Matt said. "But I was thinking in exactly those terms-hauling fat ladies-when I was thinking about what I would be doing in the 12^th."

"As I was saying, you won't learn anything hauling fat ladies except how to haul fat ladies. The idea of putting rookies on jobs like that is to give them experience. You've already had your experience."

"Do you mean because I shot the serial rapist?" Matt asked.

"No. As a matter of fact, I didn't even think about that," Chief Wohl said. "No, not that. That was something else. What I meant was the price of going off half-cocked before you think through what's liable to happen if you do what seems like such a great idea. The price of doing something dumb is what I mean."

"It's obviously expensive," Matt said. "I lose my job. I get my boss in trouble. I get to haul fat ladies. And because I was dumb, the scumbags who shot the other scumbag and Penny Detweiler get away with it. That really makes me mad. No, not mad. Ashamed of myself."

He became aware that Chief Wohl was looking at him with an entirely different look on his face.

"Chief, did I say something wrong?" Matt asked.

"No," Chief Wohl replied. "No, not at all. Can I have another one of these?"