NEIGHBORHOOD HERO CHARLEY MCFADDEN."

"Looks fine, Mr. Amarazzo," Charley said. "Thank you."

"'Mister Amarazzo'?" Big Tony replied. "You sore at me or what? We haven't been friends since God only knows how long?"

Charley, who could not think of a response, smiled at Big Tony's reflection in the mirror.

"And now we're gonna give you a shave that'll turn your chin into a baby's bottom," Big Tony said.

"Oh, I don't want a shave," Charley protested.

"You can't go to Saint Dominic's needing a shave," Big Tony said, as he pushed Charley back in the chair and draped his face in a hot towel, "and don't worry, it's on the house. My privilege."

Ninety seconds later, as Charley wondered how long (he had never had a barbershop shave before) Big Tony was going to keep the towels on his face, someone else came into the barbershop.

"You know who's in the chair, under the towels?" Charley heard Big Tony say. "Charley McFadden, that's who. You seen theBulletin?"

"I seen it," an unfamiliar voice said. "I'll be goddamned."

Charley had folded his hands over his stomach. He was startled when his right hand was picked up, and vigorously shaken by two hands.

"Good for you, Charley," the voice said. "I was just telling the wife, when we seen the paper, that if there was more cops like you, and more shitasses killed like the one you killed, Philly'd be a hell of a lot better off. We're all proud of you, boy."

"I knew all along," Charley heard Big Tony say, "that Charley was a cop. I couldn't say anything, of course."

When Big Tony pulled the hot towel off, and started to lather Charley's face, there were three other men from the neighborhood standing behind the chair, waiting to shake his hand.

It was a pleasant spring morning, and the Payne family was having breakfast outside, on a flagstone patio. The whole family, for the first time in a long time, was all home at once. Foster J. Payne, twenty-five, who looked very much like his father, had come home from Cambridge, where he had just completed his second year at Harvard Law; and Amelia Alice "Amy" Payne, twenty-seven, who had three years before-the youngest in her Johns Hopkins class-earned the right to append "M.D." after her name, had just completed her residency in psychiatry at the Louisiana State University Medical Center, and had come home to find a place for herself in Philadelphia. Brewster C. Payne III, eighteen, who had just graduated from Episcopal Academy, had commuted to school; but he was, after spending the summer in Europe (his graduation present), going to Dartmouth; and Patricia Payne was very aware that the nest would then be forever empty.

Amy was petite and intense, not a pretty girl, but an attractive, natural one. In judging his children intellectually (and of course, privately) Brewster Payne had rated his daughter first, then Matt, then Foster, and finally Brewster, who was known as "B.C." Just as privately, Patricia Payne had done the same thing, with the same result, except that she had rated B.C. ahead of Foster.

Amy was very smart, perhaps even brilliant. She had been astonishingly precocious, and as astonishingly determined from the time she had been a little girl. Patricia worried that it might cause her trouble when she married, until she learned to adapt to her husband, or perhaps to the more general principle that it is sometimes far wiser to keep your mouth shut than to persist in trying to correct someone else's erroneous notions.

Matt was bright. He had never had any trouble in school, and there had been at least a dozen letters from teachers and headmasters saying essentially the same thing, that if he applied himself, he could be an A student. He never applied himself (Patricia was convinced he had never done an hour's honest homework in his life) and he had never been an A student.

Foster was, but Foster had to work at it. By definition, Foster was the only student among the three of them. Amy rarely had to crack a book, Matt was never willing to, and Foster seldom had his nose out of one. B.C. had been a 3.5 average student at Episcopal without ever having brought a book home from school.

The patio was furnished with a long, wrought-iron, mottled-glasstopped table, with eight cushioned wrought-iron chairs. Two smaller matching tables sat against the fieldstone, slate-topped patio wall. Two electric frying pans had been set up on one of them, and it also held a bowl of eggs and a plate with bacon and Taylor ham. The other held an electric percolator, a pitcher of milk, a toaster, bread and muffins, and a pitcher of orange juice.

Patricia Payne had decided, when the kids were growing up, that the solution to everybody's sauntering down to breakfast in their own good time was, rather than shouted entreaties and threats up the kitchen stairwell, a cafeteria-style buffet. The kids came down when they wanted, and cooked their own eggs. In the old days, too, there had been two newspapers, which at least partially solved the question of who got what section when.

There was something bittersweet about today's breakfast, Patricia thought: fond memories of breakfasts past, pleasure that everyone was once again having breakfast together again, and a disquieting fear that today, or at least the next week or so, might be the very last time it would happen.

"That's absolutebullshit!" Matthew Payne said, furiously.

Everybody looked at him. He was on the right side of the far end of the table, bent over a folded copy of theLedger.

"Matt!" Patricia Payne said.

"Did you see this?" Matt asked, rhetorically.

"Actually, no," Brewster Payne said, dryly. "When I came down, all that was left of the paper was the real estate ads."

"Tell us what the goddamn liberals have done this time, Matty," Amy said.

"You watch your language, too,Doctor," Patricia Payne said.

Matt got up and walked down the table to Brewster Payne and laid the editorial page on the table before him. He pointed.

" 'No Room In Philadelphia For Vigilante Justice'," Matt quoted. " Just read that garbage!"

Brewster Payne read the editorial, then pushed the paper to his wife.

"Maybe they know something you don't, Matt," he said.

"I met that cop yesterday," Matt said.

"You met him?" Amy said.

"Denny Coughlin took me to meet him," Matt said. "First he took me to the medical examiner's and showed me the body, and then he took me to South Philadelphia to meet the cop."

"Why did he do that?" Amy asked.

"He shares your opinion,Doctor, that I shouldn't join the police," Matt said. "He was trying to scare me off."

"I suppose even a policeman can spot obvious insanity when he sees it," Amy said.

"Amy!" Patricia Payne said.

Foster Payne got up and stood behind Patricia Payne and read the editorial.

"Whoever wrote this," he said, "is one careful step the safe side of libel," he said.

"It's bullshit," Matt said. "It's… vicious. I saw that cop. He was damned near in shock. He was so shook up he didn't even know who Denny Coughlin was. He's a nice, simple Irish Catholic guy who could no more throw somebody in front of an elevated train than Mom could."

"But it doesn't say that, Matthew," Foster Payne explained patiently. "It doesn'tsay he pushed that man onto the tracks. What it says is that that allegation has been raised, and that having been raised, the city has a clear duty to investigate. Historically, police have overreacted when one of their own has been harmed."

Matthew glared at him; said, with infinite disgust, "Oh, Jesus!" and then looked at Brewster Payne. "Now that Harvard Law has been heard from, Dad, what do you say?"