MARK DONAHUE IS WEARING HIS FULL DRESS police uniform as we walk along the plush main hallway of the Alexandria Hilton, following Joey and Maureen McCain and their three kids and Helen McCain and one of big Joe's old partners, retired Boston police detective Jack Crowley and his wife, Ellen. Mark and I and one of his friends from the Salem P.D., Officer Jonathan Hoellrich, have flown down to Washington, D.C., to participate in the twenty-second annual National Peace Officers Memorial Service, held on the lawn behind the U.S. Capitol. Thanks to Joe Jr.'s tenacity and the work of their family lawyer, Joe Doyle, fifteen years after he was shot in that crummy Hyde Park tenement, big Joe's name will be inscribed on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Judiciary Square, dedicated to peace officers killed in the line of duty.

In the hotel ballroom two women from the Fraternal Order of Police Auxiliary issue our security badges, and then we all queue up on the walkway for the bus ride to the Capitol. We're surrounded by the survivors of those who were killed or, like Joe McCain, died of their wounds in the past year: a tall, gaunt man from Tennessee wearing a photo badge of a young police officer smiling in his motorcycle jacket; a pretty young Hispanic woman clutching the hands of her five-year-old daughter and two-year-old son; and a whole squad of police officers from Sterling Heights, Michigan, including a guy big enough to play in the NFL wearing pants a couple of shades lighter than the rest— too large to fit. Seeing them all reminds me that there is indeed evil in the world and that the vast majority of cops shoulder a fair amount of risk every time they report to work.

On the bus I'm sitting next to eleven-year-old Joseph McCain. He and his brothers are attired in colorful Hawaiian shirts and pressed dungarees, each of them wearing a survivor's tag and one of their grandfather's detective badges on a beaded chain around his neck. The boys all love their “Papa,” and eighteen months after his death are still struggling with the fact that the big man with the crinkled blue eyes and white hair is gone for good. But the McCain kids are also voracious pack rats and are hounding every peace officer in sight for a patch or a pin, competing to see who can accumulate the largest and most varied collection. They are far from shy, and not even the hard-eyed state troopers can deter them from asking; Liam's strategy with an Oklahoma highway patrolman who says he has nothing to trade is to ask the tall, well-built fellow if he'll pop one of his buttons off. The husky young Oklahoman smiles and declines and then gazes out the bus window, lost in his own thoughts.

The McCain children have been treated to a guided tour of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, and young Joseph tells me that he met plenty of other kids there. “One boy told me that his dad died when he was riding a police horse and tried to light a match and the horse went crazy and ran away and he hit his head on a barn,” says Joseph, who wears his hair in a waxed crew cut and has those McCain blue eyes above a smattering of freckles. “Another kid's dad was moving equipment at the police station and there was gas and he blew up. Another man was writing a ticket for his friend and because he was a nice guy he let his friend sit next to him in the police car but the guy had been drinking and he grabbed the policeman's gun and shot him with it.”

Joseph forms a pistol with his right hand, putting his index finger up to his head. “Right here,” he says. “In the temple.”

Our bus is being escorted by a police motorcade, and at every crossroad patrol cars block traffic and we go speeding along the Beltway, unimpeded. There are thirty motorcycles paired in a long line behind us, and as Joseph and I crane our necks to watch them downshift into a turn, the eleven-year-old tells me of a dream he once had. “I was sleeping on the futon upstairs, and in the dream I was sleeping on the futon just like I really was and my papa walked into the room and I stood up and hugged him and then— poof— my eyes opened and the room was empty and I said ‘Ohh.'”

The motorcade drives past the Washington Monument and alongside the Mall and pulls up at the Capitol with ten police cruisers and all those motorcycles streaming in behind. Out the window we can see police officers and their families from jurisdictions around the country heading for the sea of chairs arranged on the Capitol lawn. There are tall cops, stubby, red-eared cops, muscle-bound cops, gray-haired cops, cops in ascots and leather jackets, brown uniforms and blue, tiger suits, jumpsuits, female troopers in knee-high glossy boots, and sheriffs from Alabama who haven't taken a fitness test since Jimmy Carter was president.

