Then why a visit to pay respects, especially after the widowed mother had gone?

Sharon Knight said, “If he did it, if he’s lying and playing us for fools, I’ll take him down myself.”

In the cafeteria at 100 Centre Street, white faces nodded. Who didn’t know Knight was angling to become the first African American Homicide Bureau chief in the D.A.’s office? Breaking a black cop in Reagan’s America would look good on her resumé.

She knew they’d think her ambition would help make it go away, that she’d allow it to land on Addison to curry favor with NYPD and the right-wing media. Maybe they figured they’d let her choose whether to bring it to the grand jury, and then they couldn’t lose. If she got an indictment, fine. If she didn’t, it’d be a public failure by an African American. Or worse, it’d been seen as a refusal by a black woman to bring a black cop to justice.

She didn’t care what they thought as long as they turned over the files on Little Flaps and Fat Philly, and IAD’s jackets on Hill and Dalrymple.

She told Luther Addison they would.

She didn’t expect they’d be delivered by Sarah Tolchinsky, the Homicide Bureau’s deputy chief.

Tolchinsky, a tall Hassidim with skin that seemed translucent, appeared at Knight’s cubicle and waved for her to follow. They returned to her office where musty blinds prevented a view of the Woolworth Building.

The files were on her desk. She’d requested them before she learned of Knight’s interest. Twenty-nine years in the District Attorney’s office allowed her to recognize an IAD cover-up the moment it began. The photo in the Post told her they saw Addison as an easy mark for a frame, a patsy.

“What’s more important to you? Your career or seeing this through?” Tolchinsky asked, as she closed her door.

Knight suppressed an inadvertent grin.

“Your career. You’re young. Fine,” Tolchinsky waved, “but let’s see if we can help you and him.”

She allowed Knight to use the files at a table in the corner.

An hour or so later, lost in a confusing brief crafted by one of Knight’s peers, Tolchinsky heard a voice.

“Damn,” Knight repeated. She quickly double-checked the dates she’d scribbled on a yellow pad, and then stared at her boss.

“What?” Tolchinsky stood.

“I-We’ve got it,” Knight replied, wisely.

Fat Philly was relegated to page seven of the Post, bounced from the front page when an oil truck flipped and burned on the George Washington Bridge.

“This guy’s a moron,” said August, tapping the paper.

Lucy Addison had put up coffee and sliced a pound cake her son brought.

W.E. wore a bathrobe over his pajamas. His stepson, in brown slacks and sienna turtleneck, sat in his mother’s seat at the table in a sunny kitchen that could barely accommodate two.

Steele leaned against the refrigerator. “He said…?”

“He told me not to worry,” August replied.

“About…?”

August shrugged. “I shook his hand and told him it was a terrible thing. He said ‘Don’t worry. It’s gonna be fine.’”

“Think he made you?” W.E. asked.

“You forget I’m half Sicilian,” August said. “We spoke Italian.”

Luther Addison managed a smile. The three old men came up through NYPD when black men comprised about two percent of the force. They knew how to use what little they had.

“As for you, Luther,” August said, “you run about the worse sit I’ve ever seen.” He reached for another slice of the pound cake. “I wouldn’t be surprised if you turn up in some TV footage. Circling, circling…”

“‘It’s gonna be fine,’” Hammer Steele repeated. “Meaning it falls on Luther?”

“Oh yeah. Especially since Joey Dalrymple showed up.”

Steele looked down at Luther. “Your partner.”

“And Andy Hill’s running buddy since the Academy,” August added.

“Andy Hill.” The dark-skinned Steele grimaced his distaste.

W.E. watched his friends. Marrying Hill and Dalrymple told him they were building to something.

“Somebody says Hill’s got history with Little Flaps,” August said.

“Who?” W.E. asked, his voice frail.

“Hammer.”

The Addison men turned to Henry Steele.

“The Genoveses say,” said Steele, who tapped an old source. “Little Flaps Ciccanti ripped off Hill.”

Luther let out a little cough. He said, “August 19, 1978. Aqueduct. Fat Philly’s crew, including Flaps, took down fourteen hundred dollars from a sixty-nine-year-old man who hit the trifecta for the first time in his life. Same afternoon Andy Hill claimed someone stole his wife’s mink out of the trunk of his car, which she parked at… Aqueduct.”

“No coincidence,” said August, who couldn’t decide if he found Addison ’s thoroughness annoying or amusing.

W.E. said, “If the UPS facility in Howard Beach gets ripped off, the Feds will think the Gambinos backed it.” He shook his head. “Fat Philly went to the Genoveses for protection?”

Steele nodded.

August said, “What a mook.”

Steele turned to young Addison. “Stand down,” he said. “This thing plays out. Fat Philly will flip any way he has to.”

Addison hesitated.

“Go ahead,” his stepfather whispered.

Leaning over his coffee cup, Luther Addison told them what else Knight delivered and how tests City College ran cleared him. “I think we can do this by the book,” he added

“Whose book?” August asked.

Rosemary Barone worked as a secretary at Christ Hospital, a sprawling brick complex across the Hudson in downtown Jersey City. Addison was told he’d find her sooner or later in sunlight, smoking two Newports at a time and cursing ex-husbands. Imagine a rusty nail come to life, Addison was advised. That’s Rosemary Flanagan Hill Barone.

“Yeah, and?” she said when Addison identified himself. He wore a gray turtleneck under a forest green corduroy jacket with gray elbow patches.

He went gentle. Jersey City had a huge African American population and he was betting she didn’t much like that: All the other smokers around her were white too. The black smokers were gathered at the curb maybe thirty feet away.

“I was wondering if I might have a word…”

“‘Have a word’? One? What kind?”

The white smokers tittered, their condescension sprinkled with uncertainty and quavering defiance.

He said, “It’s about your husband Andy.”

“Tell me he’s dead,” she said, scowling under a blond bouffant some twenty years out of date.

“No, he’s not-”

“Not? Wrong word.”

“It’s about your mink coat,” Addison continued. “The one that was stolen at Aqueduct.”

She let loose an ugly rattle Addison took for her laugh. “You think I look like I ever had a mink stole?”

“Andy said you did. He said you left in it your trunk-”

“I left a mink stole in the trunk of my car at the racetrack? Me?” She spit. “How much did he get for it?”

“The stole you never had?”

“From insurance, wise guy.”

Addison replied, and then she started spewing.

Twenty-five minutes later, her supervisor came looking for her.

“Call me,” she told Addison, as she followed the hardy black woman back inside. “I’m just getting started on that miserable pimple.”

Addison shot up in bed, certain the ringing phone meant his stepfather had passed. But someone had gotten his unlisted number, which he’d given only to his family, the Guardians, a couple of college buddies, and NYPD. Racial epithets mixed with profanity told him where the caller got it.

Wrapped in a robe, he went to his chair in the living room and listened to the traffic below on Columbus Avenue, trying to quell his anger. One o’clock and he knew he wasn’t going back to sleep. He checked on the baby, looked over the notes he made after talking to Hill’s ex, and then replayed the conversation he’d had with the old cops-the taciturn Steele, the jovial but vaguely dangerous August, and his stepfather, the reasoned, reliable W.E.