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trash.” I ignored him and continued the search.
    “Well, we have a .25 caliber revolver, and what’s this?” I pulled out three bags of white powder.
    “Brady, I’ve never seen heroin sold like this.” I carefully opened a bag and put some on the tip of my tongue; it was bitter,had little odor, and for a few minutes I lost sensation on my tongue. The powder did not have the characteristic foul smell that comes from adulterants, and most street heroin was averaging less than ten percent pure. It didn’t add up. How did this low life, stick-up man come up with these three bags – probably cocaine?
    “Brady, let’s ask Narcotics to bring their kit to the station.”
    “Good idea. This kid knocked off a High’s store yesterday and he’s carrying this much powder?”
    I began to intone, “You have the right to remain silent…” In a quick movement, the kid stepped back and stomped on the top of my foot. I slammed his head into the car, breaking his nose and causing various cuts.
    “Brady, did you see that? He tripped in the rain and fell on a rock.”
    “I saw the whole thing.”
    “If you want some more accidents, asshole, just keep fucking with me,” I growled. “The accidents are going to get worse, and every cop here will swear to them. Do you understand, asshole? Well?” A bloodstained head nodded up and down slightly.
    Meanwhile, the arriving MPDC officials made nice with the Park Police brass for their cooperation, and Lieutenant Dominik came by to look at the powder. He told me that another officer had found more in a sandwich bag under the seat. We put the prisoner in a cage car, 2 and a procession of police vehicles returned to the station in the pouring rain.
    At the precinct, Brady cuffed the prisoner to the rusted pipe. We greeted the team from Narcotics.
    “So, you found something interesting,” said Detective Lieutenant John Roberts. “Let’s have a look.” Roberts was an intense fellow, barely meeting the five-foot-eight-inch height requirement, had a receding hairline, looked to be in his thirties, and was wearing the cheap, standard-issue polyester brown suit. Brady and I exchanged looks as to why the captain of Narcoticssent his second-in-command out to a precinct drug-bust.
    Roberts poured some of the powder onto a clean sheet of paper and appeared to toy with it using a wooden coffee stirrer. To nobody in particular he said, “Cocaine is very hygroscopic—it absorbs moisture easily from any source, including the air. See how it looks and feels a little pasty. Let’s see how pure it is.”
    Out of his bag came a device with a heating coil around the bottom of a Pyrex tube with a thermometer affixed to it. With a tiny spoon, he put in a couple of grams, mixed in a few drops of water, and plugged it in.
    “What’s your name, son?” he asked the prisoner.
    “Slim.”
    “Do you know what you have here, Slim?”
    “I don’t even know how it got there. Somebody musta put it in my pants while I was sleeping.”
    Roberts silently eyed the rising temperature and the white paste, which began to melt at one-hundred-sixty degrees. Roberts made some notes and pulled the plug at one-hundred-seventy.
    “Pure cocaine melts at one-hundred-ninety-five degrees. However, there is no such thing as imported ‘pure.’ Personally, this is as high as I have ever seen. I need to discuss these results with the higher-ups in the chain of command. Would you ask your lieutenant, the one at the crash site, if I could have a word with him?”
    I went upstairs to find Dominik; he was busy, and asked what Roberts wanted.
    “I don’t know,” I told him. “He said he wants a word with you.”
    Roberts walked over to the stairs and motioned for Dominik to join him near a largely abandoned indoor shooting range. Brady, “Slim,” and I watched the sometimes-animated conversation. After a few minutes, the two men shook hands; Dominik left, and Roberts came back for his tester and bag.
    “This is a