Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 46, No. 6. Whole No. 265, December 1965

Never Kill a Cop by William Fay

Another heart-warming human-interest detective story by William Fay... about Fogarty, ex-cop and struggling young lawyer, recently defeated for public office, and Sarah Kearney, a beautiful young heiress — and about faith, that priceless ingredient without which no detective, amateur or professional, is worth his salt...

When Fogarty got to his office at half-past ten in the morning, carrying his breakfast in a paper bag, the door was unexpectedly unlatched. A girl named Sarah Kearney sat in the client’s chair next to his desk, looking at him with what he at first interpreted as blithe superiority. It was no way to look at Fogarty in his present mood or at this stage of his new career.

“Good morning, counselor,” Miss Kearney said.

“How are you?” His response was cautious. It was the first time they had met to speak in several years, or since the occasion when, as a policeman, he had almost locked her up for obstructing traffic willfully. “Do you carry a set of keys?” he said. “Or do you float over transoms like cigar smoke?”

“The superintendent let me in. I told him I had been sitting on the stairs for forty minutes.” She looked at him joylessly. “Your paper bag is dripping,” she said.

“Let it drip.”

He didn’t wish to be unpleasantly hostile, but she was here, like some polished apple out of Eden, and Fogarty, a principled man, felt entitled to self-defense. He found that his pride, much more than his privacy, was being dynamited by her presence. He had a container of coffee and a jelly doughnut in the bag. The tilted container was partly empty now and the doughnut looked like a wet, soggy softball.

It punished him to know she’d had the opportunity to gape around his office and conclude from firsthand evidence that, in addition to being a recently defeated candidate for public office, he was strictly a five-and-ten-cent counselor-at-law. The do-it-yourself testimony of a paint can in one corner and his old pants on a hook did not indicate prosperity any more than did his obvious lack of a secretary. He dropped the soggy doughnut into a receptacle.

“You care for some coffee?”

“No, thank you, Joe.”

It seemed to him she had a nerve to call him “Joe,” as though he were still a cop on the corner of Main and Sheridan Streets and she was breezing by in one of her old man’s Mohawk V’s, those six-to-eight thousand-dollar items (f.o.b. Detroit), for which they had the exclusive agency in town. He felt like reminding her that a man doesn’t go to college and law school for a couple of thousand nights to have some dumpling, after years of nose-in-the-air indifference, give him that “Joe” stuff with a patronizing smile.

“I suppose you came here for a reason?”

“A perfectly legitimate one,” she said. Then, very seriously, “Angelo Amato is in trouble.”

Fogarty leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. Something prompted him to say the next, unnecessary thing. “Before you go any further, I’m on Angelo’s side.”

She looked at him coolly. “Don’t be so aggressive.”

“I’ll be what I have to be.”

“Just because you lost an election,” she said.

“Never mind the election.”

Her simple statement, “Angelo Amato is in trouble,” was a phrase he hadn’t heard in a long, almost forgotten time. Angelo, who worked for the Kearney Mohawk Agency, was an ex-petty hoodlum, long reformed. Fogarty would not deny that Angelo had a hold on his affections that a Stillson wrench or a bond of blood could not more firmly secure.

“What kind of trouble is Angelo in?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t tell me.”

“Then how do you know he’s in any trouble at all?”

“The way he looked, the way he acted when he came in at half-past eight this morning. He was pale as bread and I’m sure he hadn’t slept. He’d cut himself below the elbow of his right arm and there was a soiled bandage around it. I tried to send him home.”

“Are you running the agency now?”

“In my father’s absence, yes. He’s in New Mexico on vacation.”

“Is that so?” Fogarty said. As a man of disciplined good manners, he did not suggest it was a good place for her father to be — out where the Indians might teach him to keep his big mouth shut — especially in matters of local politics. “Tell me more about Angelo,” he said. “Couldn’t the guy just have had a bad night? Tied one on?”

