the most remorseless constable, saying "sponsor"
Anything less than a combination thoroughgoing professional and AA-longtimer would have at least hiked an eyebrow at one of the most powerful and remorseless constables in three counties saying sponsor.
Context
The program's widest reach in the book, into the office of the law itself: the toothbrush-revenge prosecutor, one of three counties' most remorseless, rotating his Stetson and speaking fluent recovery — sponsor, working a program, a day at a time, detach with love. The disease's institutions have colonized even the man who prosecutes the diseased; the same twelve-step grammar that runs Ennet House now runs the constable's interior, "unmanageability" and all. The reach is the point: no one is standing outside this machinery.