From a Buick 8(3)

Then: '12, this is Statler.'

'12.'

'Jetta is registered to William Kirk Frady of Pittsburgh. He is previous . . . uh . . . wait . . .'

It was his only pause, and I could hear the hurried riffle of paper as he looked for the card Shirley had given him, the one with the call-codes on it. He found it, looked at it, tossed it aside with an impatient little grunt. Through all this, Eddie waited patiently in his cruiser twelve miles west. He would be looking at Amish buggies, maybe, or a farmhouse with the curtain in one of the front windows pulled aslant, indicating that the Amish family living inside included a daughter of marriageable age, or over the hazy hills to Ohio. Only he wouldn't really be seeing any of those things. The only thing Eddie was seeing at that moment ? seeing clearly ? was the Jetta parked on the shoulder in front of him, the driver nothing but a silhouette behind the wheel. And what was he, that driver? Rich man? Poor man? Beggarman? Thief?

Finally Ned just said it, which was exactly the right choice. '12, Frady is DUI times three, do you copy?'

Drunk man, that's what the Jetta's driver was. Maybe not right now, but if he had been speeding, the likelihood was high.

'Copy, Statler.' Perfectly laconic. 'Got a current laminate?' Wanting to know if Frady's license to drive was currently valid.

'Ah . . .' Ned peered frantically at the white letters on the blue screen. Right in front of you, kiddo, don't you see it? I held my breath.

Then: 'Affirmative, 12, he got it back three months ago.'

I let go of my breath. Beside me, Shirley let go of hers. This was good news for Eddie, too. Frady was legal, and thus less likely to be crazy. That was the rule of thumb, anyway. :   '12 on approach,' Eddie sent. 'Copy that?'

'Copy, 12 on approach, standing by,' Ned replied. I heard a click and then a large, unsteady sigh. I nodded to Shirley, who got moving again. Then I reached up and wiped my brow, not exactly surprised to find it was wet with sweat.

'How's everything going?' Shirley asked. Voice even and normal, saying that, as far as she was concerned, all was quiet on the western front.

'Eddie Jacubois called in,' Ned told her. 'He's 10-27.' That's an operator check, in plain English. If you're a Trooper, you know that it also means citing the operator for some sort of violation, in nine cases out of ten. Now Ned's voice wasn't quite steady, but so what? Now it was all right for it to jig and jag a little. 'He's got a guy in a Jetta out on Highway 99. I handled it.'

'Tell me how,' Shirley said. 'Go through your procedure. Every step, Ned. Quick's you can.'

I went on my way. Phil Candleton intercepted me at the door to my office. He nodded toward the dispatch cubicle. 'How'd the kid do?'

'Did all right,' I said, and stepped past him into my own cubicle. I didn't realize my legs had gone rubbery until I sat down and felt them trembling.

His sisters, Joan and Janet, were identicals. They had each other, and their mother had a little bit of her gone man in them: Curtis's blue, slightly uptilted eyes, his blond hair, his full lips (the nickname in Curt's yearbook, under his name, had been 'Elvis'). Michelle had her man in her son, as well, where the resemblance was even more striking. Add a few wrinkles around the eyes and Ned could have been his own father when Curtis first came on the cops.

That's what they had. What Ned had was us.

One day in April he came into the barracks with a great big sunny smile on his face. It made him look younger and sweeter. But, I remember thinking, we all of us look younger and sweeter when we smile our real smiles ? the ones that come when we are genuinely happy and not just trying to play some dumb social game. It struck me fresh that day because Ned didn't smile much. Certainly not big. I don't think I realized it until that day because he was polite and responsive and quick-witted. A pleasure to have around, in other words. You didn't notice how grave he was until that rare day when you saw him brighten up and shine.

He came to the center of the room, and all the little conversations stopped. He had a paper in his hand. There was a complicated-looking gold seal at the top. 'Pitt!' he said, holding the paper up in both hands like an Olympic judge's scorecard. 'I got into Pitt, you guys! And they gave me a scholarship! Almost a full boat!'

Everyone applauded. Shirley kissed him smack on the mouth, and the kid blushed all the way down to his collar. Huddie Royer, who was off-duty that day and just hanging around, stewing about some case in which he had to testify, went out and came back with a bag of L'il Debbie cakes. Arky used his key to open the soda machine, and we had a party. Half an hour or so, no more, but it was good while it lasted. Everyone shook Ned's hand, the acceptance letter from Pitt made its way around the room (twice, I think), and a couple of cops who'd been at home dropped by just to talk to him and pass along their congrats.

Then, of course, the real world got back into the act. It's quiet over here in western Pennsylvania, but not dead. There was a farmhouse fire in Pogus City (which is a city about as much as I'm the Archduke Ferdinand), and an overturned Amish buggy on Highway 20. The Amish keep to themselves, but they'll gladly take a little outside help in a case like that. The horse was okay, which was the big thing. The worst buggy f**kups happen on Friday and Saturday nights, when the younger bucks in black have a tendency to get drunk out behind the barn. Sometimes they get a 'worldly person' to buy them a bottle or a case of Iron City beer, and sometimes they drink their own stuff, a really murderous corn shine you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. It's just part of the scene; it's our world, and mostly we like it, including the Amish with their big neat farms and the orange triangles on the back of their small neat buggies.