Getting off the bus, Maureen tells young Joseph to zip up his fly. “I said that to my father-in-law once and he said, ‘Dead men don't fall out open windows,'” Maureen tells me, with a laugh.

A six-foot hurricane fence encircles the lawn, notched with three security checkpoints and guarded by the Capitol Police and the U.S. Border Patrol. High up on the Capitol roof I can make out half a dozen snipers, their binoculars glinting in the sunlight. President Bush is expected and security is tight, although I can't help noticing that there are hundreds of cops and almost all of them have guns. It occurs to me that the government must have enormous faith in the police chiefs of this country. The chiefs supervise these cops and grant them their powers, including the right to carry a weapon in the vicinity of the president.

A heavy downpour was expected, but so far the wind has staved off the clouds and there's blue sky overhead, scented with flowering trees. It's the sort of May afternoon that, when the McCains were young, Helen, with her hair newly marcelled, and Joe, after putting on a neat-looking sport coat, would've taken the roof down on the Cadillac and gone for a drive up through Lynn and Salem.

In the shadow of the Rotunda, three sections of folding chairs are arranged in a crescent facing the gigantic temporary stage. Beside me Jack Crowley is wearing a rose-colored Palm Beach sport jacket and fiddling with the zoom lens on his camera. The former Boston detective, a broad, white-haired man with a cropped white beard, retired three years ago after thirty-eight years on the job. Big Joe called Crowley the best police photographer in the business and spent many evenings with him and Joe Doyle on the ground floor of their building at 73 Tremont Street in Boston, at the Fatted Calf.

The site of the old Waldorf restaurant, the Fatted Calf had a steer's head etched into the frosted glass of the windows facing Tremont, and walls paneled in the original gleaming mahogany of its former tenants. One night Jack Crowley and Joe McCain were having a few drinks after work, making little note of a diner at a table beside them as the man polished off several beers, a huge sirloin steak with all the trimmings, a fine dessert, and two or three glasses of liqueur. When his bill arrived, the man could be seen writing a lengthy message on the back of the slip.

The manager of the Fatted Calf was a diminutive fellow named Sy, with a few long strands of hair combed over his balding pate. When the waiter retrieved the solo diner's check and carried it over to Sy, the manager turned and stalked across the barroom. Hailing McCain and Crowley, who were regulars, he shoved the check under the detectives' noses, and they read the man's note:

“What the hell is that?” Sy asked.

“I think it's called a ‘business loss,'” said Crowley, sending McCain into paroxysms of laughter.

The little bar manager began sputtering. “Aren't you going to arrest him?” asked Sy.

“We're not gonna lug a guy just because he can't pay for dinner,” said McCain.

SUDDENLY A VOICE BREAKS OVER the loudspeaker, asking all uniformed police officers to form an honor cordon from the middle security checkpoint to the phalanx of chairs right in front of the stage, so the immediate families of the slain officers can be seated. Helen McCain is part of this group, escorted by Joe Jr. in his Somerville Police uniform.

The cordon of saluting officers divides the great lawn of the Capitol, with the survivors walking in silence between them, wives and mothers and husbands and sons, old men in wheelchairs pushed by New Jersey state troopers and babies in prams manned by deputy sheriffs from Ohio. After a while I see Helen and Joey walk past, but the survivors keep coming and coming, with the clean white spike of the Washington Monument looming in the distance. It's the magnitude of the silence and the sheer number of survivors that finally gets to me, as my sinuses fill up and a line from T. S. Eliot's “The Waste Land” pops into my head: “I had not thought death had undone so many.”

When everyone is seated, the national chaplain of the Grand Lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police says the invocation, and a female police officer from Tucson, Arizona, sings the National Anthem. Then a recording of “Hail to the Chief” bursts over the sound system and every cop within a half mile snaps to attention. Wearing a dark blue suit, taller than he appears on television, President George W. Bush descends the stairs of the Capitol, past the color guards from various jurisdictions and a long line of Capitol Police frozen in salute.