“It wasn’t that simple. He was troubled and evasive. All he said was ‘I’ll go to see Fogarty, but not right now.’ He doesn’t know I’m here, but that’s why I came. I called his wife on your phone, if you’ll forgive me. All Rose did was weep and fail to make sense. Now — is that my imagining?”

“M’m-m,” said Fogarty. “I don’t like this at all.”

“He’ll talk to you. The Lord knows why, but you’re the only hero Angelo has. The least you could do is come back to the shop.”

“I can’t go now. I’m going over to Maxim’s Funeral Home — pay my respects to the cop who got killed out on Manion Road.”

“You mean Eddie Bernstein?”

“That’s right. Bernstein, the detective. He was a friend of mine. I worked with him when he was a patrolman.”

“What about Angelo?”

“I’ll see him later,” Fogarty said. “It’s hard to explain. You could call it an ex-cop’s intuition, but I don’t think I should go to see him at your place, unless he suggested it.”

“Why not?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Fogarty said. “Since Angelo is all we have in common, let’s agree that he didn’t rob a bank or slug anybody on the head. Now, if he’s in the only kind of trouble I can even imagine him being in, it might not help to have it appear as though he’s been looking around for me. Did he mention any of the crowd he was mixed up with years ago? Frank Savarese, for instance? Any of the others?”

“But you know that he doesn’t see them.”

“Does that mean they couldn’t see Angelo?”

“Well, no; I suppose that’s conceivable. And from the way Rose carried on, perhaps it could be.”

“Where does Angelo go to lunch these days?”

“O’Mara’s place, on Bridge Street, most of the time.”

“Tell him I’ll meet him there at half-past twelve.”

“Thank you,” Sarah Kearney said.

“No thanks at all.” He watched her stand up. She was tall and she was a queen and she was handsomer now than she had been in their high-school days, when the sight of her used to flip his heart like a dish. “You’re not as fresh or as hard to get along with as you used to be,” he said kindly. “It’s a great improvement.”

“I’d punch you in the nose,” she said, very calmly, “if it weren’t for Angelo.”

He left the funeral home a few minutes after twelve. The rabbi and most of Bernstein’s relatives shook solemn hands with him. He had made one brief, rehearsed speech to the widow, but his voice had cracked and his eyes had filled. He didn’t think he should try again.

A cop named Finley stood in the lobby, well apart from the rest, quietly saying his beads. Fogarty walked over.

“Tough, isn’t it, Joe?” said Finley. “At a time like this?”

“It’s always tough, Al,” Fogarty agreed. “You know anything more? More than that he got clipped by a car?”

“He got sideswiped, Joe — clean, dainty, deadly.”

“I heard that much. What else have you got?”

“A handful of glass from a headlight. There’s only one and a half million headlights like it in the state.”

“Eddie wasn’t on duty, was he?”

“He was off last night. It was like they had it in this morning’s paper. His own car was parked ten or fifteen feet from the call box on Man-ion Road. No call came through, but the phone was danglin’ from the box when Eddie was picked up off the road. That could make you think of a lot of strange things, but you know as much as I do, Joe.”

“I’ll see you, Al.”

Outside it was late and bare November. The wind was rocking the leafless trees. Fogarty buttoned his coat. He put his hands in his pockets.

A pale-toned, Pullman-sized, quite beautiful convertible had stopped at the curb outside the funeral home. It was a Mohawk V. The motor was idling. The twin exhausts raised little clouds like profane incense to the memory of Bernstein.

Fogarty walked around to the far side of the car, where the driver’s fat arm rested on the door.

“Is this a gag?” Fogarty asked.

“You want somethin’, Joey?” the driver said.

“I want you to get out of here.”

“You bought the whole street, Joey? It’s yours?”

Frank Savarese was an important man. This was an opinion shared by friendly critics as well as by those who believed he should be in jail. A huge man, in his forties, hard-fleshed, fairly trim, and bolder at times than he was bright, he owned the Beach and Country Club, on Davis Neck, the greenest, best bit of real estate within the limits of Sound City, New York.

Fogarty could have told you that he also owned the mayor of the town, half the city council, and the zoning board that permitted him to operate on Davis Neck in the disguise and sanctuary of a “private” club.

