THE HOLE in the Wall, once my home away from home. Being here feels weird on many levels, one of which is that I’m here without Kate, my longtime partner, my friend, for a brief time more than that. My feelings for her, my memory of her, will always be complicated. She made life difficult for me at the end, but her heart was in the right place, even if her head was not. We never should have slept together. We never should have breached that wall. It colored everything. It made it harder for us to see what was going on around us. She deserved better.
Patti spins on her bar stool and gives me the once-over as I approach.
“How’re you doing?” she asks.
I shrug. “I’m a washed-out cop with a questionable future.”
She points a finger at me as she raises her beer. “But still a cop,” she says.
She seems happy that I’ve come out of this thing in one piece. Patti is always a mixed bag, a lot of work, but in the end, she was always looking out for me. Did she enjoy it, on some level, being the one helping me instead of the other way around? I’m sure she did. But in the end, what’s the difference? She was there for me when it counted.
Soscia, wearing a Hawks jersey, is so far into his pints that he can hardly stand. He falls into me and drapes an arm around my neck. “This guy,” he slurs to whomever is listening, which is nobody. “Best cop I know.”
“You’re a good egg, Sosh,” I say, then I catch someone else’s eye.
She walks up to me with a coy smile, her eyes down.
“Well, well, well,” I say. “Kim Beans, as I live and breathe.”
She looks up at me, the smile a bit brighter. “You heard about Margaret, I take it.”
“Of course I heard.” It was Goldie. My father is too proud to admit anything. But Goldie caved. The feds took the death penalty off the table, and he gave up Margaret. The FBI perp-walked her out of the Daley Center four hours ago.
“Congratulations,” she says.
I raise my eyebrows and smirk at her.
She nudges me with an elbow. “Ah, you’re not still sore at me, are you?”
I put a hand on my chest. “Sore? Why would I be sore? Because you were receiving those weekly photographs from Margaret Olson and forgot to mention it? Even though it would have cleared me?”
She wags a finger at me. “Just exercising my rights under the First Amendment,” she says.
“Yeah?” I lean into her. “Tell you what, Kim. Maybe someday you and I will meet in a dark alley, and I’ll exercise my rights under the Second Amendment.”
She deserves that, and she knows it. What does she care? This whole case rebuilt her career. She’s back on TV and has a great future.
“Fair enough,” she says. “But if your attitude ever adjusts, Detective, you’ve got my number. This time it will be off the record.”
She gives me one last come-hither glance and walks away.
Did she just come on to me?
Whatever. I’m not touching that hot stove. I’m done with dangerous women.
Never again.
Not for a few weeks, at least.
The truth is, in that particular department, I’m in a weird sort of limbo. My memory is back, which means my feelings for Amy have returned. I remember and feel it more than ever now, how deeply I cared for her.
But it feels like another life to me. Like she’s a warm, loving memory, but without the piercing heartache. It feels like I’m starting over now, a clean slate, for whatever that’s worth.
The crowd around me is filled with familiar faces, but in some ways foreign. There are nods and averted glances. Nobody knows how to deal with me. The scandal that has rocked the department will be felt for years. That’s because of me. Three very popular cops—Kate, Goldie, and my father—are gone now, and in different ways they’re all connected to me. I’m not exactly a pariah; nobody can really blame me for anything. But I’m a symbol of the disaster, the last remaining freight car in the train wreck.
My eyes fall on Lieutenant Paul Wizniewski, nursing a glass of rye at a table, the stub of an unlit cigar in his mouth. When our eyes meet, he pauses. Removes the cigar from his mouth. Takes a deep breath.
The Wiz will always be an insufferable, self-promoting jackass, but he wasn’t a crooked cop. I thought he was. And he thought I was. We were both reporting our findings to Goldie, the head of Internal Affairs. Goldie played each of us against the other, a virtuoso puppet show.
I nod to the Wiz. He nods back. We will never be bosom buddies, but there is room for both of us in the department.
And then I find myself climbing onto the stage and picking up the microphone.
I click the mike on and stare out at the crowd. It takes a while for the noise to die down, but eventually it does, a nervous stillness hanging in the air, all eyes on me, the comedian, the guy whose name they used to chant.
“I just want to be a cop again,” I say, surprising myself. “That’s all I ever wanted. You guys okay with that?”
Silence.
I don’t have anything else to say. I start to drop the mike, then I hear somebody in the crowd clap his hands.
Then someone else claps. Then others join in, a trickle of applause slowly gaining momentum.
Pretty soon they’re all on their feet, cheering and clapping. I wasn’t expecting a standing ovation, but I’m getting one.
I don’t know if I’m going to get back to where I was before this all happened. I’m not sure I want to. But wherever I am right now—a roomful of cops letting me know that I’m one of them again—is just fine with me for the present.
“Listen, I can’t stay long,” I say, raising a hand to quiet the crowd. “I’m meeting Margaret Olson for drinks later.”
They like that, howls of laughter. It probably helps that half of them can’t stand Maximum Margaret and the rest of them are so drunk they couldn’t spell their own names.
“Just kidding,” I say. “But I have to say, my love life is doing okay these days. I’m losing track of all the women. In fact, you know what I could use . . .”
I look out over the crowd.
“I could really use a little black book.”
Laughter, even louder, hoots and shouts.
“I’ve been looking all over for mine,” I say, “and I’ll be damned if I can find it.”