We all stand up amidst the applause and whistles and cheers, beating our hands together until they're raw. Bush settles at the podium, grins for a moment, and gives that presidential wave: a swift half arc from the center of his chest downward to five o'clock as the music dies away.

President Bush is not a great public speaker, and his staff could use an upgrade in the speechwriting department. He tends to run words together and uses a peculiar halting cadence that has the unfortunate effect of making him appear to be trying to sound smarter than he is. But when he utters the words “The death of a peace officer is a reminder that peace can be fragile,” it strikes me that George W. Bush is a man who lacks any doubt.

On the dais behind the president are Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Mueller, the secretaries of Labor and the Interior, and several congressmen and congresswomen. “You can tell it's an election year,” says Mark Donahue, sitting to my left.

Jonathan Hoellrich is on my right, wearing a pin-striped suit, sunglasses, and his police badge with a black mourning band around it. He's twenty-eight years old, an average-sized guy in a profession dominated by giant men. I have heard that Hoellrich survives— even flourishes— on the strength of his king-sized wit.

“I never voted for him, but I gotta admit, George W. has balls,” I tell Hoellrich. “He's done all the things that Clinton should have done and didn't.”

“Except for the one thing that Clinton shouldn't have done and did,” Hoellrich says. “But this is fantastic. We're close enough to be in a scrum with Ashcroft.”

Also onstage are private-sector boosters of the event, heavy-hitting law enforcement supporters, including the president of Miller Brewing Company, who gets a rousing ovation from the cops, record company mogul Tommy Mottola in what looks like a pair of Sam Giancana's sunglasses, and the pop singer Marc Anthony. In a bizarre piece of theater, the Latin heartthrob rises to sing a number after George Bush sits down. Marc Anthony is a little guy in black slacks and T-shirt, and when the prerecorded introduction to his hit “You Sang to Me” begins, he stands with the microphone, listening through his earpiece and tapping his foot. Behind him, Ashcroft and Bush and the rest of the suits are unsmiling and motionless, looking like members of the Soviet Politburo.

“This is kinda weird,” says Hoellrich.

“It's like when JFK would have Sinatra show up,” I tell him. “Bring the mob guys in, entertain, and get 'em out.”

After Marc Anthony sits down amidst polite applause from George Bush's cabinet, there's a break in the action while each of the surviving parents and spouses is allowed to pose for a photograph with the president. Dozens of press corps members close in, their cameras whirring like locusts, and we're left to kill an hour in the sun.

“If I had a sausage cart I'd make a fortune,” says Hoellrich.

After his photo op, Bush departs, and the P.A. announcer states that the Roll Call of Heroes will begin. Three hundred and seventy-seven officers from thirty-four states, several federal agencies, and Puerto Rico were killed on the job last year. Texas has suffered the loss of eighteen cops, while California, South Carolina, and New York have each lost ten. There were two in Massachusetts: Joe McCain and Lawrence Michael Jupin, a patrolman from the Westminster Police Department who was shot by a fleeing suspect in May 1999, lingered in a coma, and died on November 29, 2002.

As each name is called, the family approaches the podium where the surviving parent or spouse affixes a rose to a star-shaped wreath and is handed a medal commemorating the fallen officer. It's almost like a graduation ceremony, only more solemn; no caps thrown in the air, no cheers or applause, only the breeze ruffling the trees on the Mall and the distant growl of commercial airplanes.

Back in the last row, Donahue and Hoellrich and the Crowleys and Maureen and the kids and I stand up when Massachusetts is announced. With Joe Jr. on one arm and a large, blue-jacketed trooper from the Mass. State Police on the other, Helen McCain approaches the podium when her late husband's name is called. She's wearing a light green pantsuit and has had her hair done for the occasion. When the police officer hands her Joe's medal and Joe Jr. and the state trooper return his salute, Helen drops her gaze for a moment and is led away, wobbling on her bad knees.

Bagpipers from several police emerald societies are playing on the lawn adjacent to the stage, the keening of their music punctuated by the boom and rattle of the drummers. Derived from Near Eastern hornpipes and traced to fourteenth-century Scotland, the bagpipes have long been used to celebrate the bardic tradition of brosnachadh— the praise of warriors and chieftains and lament for their passing.

