The Long Fall

“I’m going into my office and you’re going up to yours,” I said. “For now that’s all we can do.”

“Theda misses you, and so does Trini.”

Trini was a Tibetan spaniel, and Theda was a precocious twelve-year-old whom Aura adopted when her best friend, Nancy, Theda’s mother, died. Twill dropped by their house now and again because they’d gotten to know each other while Katrina was off with Banker Zool.

“I miss them, too,” I said, disentangling myself.

“Call me?” she said before going out the door.

THE RECEPTION AREA of my office had been cleaned up. Even the holes in the wall were spackled and awaiting a new coat of paint. Aura took care of me as best she could. If I was a good guy I would have told her not to wait, to find a new man who deserved her attention. And I wouldn’t have said it because there was no chance of us getting back together. Katrina could leave at any moment. The problem was that I might, one day soon, find myself free and available. But then what? Would she end up murdered just for being my friend, as had Gert Longman? Would she end up snarling at me as she died, like that girl calling herself Karmen Brown had done?

AFTER APPRECIATING THE job well done and castigating myself for not being able to live without hope, I went through to my office and lay down on the sofa. There were fires burning all around me, but I slept long and hard.

Ê€„

26

I jerked awake at 11:07 when the buzzer from the front entrance went off. It’s not a loud sound, but who knew what new assassin might have been pressing that button? I went over to my desk, opening the second drawer on the right side. The small monitor was connected to four concealed electric eyes that covered every possible angle outside my front door.

Lieutenant Kitteridge had the woman he was with stand to the side so that the one camera he knew about wouldn’t reveal her. This gave me pause, but not in a doorstopper kind of way. I just wondered who she was and what her presence might portend.

As I have said many times, the honest cop and I had no love lost between us. He despised me and I had a healthy dislike for him. But I understood as I made my way toward the front that he was one of the few people, outside of a handful of intimates, that I trusted implicitly. I knew that he wouldn’t bushwhack me, wouldn’t set me up just to see me fall. He was the better man and I had to respect him regardless of any other feelings I harbored.

“Who is it?” I called through the outer door.

“Police,” Kitteridge said in a false authoritative tone. I remember thinking that he must’ve been in a good mood.

“Who’s that with you?” I asked. I had to. Every now and then the cop needed to be shown that I was a step ahead.

“Sergeant Bethann Bonilla,” he replied evenly, without any show of surprise.

I opened the door. The thirtyish sergeant was a head taller than her colleague. She had half a head on me. She was slender but wore a bulky blue suit to give the illusion of substance. As white as Kitteridge, she had black eyes and hair that whispered the accent of her last name.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

“Let us in, LT.”

WHEN WE WERE all seated in my office there was a moment of silence: those few seconds before the first round of the main event, before the bell rings and all hell breaks loose.

There was a very long cargo ship cruising down the Hudson, under the Statue of Liberty. Its passage gave me ideas that led far away from that room.

“Sergeant Bonilla is the newest addition to midtown Homicide,” Carson said. “She’s hoping to make you her first collar.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I got a thick neck.”

Bonilla smiled in a way that I didn’t quite get. But one thing was for sure—she wasn’t intimidated by me.

“You know, that’s always howÖre— I thought it should be,” I opined.

“What’s that, Mr. McGill?” Bonilla asked. Her voice was pleasant and throaty.

“A man should always be introduced to his executioner. That way there’s nothing shadowy or sinister about the deed. If the government is gonna kill you, everything should be aboveboard and nothing kept secret.”

There was that smile again.

“Willie Sanderson’s still in a coma,” Kitteridge said, throwing my philosophical line of reasoning off track.

“What you should be saying is that he’s still dead,” I said, “with little hope left for his resurrection.”

“This coma might become a permanent condition,” Carson said as a retort and in preparation for some other kind of attack.

Bonilla’s stare was starting to make me feel uncomfortable.

“We’d like to know what you can give us on Mr. Sanderson,” she said.

“The first time I met the man was at the wrong end of his big fist,” I told her. “I was a fool not to check the monitor before going out. I’ll probably be that same fool again someday soon.”

I was going out of my way trying to be witty. Maybe I had a concussion or something.