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he was assigned to a case, he’d be
on it, day and night.” He laughed. “Day and night, night and day. Pretty funny.”
    I smiled but didn’t say anything. I don’t think he expected me to.
    “Anyway, Charlie was plainclothes, but he was just itching to be a detective. And if things
hadn’t changed, I can guarantee that he would have had the gold badge as soon as they had an
opening in the squad. Charlie Welles was quite a cop.”
    He turned to me. “Yeah, Charlie, I’m at Uptown District station now. Detective Sergeant
with the murder squad.”
    “Interesting work.”
    “Very,” Holstein said, flashing a shark-like grin. “Rules and regs aren’t as restrictive now as
they were back in the day. You zero in on a suspect, and you know you’re right, you do pretty
much anything you need to, make an arrest, close the case. We’re very...results-oriented these
days.”
    “That must make things easier,” I said, turning and walking to my desk.
    “Easier, but not easy,” Holstein said, following me. “Still have to figure out who did it.”
    I sat down and Holstein took one of the chairs in front of the desk. “You always had a knack
for that, Ray,” I said.
    “Yeah, I had a real nose for the bad guys,” Holstein said. “Still do, as a matter of fact.”
    He looked over his shoulder. “So Burt, after the war, we’re all in the camp, right? Camp
Delta-5, just outside the city. And it’s pretty fucking miserable, you know? Living in barracks,
shitty food, marginal sanitation, and the occasional midnight run from the guards looking for a
little yum-yum. Not the kind of lifestyle you’d stick with if you had any kind of a choice, right?”
    Holstein looked back at me. “Then one day a recruiter comes around. Somebody up the line
has decided to close the camps, let people go home. But they need experienced cops. They want
to rebuild the police department, get things back to normal, you know? Sounded pretty good.
Get back to work, doing what we were doing, and in the process get the hell out of Delta-5. I
mean, who could turn down a deal like that?”
    I raised my hand and smiled. “That would be me.”
    “That’s right,” Holstein said, pointing across the desk. “This same Charlie Welles, the go-getter, said no way. There were four guys from the 83 rd Street detective unit in Delta-5, and three
of us figured it was a pretty good deal. Even without the Peter Pan stuff, live forever, never grow
old. But not Charlie. Old Charlie here was happy enough where he was.”
    “Not so much where I was, Ray,” I said. “Just what I was.”
    Holstein looked around. “Well, in the end, you didn’t do too bad for yourself,
buddy. Nice job, somebody to keep an eye out for you, make sure nothing unfortunate happens
to you. It’s not the police department, but I guess it’s an honest living.”
    “I get by,” I replied. “So what are you doing in this part of town, Ray? Come to see
Joshua?”
    “Yeah, thought we might stop by and say hello,” Holstein said. “We had a little incident
uptown this morning . You hear about it?”
    “Might have heard something. Not my business, so I didn’t pay a lot of
attention.”
    Holstein leaned back in the chair. Behind him, Martinez stood and walked over to the desk.
I realized he was short. Really short. Maybe five feet tall, if that. He sat down beside his
partner.
    “You were in the Uptown District station today, correct?” Martinez asked.
    “That’s right.”
    “What was the reason for your visit?”
    “Working a case. Missing person found herself dead uptown. I was
making arrangements for the family.”
    Martinez nodded and pulled a small notebook from his jacket. Looking down, he said,
“While you were there, you threatened two members of the police department, correct? A
Lieutenant Iverson and a morgue attendant named Wilkowitz.”
    “I didn’t get the morgue attendant’s name. I’ll take your word for it.”
    “You threatened them,