Frank Savarese’s club was so private it enjoyed the luxury of its own police force — three cops with badges, in letter carrier’s gray, hired by the day from a New York City agency. Thus, by virtual ordinance, the Beach and Country Club was out of bounds for the Sound City police.

“You’re going to tell me you were fond of Bernstein?” Fogarty asked.

“I got my receipt for the flowers, Joey. I’m entitled to see if they got delivered.”

“If you put a foot inside that chapel,” said Fogarty, “I can tell you right now there’s a cop in there who will throw you through a wall.”

“You scare me, Joey.”

“I’m not surprised,” said Fogarty, “because, when you come to think of it, I always did.”

He walked toward Main Street slowly, thoughtfully. He got to O’Mara’s Municipal Tavern at half-past twelve. He didn’t see Angelo Amato. He saw a union delegate and a painter named Lew, seated at the luncheon counter, eating boiled beef and sauerkraut, the special of the day. Fogarty went to the bar on the opposite side and O’Mara drew a beer for him.

Fogarty waited, licking foam from the glass, until a couple of cops came in. They waved to him and sat down with the painter and the union delegate. Fogarty walked over and said to one of them, “You happen to have seen Angelo Amato?”

“Who?”

“Angelo,” he repeated. “Angelo Amato.”

“They just took the poor guy to the hospital, Joe, with a lump on his head the size of your fist.”

“They took him from where?”

“From Kearney’s place, where he works. Two strangers walked in off the street while he had his head under the hood of a car. They were quick and they nearly killed him.”

Fogarty walked down a broad, sound-cushioned corridor in the Sound City Hospital, not having gained admittance to Room 507. The nurse on duty had said, “No visitors.” The waiting rooms were straight ahead.

There was a cop taking information from an intern. Fogarty joined them. Beyond, in one of the waiting rooms, he could see Sarah Kearney and a gentleman friend of hers named Charles Nestor Forbes, a civic leader. A jerk, he thought, and then disliked himself. It could be that I’m just a jealous slob; and it was strange, strange that this might possibly be true.

“We don’t know the extent of the injury,” the intern said. “He’s unconscious now. Whether there’s a skull fracture or a serious trauma, I don’t know. You’ll have to speak to Doctor Theiss. Excuse me.”

The cop kept writing. Fogarty remained there, looking over his shoulder, reading the notes on the pad. “Was he conscious when they brought him in?” he asked.

“Not when they brought him in, Joe. But after the beatin’ he was. Miss Kearney says so, and she knows more about it than me. How do you spell ‘trauma’?”

“Tee-ar-aye-yew-em-aye,” Fogarty said. He walked into the waiting room and said, “Charles, my good man,” with great formality to Charles Nestor Forbes who looked surprised.

Charles was as tall as a leaping stork. He was thin and his hair was cropped like a well-kept lawn. He looked very Ivy League and he had money in the bank He was, with Sarah’s old man, a member of the League for Independent Voters. In the recent election he had regretfully stated that Fogarty was “too inexperienced and ignescent” to merit the league’s support as a city councilman. He also took Sarah Kearney to dances and public picnics.

“And how are you, Joe?” he inquired.

“I’m ignescent, Charles.” Fogarty struck a match to light a cigarette. “I even know what it means.”

Now, within the waiting room, he saw Rose Amato. She was seated, her hands folded on the glossy surface of a magazine, her cheeks like chalk, her dark eyes raised to Fogarty.

“Pray for him, Joe.”

“He’ll be all right.” The lump came up in Fogarty’s throat — widows, orphans, mothers in distress; he had no defense — never had.

“Don’t ask me any questions, Joe.”

“Look, Rose, sometimes you’ve got to face things,” Fogarty said. “Sometimes you can’t afford to be scared.”

“Please. Please, Joe.”

He dragged more deeply on his cigarette. Sarah signaled for his attention. Charles Nestor Forbes sat down. Fogarty followed Sarah into the other waiting room.

“You saw it happen at the shop?” he said.

