As they had been for the past twenty-two weeks, the grads were together at one very large table, passing frosty pitchers of beer around and accepting congratulations and words of encouragement and advice from well-wishers. Although the academy was run by the city of Sacramento, only seven of the fifty-two graduates were going to the Sacramento Police Department: eleven were going to the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department; fifteen others to other California police, sheriff’s, and different law-enforcement agencies. The remaining nineteen graduates had no positions waiting for them: They had paid their own way to attend the five-month program, half junior college, half boot-camp academy, hoping to be hired by one of the agencies sometime in the future. Needless to say, they took full advantage of the free drinks and aggressively buttonholed the highest-ranking officers they could find, hoping to meet an influential sergeant or administrator and make a favorable impression.

The target of most of the jokes and abuse that night was the honor grad, Paul Leo McLanahan. Every veteran cop wanted a piece of him, wanted the opportunity to see what the number one grad of the latest crop of “squeaks” (so named because of the sound of the leather of their brand-new Sam Browne utility belts) was made of. Paul did the one thing that raised the blood pressure of most of his tormentors: He was polite. He called them “sir” or “ma’am” or by their rank if he knew it. He gracefully extricated himself if he was in danger of being drawn into an argument-“So what do you think of the fucking chief?”-a drinking contest-“Stop sipping that beer, rookie, and have a bourbon with us like a real man!”-or an arm-wrestling match-“Hey, I’ll show you a good short guy can take a big guy any day!” When Paul entered an argument, it was to pull a friend away from the confrontation or to keep it from getting out of hand; when he walked away, he made it look to everyone as if he was on their side.

Paul had come around behind the bar to help Patrick and Wendy wash some mugs and shot glasses, and he saw his big brother grinning at him. “What?”

“You,” Patrick said. “Sometimes I can’t believe you’re the same kid who used to drop out of trees and ambush me or your sisters. You’re so laid back, so damned… what? Diplomatic.”

“That’s the main thing they taught us, Patrick-sometimes what you do in the first few seconds of a conflict, or even before you arrive on the scene, will determine the outcome,” Paul said, finishing the glasses and giving his sister-in-law an appreciated shoulder massage. “Go in pissed off, hard charging, and kick-ass, and everyone rises to the challenge and wants to kick ass too, and before you know it the fight’s on. Being polite takes the wind out of most guys’ sails-you call a guy ‘sir’ enough times and sound like you mean it, and he’ll go away from sheer boredom.”

“Nah. I’d just pull out my gun and shoot ‘im,” Patrick joked.

“That’s the absolute last option, bro,” Paul said seriously. “Dad told me that in thirty-two years on the force, he’d only been involved in a half-dozen shooting incidents, and he regretted firing every bullet even though he used it to protect his life or that of another cop. There are guys on the force who have never fired their weapons except at the range. I want to be one of those guys.”

“In this city? I doubt it,” Wendy said dryly. Wendy McLanahan was very close to term, but she didn’t show it at all-her belly pooched out only a little, which made it hard for most folks to believe she was due in less than three weeks. She wore preggie slacks and a baggy Victoria’s Secret silk blouse, but even without them she carried her baby close under well-conditioned stomach muscles and had no sign of a ponderous or waddling walk. She had let her reddish-brown hair grow long and straight; it curled seductively over her shoulder and nestled between her ample baby-ready breasts. “I do like your attitude better than your brother’s-but you have to remember, he’s been trained to drop bombs on folks for years.”

“Yes, I know-the SAC-trained baby-killer,” Paul said with a smile. “What was it you always said SAC stood for? Your target list, right?-‘schools and children.’ Hey, Cargo.” Paul grabbed a passing uniformed cop. “Cargo, meet my brother, Patrick, and his wife, Wendy. Patrick, Wendy, this is Craig LaFortier. We call him Cargo.” Patrick could see why-the guy was huge, at least six four and close to three hundred pounds. “Kicks butt in the Pig Bowl football game every year. He’s my FTO.”

Patrick and Wendy shook hands with LaFortier, the cop’s hand engulfing theirs. “I assume an FTO is the guy you’ll be riding with for the first few months?” Wendy asked.

“Yep,” said LaFortier in a deep, foghornlike voice. “It stands for…”

“ ‘Fucking training officer,’” Paul interjected.

“Field training officer,” LaFortier corrected him, with a scowl fierce enough to darken the entire waterfront. “And that better be the last time I ever hear that crack, rook, or you’ll be washing patrol cars at the South Station instead of riding in ‘em. Yes, Paul gets a little on-the-job training for six months. We start tomorrow night.”

“Tomorrow? You just graduated!” Patrick exclaimed. “They don’t give you an orientation or anything?”

“Normally, yes,” said LaFortier, “but my shift begins tomorrow, and I have off for Christmas, so instead of waiting two weeks, Paul gets to start right now. He’ll come in a couple of hours early and we’ll get him a locker, show him how to make coffee the way I like it, all that important stuff. But we need guys on the street.”

“So we heard,” Wendy said worriedly. “Seems like gangs and drugs are worse than ever here in Sacramento.”

“They’re bad everywhere, in every big city in America,” LaFortier responded, “but this new wave of drug activity has got us back on our heels. The hard stuff is back-LSD, heroin-but now homegrown junk like methamphetamines are exploding on the streets. And the competition between the criminal organizations is increasing too. Northern California is the collision point-it’s a natural nexus of white, black, Latino, Asian, and even European gangs. They’ve all found a home here, and the violence is bound to escalate.”

At the sight of Patrick’s face, LaFortier added hastily, “You don’t need to worry about Paul, Mr and Mrs McLanahan. He can handle it. He’s the rising star, the guy everyone’s watching. And he comes from good stock-the Sarge will be watching over him, I know it. He’ll do fine.”

As he was speaking, an eerie hush enveloped the tavern, as if all the air were being sucked out into space. All four of them turned. The chief of police of the city of Sacramento, Arthur Barona, was entering the bar, together with one of the department’s captains, Thomas Chandler, the commander of the Special Investigations Division.

Patrick was fascinated. In sixteen-plus years in the US Air Force, he had never seen anything quite like the open hostility that radiated from the street cops in that room. But if Barona noticed it as he made his way to the bar, he wasn’t letting on one bit.

He was a tall, powerfully built man in his early fifties, and had been the city’s chief of police for five years. He wore a dark suit instead of his chief’s uniform, a political judgment that attested to his administrative and political career background, first as a Dade County, Florida, prosecutor, then as a law-enforcement bureaucrat and consultant to a number of governors and to the US Department of Justice. It was no secret to anyone that being the police chief of a major metropolitan city was not Arthur Barona’s ultimate career goal. In fact, it was just a stepping-stone, a square-filler, a device to get some practical, on-the-street experience to flesh out his rйsumй for higher political office.