In a few minutes Joe Jr. and Helen rendezvous with our group by one of the checkpoints, and Joe Doyle and his daughter Jessica walk out from beneath a giant shade tree and join us. The curly-haired attorney settled a big case at the eleventh hour back in Boston and flew down just in time to make the ceremony. He kisses the women and shakes hands all around, pausing to admire Joe's medal. It's inscribed “Fraternal Order of Police Supreme Sacrifice Medal of Honor,” arranged with a blue-and-gold ribbon in a crushed velvet box. No doubt it will take its place on a shelf filled with Joe's decorations back in Helen's TV den in Somerville.

Joe Doyle has never seen the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, which is just a few blocks away, and we decide to walk over while Helen and the children and the Crowleys hail a cab to take them back to the hotel. Doyle has known Jack Crowley for over thirty years and calls out to him from the sidewalk when the taxi arrives.

“Be careful, Jack,” says Doyle, resurrecting an old office joke. “Watch out for that guy.”

“Who?” Crowley asks, laughing. “Arnold Sphincter?”

“Yeah,” says Doyle. “Don't get rear-ended by Arnold Sphincter.”

“Don't worry. I won't,” Crowley says, laughing harder now. He waits until the ladies are seated and then makes an up-yours gesture toward Doyle, who roars as Crowley shuts himself inside and the taxi zooms off.

The National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial, dedicated by the first President Bush in 1991, is located on the 400 block of E Street NW. It's a grassy site dominated by two “pathways of remembrance” made from blue-gray marble engraved with the names of 14,000 officers killed on the job dating back to 1794. Contained inside the park is a second ring of marble with a smaller circumference, forming a kind of bench where visitors can sit and contemplate the many names. When we arrive, hundreds of people are moving in both directions inside the circle, past an inscription from Tacitus: IN VALOR THERE IS HOPE.

There are a large number of police officers, as well as senior citizens, young women, men in business suits, and kids of every size, race, and description. On this day every year the Capitol Police allow visitors to leave mementos on the site. Photographs and prayer cards and bunches of flowers are crowded against the berm. While we walk along searching for “Joseph E. McCain,” a black girl about ten years old, thin and very tall for her age, stands in the open center of the memorial in a light blue dress, festooned with white ribbons. I can tell by the look on her face that the name of her older brother or her father has gone up on the wall today, and I want to go over and hug the kid.

Earlier today, Helen McCain and the Crowleys visited the memorial, and we find Joe's prayer card and a Met patch taped up beside his name. Everyone crowds around for a moment, and Joe Doyle squats on his heels, running his fingertips over the one-inch letters carved into the rock. “There he is,” says Doyle, with the trace of a smile.

Two hulking state troopers from New Jersey stoop over me when I attempt to make a rubbing of Joe's name with a pen and a page from my notebook. They hand me a slip of paper imprinted with “National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial” in blue letters, along with the stub of a pencil. “Sir, try this,” says one of the policemen, tipping his cap. “It works much better.”

When I turn around, Joe Jr. and Donahue and Hoellrich are a little ways off, talking to some other cops. Joe Doyle is seated on the opposite bench, his suit jacket removed and thrown over his arm, ankles crossed. The afternoon has grown hot, and he pats his brow with his sleeve and gazes into the distance, a wistful look on his face. No doubt the gentleman from Milton is engaged in some reverie of Joe McCain, a mental motion picture of all the bad guys they investigated, indicted, and put away; all the Scotch they drank, all the practical jokes and the laughs, and all the indelible characters they knew in the dusty corridors of long ago. At that moment, looking at Doyle, I understand that no one who really knew Joseph Elmer McCain ever regretted a minute of it. That despite the bad times and the grief— and a life as big as Joe's brought as much sorrow as triumph— all of Joe's many friends considered themselves lucky.