“I didn’t see it. I was in the showroom. The men got away, as you know. Angelo was conscious for a little while. He said he’d only had a glimpse of the men and that he had never seen them before. He said to tell Rose not to worry about the family, since they had taken it out on him, whatever it was. Then he passed out. It was frightful, the beating he had to take.”

“Who’s with the kids now?”

“Rose’s sister — until I get there. Who could have done this to them, Joe? You’ve some idea, haven’t you?”

“I’ve always got ideas,” he said, “but you can’t depend on them. What I have in mind is too simple, too convenient. How much do you think Rose knows?”

“More than she has admitted,” Sarah Kearney said. “And far more than you should try to force out of her now.”

Fogarty left the hospital and went to the office. He opened the mail he had neglected earlier and found a $50 fee that he had not expected to collect. He went downstairs to the drug store and had a sandwich.

He wondered again if Sarah’s visit to his office could have contributed to the beating of Angelo Amato. Assuming that Angelo was in some way involved with his old companions, would not her hasty visit to his office be evidence that Angelo was on the verge of howling “cop”? Couldn’t Sarah have been followed?

He got up from his seat at the counter. It was almost four o’clock. He paid the man and dialed Angelo’s number from a coin booth. It was Sarah who answered the phone.

“It’s me,” he said. “Fogarty, the people’s choice. Is everything all right out there?”

“Everything’s all right, except that I’m not used to cooking with olive oil or letting children nibble on Italian salami.”

“I mean — well, is there anybody else with you?”

“Why should there be?”

“I’m the nervous type,” said Fogarty. “I think maybe there should be someone there. I’ll come out myself.”

“If you insist on being dramatic,” she said, “you can pick up a loaf of bread. One of those yard-long jobs at Danetti’s.”

Fogarty, having sold his car to raise campaign funds, took a cab.

“Thanks for the bread,” she said.

“My compliments.”

She wore an apron not equal to the excellent length of her. It looked like a bib. The sleeves of her dress had been rolled back to the elbows. There was tomato paste on her arm.

“Come in,” she said. “You’ll freeze out the house.”

He came in the side entrance, closing the door behind him. There were four small Amatos, three of them self-propelled. The fourth was in a playpen, blessedly asleep.

“That’s young Armand,” Sarah said. “He’s seven months old.”

“I’m the kid’s godfather,” Fogarty said. “You’re telling me?”

Angelo’s house was on the fringe of town, out past the city ball field and the last bus stop. As it had been all day, the wind was big, aggressive. The afternoon light began to fade. A shutter banged. The shadows cast by the wide arms of a chestnut tree were rhythmic and foreboding. Night would come early. The driveway at the side of the house was empty. The garage looked empty too.

“How did you get out here?” Fogarty asked.

“Charles drove me out. He’s coming back for me.”

“Did you hear from Rose?”

“She phoned from the hospital.”

“Yes?”

“To say we needed bread. I told her you were in charge of the bread. She said, ‘Madre mia’; she was glad you were coming out. I guess it could get a little creepy.”

“What about Angelo?”

“He seems to be resting well. I talked to the nurse. X-rays showed the fracture wasn’t too severe. They’re only worried about internal bleeding.”

Fogarty sat in a tufted chair. Dominic, John, and Mary Amato — seven, five and three years old — stood close by, watching him. He gave them each a dime and a Vote for Fogarty button, his picture framed within the circle of the lettering.

“Here, you can have one too,” he said to Sarah Kearney. “They’re always cheaper after election.”

“Thank you. I’ll pin it on Charles. If you’ll excuse us, we’re going to have our baths.”

“You too?”

“Don’t be cute. Just keep your eye on Armand.”

It was no problem minding Armand. Fogarty read the Sound City Call, an afternoon daily, but was not enlightened. The darkness had long been with them. Traffic was light on the road that passed the house. Once in a while he’d see the headlights sweep around the turn, then “whoof!”; they drove that fast.

Sarah came downstairs with three scrubbed, aromatic, and pajamaed Amatos. She fed them in the kitchen. Fogarty stood in the doorway, watching her.

