I opened the inner door and stepped back.
"The water is still hot, Arthur."
Rourke came inside, took off his wet fedora, and laid it on the hall tree.
He looked around the narrow hallway, his eyes lingering on the framed black-and-white photograph of the 1974 boiler shop crew standing in front of the steam manifold at the 207th Street depot.
He pointed a thick finger at the young man with rolled sleeves standing in the third row, his face smudged with soot.
"That was the winter the main valve failed," Rourke said quietly.
"January tenth," I said, setting a second mug on the small table and pouring the remainder of the kettle.
"Three degrees outside, and the repair bay was forty-five below until we got the bypass pipe welded. Your father brought down two thermoses of black coffee from the dispatcher's shanty and left them on the toolbox."
Rourke sat down in the wooden armchair by the radiator, his heavy shoulders sagging against the slats.
He looked as if he hadn't slept in thirty-six hours, which was probably true.
He opened the manila folder and took out three stapled sheets of legal paper covered in typed carbon columns.
"The union attorneys met with the district attorney's public integrity unit forty minutes ago," Rourke said, sliding the papers toward me across the oilcloth.
"The grand jury is returning thirty-four counts on Cleary by midday. Grand larceny, bribe receiving, extortion under color of authority, and falsifying municipal logs. Vance’s lawyer spent the last hour trying to negotiate a five-year plea in exchange for testimony against the precinct supply clerk."
"Did the county take it?"
"No," Rourke said.
"The prosecutor told Tartaglione that with forty-two signed ledger entries and twenty-seven registered serial matches on the survivor scrip, Vance doesn't have anything left to trade. He’s going to upstate custody at Green Haven, Frank. A former transit cop in general population doesn't get an easy run."
I didn't answer.
I took a sip of the chicory, looking through the steam at the typed names listed along the margin of the state complaint: Miller, Vance, Cleary, Diaz, Gans.
"What about the depot boys?"
I asked.
Rourke tapped the second page with his thumb.
"The court impounded the cash from the junction box. The district attorney agreed to transfer the entire thirty-eight hundred dollars directly to the credit union welfare account to cover the back mortgage payments on the retired members' files. Henderson's widow gets her oil bill paid for the winter. Tom O’Bannon’s nursing home copay is settled through November."
He paused, his eyes settling on my face.
"And your property tax voucher was returned to the city finance department with a certified judicial clearance stamp. You're paid through nineteen eighty-six, Frank. You own this house free and clear until the day they carry you out."
I looked down at the receipt on the table.
The embossed purple seal of the state supreme court was still damp where the clerk had pressed the metal stamp into the paper.
It was an ordinary piece of pulp, five inches wide and three inches deep, no thicker than a transit transfer or a grocery slip.
But it meant that no bailiff would knock on this door with an auction notice, and no precinct clerk would send an eviction summons to be nailed against my front post.
"You took a big chance walking onto that platform with marked bills, Frank," Rourke said, his voice dropping into that quiet, gravelly cadence he used when the uniform came off.
"If Vance had tossed you onto the roadbed before Diaz hit the stairs, the microphone wouldn't have kept your skull off the third rail."
"Miller Vance was a coward, Arthur," I said.