Again

[maggiethecat]

Again

Chapter One

There were hands in the darkness, strong and swift and skilled, lifting him into place. His shirt was ripped open, abruptly — he heard a button ping against the wall — and then something soft and thick was pressed against his chest. He heard the crunch of bandage scissors cutting through fabric, felt a thin line of metal snaking coolly up his forearm as his jacket and shirt sleeves were slit open, and then the piercing sting of a syringe. The noise around him was overwhelming: sirens wailing and hoarse shouts and the emotionless rasp of the dispatcher, coming through the open windows of police cars hastily pulling up, coming from radios on belts and from somewhere in front of him, repeating, as though on an endless loop, “10-13 repeat 10-13, officer down, officer down, all units in the area proceed to the corner of Bleecker and Thompson.” And through it all, the lifeline of his partner’s voice, taut with strain and false cheer. “Hang on, just hang on, we got you, you’re gonna be all right.”

Then she was gone and a door slammed behind his head and they were tearing through the city, barreling through intersections, rocking wildly around corners, every slam across a pothole shooting fire through his chest and left shoulder. He kept drifting in and out, arrowing into an even deeper darkness and then resurfacing, struggling for every breath like one drowning. Something was oozing wetly across his stomach and down under his back. He wanted to turn his head to see what it was, but his neck was held by a cervical collar and there was something over his face, hard-rimmed, coldly hissing oxygen into his mouth and nose. The hands on his chest started pressing down, harder, and a man’s voice urged, “Stay with me, buddy, stay with me.” He could smell the coppery reek of blood and wondered dimly if it was his.

The ambulance screeched to a halt and the door behind him shot open. The gurney he was on was jerked backward, wheeled struts unfolding to the pavement, and they were off, fast, banging through doors and down a long hallway, the paramedic at his head yelling, “GSW, chest, bleeding out.” The second paramedic was running alongside, gasping out vitals as he held up the IV bag. They slewed to a stop, and he felt hands quickly going over his chest, his arms, his head, and then pulling up his eyelids. A click and he felt a faint breeze, no more than the slightest movement of air, as something waved back and forth across his eyes. Penlight, he thought wearily. Fucking doctors.

“Fixed but not dilated,” a woman said. “What the—?”

“Blind,” the first paramedic said shortly. “That’s what his partner said — he’s a cop.”

“Shit, this is that guy?” said the woman. “No wonder the Mayor’s here.”

He heard what sounded like a hand slapping a wall, three times in rapid succession, and the woman muttered, ‘Come on, come on.” The elevator doors slid open and she snapped, “OR’s waiting, we’ll X-ray upstairs—” and then he was gone, sinking into the icy formless void.

. . .

She had known as soon as the two officers appeared at her office shortly before five; known because she had been through this before and because she thought of herself as an old hand, toughened by experience and her years with a complex and troubled man. In this she was wrong.

“No. No,” she heard herself say, her voice sounding hollowly in her ears. She consciously braced her knees as they began to buckle, forcing herself to stand. “Not again,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Dunbar—” one of the men started to say and she stopped him, putting up a shaking hand.

“Just tell me he isn’t dead,” she said. “I can do anything but that.”

Again the fragmented instructions to her assistant as she blindly gathered her things, again the long ride in the elevator with two stone-faced men, again the patrol car speeding downtown with the flasher on the roof blaring color and sound. Not to Bellevue — she was grateful for that much — but to St. Vincent’s, where, she was told, her husband was in surgery. Something about a visit to a suspect gone terribly awry, something about a gunshot to the chest.

“Where’s the dog?” she said numbly. “Where’s his dog?”

“I don’t know, Ma’am,” the captain beside her said uncomfortably. “His partner followed him to the hospital. Maybe she’ll know.”

They led her to a side door, away from the television reporters self-importantly speculating into their microphones at the front entrance, and up to the fifth floor surgical suites and the waiting room for same, a dismal cubicle with fluorescent strip lighting, sagging Naugahyde-upholstered chairs, and a cheery view of an air shaft. The halls were already lined with cops who’d heard the call and waited, silently, to donate blood, to show solidarity by their massed presence, to simply be with a wounded brother. She spotted a tall man, slumped forlornly against the wall with his head down and a ball cap pulled low over his eyes, and realized it was Terry Jansen. Go away, Terry, her mind screamed. You don’t belong here.