“So?” she said.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“Then be useful. Get Armand.”

“He’s asleep.”

“He isn’t now. I heard him.”

Fogarty got Armand and brought him into the kitchen. Sarah sent the three others into the living room, where she served their dessert, and Dominic turned on the television. Sarah returned to the kitchen. Armand was squirming and Armand was damp.

“Give him to me,” she said, “in heaven’s name, before you strangle the lamb.”

“He doesn’t smell like a lamb. He smells like a sheep.”

“Humph,” she said. “A funny man. A funny, funny, funny man.” She changed and powdered and began to feed the youngest Amato. She looked at Fogarty. “What’s that you’ve got?”

“It’s a map,” he said. “A police map of the city. Here, where I’m pointing, is where we are now. Forget it. I’m interested in the opposite end of town — over here on Long Island Sound. Follow the pencil — this is Savarese’s Beach and Country Club.”

“I believe you,” she said, “but I don’t want to stick the spoon in the baby’s eye. This has to do with Angelo?”

“With Angelo, maybe. But first with Eddie Bernstein. As I think I mentioned, this is strictly a dream; it would occur to a moron, but you have to begin with something. I’ll begin by believing in Angelo. A guy doesn’t live the way he’s been living for years and then take off like a two-dollar burglar. I say if he’s in trouble, the trouble came to him, and that could be Frank Savarese.”

“Go on,” she said.

“Last night, sometime around midnight, Eddie Bernstein got clipped by a speeding car. Nobody saw it, but he was trying to phone from the police call box on Manion Road. His own car was parked near the call box. He wasn’t on duty.

“Suppose he was out to Savarese’s place and was snooping around out there before he was discovered. You know they’ve got their own special police. Real ‘special,’ I can tell you — a regular cop needs a warrant and a squad of marines to get any place at all.

“But suppose Eddie got real lucky. Suppose he came up with something the mayor, the zoning board or all of Savarese’s money couldn’t fix. A free-wheeling crap game that would cost him his liquor license, or the wrong kind of dames — the ‘private-party’ type our cops could toss in the wagon. Now, if you look at this map, you’ll see that while it’s a mile away, the call box on Manion Road is the first one Bernstein could have got to. What wouldn’t Savarese have done to stop him?”

“I see what you mean.”

“About Angelo. Putting aside our personal feelings, you know as well as I do that he was mixed up with Savarese. When he was a kid he used to drive a car for the bum and pick up horse bets for him all over town.

“That’s where I caught up with him. He was collecting slips from twenty candy and cigar stores. He was also repairing slot machines. Savarese wasn’t such a fancy fellow then. He needed a good mechanic. What I’m trying to say right now is that he might have needed one last night.”

“To repair a car, of course.”

“A fender, a headlight, whatever it was that needed to be fixed — quickly, cleanly, professionally — not at your shop, but here — and off the record, in a way the cops couldn’t check.”

“Angelo wouldn’t do it.”

“Let’s not be too pious,” Fogarty said. “You don’t know what leverage might have been used. And if it involved Eddie Bernstein, the chances are that Angelo wouldn’t have known until this morning. You said yourself that he was coming to see me about whatever trouble he was in. Well, didn’t you?”

“I told you exactly what he said.”

“Well, then, it’s good enough for me. We’ll see.”

He watched her remove the strained green beans and carrots from the features of Armand Amato. There was perspiration on her nose. A great passion swelled in Fogarty at the sight of such wholesomeness.

“You used to be so darned uppity,” he said. “In high school, for instance.”

“In high school, really? How would you know? I always thought we were of different generations.”

“You were two years behind me,” Fogarty said. “You’re almost as old as I am.”

She pushed back her hair. “That’s a crime, I suppose?”

“It’s no crime. But it’s a waste. You were never meant to be an old maid.”

“Mind your business,” she told him.

Fogarty laughed. “It’s a topic that interests me. How is it you never married Charles?”

“Who said I won’t?”

“I say you won’t. It’d be no contest. Weak tea and tiger sweat.”

