The city would escort the cortege to the county line and the motorcycle squads would pick it up from there. At the gravesite there would be rifles fired over Doolan's casket, bugles blowing, and somebody would present a flag to his granddaughter. Then it would be over and everybody would go home glad that it was over so they could get back to normal again, the bureaucrats and the foot soldiers and distant relatives and kids of deceased parents who'd been the old boy's friends having served out their obligation to a dinosaur of a cop who had taken way too long to get around to dying. But tonight was different. Tonight would be the gathering of the clan, and like all reunions, the pack would assemble in little groups according to age, rank, and serial number—the old-timers, long-retired, with their own little clique near the casket, those working buddies of Doolan's getting ready for their own inspector's parades. Gold badges gleaming on freshly pressed uniforms as the brass arrange themselves in ladderlike order of importance, wearing their funeral masks beautifully, but singing no praises to the corpse.
