The safe at Ingleside District Station stands next to the gum machine in a narrow passageway that leads to Captain Harris's office (to the left), the lieutenant's office (farther along and to the left) and the janitor's supply closet (straight ahead).

The safe is a repository for three dead flashlight batteries, a hundred and fifty unused left-hand fingerprint cards, a stack of unsold Policemen's Ball tickets from last year, and thirty-seven cents in coins and stamps. Gun set the captain's fifth of Hiram Walker inside the safe before he reported to Lt. Killpath, though he knew that Killpath's ulcer prevented him from making any untoward incursion on Herman Wolff's gift. It was more a matter of tact, and also it was none of Killpath's goddam business.

He walked up to the lieutenant's office, leaned wearily against the gun rack that housed four rifles and a gas gun nobody remembered having used and a submachine gun that was occasionally tried out on the Academy Range. He stared at the clerk who sat at a scarred and ancient fumed-oak desk stuffing envelopes.

``Where's the Lieut?''

The clerk wagged his head toward the captain's office. Gun went to the connecting door, which was open, and stood at attention while Orville Torrence Killpath, in full uniform, finished combing his hair.

The lieutenant's sparse brown hair was heavily pomaded, and as Killpath raked the comb through it, it stuck together in thatches so that it looked like umbrella ribs clinging to his pink skull. The lieutenant eyed Gun's reflection in the mirror over the washbowl and then glanced back at his own face, moving the comb methodically around his head.