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face. “Relax. It’s got nothin’ to do with you being gay. Or friggin’ black, either. Although, I gotta say, either one would be enough to kill my mother.”
    Priscilla shook her anger away. “Are they gay?” she asked in tight tones. “Your girls?”
    “Not that I’m aware of,” he said.
    Now color came to her face beneath the cafe-au-lait skin tone. “Then what the fuck, Joe? You think I got some magic dust I sprinkle on their asses to switch ’em over?”
    He chuckled. “Whadda I know? But it don’t matter—like I said, I tell all my partners the same thing. Ask Mike if you don’t believe me. I just don’t want any cop sons-in-law. Guy cops, lesbian cops, cops from outer space, it don’t matter, no friggin’ cops. Period.”
    Priscilla slapped lightly at the wheel of the Chevy.
    “Another one! Another fuckin’ cop bigot like Karen’s mother.”
    Rizzo smiled and opened the glove compartment, digging out an unopened pack of cigarettes.
    “So sue me,” he said, tearing at the cellophane.

CHAPTER THREE

    THE FOLLOWING MORNING , Rizzo sat at his kitchen table, poking absently at a bowl of cornflakes. He had a busy day ahead: lunch at one with his ex-partner Mike McQueen, then another four-to-twelve night tour with Priscilla. The witnesses to the shooting—Cocca, Hermann, and Nunzio—would give their sworn statements at noon to the police administrative aide and day tour detectives at the Six-Two. The alleged flasher, Bruce Jacoby, might or might not show up at four, with or without his lawyer, and Rizzo and Jackson still needed to get to Lutheran to interview the shooting victim, Gary Tucci, and to visit the local bars as Priscilla suggested. Rizzo also had to consider another neighborhood canvass for additional witnesses or someone who could I.D. the dark pickup truck in which the shooter had fled.
    “Plus follow up on that shell casing,” he muttered aloud.
    “Talking to yourself, Daddy?” he heard.
    Turning, he saw his middle daughter, Jessica, enter the kitchen, a small book bag in her hand. Like her mother, Jessica stood five feet eight inches tall, lean with dark brown eyes, and long, thick brown hair.
    “Hey, honey,” he said. “Home already?”
    She shrugged and dropped the bag beside the table, bending to kiss Rizzo’s forehead and sighing.
    “They canceled my ten-fifteen. The professor was out soul searching, no doubt, and he couldn’t make it. I only have the two classes on Tuesdays, so here I am.” Twenty-one-year-old Jessica was in her senior year, commuting to and from her parents’ Brooklyn home to Manhattan’s Hunter College.
    Rizzo used his foot to push a chair back from the table.
    “My good luck,” he said. “I get to see you a little.” He thrust his jaw toward the chair. “Sit,” he said. “You want coffee? I just made it.”
    Jessica dropped into the seat and smiled at her father. “Are you serious? It’s almost eleven o’clock, Daddy, I’m already swimming in Starbucks.”
    “Yeah,” he said. “Starbucks—aka Maxwell House, only four bucks a cup.”
    “I know, Daddy,” she said, rolling her eyes.
    “Actually,” Rizzo said, growing serious, “it’s good you’re here. I really need to talk to you.”
    “Oh?” she asked. “ ’Bout what?”
    “About your sister,” he said.
    Jessica wrinkled her brow. “Okay. Which sister?”
    “Your kid sister, Carol. I need you to talk to her.”
    “You want me to give her the birds and the bees talk, Daddy?” she asked. “ ’Cause I hate to break it to you . . .”
    Rizzo shook his head. “No—birds and bees I can handle myself,” he said.
    “Oh, really,” she answered, laughing. “Since when?”
    Rizzo looked puzzled as he replied. “Whaddya talkin’ about? I raised three daughters, didn’t I?”
    “Yes, but none of us ever heard any s-e-x talk from you.”
    “Well, maybe. But I still handled it. I had your mother tell you.”
    Jessica’s laughter returned. “And that’s