She stood in the hall — sitting in the dreary little waiting roomed seem too passive, too accepting — but one of the men at her side murmured that when someone came to talk to her that was where they’d go, and so she went. At least she could watch the elevator doors from there, and when they opened a few minutes later and a resident in green surgical scrubs, a slight, intense man with curly hair and steel-rimmed glasses, emerged, her breath caught and her hands went cold.

“Mrs. Dunbar?” he said.

She nodded.

“He’s holding his own,” he said immediately. “Neil Lazarus, surgical resident — I’ve been observing. He took a bullet in the chest— you knew that?”

Again she nodded.

“He’s lost a considerable amount of blood and his left lung collapsed, but they’re working on that now. Then we’ll have to see what damage the bullet caused and take it from there. I estimate he’ll be in surgery for another three or four hours, maybe a little longer.”

“He’s going to be all right?” she whispered.

“He’s obviously strong, that’s in the plus column, and we’ve got our best team working on him. Dr. Rushmore will be out to talk to you, after; she’s excellent, one of the top thoracic surgeons in the country. Get some rest if you can. Oh, and have someone at the nurses’ station page me if you have any questions.” He smiled, reassuringly, then turned and strode back across the hall to the elevator bank, the uniformed men in the hall staring at him with undisguised curiosity.

“That sounds good, Ma’am,” said the police captain with her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been rude, Captain—?”

“Dougherty, John Dougherty. And you haven’t been rude. We understand.”

“Yes,” she said distantly. “I suppose you do.”

She heard muttered exclamations running through the hall like spilled mercury and then the Mayor, who had been outside giving sound bytes, came up to her, bluff and hearty, clasping her hand between his damp palms as he intoned phrases about duty and sacrifice and honor. She wanted to hit him with the flat of her hand, wipe that smug compassion off his face, but she held her tongue and smiled and nodded. There was only one person she wanted to see apart from her husband, and when Detective Karen Bettancourt stepped out of the elevator she cut off Bloomberg mid-sentence and went to embrace her, tightly, the two women locked in mutual anguish.

“How is he?” Karen said in a low voice.

“Holding his own, that’s all I know. He’s in surgery.”

“They say how long?”

“Another three or four hours. Karen, what happened?”

‘Not here,” Karen replied, looking over her shoulder at Detectives Marty Russo and Tom Selway, who were walking up the hall toward them, Tom signaling her to wait. She shook her head at him and took Christie by the arm, reflexively tucking her hand into the crook of her elbow, and guided her down the hall and into the alcove for the coffee and candy machines.

It was all about Leon Brown, Karen explained, a crack-dealing piece of slime who was the prime suspect in the death of his common-law wife, one Aneesha Jefferson, found that morning in a dumpster behind the Bleecker Street walk-up where she and Brown lived. Karen and Jim had gone there simply to talk to the man, a formality, preliminary to grilling him at the precinct house. They had knocked on his scarred apartment door and identified themselves, and Brown had told them, sullenly, to come in . . . .

Karen stopped, awkwardly, remembering the dizzying moment when she’d thrust open the unlocked door, Jim at her side, and seen the Glock in Brown’s fist. “Gun — down!” she had yelled. A moment’s hesitation as Jim had reached for his, brushing aside his jacket to reveal his hip, barren, as it had been for the past three months, of a holstered gun. And in that split second, the split second before Jim corrected himself and dove for the floor, Leon Brown had seen that the detective was unarmed and squeezed off a round before Karen Bettancourt’s shots spun him back into the breakfront and he fell, dead, in a shower of broken glass and crockery.

“It all happened so fast,” she finished lamely, Christie’s eyes burning into hers. “Then I called for a bus and came here. We all came, all of us, Larry and Fred from the night shift. The Boss is on his way, I talked to him—“

“Did you see Terry?” Christie interrupted. “He’s out in the hall.”

“What’s he doing here?” Karen said disgustedly.

“Probably wants to give blood.”

Karen made a face. “Like Jim’d take it.”

“Stop it,” Christie said, her voice muffled by the hand over her mouth. “Don’t make me laugh.”

