The papers got the hero angle before TV. The police withheld the surveillance footage twenty-four hours, so there was no art, which determined the amount of play any story received, and the camera trucks went to Robbery Armed first. The stand-up talent didn’t know there was a twist, so they didn’t ask, and of course the department spokesman there didn’t volunteer it. You couldn’t blame him: The cops had their man in jig time, a rare enough event to shout over the airwaves and skip some details. The bank was closed; the witnesses the reporters managed to reach at home gave confused accounts of what happened. You couldn’t blame them, either: They were all ducking for cover and from start to finish my part of the show ran less than a minute.
My press conference closed too late to make the print deadline, so bright and early the next day I went out and snagged a copy of the Free Press. My face sneered at me from the first page of Section B. I was misquoted, the reporter got the make and model of my weapon wrong, and the bullet that clipped the bandit’s left knee made a detour and struck him in the right thigh. Which was okay, because that’s what I was aiming for in the first place.
Everything else was pretty much as it happened, although if you’ve ever been present at a newsworthy event and read about it later, you remember it seemed to belong to someone else’s story.
The robber’s name was Everett. He’d served two tours in Afghanistan with Army Special Forces and received a medical discharge. Three doctors had diagnosed him with post-traumatic stress syndrome. He was an insanity plea waiting to happen. I didn’t care. I’d lost interest in him the second I kicked away his gun.
As for me, I looked grayer than I did in the mirror, and my chiseled features looked as if they’d been carved in butter, but they got my name and profession right. So did the News that afternoon, along with an old photo from the library, with the inmate number cropped out. Barry’s former employer must have been nursing a grudge ever since his ace columnist left for the twenty-first century, so he didn’t send a photographer. Anyway, the account that accompanied a younger, even more peevish-looking champion of justice ran closer to fact. All I had to do was wait, holding a bucket to catch all the job offers.
It might have worked, too, if a minivan driver hadn’t turned on his radio in time for God to order him to jump the curb and crush six pedestrians on Griswold during the noon rush hour. I found that out the evening after my Superman act, when Channel Four opened with the story. All I’d known was I got a call from the station apologizing for canceling my interview at the last minute for a late-breaking story: Same thing from Two and Seven on voice mail while I was on the line.
Even so, I expected some celebrity to stick. Rosecranz, the troll who changed the lightbulbs in my office building—beginning with a free sample from Tom Edison—approached me with a baggy grin when I entered the lobby the next morning. I braced myself to accept sloppy praise. Instead he announced he’d changed the lock on my door, and handed me a pair of keys linked with a twist-tie. I’d put in my order three years ago, after someone broke in and ripped the plumbing out of my water closet for scrap. Then I remembered he’d given up on learning to read English and the only thing he ever watched on TV was men wrestling bears on a Russian-language channel.
Some calls did come in. The phone was ringing when I unlocked the door to my private office. I fed the keys to the dead rhododendron in its pot and leaned across the desk to pick up.
A wobbly falsetto voice said, “Is that Amos Walker, the scourge of pirates, road agents, slave traders, and the heartbreak of psoriasis?”
I gave Barry Stackpole some advice of an anatomical nature and banged the receiver into the cradle.
He’d call back. I settled myself into the swivel and started to take the phone off the hook. Then I remembered why I’d passed up a chance to call a lawyer and lit a cigarette, killing time before it rang again and hoping it wasn’t who I knew it would be.
It rang. When I heard his natural voice I said, “You know most of the population doesn’t know what the heartbreak of psoriasis means. It’s almost before my time.”
“I read the room first. How many clients you got lined up, and when can I expect my fifteen percent as your press agent?”
“You can have it right now. You’re the first to call, not counting a cremation service in Highland Park.”
“Highland Park is cremation. Seriously, doesn’t anyone follow the news anymore? Apart from Facebook and Comedy Central?”
“Nope. It makes me feel a little less lonely. Who’d’ve thought obsolescence would turn out to be cutting-edge?”
“Cheer down. Your incessant perkiness is making me pre-diabetic.”
“Who’s a guy got to shoot in the knee to get attention?”
“The president; but you’d better move fast. And that news cycle’s liable to be shorter than yours.”
The phone rang ten seconds after I hung up.
“A. Walker Investigations.”
“You the guy shot that robber?” This was a gravelly voice; a smoker’s cough capable of speech.
“That’s me.”
“My wife’s trying to poison me.”
“How do you know?”
“She used to be a good cook. Lately everything she makes tastes like Styrofoam.”
We wasted three minutes working it out. She’d switched to a gluten-free diet and had dragged him along to simplify things in the kitchen.
“A. Walker Investigations.”
“Are you the man—?” A woman this time, young from the sound.
“Yeah, in the knee. Unless you read the Free Press.”
“I don’t read newspapers. I heard it on talk radio.”
“I didn’t know I’d cracked that wall. What can I do for you?”
“I want you to speak to my Civics class at Wayne State on a citizen’s responsibility to the community. I need the extra credit.”
“A. Walker Investigations.”
“Is this—?” A man with a southern urban accent.
“How can I serve you?”
“My next door neighbor’s a murderer. I want you to catch him.”
I sat forward and ground out my cigarette stub in the ashtray. “Are you sure?”
“I saw the whole thing.”
“What did you see?”
“It was a hit-and-run, right in front of my house. She’s dead there in the street. I love her and he killed her.” The voice broke.
“Did you call the police?”
“I did! They said there’s nothing they can do!”
I dragged over a pad and took a pencil out of the cup. “What’s your friend’s name?”
“Fluffy.”
That kind of thing continued off and on for the rest of the day. I turned down divorce work twice, referred one caller to a lawyer, got into a fight with a man who wanted me to beat someone up, and took down contact information on a couple of possibles-but-unlikelies. I was headed out for home when the phone rang for the last time. I almost didn’t answer it.
“Is this Mr. Walker?”
This was another young female, nearly inaudible.
“Yes, it is.”
“I wanted to thank you for saving my life in the bank.”
I cocked a hip up onto the corner of the desk. “You’re the cashier?”
“I—I haven’t been into work since. The manager’s a nice man. He said I didn’t have to come in until I was ready, and I’d still be paid. Everyone’s been so kind, even the reporters; most of them, anyway.”
“Sweet of them. You might’ve been killed.”
“I heard you were arrested.”
“I expected to be. It’s routine. It turned out all right. The police dropped the charges. Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. I held up until I got home, then I fell apart. Like after an accident?”
“Me, too. Shooting at someone and getting shot at are just about the same. It was very nice of you to call. Is there anything I can do for you?”
“Yes!”
I almost fell off the desk. It came that quickly and with such certainty.
“Someone is dead who shouldn’t be, and the wrong man is in prison.”
I was silent. Then she spoke again.
“Can we meet?”