Frank Batiste wasn’t sure anymore that he was happy to have made lieutenant. It was more money and that was all right, but sitting here in the office all day, the conduit for gripes going up and edicts coming down, was wearing him down.

In ancient times they killed the bearer of bad news, and he was starting to understand why. Maybe, somehow, the news would go away, or wouldn’t have to be thought about.

He couldn’t just hide in here all day. He forced himself up from his chair, feeling the beginning of back pain, and opened the door.

The homicide department was commencing to take on the feel of a country-club locker room. Several golf bags leaned against desks.

He walked back through the room, nodding at the guys and getting ice for his troubles. Hell, it wasn’t his doing. He even sided with the men. Maybe he should step down as looie, let someone else deal with this crap. But what would that do? Just put someone else in, someone who wouldn’t be as sympathetic to the team.

If only the City That Once Knew How had a goddamn clue, he thought. Now it didn’t know how to wipe its own ass. And nowhere was it more clear than here in Homicide. These fourteen guys-it sounded funny, but was true anyway-were the shock troops against the worst elements in the city. No one got to Homicide without nearly a decade of solid police work, without a lot of pride, and without some special mix of killer instinct, stubbornness and brains. These guys were the elite, and if you cut their morale you had a problem.

But last week, for the first time in seven years, the department had brought charges against two men on the squad. A month before, the two officers-Clarence Raines and Mario Valenti-had gone to arrest a telephone-company executive named Fred Treadwell for murdering his lover and his lover’s new boyfriend. Treadwell had resisted arrest-kicking out a window of his second-story apartment, cutting his head upon his exit, falling to the alley below, breaking an ankle, smashing his head again as he pitched into some garbage cans and escaping on foot to his attorney’s office.