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that would destroy the average Russian soldier, a brother whose fists clenched when I was within smelling range, and a few interesting encounters.
    Phil did not turn around murderously. He didn’t turn around at all but answered calmly, “You know how old I’ll be at the end of this week?”

    â€œFifty,” I said, leaning back against the wall as far from him as I could get.
    â€œFifty,” he agreed, taking another sip. “Half a century. And you’re only a few years behind.”
    â€œPhysically,” I agreed.
    â€œPhysically you’re over the century mark,” he grunted. “How many times you been shot?”
    â€œThree,” I said. “And you?”
    â€œFour, counting the war,” he answered.
    â€œWell,” I sighed, “it’s been nice talking about the good old days, but I’ve got a client, and some groceries to pick up. I’ll needle you once or twice about Ruth and the boys. You throw something at me, tell me what you want, and I’ll be going.”
    That should have gotten him, but it didn’t. What was worse was that he turned around with a sad near-smile on his face and his scarred sausage fingers engulfing his cup. His hair was steel gray and cut short as always. His cop gut hung over his belt and his tie was loose around the collar of his size-sixteen-and-a-half neck.
    â€œI got the word Monday,” Phil said, looking down at the dregs in his cup and shaking it around a little. “I made captain. I’m moving down the hall this afternoon.”
    Four wisecracks came like shadows into my mind but I let them keep going and said, “That’s great Phil. You deserve it.”
    Phil nodded in agreement. “I paid for it,” he said. “I paid.”
    And so, I thought, did a stadium-load of criminals and people who just got in Phil’s way. For the first ten years of being a cop, Phil had tried to single-handedly and double-footedly smash every lawbreaker unlucky enough to come within his smell. He kicked, bent, broke, twisted bodies and the law, and gained a reputation for violence I could have told Jimmy Fiddler about when I was ten. The second ten years, after he made lieutenant, had been like the first decade but sour. Crime hadn’t stopped. It had gotten bigger and worse. If Phil had paid attention to the books our old man had given him from time to time, he would have known all this from Jaubert or the cop in Crime and Punishment , but Phil was a dreamer with a pencil-thin, overworked wife, three kids, one of whom was sick most of the time, and a mortgage.
    â€œSeidman’s moving in here,” he went on. “He’s up for lieutenant next month. Your pal Cawelti might move up too.”
    â€œThat will make me feel safer at nights,” I said.
    â€œEnough shit,” Phil said, putting down his coffee cup and pulling his tie off. “I’m never going higher than captain. There’s no place higher for me to go. So, no more damned ties. No more fooling around.”
    â€œYou’ve been fooling around all these years?” I said, looking into a grin I didn’t like, a grin that made me feel a twinge of sympathy for the unknown offender who next came within the grasp of my brother.
    â€œEleanor Roosevelt,” he said, throwing the tie on the desk. I think it was a tie I had once given him, picked up as a partial payment from Hy of Hy’s Clothes For Him for finding Hy’s nephew, who had departed with Hy’s weekly cashbox and was spending it freely in a San Bernardino bar when I found him. Hy had a bad habit of losing his relatives and a worse habit of paying me off in unwanted clothes when I found them.
    â€œEleanor Roosevelt,” I repeated sagely.
    â€œThat’s what I want to talk to you about,” Phil said, leaning forward, his fists on the desk. The pose was decidedly simian, I noted, an observation I managed to keep from sharing with