There's nothing personal about who you fight in fight club. Everything about him from the armful of gold hash stripes to the box-toed custommade shoes said flatfoot. Behind his back the cops on Centre Street called him Spark Plug, after the tender-footed nag in the comic strip Barney Google.
The group near the white man's corpse, of which he was the hub, had grown by then, to include, in addition to the principals, two deputy police commissioners, an inspector from homicide, and nameless uniformed lieutenants from adjoining precincts.