“I ought to hit you,” she said.

“Go ahead.”

“If I wasn’t holding the baby, I would.” But she didn’t look especially mad. She was a fine lot of woman and her eyes were suddenly soft. “You with your foot in everything you ever said to me,” she told him now. “How could I have been nice to you in high school? Would you have let me?”

“Try me now,” he said. “I’m stupid, but willin’.”

“Get away from me.”

She was holding Armand and couldn’t defend herself. She was between the high chair and a kitchen cabinet. Fogarty, with a boldness he had never in his life displayed, kissed her.

“I always wondered what it would be like,” he said. “Since I was a kid, I’ve wondered. And now I find it tastes like strained green beans.”

Rose Amato came home from the hospital at eight o’clock. She was a pretty-faced, compact, and virtuous woman of high emotional pitch. She had settled down. She was grateful and worn. Her children were safe and asleep. She sat on the sofa.

“Angelo’s going to be all right,” she said again. “Saint Anthony did it.”

“Saint Anthony or Saint Patrick,” Fogarty said. “I was praying too... Rose, listen to me.” Her dark eyes searched him. “Did Angelo do a repair job on a car last night?”

“Why do you ask me that?” She turned to Sarah, as though the other woman could assist her. “Why does he ask me?”

“I don’t have to ask again,” he said. “Was it Frank Savarese who came here, Rose? Or anyone of his crowd? You may think it’s safer not to say anything, but you’re wrong. Never mind the threats they made.”

“Never mind the threats?” she said in wonder. “After this morning, never mind them?”

“Savarese can only be dangerous when he’s out of jail,” said Fogarty. “And I’ll tell you this: I can’t help you or Angelo if you were accomplices to what happened.”

“Angelo didn’t know,” she said. “He didn’t know what they had done.”

“You mean he didn’t know until this morning about Eddie Bernstein. But last night he knew they must have hurt something or someone, didn’t he?”

“They forced him to help them,” Rose said now. “He couldn’t say ‘No,’ the way they kept after him. ‘Get a new headlight,’ they said. ‘Go down to the shop,’ they said. They kept him from the phone. They kept him from me. They talked all the time about the children, the baby even. It was Savarese, yes. Him and two others. A fellow named Phil went down to the shop with Angelo. You understand, Joe, how it had to be?”

“I understand he did exactly what they wanted,” Fogarty said. “So that if Savarese had the brains of a goat and destroyed the evidence, there’s not a thing anyone can do. Savarese took the broken headlight with him, didn’t he?”

“He thought he did,” Rose said.

“What do you mean, ‘he thought’?”

“Angelo brought two headlights from the shop,” Rose said. “Don’t ask me how he managed to do it. I wasn’t there to see. After he did the job for them, they made him check the fender and the bumper for any spots. He told me in bed that he worked slow. It was cold out there in the garage, so they came in the house here for a drink, the three men.

“That’s when Angelo’s chance came. He twisted the other light. He cut himself on purpose, under the elbow. Right here, like it was an accident. God is my judge, Joe. And in two minutes’ time he has the second headlight looking like the first. That’s the one he gave to Savarese, with his own blood on it.”

“You’ve got the other one?” Fogarty said. “You’ve got it here?”

“Where Angelo told me to put it. He said to wrap it like a roast and put in a freezer — until he got in touch with you.”

“You’re my girl, Rose. Angelo’s my boy.”

“I’ll get it now. It doesn’t seem so scary when you’re here, Joe.”

She returned with a lightly frosted package which Fogarty hastily unwrapped. The chrome of the bright outer casing had been dented and twisted by impact; the glass that remained was jagged, like a funny-paper starburst. The chrome and glass were smeared, as though by some swift attempt to wipe it with a rag.

But under the strong light of a lamp, there were fragments visible — of cloth, thought Fogarty, from Eddie Bernstein’s coat? And then, quite visible, too, and less pleasant to see, the gelatinous clots of a good man’s blood.

“This’ll do it,” said Fogarty. “In a lab it’s got to stand up.”

