caught myself saying, “I want to be the first to know about anything that’s not above board,” and El Miedo said, You would. That’d be just like you. You pussy.

I heard a mention of “prior convictions” … and I didn’t think suspended sentence or time off for good behavior, I thought about my convictions. I’d had infractions. I’d had warnings. I’d been written up. But convictions…. Had I ever had any of those? Really?

Even when I had the shakes I hadn’t been as shaky as I’d been at the grand jury that morning. Coming back to the Precinct, it just got worse. The whole welter of phrases and faces. Arraignments. Bail postings. Extradition orders. Interstate flight.

I was trying to get up to speed on the Whitney case when the Captain fronted me for a chat. He called our prep briefing sessions “chalk talks,” as if we were back in high school. He’d come up through Alcoholic Beverage Control and COMPSTAT—terrifically appropriate training for someone heading a major case squad like Robbery-Homicide. He looked, dressed and tried to talk like Larry King, and could recite every section of the California Penal Code. He was waffling on to me about some “regulation,” when I got hand-delivered the final divorce agreement from Polly’s lawyer. Their office, on her instructions no doubt, was always sending the stuff to work, so in case anyone in the station house just might’ve happened by some mad chance not to have heard, they’d get the picture.

And what a pretty typical picture it was. Especially for a cop. It felt like cold paper to me, but coming not long after my partner on the job had requested a transfer, it didn’t make me feel so hot. Bruce Wyburn, who’d worked with me less than a year, had given me the heave-ho. A guy named Bruce, for God sakes. I signed on the dotted line and tried to focus. But I couldn’t. The song had crept into my mind again. The tune. Her voice.

It was one of those obscure jazz weepers—with the kind of sentimental lyrics you hear when you’re weaving out of a fern bar—the melody something a spare change saxophone would do in a tiled tunnel by a bus stop … always wavering and wandering, getting away from you … then slipping an evening-cool hand back into your pocket when you were well past. That’s what it sounded like. The past. Lost secret moments that hurt you to recall and yet you longed to regain—and believed you could recapture … like an escaped felon … but only while the song lasted. As if, just beyond the bars of the music, she … whoever she was … was waiting beneath a streetlight for you. Time had changed its mind … summer was back for a refill and the precious sorrow was about to begin again. “Wayward Heart … always leads me in danger … of staring fondly at strangers …”

It was nothing that some goat hair and dynamite couldn’t fix, but I’d taken the pledge. Not even El Miedo could scare me back in the gutter again. That made it line ball which I hated more … the emptiness of the weekend or …

… also referred to as … perdida del alma … Susto is an illness attributed to a frightening event that causes the soul to leave the body. Individuals with susto also experience significant strains in key social roles. Symptoms may appear any time from days to years after the fright is experienced. It is believed in extreme cases, susto may result in death … Ritual healings are focused on calling the soul back to the body and cleansing the person to restore bodily and spiritual balance.

—Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR)