“I don’t throw down,” Addison said. “I don’t shoot unarmed kids.”

“Says…”

“Anyone you interview.”

“Long as he’s black.”

Addison shook his head and, quoting Reagan, said, “There you go again.”

Alderman said, “You told your CO you didn’t draw-”

“No I didn’t. I drew,” Addison said. “I didn’t fire.”

“The Glock,” Zachary said, his back to the table.

Addison opened the manila envelope and withdrew a notarized document. He passed it to Alderman, who read it with care.

Hearing silence, Zachary turned and looked over his partner’s shoulder. After a moment, he said, “What makes a man do something like this?”

“People like you,” Addison replied.

“Two tests,” Alderman muttered as he reread the report. “Overkill.”

After the lengthy interview at the 7-5 following the Ciccanti shooting, Addison arranged for tests that proved he hadn’t fired a gun, making him the first to use the resource at City College he proposed and helped develop for the Guardians.

“That’s going to the press,” Addison said, nodding.

“Why’s that?” Alderman asked, suddenly agitated.

Addison slid the front page of this morning’s Post from the envelope. “IAD set that in motion.”

Someone inside NYPD told the Post the investigation would be guided by a respect for Office Addison’s “civil rights,” a phrase that meant one thing to blacks and another to certain whites, including many in Howard Beach.

The Post headline: “Where’s My Brother’s Civil Rights?” Nine-year-old Angela Ciccanti in her Saint Helen’s uniform. Meanwhile, Fat Philly’s crew and their families marched Cross Bay Boulevard, signs in fists, demanding the medical examiner release Ciccanti’s body.

Alderman asked, “Got friends in the press, do you?”

Addison stared at Alderman’s face, the blond mustache that didn’t work, the clenching at the corners of his eyes. He was the one, not Zachary. Alderman wanted this black versus white, the easiest way for IAD to make it disappear.

“No friends in the press,” Addison replied. But his wife’s sister knew the principals at D. Parke Gibson Associates, an influential public relations firm. “We’re just going to make certain that-”

“Who’s ‘we,’ Addison?” Alderman asked sharply.

“‘We’ is me and anyone in NYPD, the D.A.’s, and the Justice Department that wants to find out what happened to Little Flaps, who was breaking into the UPS depot last Thursday night with a Philips head, a box cutter, an Instamatic, and a duffel bag.”

Alderman said, “The D.A. being your friend Sharon Knight. Sister is bucking for chief of the Homicide Bureau, isn’t she?”

“‘Sister’?” Addison held back a laugh.

Zachary put his palms on the table. “Officer,” he said, “I’m guessing you know nothing you do is going to wash this away.”

“And I’m thinking you’ve got two days, maybe three, to hook this where it belongs,” Addison replied. “Once we get it off me, it’ll go where it goes. Which could be IAD, could be the mayor’s office, could be whoever shot the boy.”

He looked at Alderman.

“A lot of heads for your plate, Detective,” Addison said, “but the black one is up and leaving.”

He sat back satisfied, the Guardians and Sharon Knight on his shoulder.

Alderman smiled dark as he leaned in.

“Let me tell you how we see it,” he said. “Kid made you run your lazy black ass. Dalrymple told you to cool down, but you wouldn’t have it, not after Flaps dropped a couple of N-bombs on you.”

“Ciccanti was at least sixty feet-”

Alderman brought up his index finger. “You pull your throw down-hell, half the 7-5 will say you carried it-and you shot him. Three times. Then you stonewalled your CO, ran to your black-ass friends at City College to kick off the cover-up, and you went out and hired some PR firm to work the press. You’ll ask the D.A.’s office to dump this on a white cop ‘cause blue ain’t good enough for you. You’ll say anything to tear us down.”

Addison stared at him.

“And that’s the way it plays,” Alderman said. “It’s 1982 and you shot a white boy in Howard Beach. You know what’s up and leaving, Officer? Your career, your freedom. Your freedom and your career.”

Steele and August were at a table in the corner near the garbage bin and a stack of orange trays. They’d pretended they hadn’t seen Lucy helping W.E. out of the cab on Ninth, leading him by the elbow and then hanging back as he made his way alone along the haphazard aisle of Formica tables and yellow plastic chairs. But when they stood to greet their old colleague, they nodded discreetly to her, gestures she returned with a pained smile.

“Mr. Man,” August said with forced cheer. The stout, coffee-light-skinned man took Addison ’s hands in his. “Bony but beautiful.”

Steele said, “W.E.”

They waited until Addison angled into a seat.

“Started without me,” W.E. said when his grimace subsided.

August had been dipping a finger into a small plastic cup of barbecue sauce. “Never.”

“Hammer tied you down?”

Henry Steele smiled.

Three men old before their time, though Steele, with his shaved head and impossible taut skin, looked like he might still be dogging the Genovese family’s black lieutenants across Brooklyn and Queens. Cookie August, on the other hand, had put on twenty-five additional pounds since he left a stretch as the only black man in the Anti-Crime Unit. He was showing his age: The curly hair above his ears had gone from peppery gray to powder-wig white.

Good men, W.E. Addison knew, dedicated cops. Thank God neither of them was on the clock with stage three non-small cell lung cancer that was no longer treatable by chemo or radiation.

Savoring the mesquite-wood scent, Addison looked toward the pit. Not quite noon, which meant Smokey’s was still serving last night’s ribs. The tender meat would fall off the bone.

“Same old?” August asked as he went for trays.

Addison nodded, knowing it might be the last time.

Luther Addison was on modified desk duty until someone leaked which phone he’d answer, so NYPD sent him home. After food shopping at Zabar’s for his Giselle and their baby son, he rented a black Buick Century, waited until dark, and drove the Williamsburg Bridge to Myrtle Avenue, making his way to Howard Beach. The funeral home was on 159th Avenue.

Fat Philly was working the front door, shaking hands like he was running for office. Red shirt open at the collar under a black suit, heavy gold chain on his wrist, red carnation in his lapel, gray patent leather loafers: His idea of appropriately somber for the photographers and TV crews.

One of the Guardians out of the 1- 13 in nearby Jamaica told him a snitch reported Fat Philly behind the scheme that landed Little Flaps in Bridges. Addison wondered if Philly was making some kind of move, knowing the TV lights would keep the real mobsters at bay.

To dodge a tail, Addison drove the Belt Parkway and over to Rockaway Boulevard to circle Aqueduct before doubling back to 159th. Then he did it again. And again, driving past the funeral home, using the mirrors to see who was coming and going.

Shortly after ten o’clock, he returned to find Fat Philly putting Mrs. Ciccanti and her daughter Angela in a limo; the fat man went inside, where he stayed even after the funeral home shut down. The crowd gone, Addison parked up the block and cut the engine.

His partner Joe Dalrymple arrived shortly before midnight.

Frowning in confusion, Addison took off his baseball cap and ran his hand across his close-cropped hair. Running no more than thirty feet behind him when a weapon was discharged, Dalrymple knew Addison hadn’t taken down Little Flaps, and Addison was fairly sure Dalrymple, who’d bent left coming out of the patrol car, hadn’t shot him either.