"Twenty-two-forty," he said.
The radio hissed. A woman's voice, flat and tired and patient, said, "Twenty-two-forty."
"Show me out at the QuikTrip, Gravois and—" he looked up at the sign— "Gravois at Delor, with one, vehicle check, no further. Then show me ten-eight en route to the district." He paused. He breathed. "And advise Lieutenant Hecht I need to see her in her office when I get there. Not end of shift. When I get there."
The radio was quiet a second. Then the woman said, "Copy, twenty-two-forty. Advising."
He let go of the button. He stood there. It had taken eleven seconds, and he looked like a man who had carried something up a long flight of stairs.
"What will you tell her?" Selma said.
"What I was doing." He looked at the car. "All of it. Today. And the other. Sixteen years of it." He took a card out of his breast pocket, a plain white business card with the department's star in the corner, and wrote something on the back with a pen from the same pocket, and held it out. "That's my name and my badge number. The number on the front is the district. That's the civilian oversight board, on the back, I wrote it down. If you want to file on me, that's where. You should. I'm telling you you should."
She took the card. She looked at it and did not put it away.
"Will they fire you?" she said.
"Maybe. Probably not for today. Today I'll get a suspension and a class. For the other—" He shrugged, a big slow shrug. "I've got twenty-eight years in. Two more and I get my thirty. Maybe I don't get my thirty." He thought about it. "My dad did thirty-four. He'd say, Gene, you got off easy."