At a corner table in the former tavern that is the headquarters of the First Amendment Club, Diane LaVallee and Dennis Delano were revisiting the murder cases they’d worked. The jowly Delano, the suspended Buffalo police detective who reporters routinely and generously describe as “stocky,” worked on half a sandwich while LaVallee, prompted by a reporter from the Riverside Review, recalled the 1992 rape and murder of 13-year-old Jennifer Dominiak of Glor Street in Black Rock.

On my way to Tuesday’s meeting of the Buffalo Common Council’s Legislation Committee, I stopped off at the office of my favorite highly placed informant, the Skeptical Authority of City Hall (SACH). The chief had sent me over to the seat of Buffalo government to monitor the committee’s deliberations over North District member Joseph Golombek’s proposal to have the city switch to a city-manager form of government. The chief thought something interesting might ensue during deliberations over the matter in the committee, to which it had been sent after its filing by Golombek a week earlier.

“you know what I mean? Twenty years sweating my nuts off behind this bar.”