Hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched, Peter Patterson trudged the final half block to the corner and ducked under the overhang of the skyscraper there. The moment he stopped walking, he became aware of how wet and miserable he was. His raincoat and his hat had protected him for a while, but now they were both soaked. His socks and cuffs were sodden from wading through the sluicing gutters. The cold was seeping into his core.

It was a hell of a night for a meeting-with the storm going and the river about to blow. A hell of a night to finally do what he had convinced himself to do.

Lieutenant Brick Ramsey saw Patterson reach the meeting point, but he lingered where he was, watching the man through the windshield of his unmarked Charger. Watching the wavering shape of the man anyway. He couldn't see much more of him than that. He didn't want to turn his wipers on. He was afraid the movement might draw attention to him sitting there. Uninterrupted, the rain spilled down over the glass in gusting sheets, then broken streams and droplets. Through the water, the pink glare of the downtown halogen lamps seemed to melt and run in fluid streaks of illumination. The stoplights ran in fluid streaks of red, then green. And beyond the light, in the blur and shadows, there was the wavering shape of Peter Patterson, an average-sized man in a hat and overcoat, hunched and waiting. Ramsey knew he ought to go to him, but he lingered, watched.

Ramsey figured himself for a hard man, but he didn't like thinking about what he was about to do. Peter Patterson was nobody in the big scheme of things. He was nothing in the city hierarchy. Just a bookkeeper. Just a middle-aged drunk who'd come to Jesus and now fancied himself incorruptible. There should have been a dozen easy ways to shut him up or shut him down. They could've just waited him out probably. The mood would probably have passed.