In this second-echelon American city, mildly famed for its Jap-financed Babel Tower, its harbors and marinas, its university, its futuristically enlightened corporations (computer software, aerospace, pharmaceuticals), its high unemployment, and its catastrophic inner-city taxpayer flight, a homicide police works maybe a dozen murders per year. [...]

Right now I want to say something about myself and Colonel Tom. One morning toward the very end of my career in Homicide I came in for the eight to four—late, drunk, with a face made of orange sand, and carrying my liver on my hip like a flight bag. Colonel Tom got me into his office and said, Mike, you can kill yourself if that’s what you want. But don’t expect me to watch you doing it. He took me by the arm and led me to the second tier of the headquarters garage. He drove me straight to Lex General. The admissions doc looked me over and the first thing he said was, You live alone, right? And I said, No. No, I don’t live alone. I live with Deniss…After they dried me out I convalesced at the Rockwells’ residence—this was when they lived way out in Whitefield. For a week I lay in a little bedroom at the back of the ground floor. The distant traffic was music and people who weren’t people—as well as people who were—came and stood at the foot of my bed. Uncle Tom, Miriam, the family physician. And then the others. And Jennifer Rockwell, who was nineteen years old, would come and read to me in the evenings. I lay there trying to listen to her clear young voice, wondering if Jennifer was real or just another of the ghosts who occasionally stopped by, cool, self-sufficient, unreproachful figures, their faces carved and blue.

I never felt judged by her. She had her troubles too, back then. And she was the daughter of a police. She didn’t judge.

We were in Hosni’s, the little gyro joint on Grainge. Popular among police for its excellent smoking section. Hosni himself isn’t a smoker. He’s a libertarian. He threw out half his tables just to skirt city law. I’m not proud of my habit, and I know that Hosni’s crusade is one we’re eventually going to lose. But all cops smoke their asses off and I figure it’s part of what we give to the state—our lungs, our hearts.

I keep thinking about her body. I keep thinking about Jennifer’s body and the confidence she had in it. See her in a swimsuit and you just thought…One summer day five or six years ago the Rockwells took the whole roof pool at the Trum, for their anniversary, and when Jennifer came out of the cabana and walked toward us in her white one-piece we all fell silent for a beat, and Silvera said, “Hm. Not bad.” Then Grandma Rebka clapped her hands together and wailed, “Zugts afen mir!” It should be said about me. We should all be so lucky. The sight of her instantly had you going along with the idea that the basis of attraction is genetic. Get Jennifer, and your genes would surge forth, in a limo. Her body was kind of an embarrassment, a thrilling embarrassment, to everyone (even Trader dipped his head). But it wasn’t an embarrassment to her. The confidence with which she carried it was self-evident, self-sufficient—I guess the word I want is “consummate.” She never needed to give it a moment’s thought. And when you consider how much the rest of us think about our bodies, and what kind of thoughts these are. Yes, absolutely right. We should all be so lucky.

I don’t personally believe that her work—her bent, her calling—had much to do with anything, except that it lengthened the band. By which I mean something like: The intellectual gap between Jennifer and LaDonna, Jennifer and DeLeon, Jennifer and the thirteen-year-old girl who murdered a baby over a diaper—that gap feels vast, but might be narrowed by habitual thoughts about the universe. In the same way, Trader was “the kindest lover on the planet”—but how kind is that? Miriam was the sweetest mother—but how sweet is that? And Colonel Tom was the fondest father. And how fond is that? Jennifer was beautiful. But how beautiful? Think about this human face anyway, with its silly ears, its sprout of fur, its nonsensical nostrils, the wetness of the eyes and of the mouth, where white bone grows.