The Tin Man Read Online Free PDF

see the sun
rise
at the
end
of the day. Lastly, we meet there to prove the old Irish maxim: God invented liquor so the Irish wouldn’t rule the world. It’s time to prove how correct that saying can be. Last civilian at the bar buys it!” With a flurry of kisses for Biba, the crowd headed for the waiting taxis that would take them to the second half of the evening’s festivities.
    Its real name was the Shamrock, but everyone knew it either as McLanahan’s or the Sarge’s Place, after Patrick’s father’s rank when he retired as a Sacramento police officer and ran the bar. Whatever its name, it was one of a handful of bar-and-grills in the downtown area that catered to cops, kept cop schedules, and was attuned to what was going on in the law-enforcement community. It was known to sometimes be open at six A.M. , right around graveyard-shift change after a particularly busy or bloody night, or on a Sunday evening after a cop’s wake. Although it was no longer fully owned by the McLanahan family, Patrick, as de facto head of the clan—their mother, Maureen, was now retired and lived in Scottsdale, Arizona—was tasked to pour the first round of Irish whiskey, and they raised their glasses to the new crop of California peace officers who had graduated earlier that day.
    He poured a lot of whiskey that night. Most ofthe academy grads, and all of them with assignments in the Sacramento area, were there, along with dozens of active, reserve, and retired cops from all sorts of agencies, from the Sacramento Unified School District Police to the FBI; and McLanahan’s extended its invitation to party to anyone who carried a badge into harm’s way or in support of law enforcement—which included a few firemen, parole and probation enforcement officers, dispatchers, and even district attorneys and DA investigators. Everyone was welcome to join in the party—but cops give off a definite air of distrust bordering on hostility to anyone they don’t recognize as one of their own, so no outsiders dared venture toward the free drinks. Not that any cop actually
prevented
a civilian from going near the bar; it was simply made clear by the eye signals and body language that the free drinks were for cops only.
    As they had been for the past twenty-two weeks, the grads were together at one very large table, passing frosty pitchers of beer around and accepting congratulations and words of encouragement and advice from well-wishers. Although the academy was run by the city of Sacramento, only seven of the fifty-two graduates were going to the Sacramento Police Department: eleven were going to the Sacramento County Sheriffs Department; fifteen others to other California police, sheriffs, and different law-enforcement agencies. The remaining nineteen graduates had no positions waiting for them: They had paid their own way to attend the five-month program, half junior college, half boot-camp academy, hoping to be hired by one of the agencies sometime in the future. Needless to say, they took full advantage of the free drinks and aggressively buttonholed the highest-ranking officers they couldfind, hoping to meet an influential sergeant or administrator and make a favorable impression.
    The target of most of the jokes and abuse that night was the honor grad, Paul Leo McLanahan. Every veteran cop wanted a piece of him, wanted the opportunity to see what the number one grad of the latest crop of “squeaks” (so named because of the sound of the leather of their brand-hew Sam Browne utility belts) was made of. Paul did the one thing that raised the blood pressure of most of his tormentors: He was polite. He called them “sir” or “ma’am” or by their rank if he knew it. He gracefully extricated himself if he was in danger of being drawn into an argument—“So what do you think of the fucking chief?”—a drinking contest—“Stop sipping that beer, rookie, and have a bourbon with us like a
real
man!”—or an arm-wrestling