Now that the serious part of the day is over, it's time to get down to the real tribute. A few blocks away, the Fraternal Order of Police has cordoned off the street in front of their building and is about to crank up the party. En route we pass through a bazaar of cop paraphernalia, and Mark Donahue and I pick up some trinkets for our kids. Hanging from one of the racks is a T-shirt that depicts a policeman holding a can that says “Whoop Ass” with the caption “Don't Make Me Open This.”

Strolling past the booths, Donahue reminds me that we're in D.C. to party for Joe McCain, not to bury him. “That bullet saved his life,” Donahue says. “He was fifty-eight years old and way up over three hundred pounds. His heart never would've lasted.”

As a result of his wounds, big Joe changed his diet, quit drinking, and took up golf with a vengeance. He even hired a personal trainer to help him lose weight. “We had him for thirteen more years,” says Donahue, as we turn into the block party. “So let's get some beers.”

Beneath a giant white tent anchored by plastic barrels filled with concrete, four hundred cops are crowded around a makeshift bar constructed of sawhorses and planks. Although most are in plainclothes, nearly every one of them is wearing his badge and a gun, their voices rising in a great din.

“Smell it?” asks Donahue.

“What?” I ask.

“All the testosterone.”

Many of the cops are white guys over six feet tall, and there are a lot of ex-military, especially jarheads. But there are a significant number of blacks, every shade of brown, Amerasian sheriffs from the desert, and Latinas in tight jeans packing .38s. Music is blaring from a stage at one end of the block, and the stench of motorcycle exhaust fills the air as more and more partygoers arrive by the moment.

Security is lax, almost nonexistent. Each of the dozen or so bartenders— all of them cops— is wearing a T-shirt that says “Staff” and carrying a sidearm. But there's no perimeter, and no metal detectors— not that they would do much good. With all that is going on these days, I have the strange feeling that this is both the safest and the most dangerous place in the entire country.

“It's like the wild, wild west,” I say to Hoellrich.

He stands with his hands on his hips, surveying the crowd. “I'd rather finger-bang my own ass than hang around a convention with a bunch of cops,” he says.

Hoellrich sure is a funny bastard, and Donahue pays his buddy from the Salem P.D. the ultimate compliment when he laughs into his beer and says, “Joe would've liked you.”

Soon we are pouring the caramel-colored truth serum down our throats and making a passel of new best friends. Though it's early in the evening, the sky has darkened and the first drops of rain begin pattering against the tent. Everyone on the outside moves under the roof while an enormous Arkansas sheriff bellows from the midst of the throng. He's the size of a professional wrestler, barrel-chested and bald-headed, and has his arms around two lesser titans: a dreadlocked undercover cop with gigantic biceps and another large black dude wearing a “Detroit Police” T-shirt. The sheriff from Arkansas is wearing a pistol the size of my forearm and downing cans of Miller like it's nobody's business.

Jonathan Hoellrich, all five feet nine and 160 pounds of him, says, “Watch this,” and hands me his drink. Approaching the three swaying giants, Hoellrich flings his arms out wide and proclaims in a loud voice, “I want to fight all three of you guys, right here, right now.”

For a moment the big sheriff is stymied, his eyes bulging, a tiny upturned baseball cap riding the crown of his head like a yarmulke. Hoellrich snorts through one nostril and raises his hand in a bullshit kung fu pose. “I'll tear you apart,” he says.

The sheriff roars with laughter, spraying the crowd around him with a mouthful of beer foam. He drops the Rastafarian cop and reaches out to grab Hoellrich by the neck, crushing him in a bear hug. “Aaaarggh,” he says. “I like you.”

Hoellrich comes sauntering back to us. “He's lucky I didn't kick his ass,” he says.

The rain has increased, and brown water awash with flotsam is rushing along the sidewalk. Joe Jr. is nearby, talking with Dave Moseley, a Metropolitan cop from D.C. They're both members of the Renegade Pigs, a contingent of whom, including Joey, have ridden their Harleys down to the memorial from New York City. Stocky, bearded, and mustachioed, Joe Jr. and his buddy have shed their badges and guns and are drinking beer with one foot on the curbstone and the other in the gutter.

