I could have picked up a telephone.”

Part Forty-Seven: The Benevolent Fund

The two thousand and ninety dollars went back.

Every officer got their hundred and ninety returned, in a different envelope, by Nathan, individually, which he says was the single worst afternoon of his career and which I believe.

And then eight of them did it properly.

Our city’s police benevolent association — which is not the department, which is a separate incorporated body with its own officers and its own accounts and its own rules, funded by member dues and by a fish fry in September — has a small discretionary fund for community hardship, which exists precisely for this and which almost nobody uses because almost nobody knows how to fill in the form.

The form is two pages.