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predictable destination. The picturesque locale of thatched huts and palm trees bore the threat of mosquitoes, malaria, and the absence of modern medical care. During his mission, the young priest contracted a case of tuberculosis so serious it sunk to the bone. Every couple of months, he would return to the States to recuperate at Saint Andrew’s. Once well enough, he would travel back to some remote island to resume his work. Emmett had watched him grow paler and more frail with each passing visit. In time, he ceased to see him altogether. The tuberculosis had killed the young priest. Emmett couldn’t recall a funeral, however the other novices whispered about his sacrifice with reverence. His story was as much heroic myth as a cautionary tale. That was the Jesuit way. To toil and not seek rest. To labor and not ask for a reward. To give and not count the cost.
    Jesuits called themselves “Ours.” Everyone else was an Extern, an outsider. The teenage boys Emmett encountered at Saint Andrew’s hungered to be members of Ours, to be a part of something bigger than themselves, whereas Emmett found himself constantly tabulating the price of what being one of Ours would cost him.
    Cost was a concept Emmett had ample time to contemplate from the Records Room. Newark was a world away from the South Pacific, but like the dying priest, Emmett kept going back to the Fourth Precinct, day in and day out. Penance for past sins, the compulsion had seeped into his bones, and every second he spent in the basement, an Extern from the force, was a second spent not fulfilling his duty. Thoughhe had renounced a life of service to the church, he had taken on a life of service to the city, an act that would have made Saint Casimir proud, yet no sacrifice Emmett made or could ever make would cancel out his wrongdoing from his conscience. The ever-present tug of an invisible chain around his leg was getting tighter and tighter even as he got into bed and uttered another silent prayer that sleep would find him as it had Edward, then Emmett could forget too.

FIVE
    The night’s events had made the front page of the Thursday morning Star Ledger , though not the headline. Sandwiched between news from Vietnam and a piece about the clash between Israelis and Arabs, the article started off with the caption, “Cops and firemen attacked, stores looted.” The name of the cabdriver, Ben White, was never mentioned. Neither were the names of the officers who had beaten him. The story centered on the dozens of arrests and quoted figures estimating the losses at approximately two thousand dollars, substantial but not irreparable. The police were portrayed as heroes for suppressing the scuffle as quickly as they did, and Director Sloakes was lauded for his command. The word riot was printed only once.
    Edward sat across from Emmett as he read the paper, his wheelchair pulled up to the kitchen table. He poked at the toast Emmett had made for him, uninterested in food. The rustling of the newsprint roused him from his stupor.
    “Was it as bad as they’re making it out to be?” he asked, more to have something to say than because he was curious. Edward hadn’t brought up the bottle of Jim Beam. His bloodshot eyes and the bruise on his forehead from the fall said everything short of an apology. The realization that all of the alcohol in the house was gone had yet to set in.
    “Worse,” Emmett said.
    Whether the papers were willing to acknowledge it or not, the beating of the cabdriver was a wick in the growing powder keg that was the Central Ward. That April, police had gone after picketers peacefully protesting at the Clinton Hill Meat Market. In June came the scandal regarding the potential appointment of James Callaghan to the Board of Education over the better-qualified candidate, Wilber Parker. Callaghan hadn’t gone to college while Parker was the first black man to become a certified public accountant in the state of New Jersey. The residents of