“It's like Calcutta,” says Joey, watching the water stream by. He squats over the torrent and pantomimes taking a shit and then a drink. “Soup, anyone?”

McCain and Moseley share the opinion that real cops understand and recognize one another and don't have to advertise what they do for a living. Joey eyes the pretty boys in the crowd with the sleeves rolled up on their polo shirts and their badges hanging out and says, “I don't know if you guys realize it or not, but there's a shitload of cops around here.”

Moseley and Hoellrich and Donahue snort into their beers while Joey laughs and spits into the gutter. The weather has driven more partyers under the tent, and we get squeezed onto the sidewalk, bareheaded, no umbrellas, the rain diluting our drinks. In a moment of inspiration, Hoellrich unfastens the two bottom cords of a Miller Lite banner tied to the fence and lifts it up to form a shelter-half. Soon five more cops duck beneath Jonathan's invention, the water slanting off to each side.

“Now that's leadership,” says Hoellrich, who's planning to take the sergeant's exam next month. “If I was in 'Nam, I woulda made a tent out of a matchstick.” He peers out at the crowd. “Hey, where's all the hot prosecutors?”

Nearby is a short, stocky guy with a Jersey accent. “You look like a fed,” he says to me.

Because I'm trim and have short hair and don't say much, everyone thinks I'm with the FBI. But really I'm just an old-time newsie, a pad and pen stuck away in my pocket, eavesdropping on all the conversations swirling around me. Everybody's drunk and armed to the teeth, a scene right out of the 1850s, and there hasn't been a scoop like this since the lords of the inkwell chased Pinkerton and his men as they pursued the Wild Bunch across the Texas Panhandle. I should be wearing a bowler hat and carrying Apache charms.

The guy from Jersey is a forty-one-year-old detective with the Newark P.D. named Bobby Clark, and he's certain that I taught a course he took in New York City called “High Intensity Drug Trafficking,” which is offered through the FBI Academy. “Your hair was darker, but it was you, all right,” Bobby says. “The thin nose, the posture, everything.”

I tell him that he's mistaken and he buys me a drink. He buys everyone a drink. His partner, Rueben Torres, is a muscular Puerto Rican kid with his hair combed straight back who proclaims himself “the best-looking cop in Jersey.” The Newark guys are a couple of hot shits and they gain immediate acceptance in our corner; Rueben even tries to make time with Joe Doyle's daughter.

Donahue takes delight in pointing this out. “Lookit, Joe,” he says.

“Gimme a fucking break,” says Doyle, laughing.

The Newark guys are busy telling Donahue and Hoellrich that two cops ride in every patrol car in their jurisdiction, an example of largesse that amazes the New Hampshire cops but something the Jersey detectives insist is a necessity.

“Fucking killers out there,” says Rueben. In the Vailsburg section of Newark, a small number of Russian mob types have managed to unseat a powerful chapter of the Bloods, a California-based gang made up of violent black kids.

“These guys are fucking scared of the Russians,” says Rueben, noting that the Russians operate a string of chop shops in the South district, off Frelinghuysen. “They have no respect for anything.”

Rueben and Bobby are also stuck on the notion of genuine cops versus fake cops. Bobby explains that real cops write letters to the chief asking for more typewriter ribbons, while the phony cops brag about gunfights they've been in.

“You wanna meet a real cop? I'll show you a real fuckin' cop,” he says, jerking my elbow.

We hop across the narrow alley of rain and pass under the tent. Standing in a circle of other guys is a light-skinned black kid from Howard County, Maryland. He wears his hair in short, tight cornrows and shakes my hand and nods when Bobby introduces us.

In baggy jeans and an oversized windbreaker, Mark Taylor looks like a guy who hangs out on a corner somewhere, doing a little business, one of those urban account executives you'll find in every city in America. But he's an undercover narcotics cop, albeit a soft-spoken one, a humble man in a job that has often been filled by bigmouthed cowboys. Taylor explains that the marijuana and Ecstasy dealers in his neck of the woods are not particularly violent but are well-organized, and he and his partner, a tall, young, silent kid with darker skin, are making a ton of good pinches.

