Hartigan's polishing his badge and working himself up to kissing it good-bye, it and the thirty-odd years of protecting and serving and tears and blood and triumph that it represents. He's thinking about his wife's slow smile, about the thick, fat steaks she's picked up at the butcher's, about the bottle of champagne she's got packed in ice, about sleeping in till ten in the morning and spending sunny afternoons flat on his back. Just one hour to go and he gets word from a stoolie about that one loose end he hasn't tied up, a young girl who's out there, helpless in the hands of a drooling lunatic. Just one hour to go . . . and he's gonna go out with a bang.