"I told him yes," Lorenz said.
The sergeant came at a quarter to two, a short, square, gray-haired woman named Lomax with reading glasses pushed up into her hair and a travel mug in her hand, and she got out of her car and looked at the open night drop and the blue bag and the hotel pan on the roof of Brodersen's cruiser and the money weighted down with quarter rolls on the hood, and then at the two men sitting a yard apart on the curb, and she said, "Well, this is a picture," and Brodersen stood up and walked over to her and talked for a long time in a low voice, and Lorenz watched them and did not try to hear. At one point the sergeant looked over at him. At another point she put her hand on Brodersen's arm, briefly, and took it away. Then she came over to the curb, and Lorenz stood up.
"Mr. Dimaculangan," she said. She said it right. She must have asked. "I'm Sergeant Lomax. I understand you've had a hell of a night."
"Yes, ma'am."
"I'm sorry for it." She said it plainly, without decoration, and moved on before he could answer, which he was grateful for. "Here's what happens. Detectives are on their way, they'll want to talk to you. The pan and the Copperline bag go to the evidence room. Your restaurant's money doesn't. It's not evidence of anything except that you're good at counting. Officer Brodersen's going to photograph it and count it again in front of me, and then he's going to give it back to you with a property receipt, and when you're done with the detectives he's going to drive you wherever you want to take it. Is that all right?"
"The bag is void," Lorenz said. "The bank won't take it now."
"Then you'll get a new bag. And Officer Brodersen will write down why the old one's torn." She glanced back at Brodersen. "Won't he."
"Yes, Sarge," Brodersen said.
"And the envelope," Lorenz said. "In his pocket. Six hundred forty dollars. For my mother."
The sergeant turned her head and looked at Brodersen for a long, level moment. Brodersen unbuttoned his breast pocket and took the envelope out and walked over and held it out to Lorenz, and Lorenz took it. It was warm from the cop's body. The flap was creased now, and there was a smudge of something on the front, a gray thumbprint, right across the word NANAY. Lorenz looked at it for a moment and then folded it in half and put it back in the inside pocket of his jacket, and zipped the jacket up to his chin.