It was enough, most nights, to make Tommy Falcone wish he had never become a cop. He could have dealt with danger, with excitement, but the insufferable dullness of walking a beat pushed him to the edge. In the months since he had returned home, he had come to realize what a medical marvel had been performed on his right hip and leg to enable him to walk again. But the doctors had probably never counted on his walking a ten-hour beat, night after night, in a heavy, sweat-soaked police uniform. It was little comfort to realize that his father, before being promoted to sergeant, had done just the same kind of stultifyingly boring patrol work, just to be able to feed his family. He remembered being little and seeing his father coming home from work and soaking his feet in the big white-speckled blue pan in which Mama roasted holiday turkeys. And he remembered thinking at the time that his father must be old, very old. He began whistling a melody from a Verdi opera. He could never remember its name—music was Tina’s specialty, not his—but he had grown up hearing Caruso sing it over the family’s treasured phonograph and the music was deeply imprinted on his brain.
