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“I can always find time to take a cup of coffee with you,” Woodrow said. “Right over there’s as good a place as any. At least it’s clean.”
“The Sergeant said it would be all right if you put yourself out of service for half an hour.”
“I’ll park this,” Woodrow said.
When he came back from parking the car, he recognized the man driving the car.
“This your boy, isn’t it, Foster? He wasn’t nearly so big the last time I saw him.”
“How do you do, sir?” Tiny said politely.
“Well, I’ll be. I recognized him from his picture in the paper. When they arrested those dirty cops.”
They went in the small neighborhood restaurant. An obese woman brought coffee to the table for all of them.
“Miss Kathy, this is Lieutenant Foster, and his boy,” Woodrow said. “We go back a long way.”
“Way back,” Lieutenant Lewis agreed. “When I graduated from the Academy Officer Bailey sort of took me under his wing.”
“Is that so?” the woman said, and walked away.
“When Foster here finished the Academy, they sent him right to Special Operations, put him in plain clothes, and gave him a car,” Lieutenant Lewis said. “Things have changed, eh, Woodrow?”
“You like what you’re doing, boy?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I was thinking the other day that if I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t,” Bailey said.
Lieutenant Lewis laughed.
“You don’t mean that, Woodrow,” he said.
“Yes, I do mean it. Don’t take this the wrong way, boy, but I’m glad I’m not starting out. I don’t think I could take another twenty-some years walking this beat.”
“I was telling Foster that walking a beat is what the police are all about,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Well, then, the country’s in trouble,” Bailey said. “Because we’re losing, Foster, and you know it. Things get a little worse every day, and there doesn’t seem to be anything that anybody can do about it.”
“What I was trying to get across to Foster was that there’s no substitute for the experience an officer like yourself gets,” Lieutenant Lewis said.
“Well, maybe you’re right, but the only thing my experience does is make me tired. Time was, I used to think I could clean up a place. Now I know better. All I’m doing is slowing down how fast it’s getting worse. And I only get to slow it down a little on good days.”
Lieutenant Lewis laughed politely.
“I was thinking, Woodrow,” he said, “that since Foster hasn’t had any experience on the streets, that maybe you’d be good enough to let him ride around with you once in a while. You know, show him the tricks of the trade.”
“Good Lord,” Officer Bailey laughed, “why would he want to do that?”
Lieutenant Lewis glanced at his son. He saw that it was only with a great effort that Officer Foster H. Lewis, Jr., was able to keep his face straight, not let it show what he was thinking.
“My father is right, Mr. Bailey,” Tiny said. “I could probably learn a lot from you.”
That response surprised and then delighted Lieutenant Lewis, but the delight was short-lived:
“The only thing you could learn by riding around with me,” Officer Bailey said, “is that Satan’s having his way, and if you have half the brains you were born with, you already know that.”
Officer Lewis looked at his watch.
