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found myself getting increasingly nervous and agitated, till at last I had to get to my feet and pace up and down the hall to work off the tension. I tried to hold my movements to a casual stroll but kept going instead at a faster and faster stride, then abruptly breaking it back to the stroll and building all over again, so that I’m sure I must have looked like a rookie out there practicing how to walk a beat.
    It was only a few minutes I waited, but it seemed an hour. The same two detectives came out, and the one who’d tried to chat with me in the car said, “Captain Linther wants to see you now.” He was still cold, because of the way I’d acted before.
    I got to my feet and they led me through the bullpen, a long bleak room lined with small square wooden desks, each with its telephone, most now unoccupied. One man in shirt sleeves was pecking at an old typewriter in the corner, another at one of the desks was murmuring into a phone.
    At the far end was the door marked CAPTAIN . They didn’t come in with me, but stood aside for me to enter and then shut the door after me.
    I was now in a small square office done in the same color scheme as the hall. A large wooden desk, scrupulously neat but battered by age, dominated the room. The other furniture—sofa, wooden chairs, table—all were the same ancient vintage, except for a gleaming new gray metal filing cabinet in the corner. On the walls were framed photographs of the President, the current Mayor, and other less recognizable faces.
    Two men were in the room, both seated, both in civilian clothing, both in their fifties. The one on the sofa was lean and rangy, with thick gray hair and a heavily lined pale face. The one behind the desk—this would be Captain Linther—was a balding bulky man who obviously had heard the story of my being thrown off the force; he looked at me with apparent distaste and said, “So you’re Tobin.”
    I said nothing, because there was nothing to say.
    He turned his head to the side, saying, “This is Captain Driscoll, Twenty-seventh Squad.”
    I said, “How do you do?” and Captain Driscoll nodded.
    Captain Linther said, “Captain Driscoll wants to talk to you about a murder case in his precinct you’re involved in.” He turned his head again, said, “Well, he’s all yours,” and got to his feet. “I’ll be down the hall.”
    Captain Driscoll thanked him, waited till Captain Linther was out of the office, and then looked at me and said, “Sit down, Tobin.”
    “Thank you.” I sat on a wooden chair not far from him.
    He took out a pipe and a dark leather pouch. Watching his hands fill the pipe, he said, “You’re a witness in that double killing in my precinct.”
    “I was there, yes.”
    He glanced at me, then back at pouch and pipe. “Why were you there?”
    “Robin Kennely asked me to come. She’s a relative of mine, second cousin.”
    “Why did she ask you?” He put the pouch away and looked at me directly.
    I said, “A plainclothesman had been giving her friends at that coffee house a bad time. They didn’t know if he wanted to be bought or what, so she asked me to have a talk with him.”
    He nodded heavily, and put the pipe in his mouth, and began to pat himself for matches. “I still have one question in my mind,” he said.
    I took matches from my pocket and extended them to him. Because he wanted me to, I asked, “What’s that?”
    “Thank you,” he said, taking the matches. He lit one, and between puffs on his pipe he said, “It seems to me, you’re accusing, one of my men, of trying to get a bribe.” He shook the match out, leaned forward to drop it into an ashtray on Captain Linther’s desk, sat back and looked at me again. “Do you have any evidence to back up this accusation?”
    “I should have known,” I said.
    He looked puzzled. “You should have known what?”
    “I’ve been away from the force too long,” I said. “Otherwise I’d have realized you’d have to come to me for