JIMMY DUGAN.

It’s a steamy afternoon in August. The sun is beating down. There’s been no rain for days. Everything is dry. And dusty. And hot. Jimmy is out with his partner, Curtis.

“Don’t be calling me no Curt,” he told Jimmy their first day together. “IT’S CURTIS.”

Curtis is a large black man elegantly turned out with a knife-edge crease in the trousers of his dark mohair suit and a highly polished shine on his black Bally shoes. Jimmy looks good too. He always looks good. Wearing all black today. Black slacks, black open-necked shirt, black sport coat and black slip-ons. They all look like that, the other members of the unit. Sharp. Hot. Gelled. And hungry.

The lieutenant looks even sharper.

The squad is an anti-crime unit targeting areas that might lead them to bigger fish. This time it’s the fences. Jimmy and Curtis were sent to interview one working out of a pawnshop on Broadway underneath the El in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It’s what they call a go-see. A roust. To let the guy know they’re there and to push him just a little. The whole unit in their fancy-looking clothes and heavily styled hair are out doing the same thing.

Shaking the fences to see what falls out.

The place is a grimy storefront next to a Laundromat on a block crammed with people of every persuasion. Chassids and Puerto Ricans. Mexicans and Russians. Chinese and Slavs. Straight and gay. Salt and pepper and everything in between. The melting pot in all its glory. Rushing this way and that like rats in a lab experiment.

A three-ball pawnbroker sign hangs outside the store. The window is crammed with musical instruments, some hanging from the ceiling, some piled on cases. All dusty and cobwebbed. Tarnished trumpets and dull trombones lie in a pile on the floor. Guitars are tumbled one on top of the other in a rough display. A banjo, the only clean instrument, has a place of honor close to the glass. Inside is the same. Boxes piled high in every direction. Instruments wherever you look.

At the back of the store is a counter with a grill. Behind that, sitting on a stool wearing a dealer’s green visor and a jeweler’s glass in one eye, is the man they’ve come to see. Murray Fisher. Caucasian. 45, looks older. Five feet seven, looks shorter. 160 pounds, looks fatter. Gray hair. Balding. Brown eyes. Pasty white. Murray Fisher ladies and gentlemen, owner and fence.

Murray the Fence, seeing the obvious cops come storming into his place of business, decides to do the only thing his addled brain can come up with on such short notice. He draws the gun he’s got ready for the robber he’s sure will one day hold him up. It’s registered and legal this gun and has never been fired. Until now, that is. Because Murray the Fence takes aim at the cop in the front.

The thin one.

The white one.

The one not in a suit who’s beginning to make a move of his own.

Jimmy’s the man in front. The one Murray the Fence is taking aim at. Jimmy Dugan. Our Jimmy. Out there in front. Just ahead of Curtis, not Curt. Screaming at the top of his voice, “Gun. Gun,” drawing his own weapon as he leaps horizontally. Falling. Falling. Onto a pile of boxes. Squeezing off a shot as he falls.

At the same time, Murray the Fence pulls his own trigger, but Jimmy’s not there. He’s lying in a pile of boxes. The pawnbroker’s bullet goes between Jimmy and Curtis, not Curt, bounces off a tuba and settles in a squeezebox that makes a plinking-plonking sound.

The shot Jimmy gets off slams into the fence’s shoulder and puts him out of action.

It was a close call. The closest Jimmy’s ever had.

Back at the station he’s debriefed, shrunk, and offered counseling. They send him home telling him to take tomorrow off and take more time off if he thinks it’s necessary.

He drives home listening to Dave Matthews at full blast, adrenalin pumping through his brain and wild thoughts charging through his mind. Images flash on and off of the pawnbroker and that filthy store. And Murray the Fence. Whoever heard of a guy called Murray the Fence drawing down on him like he was Gary fucking Cooper?

On top of the rush he’s feeling and the trembling in his belly, he’s horny. He can hardly believe it. He could’ve been shot or maimed and here he is with an erection. He laughed out loud as his mind went to Vicki. His Vicki. Beautiful Vicki. Home from work early these days. Maybe there now? Waiting to comfort him and hold him in her arms.

His brain is speeding like a meteor. His dick is as hard as a rock.

They rent a walk-up in Park Slope where the streets are quiet, and the neighbors are decent. Jimmy and Vicki. In their two-bedroom apartment with the drop living room and the big bay window. They make out pretty good. She’s a teacher. He does okay as a cop. High school sweethearts married ten years now. No kids, though. She wants them; he doesn’t. He doesn’t tell her this. He says he wants them too, just not now. But he doesn’t want them. Ever.

He finds a spot at the top of the street, parks, and hotfoots it to their building. Bounds up the stairs. Opens the door and bursts into the apartment with an expectant look on his face and a bulge in his pants.

And there she is, Vicki his high school sweetheart. The love of his life. Married ten years now. In their bedroom. On their bed. Naked as a babe. In the arms of his best friend. Who hasn’t heard his entrance. And continues to pump himself wildly into Jimmy’s horror-stricken wife.

He fell apart after that with the booze and the screw-ups and the gradual letting go of everything he’d worked hard for. Till he hit rock bottom. And then, because of a captain who had a soft spot for him, he picked himself up and turned things around. He dried himself out, got some counseling, and when he’d pulled himself together looked for somewhere new to start over.

Columbia fit the bill.

Jimmy is still Columbia’s only detective. Looking dumpy and round these days and thin of hair, but he’s clean and sober. Traveling through life with Mary Harwood, his lady friend, and Lucy, her thirteen-year-old daughter, and enjoying a way of living he never thought possible.