“You been in a drug raid yet?” Taylor asks me, flashing a smile. “It's a rush.”

When Bobby the Newark cop and I return to our previous spot, he shakes his head, indicating a group of muscle-bound cops tricked out in their monogrammed golf shirts and nouveau high-and-tight haircuts. “I'd take that kid from Maryland over those guys anytime,” he says, rounding out his vowels in a thick Jersey accent. “Don't ask me how I know, but he's a real cop. There are five hundred guys in here and about two dozen real cops and he's one of 'em.”

Bobby says that a real cop goes to work every day realizing there's a possibility he may die on the job but doesn't sensationalize the danger of his profession or himself. He does the job for its own sake, and doesn't seek recognition or commendations. Sergeant Bobby Clark, who has made a thousand arrests in the past ten years, is describing someone he's never met: Joe McCain.

A few yards away, several guys from the Norfolk P.D. are affixing their departmental stickers on the proffered rear ends of some exotic dancers who have shown up at the party. A gang of cops has circled the bent-over strippers, hooting and whistling as each sticker is applied with greater flourish.

“They're getting Norfolk-ed,” says Mark Donahue, his eyes turning sixes and sevens.

Jonathan Hoellrich runs over and juts out his butt and the other cops turn away in disgust. “Whattaya mean?” asks Hoellrich. “Look at me. I got a made-for-television ass.”

It's getting late and we decide to head for a place called Harry's Bar. Mark Donahue, Hoellrich, Joe Doyle and Jessica, Joe McCain, Jr., Maureen, and I reach Harry's just as the waiters begin circulating for last call and we order a round of beers. The waiter comes back right away and slings the beers and several bowls of popcorn onto the table, and we raise our bottles to three kilted members of a police emerald society who are seated across the way. They are smoking cigarettes and a set of bagpipes is strewn over the table between them.

Doyle asks Joey how Helen is doing, and Maureen jumps in with a story about her feisty mother-in-law. On a recent Sunday morning, Helen McCain got dressed in her nicest outfit and headed out to church only to discover that a vandal had “keyed” the side of her car. Several deep gouges ran the length of the door panel, and Maureen raced outside when she heard the angry shouts of her mother-in-law.

“Look what this bastard did to my car,” said Helen, shaking her cane at the damage.

Maureen patted Helen on the shoulder. “Maybe you should go pray for him, Ma,” she said.

“Yeah, I'll pray for him,” said Helen, climbing into the car. “Pray that his fucking arm falls off.”

Doyle laughs so hard at this story that he shuts his eyes and his face turns a deep crimson while his eyelids go white. We're all laughing and pounding our beer bottles on the tabletop, and Donahue says to Doyle, “Hey, Joe. Tell us the quintessential Joe McCain story.”

The laughter dies away, although an occasional titter erupts here and there. Wiping his eyes on his sleeve, Doyle pauses to straighten out his cuffs and then gazes at us with that jury box stare. “The quintessential Joe McCain story,” he says. “All right. Let me think for a minute.”

There are hundreds to pick from. But after swallowing a mouthful of beer, Doyle replaces the bottle on his coaster and raises a forefinger. “I've got it,” he says.

It was after Joe had retired and was spending part of every year at the McCains' condo in Deerfield Beach, Florida. One January morning he had to catch a 7:00 A.M. flight out of Logan Airport and rose at five to let his dog, Jack, out of the house. At the same time that Joe Jr. ran downstairs to start his father's car, a series of high-pitched noises arose from the backyard, what sounded like a woman being attacked.

Rushing halfway up the driveway, Joey caught a glimpse of Jack, shaking his head to and fro with another, smaller animal caught between his jaws. It was a skunk and Joe Jr. sprinted in the other direction just as his father burst into the backyard shouting, “Jack, Jack, no,” and the sharp, sudden stink of the skunk penetrated the morning air.

Jack dropped the skunk and bolted halfway around the house, leaped onto the front porch and shot into the foyer. Roused from sleep, Maureen was descending the stairs when she head big Joe say, “Let the dog in. He might be hurt. Let him in.”

