Kevin hadn't been a lot of a help, when Agnes McFadden had tried to talk Charley out of quitting the gas works and going on the cops. He had taken Charley's side, agreeing with him that a pension when you were forty-five was a hell of a lot better than a pension you got only when you were sixty, if you lived that long.

"Christ," he said, "Charley could retire atforty-five years old, still a young man, and go get another job, and every month there would be a check from the city for as long as he lived."

And he added that if Charley didn't want to work for the gas works, that was his business.

Mr. and Mrs. McFadden, however, were in agreement concerning Charley' s duties within the police department. They didn't like that one damned bit, even if they tried (with not much success) to keep it to themselves.

He went around looking like a goddamned bum. Facts are facts. Agnes hadn't let Kevin go to work in clothes like that, even way back when he didn't have much seniority and was working underground. God only knew what people in the neighborhood thought Charley was doing for a living.

Not that he was around the neighborhood much. They hardly ever saw him, they couldn't remember the last time he had gone to church with them, and he never even went to Flo amp; Danny's Bar amp; Grill with his father anymore.

Theyunderstood, of course, when he told them he had been assigned to the Narcotics Squad, in a "plainclothes" assignment, and that the reason he dressed like a bum was you couldn't expect to catch drug guys unless you looked like them. It wasn't like arresting somebody for speeding. And they believed him when he said it was an opportunity, that if he did good, he could get promoted quickly, and that there was practically unlimited overtime right now.

So far as Agnes McFadden was concerned, overtime was fine, but there was also such a thing as too much of a good thing. Charley had had his own phone put in; and two, three, and sometimes even more nights a week, he would no sooner get home, usually at some ungodly hour after they had gone to bed, than it would ring, and it would be his partner calling; and she would hear him running down the stairs and slamming the front door (he'd been doing that since he was five years old) and then she would hear him starting up the battered old car-a Volkswagenhe drove and tearing off down the street.

Maybe, Agnes McFadden thought, if he was areal cop, and wore a uniform, and shaved, and had his hair cut; and rode around in a prowl car giving out tickets, going to accidents, and doingreal cop-type things; it wouldn't be so bad; but she didn't like it at all, now, and if he wouldn't admit it, neither did his father.

Charley was twenty-five, and it was time for him to be thinking about getting married and starting a family. No decent girl would want to be seen with him in public, the way he looked (and sometimes smelled) and no girl in her right mind would marry somebody she couldn't count on to come home for supper, or who would jump out of bed in the middle of the night every time the phone rang. Not to mention being in constant danger of getting shot or stabbed or run over with a car by some nigger or spic or dago full of some kind of drug.

Officer Charles McFadden, who had been engaged in dipping a piece of toast into the yolk of his fried eggs, looked up at his father.

"Pop, ask me how many stars are in the sky?"

His father, who had been checking the basketball scores in the sports section of thePhiladelphia Daily News, eyed him suspiciously, and took another forkful of his own eggs.

"It's not dirty," Charley McFadden said, reading his father's mind.

"Okay," Kevin McFadden said. "How many stars are in the sky?"

"All of them," Charley McFadden said, pleased with himself.

It took Kevin a moment, but finally he caught on, and laughed.

"Wiseass," he said.

"Chip off the old block," Charley said.

"I don't understand," Agnes McFadden said.

"The only place, Mom, stars is, is in the sky," Charley explained.

"Oh," she said, not quite sure why that was funny. "There's some more home fries in the pan, if you want some."

Charley had come in in the wee hours, and slept until, probably, he smelled the coffee and the bacon, and then come down. It was now quarter after nine.

"No, thanks, Mom," Charley said. "I got to get on my horse."

"You goin' somewhere?" Agnes McFadden asked when Charley stood up and carried his plate to the sink. "Here, give me that. Neither you or your father can be trusted around a sink with dishes."

"I got to change the oil in the car," Kevin McFadden said. "And I bought some stuff that's supposed to clean out the carburetor. Afterward, I thought maybe you and me could go to Flo and Danny's and hoist one."

"I can't, Pop," Charley said. "I got to go to work."

"You didn't get in until four this morning-" Agnes McFadden said.

"Three, Mom," Charley interrupted. "It was ten after three when I walked in the door."

"Threethen," she granted. "And you got to go back? Your father has the day off, and it would be good for you to spend some time together. And fun, too. You go down to Flo and Danny's and when I finish cleaning up around here, I'll come down and have a glass of beer with the two of you."

"Mom, I got to go to work."

"Why?" Agnes McFadden flared. "What I would like to know is what's so important that it can't wait for a couple of hours, so that you can spend a little time with your family."

She was more hurt, Charley saw, than angry.

"Mom, you see on the TV where the police officer, Captain Moffitt, got shot?"

"Sure. Of course I did. What's that got to do with you?"

"There was two of them," Charley said. "Captain Moffitt shot one of them, and the other got away."

"I asked, so what's that got to do with you?"

"I think I know where I can catch him," Charley said.

"Mr. Big Shot," his mother said, heavily sarcastic. "There's eight thousand cops-I know 'cause I seen it in the newspaper-there's eight thousand cops, and you, you been on the force two years, and all you are is a patrolman, though you'd never know it to look at you, and you 're going to catch him!"

Charley's face colored.

"Well, let me just tellyou something, Mom, if you don't mind," he said, angrily. "I'mthe officer who made the identification of the girl who shot Captain Moffitt, and those eight thousand cops you're talking about areall looking for a guy named Gerald Vincent Gallagher, because I was able to identify him as a known associate of the girl."

"No shit?" Kevin McFadden asked, impressed.

"Watch your tongue," Agnes McFadden snapped. "Just because you work in a sewer doesn't mean you have to sound like one!"

"You bet your ass," Charley said to his father. "And I got a pretty good idea where the slimy little bastard's liable to be!"

"I won't tolerate that kind of dirty talk from either one of you, I just won't put up with it," Agnes said.

"Agnes, shut up!" Kevin McFadden said. "Charley, you're not going to do anything dumb, are you? I mean, what the hell, why take a chance on anything if you don't have to?"

"What I'm going to do, Pop, is find him. If I can. Hang around where I think he might be, or will show up. If I see him, or if he shows up there, I'll get Hay-zus to go with me."

Officer Jesus Martinez, a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican, was Officer Charley McFadden's partner. He pronounced his Christian name as it was pronounced in Spanish, and Charley McFadden had taken to using that pronounciation when discussing him with his mother. Agnes McFadden had made it plain that she was uncomfortable with Jesus as somebody's first name. Hay-zus was all right. It was like Juan or Alberto or some other strange spic name.

"I wishyou wore a uniform," Agnes McFadden said.