Treadwell and both the other principals in this triangle being gay, his attorney immediately called a press conference and trotted poor Fred out with his cuts, breaks and bruises, charging police brutality.

Valenti and Raines, two of the elite with perfect records, had, it seemed, suddenly not been able to contain their prejudice against gays (probably as a result of their own latent homosexuality), and had beaten Fred to within an inch of his life, leaving him for dead in the alley behind his apartment.

Somebody took Fred’s lame story-or the righteous outrage of the gay community-seriously enough to bust Raines and Valenti and begin a formal investigation.

As if that weren’t enough, at about the same time as the charges came down, the latest budget cuts were announced. Effective immediately, no overtime was to be approved for ‘routine procedural work,’ which meant writing reports and serving subpoenas.

A significant number of murder cases now were what they called NHI cases. It stood for ‘No Humans Involved,’ and a kind interpretation meant that the victim, the suspect and all the witnesses were at best petty criminals.

These people were not fond of policemen and tended to be hard to find during normal business hours. So the service of subpoenas would most often take place in the early morning or late at night, and the cops going out after their witnesses would put in the overtime knowing this was their best chance of doing their job. Now the city had decided it wasn’t going to pay for that.

Which led to the golf clubs. The guys went out at eight or nine o’clock, knocked at doors, found no one home, played a round of golf, went back to the same doors and tried again, still found no one home, came back to the office, and wrote reports on their day in the field.