Just then the smell reached Maureen, and she slammed the door in Jack's face and locked it. No way was she letting Jack inside their apartment after he'd been doused with skunk spray.

Big Joe coaxed the dog out of the foyer and up the driveway and in the back door. The skunk had crawled off beneath the porch to die. After shooing Jack into the pantry, Joe glanced up at the clock— he had about twenty minutes to clean up and catch his flight. He called for a taxi, jumped in the shower, and had changed his clothes just as the cab pulled up in front of the house.

Grabbing his suitcase by the front door, Joe thundered down the stairs and climbed into the taxi, instructing the driver to head for Logan. “Can you smell anything?” asked Joe.

“No,” the cabbie said.

Fifty feet down the road, the driver leaned over and opened both windows. “Now that you mention it . . .”

Joe arrived at his terminal in the frozen semidarkness and hailed a state trooper he knew. As they walked toward the gate, out of the corner of his eye Joe noticed the trooper sniffing the air. And some of the folks passing by were stopping short and asking each other, “What's that smell?”

Big Joe hurried on.

When he arrived at the gate, he learned the plane was full and ready to depart. Joe McCain was the last passenger onboard, and as he squeezed his bulk down the aisle and located his seat in the back of the plane, a flight attendant asked no one in particular “What is that smell?”

“It's me,” said Joe.

The woman laughed, thinking that he was kidding, and went up the aisle looking for the source of her complaint. The plane was loaded with sunbirds, and Joe's assigned seat was next to a guy who must have weighed four hundred pounds, his fat spilling over the armrests. A large man himself, Joe wedged himself in beside the man and reached up to unscrew the little valve that controlled the overhead fan, thinking it might help dispel the odor.

But he only managed to spread the smell throughout the plane, and moments later passengers up both sides of the aisle were looking around and expressing their intense displeasure. Joe raised his eyebrows toward the fat man sitting beside him and shrugged his shoulders, as if to say, “Who knew?”

Our laughter rings out across Harry's Bar, and I'm so taken with Joe Doyle's story that I fall off my chair and Donahue bats me over the head with the popcorn bowl. “That was Joe,” says Doyle. “The bull in the china shop.”

The waiter tells us that it's time to go. As we rise from our chairs, the kilted bagpiper notices Joe Jr.'s survivor's tag and they start talking while the other revelers begin making for the exits. Joey tells the piper that he plays drums in the Boston Gaelic Column and that his father has been enshrined on the memorial today.

“Can I play something for you?” the piper asks.

Sure, says Joey.

The gray-haired cop stubs out his cigarette and takes up the bagpipes. He tucks the bag under his arm, moistens the tip of the blowstick and spreads the drone pipes across his left shoulder. As soon as the piper inflates his bag and utters the first note, cops who had been heading for the door pull an about-face, grope on tabletops for that last, abandoned beer, and then crowd around with their glasses raised.

The wail of the bagpipes fills the bar to the rafters as the piper hits the grace notes segueing from “The Wild Colonial Boy” to “Amazing Grace.” His tone goes lower, the pipes somewhat quieter, and it occurs to me that a piece of Joe McCain has been left on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol, and a part of him will forever reside in Judiciary Square, but the lion's share of the man can be found here, in the late night stench of Harry's Bar. I glance around at the people who loved him— Joey and Maureen, Mark, Joe Doyle and his young daughter— all transfixed by the music, their expressions a mingling of amusement and regret as they praise the great warrior and lament his passing.

The saga of Joe McCain reminds me that, now more than ever, we need heroes. We're just looking for them in the wrong places. If you're searching for a man or a woman made from the stuff they used in World War II, or at the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, or out on the paddies of Vietnam— if it's the genuine article you're after— forget about Major League Baseball or the local cinema. Ballparks and movie theaters produce entertainers, not heroes. So if you're stuck for a name, pick up the Quincy phone book and give Joe Doyle a call. He'll give you the address of a little park in Washington, D.C., and you can take a walk through. If you really want heroes and you've got the time to go looking, you'll certainly find some in there.