“Exactly. You’re a pretty smart guy, Teddy,” I said. “Makes me glad the Pittston cops never found out about that time in high school when you–”

“Oh, go fuck yourself, Stan.”

“I tried that once – threw out my back something awful.”

I reset the alarm clock for half an hour before sunset and went back to sleep. If I’d known what was waiting for me, I would’ve just stayed awake, exhaustion be damned.

I was chasing Patton Wilson, who looked the same as the last time I’d seen him – iron-gray hair, tan, slim build. He ran pretty damn well, too, for somebody in his sixties. I pursued the bastard all over Scranton, but it was a Scranton without people except the two of us – deserted streets, abandoned cars, all the buildings silent and dark. There were storm clouds above us with big, dark thunderheads. I was kind of amazed at my ability to keep up with Wilson for so long, but also frustrated because I wasn’t gaining on him. He stayed about fifty feet ahead of me. He couldn’t seem to find the speed to pull away, but I wasn’t closing the gap, either. Fifty feet between us, all over town. Then Wilson started taunting me, throwing words back over his shoulder like mud balls.

“You’ll never catch me, Markowski! You’re too old, too slow, and too stupid!”

“I almost got your ass last time, in that warehouse!” I yelled. As devastating retorts go, it left a lot to be desired.

“Close only counts in horseshoes, you Polack cocksucker!”

I’d read that Wilson had gone to some fancy college years ago. Harvard, Dartmouth, one of those places. Apparently it hadn’t helped him develop a refined vocabulary.

“Know why you’ll lose, Markowski? Rules! You have to follow all those stupid cop rules, and I don’t. I do what I want, when I want, to whom I want.”

At least, he’d known enough to use “whom”. A point for the psychopath. It occurred to me that Wilson was starting to sound like a James Bond villain, and I wished Karl was here to see it – he gets a kick out of that stuff.

He was right about the rules, though – damn his rich, crazy ass. But I was finally starting to run out of steam, and my lungs were burning. I’d have to stop soon, and Wilson would get clean away and finish his plans to get control of my city. One of the rules cops have to follow is that you can’t shoot a fleeing suspect, if he’s unarmed. You’re supposed to catch and subdue him “using nonlethal means,” as the manual puts it.

Well, fuck the manual – and fuck the rules, too. I reached under my jacket to draw the Beretta from my hip holster. And the holster was empty.

Ahead, Wilson came to a sudden stop and whirled to face me. He was holding my gun. “This what you’re looking for?” he said with a smirk. “Then, by all means, let me return it to you – one bullet at a time.”

He cocked the weapon and aimed it right in the middle of my face. His expression said, “I win again, sucker. I always win.” Then he squeezed the trigger.

The alarm woke me up before I had the chance to die.

I sat on the edge of the bed for a few minutes, trying to shake what was left of that fucking dream out of my brain. Then I got up and checked my email. Teddy hadn’t let me down. The document attached to his message was exactly what I’d asked him for, and I started printing it – all ninety-four pages’ worth.

Over breakfast, I told Christine about the plan to pass on the news about Phil Slattery’s verbal indiscretion to the Times-Tribune.

“That ought to have him spitting blood over his morning paper,” she said.

“I hope so,” I said. “Karl really wants to be the one to do it – maybe I should let him.”

“Why’s he so eager?”

“He thinks if he leaks the story, he can get the paper to refer to him as ‘Deep Fang’.”

She chuckled, then took a sip from her cup of Type O. “Deep Fang – if that isn’t the name of some porno film, it should be.”

“What do you know about porno films?” Sometimes it’s hard to stop being a parent.

“Me?” She touched the fingertips of one hand to her chest, like some Southern belle in the movies. “I don’t know a blessed thing about such matters, Daddy. I’m as pure as the virgin snow.” She gave me a wicked grin. “Or I was – until I drifted.”

I decided this wasn’t a topic I wanted to explore with my daughter, so I said, “Well, Slattery drifted, too – with some help from Karl.”

“Think he’s likely to drift far enough to sink his own flotilla?”

“Flotilla?”

She shrugged. “Just preserving the metaphor.”

“No, that won’t sink him – not all by itself,” I said. “Fortunately, I have only begun to fuck with him.”

“Good one, John Paul Jones,” she said. “Are those the devilish doings you referred to last night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Tell me,” she said.

So I did. It took quite a while.

When I was done, she sat there and looked at me for several seconds. “I knew you could be a tough son of a bitch, Sergeant – you have to be, in your job. But this kind of ruthlessness is something I haven’t seen in you before. I’m not sure I like it.”

“Yeah, well, extraordinary times demand extraordinary measures. Somebody said that once, although I forget who.”

“No, don’t hide behind clichés. That’s for cheap politicians – and whatever else you are, you’re no cheap politician.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m happy about it? That I rubbed my hands together and cackled fiendishly when the idea came to me, like some fucking mad scientist in the movies?”

She shook her head slowly. “I know you better than that. It’s just that…”

“What?”

“I don’t get to look myself in the mirror anymore,” she said. “But you do – every damn day. Question is, will you still be able to do that, after this shit you’re talking about goes down? Always assuming you can make it work, that is.”

I rubbed one hand over my face, slowly. “I don’t know, honey. I really don’t. But I do know this much – I won’t be able to look myself in the mirror again if I let this city go right down the fucking tubes, without doing everything I can to stop it. And I mean everything.”

The mug she’d been drinking from had left circles of moisture on the table. She traced each one with her fingertip slowly, as if she had all the time in the world. Then she looked up and said, “Well, if that’s the way it is, Sergeant, then all I can say is – get out there and kick some fucking ass.”

This time, I was the one who’d suggested the Brass Shield Bar and Grill as a meeting place. My motivation was basically the same one that had brought Louis Loquasto here the first time – safety, but a different kind of safety. Before, Loquasto had wanted to be close to all these off-duty cops as protection against the Delatassos’ bombs and bullets. Now, I wanted to be seen talking to him in here, because nobody in his right mind would even think about engaging in a criminal conspiracy while surrounded by all these guys wearing badges. At least, that’s what I planned to say to Internal Affairs, if it ever came to that – and it might.

We’d agreed to meet at eight o’clock, an hour before my shift was due to start. I figured that would be plenty of time – after all, how long does it really take to light a fuse?

The consigliere was punctual, sliding into the booth just as the clock over the bar reached the top of the hour. The room was full of the buzz of about two dozen half-drunk cops having what passed for conversation; I had to lean forward so he could hear me, and maybe that was just as well. I nodded toward the glass resting on his side of the table. “I ordered you a bourbon on the rocks, like you had last time. Don’t drink it if you don’t want to – it’s just for show.”