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But there were also men like Don Slatterly, a Robbery detective, Kevin McRae, a flatfoot at the Oh-Six, and Emmett Strack, a twenty-five-year warhorse from the Oh -Three, who said very little but atched--and saw--everything They h the crowd and dispensed words of caution or restraint here, slivers of hope there, but mostly they just listened and assessed The s watched the space their masters had just vacated It would be these men and a few others like them, Danny decided, who the police brass should worry about if they wanted to avert a strike

At the coffee urns, Mark Denton suddenly stood beside him and held out his hand

"Toht?"

"Danny" He shook Denton's hand

"You were at Salutation when it was boht?"

Danny nodded

"But that's Harbor Division" Denton stirred sugar into his coffee

"The accident of my life," Danny said "I'd pinched a thief on the docks and was dropping him off at Salutation when, you know"

"I'hlin--you're pretty well known in this depart Captain Tommy can't control is his own son That uys like you"

"Thanks I'll think about it"

Denton's eyes swept the room He leaned in closer "Think quickly, would you?"

Tessa liked to take to the stoop onhis Silvertone B-XIIs She sarettes that shts Danny sat with her So in Tessa made him nervous His limbs felt cumbersome around her, as if there were no casual way to rest them They spoke of the weather and they spoke of food and they spoke of tobacco, but they never spoke of the flu or her child or the day Danny had carried her to Haymarket Relief

Soon they left the stoop for the roof No one came up on the roof

He learned that Tessa enty That she'd grown up in the Sicilian village of Altofonte When she was sixteen, a powerfulpast the cafe where he sat with his associates He'd ed to meet with her father Federico was a uages but also ru married so late in life Tessa's mother had passed on when she was ten, and her father raised her alone, with no brothers or money to protect her And so a deal was struck

Tessa and her father made the trip to Collesano at the base of the Madonie Mountains on the Tyrrhenian coast, arriving the day after Tessa's seventeenth birthday Federico had hired guards to protect Tessa's dowry, mostly jewels and coins passed down froht in the guesthouse of Priuards were cut as they slept in the barn and the doas taken Prie for the bandits At nightfall, over a fine dinner in thein on the suspects The doould be returned and the wedding would take place, as planned, that weekend