Byrne closed his eyes, then opened them, hoping his face was fashioned into something resembling faith. He turned. “Sure you are, Jimmy.”

“For a cop, you’re a terrible fuckin’ liar, you know that? I’m amazed we ever made case one.”

“You just get strong.You’ll be back on the street by Memorial Day. You’ll see. We’ll fill up Finnigan’s and raise a glass to little Deirdre.”

Jimmy waved a weak, dismissive hand, then turned his head to the window. Within seconds, he was asleep.

Byrne watched him for a full minute. There was more he wanted to say, a lot more, but he would have time.

Wouldn’t he?

He would have time to tell Jimmy how much his friendship had meant over the years, and how he had learned what real police work was all about from him. He would have time to tell Jimmy that it just wasn’t the same city without him.

Kevin Byrne lingered a few more moments, then turned, stepped into the hall, and headed to the elevators.

Byrne stood in front of the hospital, his hands shaking, his throat tight with emotion. It took him five turns of the wheel of his Zippo to light a cigarette.

He hadn’t cried in many years, but the feeling in the pit of his stomach recalled a time in his life when he had seen his old man cry for the first time. His father had been as big as a house, a Two-Streeter, a Mummer of citywide repute, an original stick fighter who could carry four twelve-inch concrete blocks up a ladder without a hod. Seeing him cry made him small in the ten-year-old Kevin’s eyes, made him into every other kid’s father. Padraig Byrne had broken down behind their Reed Street row house on the day he learned his wife needed cancer surgery. Maggie O’Connell Byrne lived another twenty-five years, but no one had known that at the time. His old man had stood by his beloved peach tree and shook like a blade of grass in a storm that day, and Kevin had sat in his bedroom window on the second floor, watching him, crying along with him.

He never forgot that image, never would.

He had not cried since.

But he wanted to now.

Jimmy.

10

MONDAY, 1:10 PM

Girl talk.

Is there any more cryptic language to the male of the species? I think not. No man who had ever been privy to the conversations of young females, for any length of time, would fail to concede that there exists no task more challenging

than trying to demystify a simple tête-à-tête among a handful of American teenaged girls. By comparison, the World War II Enigma code was a breeze.

I am sitting in a Starbucks on Sixteenth and Walnut, a cooling latte on the table in front of me. At the next table are three teenaged girls. Between bites of their biscotti and sips of their white chocolate mochas pours forth a stream of machine-gun gossip and innuendo and observation so serpentine, so unstructured, that it is all I can do to keep up.

Sex, music, school, movies, sex, cars, money, sex, clothes.

I am exhausted just listening.

When I was younger, there were four clearly defined “bases” as it related to

sex. Now, it seems, if I hear correctly, there are pit stops in between. Between second and third, I gather, there is now “sloppy” second, which, if I am not mistaken, involves one’s tongue on a girl’s breast.Then there is “sloppy” third, which means oral sex. None of the above, thanks to the 1990s, is considered sex at all, but rather “hooking up.”

Fascinating.

The girl sitting closest to me is a redhead, perhaps fifteen or so. Her clean, shiny hair is pulled back into a ponytail and secured with a black velvet band. She wears a tight pink T-shirt and beige hip-hugger jeans. She is sitting with her back to me and I can see that her jeans are cut low and, in the posture she is in—leaning forward to make a point to her two friends—reveal an area of downy white skin beneath the top of her black leather belt and the bottom of her shirt. She is so close to me—inches away, really—that I can see the small dimples of gooseflesh caused by the draft of the air-conditioning, the ridges of the base of her spine.

Close enough, in fact, for me to touch.

She prattles on about something to do with her job, about someone named Corinne always being late and leaving the cleaning up to her, about how the boss is such a jerk and has really bad breath and, like, thinks he’s really hot but in reality looks like that fat guy on The Sopranos who takes care of Tony’s uncle, or father, or whoever he is.

I do so love this age. No detail is so small or insignificant that it will escape their scrutiny.They know enough to use their sexuality to get what they want, but have no idea that what they wield is so powerful, so devastatingly halting to the male psyche that, if they only knew what to ask for, it would be theirs on a platter. The irony is that, for most of them, when that understanding dawns, they will no longer possess the looks to achieve their goals.

As if scripted, they all manage to look at their watches at the same time. They gather their trash and make their way to the door.

I will not follow.

Not these girls. Not today.

Today belongs to Bethany.

The crown sits in the bag at my feet, and although I am not a fan of irony—irony is a dog that bays at the moon while pissing on graves, according to Karl Kraus—it is no small mockery that the bag is from Bailey Banks & Biddle.

Cassiodorus believed the crown of thorns was placed upon Jesus’s head in order that all the thorns of the world might be gathered together and broken, but I don’t believe that to be true. The crown for Bethany is anything but broken.

Bethany Price gets out of school at two twenty. Some days she stops at a Dunkin’ Donuts for a hot chocolate and a cruller, sitting in a booth, reading a book by Pat Ballard or Lynne Murray, novelists who specialize in romances featuring larger women.

Bethany is heavier than the other girls, you see, and terribly self-conscious about it. She buys her Zaftique and Junonia brand items on the Internet, still uncomfortable shopping in the plus-size departments at Macy’s and Nordstrom, lest she be seen by her classmates. Unlike some of her thinner friends, she does not try to shorten the hem of her school uniform skirt.

It has been said that vanity blossoms but bears no fruit. Perhaps, but my girls sit at the school of Mary and therefore, despite their sins, will receive abundant grace.

Bethany does not know it, but she is perfect just the way she is.

Perfect.

Except for one thing.

And I will correct that.

11