That was when he heard Rose Amato scream and Sarah Kearney gasp. A shaft of cold air had cut into the warmth of the room. A door closed with finality, as though the men in the doorway had been standing there for more than a fractional moment.

“You got to stand up, too, Joey,” someone said.

Fogarty was obliged to rise and turn from a crouched position, his eyes still blinking from the effort they had made in the lamp’s strong glare. He saw Frank Savarese.

“Put that thing on the table, Joey.”

Fogarty held to it dearly, as though to the world’s last loaf of bread. Other items were in focus: the gun in Savarese’s hand; a thief named Phil Mobile; and likely enough, thought Fogarty, there’d be another one outside. They’d handled it well. There’d been no sound or sweep of lights to betray their approach or their arrival.

“Put it down,” Savarese repeated.

“Why do you want it?” Fogarty asked.

“Look, don’t be comic. We started out tailin’ Miss Mohawk V at nine o’clock this mornin’. She went to your office — you of all people; she wouldn’t give you the dirt off a hub cap, so we knew then Angelo’d talked.

“When you take a cab out here an’ wait four hours for Angelo’s wife, we figure there must be business. That’s an interesting piece of goods you got in your hands. It’s something I’ve got to have. Put it down on the table, just like I told you.”

“You’re not talking to some stooge at the beach club, Savarese. I’m an ex-cop, remember?”

“Ex-cop is good. You could be an ex-lawyer too.”

“I could get lucky,” Fogarty said.

“You’ve been a chump all your life. It’s too late now. All I want is that headlight. For the last time, Joey.”

“For the last time, what?”

They heard the squeal of protesting rubber as a car turned into the narrow drive at Angelo Amato’s house. The lights were brazen, blinding high. The man named Phil Mobile crouched at a window, trying to see. Frank Savarese backed nervously away.

Fogarty walked after him, the broken headlight in his hands. He hit Savarese in the face with it, then lunged for the heavy man. They fell and rolled together and the gun got away from Savarese.

Fogarty hit him once, twice, three times with heavy-handed sincerity. It was very effective. Fogarty then got to his feet, his hands still clenched, but the man named Phil Mobile was only standing there, suspended in doubt, gazing anxiously from Sarah Kearney to the light that still filled the driveway.

“You may need this,” Sarah said to Fogarty. She gave him Savarese’s gun.

“You won’t need it for me,” said Phil Mobile. “Let’s get it straight. I wasn’t in no car on Manion Road.”

Phil, like Fogarty, watched the door with apprehension as it opened and the sky-high, puzzled figure of Charles Nestor Forbes came into the room. There was another man behind him, faithful to his assignment — up to a point.

“Keep walking. Keep coming in, you bum,” said Fogarty to the stranger. “Drop the gun on the floor.”

Charles Nestor Forbes looked about with interest, a man as edified as he was terrified, so that he was, in his way, a person to be admired.

“This isn’t exactly in my line,” Charles said, “but shouldn’t someone phone the police?”

“You, Charles,” Fogarty suggested. “You’d be just the man. Give my politest respects to the sergeant at the desk. Call Sound City four-three-thousand.”

Fogarty couldn’t have explained why he went back to his office at such an hour, except that it was a good place to think and a better place to brood. He wondered why he had let Charles Nestor Forbes take Sarah home. Because I don’t own a car of my own, he thought, and had to ride back with the cops.

He sat there a while until he heard footsteps outside his door. Things being as they had been through the day, he got up hastily. Sarah Kearney was standing there.

“Where did you come from?”

“I came from Feeney’s diner,” she explained. “I saw your light on, and that nice irresponsible janitor — he let me in downstairs. I brought you coffee and a dry jelly doughnut. I also wore my ‘Vote for Fogarty’ pin.”

“Why?”

“Because I think you’re going to be mayor some day. I’ve got great hopes for you, Joe.”

“Come here,” he said.

She didn’t taste of strained green beans when Fogarty, a willing man, began fulfilling her hopes.

“I told Charles not to wait,” she said softly, “but I think it’s time you let go.”