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"I suppose I deserved that," she said.

"I'm sorry," Matt said. "Jesus Christ, Amanda, I can't tell you how sorry I am I said that."

She looked into his eyes for a long time.

"You'll be the second, all right? I was engaged," she said.

"I know," he said.

"You do?"

"I mean, I know you're not a slut. I have a runaway mouth."

"Yes, you do," she agreed. "We'll have to work on that." She put her hand to his cheek. He turned his head and kissed it.

When he met her eyes again, she said, "I knew you were going to be trouble for me the first time I laid eyes on you."

"I'm not going to be trouble for you, I promise."

She laughed.

"Oh, yes you are," she said. "So now what, Matthew? You want to show me your etchings now or what?"

"They're in my sleeping-accommodations suite," he said. "That's the small closet to your immediate rear."

"I know," she said. "I looked. Lucky for you I didn't find any hairpins or forgotten lingerie in there."

"You'll be the first," he said.

"You mean inthere," she said, and when she saw the uncomfortable look on his face, she stood on her toes and kissed him gently on the lips. Then she took his hand and led him into his bedroom.

****

When Sergeant Nick DeBenedito and Officer Jesus Martinez walked into Highway Patrol headquarters at Bustleton and Bowler, Officer Charley McFadden was sitting on one of the folding metal chairs in the corridor.

Martinez was surprised to see him. He knew that McFadden had spent his four-to-midnight tour riding with a veteran Highway Patrolman named Jack Wyatt. Since he and DeBenedito were more than an hour late coming off shift, he had presumed that Charley would be long gone.

McFadden, a large, pleasant-faced young man of twenty-three, had already changed out of his uniform. He was wearing a knit sport shirt, a cotton jacket with a zipper closing, and blue jeans. When McFadden stood up, the jacket fell open, exposing, on his right, his badge, pinned over his belt, and his revolver. Charley carried his off-duty weapon, a.38-caliber five-shot Smith amp; Wesson Undercover Special revolver in a "high-rise pancake," a holster reportedly invented by a special agent of the U.S. Secret Service, which suspended the revolver under his right arm,above the belt, almost as high as a shoulder holster would have placed it.

Jesus thought Charley looked, except that his hair was combed and he was shaved and the clothes were clean, as he had looked when the two of them were working undercover in Narcotics.

"You still here, McFadden?" Sergeant DeBenedito asked in greeting.

"I thought maybe Hay-zus would want to go to the FOP bar and hoist one," Charley said.

Charley had taken to using the Spanish pronunciation of Martinez's Christian name because of his mother, a devout Irish Catholic who had been made distinctly uncomfortable by having to refer to her son's partner as Jesus.

"Yeah, why not?" Martinez replied. Actually he did not want to go to the FOP bar with Charley at all. But he didn't see how he could say no after Charley had hung around the station for more than an hour waiting for him. "Give me a minute to change."

He consoled himself with the thought that it was only the decent thing to do. Charley had, after all, volunteered to drive him to work when he learned that Jesus's Ford was (again) in the muffler shop for squeaking brakes, and then he'd hung around for more than an hour waiting to drive him home. If he wanted to have a beer, they'd go get a beer.

Five minutes later he emerged from the locker room in civilian clothing. He wore a dark blue shirt, even darker blue trousers, and a light brown leather jacket. There was a fourteen-karat gold-plated chain around his neck, and what the guy in the jewelry store had said was an Inca sun medallion hanging from that. His badge was in his pocket, and although he, too, carried an Undercover Special, he did so in a shoulder holster. He had tried the pancake and it hadn't worked. His hips weren't wide enough or something. It always felt like it was about to fall off.

Despite the early-morning hour, the parking lot of the FOP Building, just off North Broad Street in Central Philadelphia, was almost full. About a quarter of the Police Department had come off shift at midnight with a thirst. Cops are happiest in the company of other cops, and attracting more customers to the bar at the FOP has never posed a problem for the officers of the FOP.

Jesus followed Charley down the stairs from the street to the basement bar and was surprised when Charley took a table against the wall. Charley usually liked to sit at the bar, which gave him, he said, a better look at the activity, by which he meant the women.

"Hold the table," Charley ordered, and went to the bar. He returned with two bottles of Ortlieb's and a huge bowl of popcorn. A year or so before, Jesus Martinez had become interested in nutrition, and was convinced that popcorn, and most of what else Charley put in his mouth, was not good for you.