The candles were all out. The small gathering stood in broken little groups talking quietly. Seeing Bennett snap as he had wasn’t good for political morale. Bennett was a bastard, but I pitied him; and Molly’s nursing Doran struck me as a betrayal. There was a quarter moon and the lawn had been mowed today and I wanted to float away on the summer sweetness of the scent.

Then I heard him: “You take your hands off the man or I’ll throw all of you in jail.”

Clifford Sykes, Jr., known to most townspeople as Cliffie, had arrived in his tan uniform with the big Western star on his breast pocket and his campaign hat slanted on his thick head. In case you missed the Western motif, he wore his Sam Browne low on his hip like the gunfighters in cowboy movies. He didn’t have framed photos of Fabian on his office walls, but I bet he had a few of Glenn Ford.

For a while there, Cliffie had started acting like a serious police officer. He’d rescued two people from a burning car, told a deputy to knock off the racial slurs, and had let his cousin Jane Sykes-the district attorney I’d fallen in love with; the district attorney who’d broken my heart-actually give him and his staff a few lessons in police conduct. But when Jane decided to return to Chicago and her ex-husband, Cliffie seemed to forget everything he’d learned.

He elbowed through the gathering and then hurried up the steps. “I should’ve figured you’d be involved in this, McCain. The only thing I’ll say for the judge is she sure as hell wouldn’t hook up with a bunch of Communists like this.”

He was moving all the time he was yelling at me. The men had unhanded Bennett, but Bennett hadn’t moved. He’d quit sobbing, but he stared straight down and made tiny whimpering sounds.