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Something’s
     prefrontal cortex, but they hadn’t really been shot, and most of them knew it.
    But blood is blood, so the medics set about going around checking each one, picking slivers of glass out of them, wiping them
     down, patching them up.
    I sat back, and tried to breathe.
    Who knows? I mean, who the fuck knows, you know?

CHAPTER 3
    Ken Ridlin
    Inside the 1812 Club
    Thursday, January 9
    It is the last night of my last shift on the last rung up the ladder back to Homicide when the call comes in.
    “Attention: All Units.”
    I am thinking about Narcotics, about how I hate it, about how I am trying to claw my way out of it. I am thinking how I am
     almost there, just at the lip, about to shimmy over the edge, and my first thought is—oh, no, not another idiotic drug bust.
    The thing is, most dopers are too stoned to stay out of trouble. You might say, it’s a victimless crime, they’re only hurting
     themselves, what’s the point of locking them up? Won’t get any argument from me, in principle. But in reality, they throw
     themselves in front of the cops. Guy goes to score some blow, he’s in a hurry, so he leaves his car parked in front of a hydrant,
     and the badge on the beat has no choice but to ticket him and toss him, and oh, is that a crack pipe in your pocket or are
     you just happy to see me? Or that pothead basketball player who was in the papers a while back. Going on a road trip, has
     to bring his half-ounce of weed with him, because you just know there’s no dope anywhere in New York or Atlanta or L.A. And
     he has to wrap it up for safekeeping. In aluminum foil. Which even the assholes at the airport can’t help but notice, first
     when he tries to walk it through the metal detector—duh—and then when he puts it into one of those little bins and sends it
     through the X-ray.
    What are you gonna do? It goes with the territory.
    So my first thought when the call comes in is, these junkies are going to get me killed on the last night I have to deal with
     them. After all I am going through to get back, it’s all going to stop in some nasty alley with some filthy mook who can’t
     stop sniffling, can’t aim a weapon well enough to shoot the wall behind me, but who is wasted enough to drop it on the ground
     and have it go off and kill me by accident.
    But it isn’t that. It’s:
    “Shots Fired, Possible Homicide, 1812 North Lincoln.”
    And then I have to listen to it again. Because I remember this address—this is a club I used to know, from back in the day.
     And because it is only six blocks away. And because I am not a homicide detective yet, not until midnight. And so I am thinking—will
     I piss somebody off for poaching on his turf before I even get on the job? Thinking—will I somehow manage to screw up a simple
     crime scene and give them second thoughts before they have time to think their first ones? Thinking—how can this go wrong
     on me, just when I need something to go right? Maybe I can drive around, let a couple hours pass. Maybe the radio is not working
     in the storm we are having here. Maybe I am out getting a cup of coffee and I’m not hearing it.
    And I am thinking all this when the car suddenly glides up in front of 1812 North Lincoln and I am applying the brakes and
     opening the door and clipping the badge to my lapel. And by then it is too late to think of anything because here I am. My
     blue lights are on and I do not know when I turned them on, and a squad room full of uniforms is standing right behind me,
     looking at me the way the linemen look at the quarterback in the huddle—ready, hopeful, expectant.
    It is chaos inside, people buzzing all around, throwing on their coats, trying to get out. All except for the band; most of
     them are standing in front of what used to be the window.
    I flash the tin, summon up the big voice, say, “All right, everybody take a seat where you are and we’ll get to you as soon
     as we can. No one leaves until your