Karen sighed and held out the coat she’d been carrying over her arm. “I didn’t know what to do with this,” she said diffidently. “It was in my car.” As she handed the Burberry to Christie Jim’s folded white cane slid out of the inside pocket and clattered to the floor. Wordlessly, Karen picked it up and handed it to her. They exchanged a look, and Karen caught the flash of pain in Christie’s eyes before she tucked the cane back into the coat and quietly said, “Thanks.” And she wondered, for perhaps the hundredth time, what it was like to be married to Jim Dunbar.

“Karen!” Christie’s eyes widened in alarm. “Where’s Hank? If anything happens to Hank—”

“He’s fine,” Karen said. “He was in my car the whole time. I had one of the men take him back to the house. The desk sergeant’s watching him — he’s got food and water, and Melnick’ll take him home for the night. I got his cell number if you want to check on him.”

“Oh,” Christie said. “That’s good. I don’t know what Jimmy’d do without that damned dog—” Her voice broke and, finally, the tears she’d been holding back began to spill down her cheeks.

“Uh, Karen?” Marty was in the doorway, Tom one step behind.

“Not now, guys.”

“We just wanted to know, you heard anything?”

“What do you care?” she said, and Christie turned and stared at her.

“Hey,” Tom said, frowning, “that isn’t fair.”

“No, I’ll tell you what isn’t fair. What isn’t fair is that Jim didn’t have his gun. What isn’t fair is that the perp saw that, and shot him.”

“It was Jim’s decision,” Marty said coldly.

“You nagged him into it, Marty, with all your nasty little cracks. You just couldn’t leave it alone. And you,” she said fiercely, rounding on Tom. “Would it have killed you, just once, to come to his defense? You make me sick, both of you.” She turned back to Christie. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”

As they reached the waiting room door there was a commotion at the nurses' station and several of the cops gathered there laughed. “Clear a path, you bums,” a woman said briskly. “I’m gettin’ old here.” The crowd parted, Biblically, and a sleek purple wheelchair shot through, propelled by a diminutive woman with short henna-ed hair and an unlit cigarette dangling from the side of her lipsticked mouth.

“Bettancourt!” she cried as she rolled up to her. “How’s our boy?”

“Doing okay — be in surgery for a while,” Karen said, and smiled. “Mary, this is Christie, Jim’s wife. This is Mary Johansson. Miss Mary.”

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” Christie said. “Thank you for coming.”

“Heard it on my scanner.” She looked around the hallway, then up at Christie’s ashen face. “You need some air, Sweetheart,” Miss Mary said decisively. “Just for a few minutes. Get away from this mob. You too, Cute Stuff—” and she jerked a thumb at Karen. “This way.”

They followed Miss Mary along a labyrinthine route, taking an elevator clearly marked “Staff Only” to a basement level, and then winding through the bowels of the hospital along dimly lit corridors past laboratories and supply closets, and finally out a door to a deserted alley leading to 12th Street.

Miss Mary took a Bic from the purse on her lap and fired up the Marlboro Light in the corner of her mouth. An ambulance raced down the block, flashing momentarily across the mouth of the alley, siren screaming, and Christie started. Miss Mary looked at her shrewdly, then pulled out her pack of cigarettes and held it up.

“Go on,” she said with a sly grin. “I won’t tell.”

Christie fingered out a cigarette, took the Bic, and lit up. “My first in five years,” she said, expertly blowing a plum of smoke to one side. “Oh, that tastes good.”

“You smoke?” Karen said incredulously.

“Darling,” she said with a brittle smile, “everyone in fashion smokes. It’s how we keep our weight down. No, not any more. I quit when we got married. Jimmy didn’t like the smell of it in my hair.”

“You can give up a lot for a good man,” Miss Mary said philosophically.

“He is a good man, isn’t he?” Christie smiled raggedly, then dropped the cigarette to the sidewalk and ground it beneath the toe of her black Kate Spade pump. “I can’t do this. I’m sorry, Miss Mary, I— I have to get back.”

Karen laid a hand on her arm. “He’s going to be in surgery for hours. Stay here, with us.”

“No,” Christie said and squared her shoulders. “I have to be there. It’s what . . . it’s what we do.”

