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relationship duties apparently so crucial to the smooth running of all enterprises American.”
    Captain Walsh glanced at Sergeant Whelan. “You’re not American, are you, Flynn?”
    “Neither born nor brought up here, to my grief. But I do my best to muddle along.”
    “Your best doesn’t appear to be good enough.” Captain Walsh shifted catarrh in his throat. “Tell me, Frank: how are you?”
    “Better than you, apparently.”
    “How’s your appendix?”
    “I haven’t heard from it lately.”
    “Could that be because you’ve had it removed twice? These records indicate you’ve had two leaves of absence to have your appendix removed.”
    “It keeps growing back,” Flynn said. “I’m that healthy.”
    “Several prolonged absences for colitis. Five separate absences to bury your mother. Etc. Did you have five mothers?” In fact, Flynn’s mother, and father, had been shot to death in their kitchen, executed, when Flynn was fourteen. He had discovered their bodies upon returning home from school. He had never known if, when, where they were buried. “How many more mothers do you have?”
    “You’re very kind to express such interest in my personal health and life,” Flynn said. “How’s your own mother?”
    “She’s well,” said Captain Walsh. “She lives in Dorchester.”
    “All the luck,” said Flynn.
    “Sergeant Whelan has been assigned to you for some time now, Flynn. Repeatedly he has asked to be transferred to some other duty.”
    “I’ve encouraged every request, haven’t I, Grover? I’ve made a few requests to that point of my own.”
    Walsh said, “Every request of his has been denied. Although I’ve personally endorsed every one of them.”
    “My requests to have him removed from underfoot have been denied, too. I wonder why that is.”
    “The reason is, Frank, that you’re not a trained police officer. You did not come up through the ranks. You don’t know the protocol. You don’t even know the vocabulary.”
    “True,” admitted Flynn. “I have no imagination at all.”
    “You suddenly appeared from nowhere, were given the nonexistent rank of ‘Inspector,’ and since have been riding roughshod through police and court procedure, frequently leaving nothing short of disaster in your wake. You screw up the paperwork. You not only show no loyalty to your fellow officers, frequently you seem deliberately to make fools of them.”
    “Impossible.”
    “Sergeant Whelan has been assigned to you to keep you straight. From what he’s told me, he’s had a miserable life trying.”
    Flynn said, “My intentions are good.”
    “I have the sense, even now, talking to you, that you’re laughing at me. Are you?”
    “You must be misinterpreting my natural cheery good nature.”
    “Sergeant Whelan has provided me with a detailed report on you, Flynn.” Walsh thumbed the pages of a manuscript the size of a Ph.D. thesis. “Names. Dates. Have I said enough already about your frequent and ridiculously excused absences from work?”
    “You have.”
    “You seem to have a retired police officer working for you full-time without compensation. One Walter Concannon.”
    Flynn said, “I do not.”
    At the side of the room, Grover said, “Liar! Cocky is retired on half pay. He has no right even to be involved in police matters, investigations. He has no right even to be in the building! Let alone, tell me what to do.”
    Flynn smiled at Grover.
    “All right.” Walsh raised the palm of his hand in the air. “Tell me, Inspector, just where does Lieutenant Walter Concannon, Retired, live?”
    “I’ve never asked him.”
    “You do not know where he lives?”
    “I do not.”
    “He lives in some hole in the Old Records Building,” Grover asserted.
    “Is that true?” Walsh tried to fix his watery eyes on Flynn’s.
    “What’s truth?” Flynn asked.
    “I don’t wonder you ask.” Walsh looked back at his papers.
    “A good one,” Flynn said.
    “Sergeant Whelan reports you