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sight for sore eyes.”
    “That’s what eye drops are for.”
    “What brings you to our humble abode?”
    “Sullivan said I had to come,” I said.
    He put a hand on his cheek.
    “He did, did he? Follow me,” he said, turning and walking back toward his office. I followed.
    His office had been a dump when I first saw it, and over the years had gone downhill from there. The piles of paper on his desk were only distinguished from the piles on the floor by a difference in elevation. He sat in the desk chair and waved me into the only other chair you could actually sit in. Only Jackie Swaitkowski was a bigger slob, which defined their sole patch of cluttered common ground.
    Eddie lay on a low pile of periodicals, local newspapers, and law enforcement trade journals after letting out a sigh that sounded more like acquiescence than satisfaction.
    Ross offered me a cigarette, which I turned down. I looked around at the surrounding combustibles and took note of available exits.
    “So you really gave it up,” said Ross. “The smoking thing.”
    “I’ve confined reducing life expectancy to straight vodka and watching professional basketball.”
    “My dad smoked till the day he died, at eighty-five. Got hit by a car.”
    “The luck of the fathers doesn’t always descend upon the sons,” I said.
    “You ought to hope that’s true, if you don’t mind me saying.”
    He meant that my father had been murdered in a restroom at the back of a crummy old neighborhood bar in the Bronx. Beaten to death, though the damage to his knuckles showed he didn’t go easily.
    “I don’t mind, though I don’t like talking about it.”
    “Who would. Speaking of untimely death, what’s your take on Alfie Aldergreen?” he asked.
    “No idea. Nowhere near enough data.”
    “I forgot. You’re Mr. Empiricist.”
    “You didn’t forget. You know I never speculate on things I know nothing about. Neither do you. Sometimes we have testable hypotheses. Tracks to follow. But not with this one. Not yet. Clean slate.”
    “Tabula rasa.”
    “So why all the questions?”
    “I’m the chief of police. They pay me to ask questions.”
    I breathed in his cigarette smoke and fought the powerful urge to ask for one of my own. I’d quit the year before, and this moment confirmed what I already knew. Quit all you want; you’re never free of it.
    “What about you?” I asked. “What can you tell me? Not that the chief of police has to tell me anything,” I added, sparing him from saying it himself.
    “We got nothing,” he said, pushing back in his battered desk chair and sucking in a huge drag of smoke. “I can’t stop you and Jackie from sticking your noses into this thing. We know that from past experience. You’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. So let’s try something different this time. You guys can go to places it’s hard for us to go. But we’re the police, and can do things you can’t do. If we cooperate, if you communicate as you go, and tie us in as a resource rather than an adversary, it could mean a swift and just resolution to this tragedy.”
    That really was a first. Ross Semple, undisputed master of Southampton law enforcement, asking me and Jackie, unrepentant meddlers in police affairs, to let them in on our investigation, before we even had one.
    The role reversal was so startling and abrupt, it almost wrenched my neck. Though I tried not to let it show.
    He flung himself back in his chair and took another huge draw on his cigarette, causing the burning tobacco to outrun the paper, and consequently dropping a large dollop of glowing ash on his polyester pants. He brushed if off as well as he could, but I could imagine his dry cleaner confronting a constellation of irreparable pinprick holes.
    “Sure, Ross. Whatever we find out, you find out. I’d like it if Joe Sullivan stayed on the case. Your other guy is a little competitive. But that’s your call.”
    “Joe’s on it,” he said. “And me, too. My brother was