“I love my work, love Homicide,” I said with a sneer. “See that? There's the M. E. already in his plastic suit. And there are the crime-lab boys. And who's this coming our way now?” A white sergeant in a puffy blue-black parka with a fur collar came waddling up to Sampson and me as we approached the house. Both his hands were jammed in his pockets for warmth.

“Sampson? Uh, Detective Cross?” The sergeant cracked his lower jaw the way some people do when they're trying to clear their ears in airplanes. He knew exactly who we were. He knew we were cops. He was busting our chops.

“Wuz up, man?” Sampson doesn't like his,chops being busted very much.

“Senior Detective Sampson,” I answered the sergeant. “I'm Deputy Chief Cross.”

The sergeant was a jelly-roll-belly Irish type, probably left over from the Civil War. His face looked like a wedding cake left out in the rain. He didn't seem to be buying my tweed jacket ensemble.

“ Everybody's freezin' their toches off,” he wheezed. “That's wuz up.”

“You could probably lose a little of them toches,” Sampson advised him. "Might give Jenny Craig a call.

“Fuck you,” said the sergeant. It was nice to meet the white Eddie Murphy. “Master of the riposte.” Sampson grinned at me. “You hear what he said? Fuck you?”

Sampson and I are both physical. We work out at the gym attached to St. Anthony's-St. A's. Together, we weigh about five hundred pounds. We can intimidate, if we want to. Sometimes it's necessary in our line of work.

I'm only six three. John is six nine and growing. He always wears Wayfarer sunglasses. Sometimes he wears a raggy Kangol hat, or a yellow bandanna. Some people call him “John-John” because he's so big he could be two Johns.

We walked past the sergeant toward the murder house. Our elite task force team is supposed to be above this kind of confrontation. Sometimes we are.