We had to rush to make the bulldog. I wrote the lead under both our bylines while Lansing worked up what she had on Paul. It went well together: an escape artist works his art on New York’s finest. It was good stuff. By the late editions, we had it polished to a reasonable facsimile of perfection.

It was nearly ten-thirty when I bought Lansing a drink over at Flanagan’s. It’s a good solid sports bar next to the terminal. Pictures of ballplayers on the wall. Semicircular bar around a couple of TVs. Baskets of popcorn on the tables. We sat in the back and hoisted a couple of scotches.

We were tired. We stared into our booze a lot. After a while, Lansing smiled. Brushed the long blond hair back over her shoulder.

“What?” I said.

She waved me off. Then she answered. “I was just thinking: we haven’t worked together on a story like that for a while.”

“The drug den fire, wasn’t it?”

She nodded fondly. “Yeah. I didn’t think you’d ever pair with me again after I ran in the doorway for that picture.”

I laughed. “It wasn’t that. It was the drive to the scene.”

Her mouth opened in surprise. “Oh, come on!” she said. “I’m a great driver.”

I plugged in a cigarette. It kept my mouth shut. Somehow I’d known she would say that.

I lit a match. Behind the flame, Lansing’s expression grew serious.

“Listen,” she said. “I got this job because of you.”

“You got this job because you’re good.”

“And you backed off a story once to let me prove it.”

I shrugged, blew smoke at her.

Lansing looked at me hard with her blue eyes. There’s something about those eyes. They can flash at you like polished steel. But behind that, just behind it, there’s something else. Something fearful, maybe. I’m not sure. Something it would be very easy to hurt.

She said: “If you want this one—Colt, Paul, the whole thing—if you want it, it’s yours.”

“I don’t want it.”

“I’m just saying …”

“It’s your story, Lansing. There’s just some angles I want to cover. Maybe I’ll do some sidebars on it….” My voice trailed off.

She lowered her face, stared into her drink. I looked at the part in the center of her hair. The thin show of white scalp. I thought of her sitting in front of a mirror in the morning, making that part with a brush.

She looked up. “It got to you, didn’t it?” she said. “Colt? He got to you.”

I jabbed out my cigarette quickly. “Come on, Lansing,” I told her. “Let’s get out of here.”

She drove me home, up Park Avenue. Mostly the cabbies owned it now. They whizzed by quickly, fighting each other for inches and dimes. Lansing made her way uptown slowly, clinging to the right lane. When she wasn’t on her way to cover a story, she drove like an eighty-year-old dowager trying to outlive her kids.

We didn’t talk much on the way. When we got to Eighty-sixth Street, we didn’t talk much some more. She parked outside my building, and we sat together silently in the dark of the car. All around us, Yorkville was bright with movie marquees and streetlamps. Lansing gazed through the windshield for a long moment.

“What was it?” she said. “About Colt, I mean.”

“Forget it, Lancer. Thanks for the lift.”

“Come on, Wells, I can be curious, too. Think of it as a favor.”

“Forget it,” I said.

“I mean, you’ve seen people die before.”

I sighed. “I guess. But Colt seemed … I don’t know.”

“Too much alive to die,” said Lansing sadly.

“Yeah. Like he had something he lived for, anyway. Something he gave a damn about. Maybe it just seems a waste, somehow.” I reached for the door handle. “Or maybe I’m just getting old.”

“You’re not so old,” Lansing said. She turned toward me. Her face caught the streetlight’s glow. There was no trace of steel in her blue eyes now. “And I’m not so young, either.”

I had my hand wrapped around the handle when she spoke. I was about to pop the door. I stopped. I tried to look out the windshield, not at her. I saw the neighborhood’s young lawyers and stockbrokers in their long overcoats hurrying home with tomorrow’s Times. They scurried past the drug dealers. The drug dealers jerked up and down on their toes at the comers, their hands clasping their stashes in the pockets of their army jackets. Overweight women were out strolling their sleeping kids around. Overweight husbands in Giants sweatshirts followed, headed toward the newsstand for the News or the Star. The bulldog was out already. Tomorrow’s birdcage lining today.

Lansing kept looking at me with her easy-to-hurt eyes. She was beautiful. She even smelled beautiful. She was twenty years younger than I was. I felt like an idiot.

“Chandler’s coming down tomorrow evening,” I said to the windshield. “Coming down for the weekend.”

“Is she?” Lansing turned to the windshield, too. “That’s nice. I’d like to meet Chandler sometime.”

I nodded. “Yeah, that’d be great.”

I popped the door open.

“Nice working with you tonight,” said Lansing. She sounded a little hoarse.

“Yeah,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

I didn’t watch her drive away. I headed straight for my front door. I heard her engine rev behind me. When I glanced up, I saw the Accord swiveling under the green traffic light onto Lexington. I went inside.

I heard the phone ringing as I came down the hall to my apartment. I hurried to get the key in the door. I pushed into the darkness, hit the light switch. I moved straight through to the desk by the window.

I grabbed the phone, looking down at the triplex marquee. There was no line outside the theater. That big Christmas sci-fi picture must have bombed, I thought. Then I heard the deep, measured voice on the other end of the wire say:

“John Wells. This is Lester Paul.”

He waited for me to answer. “You’ve got my attention,” I said. I pulled open the desk drawer fast. I rooted through the mess for a notepad, flipped it onto the desk, flipped it open. I pulled a pen from my pocket.

“I want to tell someone my side of the story,” the voice went on. He had a trace of an accent. I couldn’t place it. “I want to tell you.”

“On the record?” I said.

“Yes, you can print it all.”

“Okay, when?”

“Tomorrow evening. Ten o’clock. Are you familiar with the American Museum of Natural History?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Walk by it on the park side. Across the street, you understand?”

“Yeah. Ten o’clock.” I scribbled it on the page in front of me.

“I’ll drive by and pick you up in a blue Chevrolet.”

“You got it.”

“And Wells …”

“Yeah.”

“If there are any police, I’ll drive by and blow your brains out.”