He had worked for the Ninth at one time, the Lower East Side Precinct and lived somewhere down Sixth between C and D. Walked his dog, Esther, every morning, a chihuahua-pit bull mix, and stood on the corner of 7th and B to finish his cigarette. You didn't need to turn on 1010 WINS if he was there, didn't need the beep, or whatever; you just watched the face: when he sucked in his cheeks to take the last hit off that Chesterfield, you'd set your watch; 7 am on the nose. He told people if they asked that he was waiting for someone.
The bar on the corner was where they filmed the Verdict. Across the street was Tompkins Square Park, where he took the 9 mm round to his head, just above the right eye. Doctors stared at the x-ray on the light box for quite some time, arguing about it, a hey-come-look-at-this kind of thing. He'd been talking to them and laughing the whole time with the nine squirreled up in his frontal cortex. Neurosurgeon on call was a recovering alcoholic. Just got his twenty-year coin the night before and said, "Leave it. Give him IV antibiotics for two weeks and leave it."
Retired from PD after that and managed to open up a private investigator's business above the Cowboy bar on First. Became a fixture with his dog on the corner every morning. Whoever he was waiting for never showed but he'd be there, finishing the bogey.
City Sanitation was given the heads up to let it alone; bar people the same: His stack of butts grew, like the Great Pyramid of Giza, subject to the elements and occasional vandalism; kind of like this monument to a cop who'd been lobotomized by a bullet and for whoever he'd been waiting for.
He just couldn't remember who that was.