“Cop’s wife,” Miss Mary said and shook her head. “Toughest friggin’ job on the planet.”

. . .

MacIlhenny’s Bar & Grill had occupied the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue and 10th Street since 1921, and the regulars at Mac’s, as it was known, liked to say the grease in the fryer hadn’t been changed since then. The décor, if you could call it that, hadn’t changed — the Antiques Roadshow crew would have swooned over the signed 1926 Yankees team picture behind the bar — and so Mac’s had never become fashionable. There had been a flurry of attention in the early 90s, after Law & Order took over the premises twice to film scenes with Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth, but the attraction wore off, eventually, as the trendy girls of publishing and their hedge fund dates drifted back uptown. The beer was cheap if watery, and the cuisine ran to gristle-flecked burgers and the kind of Irish stew that had caused people to emigrate. But cops loved it, at day’s end filling the high-backed wooden booths and lining the battered mahogany bar three and four deep.

The night bartender was a genuine Irishman, a native Dubliner with a brogue that had thickened with each decade away from the Auld Sod, and a decided way with drunks. Thomas Kerry had seen ‘em all, and Thomas Kerry could handle ‘em all. The worst were not the combative ones — those he dispatched with a toss out the door or a call to the precinct house three blocks down — but the stubborn types, like the stocky fellow with dark spiky hair who had come in just after nine o’clock with a face like a thundercloud and had spent the evening at the far end of the bar, steadily downing shots of Bushmills.

“We’re closin’ in five minutes,” he said to the man. “Time to go.”

“Can’t,” the dark-haired man replied with an injured expression. “Nowhere to go. Can’t go nowhere. Got nobody.” With precise movements, he folded his arms on the bar and pillowed his head on them.

“Hey!” Kerry said, shaking his shoulder. “We’re closin’, boy-o. You can’t stay here.”

The man lifted his hear, blearily trying to focus. “You don’ unnerstand,” he said. “I's my fault.”

“Ah, Jayzus on the cross,” Kerry moaned. “Go peddle your troubles to someone who cares. And you owe me for the last two rounds. That’s a ten spot,” he said as the man pulled his wallet from an inside pocket and fumbled out some crumpled bills. Then Kerry saw the badge. “Sorry,” he said quickly. “Didn’t know you was a cop.” He looked around the bar, hoping to see another cop he recognized, someone who could ferry this maudlin sot home and get him off his conscience.

“Tha’s me,” the man said, flashing a wide smile. With the over-enunciation of the well and truly inebriated he added, “Mar. Tin. Roo. So. Smarty Marty.” His diction took a dip again and he slurred, “The life a the party. Bu’ you c’n call me Marty.” His head sank to his arms again and he began to snore.

“No, asshole, I’m gonna call yez a cab,” said the bartender.

Again the man lifted his head, this time his focus sharpening unexpectedly. “Lemme ask you a question,” he said.

Kerry rolled his eyes and shot a surreptitious glance at his watch. “Sure,” he sighed. “One question, and then yer gone.”

“Guy with no eyes shou’n be a cop. Right?”

“Come again?”

“I told him. Hell, we all told him. But he gotta be a cop. Blin’ cop.” He laughed, and then sniffled and ran his sleeve under his nose. “Then he goes and gets shot. Again. Again. Why’d he go an’ do that?”

“I got no idea, fella. I don’t know what yer talkin’ about.”

Marty leaned across the bar so his face was inches from Kerry’s. “You don’ get it,” he said angrily. “’s my fault. Dunbar got shot and i’s all my fault.”

* * *

[maggiethecat]

Chapter Two

The night was a year long, or maybe two. She could never remember clearly, after; it was all a dream, a hazy half-state where time ran through your hands like water or stood dreadfully still. She dozed, fitfully, never slipping fully into sleep, waking with a start to look feverishly at her watch — the classic Cartier tank with the cabochon sapphire on the stem, a cherished first anniversary present no NYPD Detective Second Grade could easily afford — noting with a dismal sinking that the elegant hands had moved forward only three minutes or four. Never more than five.

Miss Mary stayed on, vanishing at regular intervals to reappear reeking of cigarette smoke and charm, and taking on Karen as protégé and charge, regaling her sotto voce with spurious tales of department scandals long past. Karen listened indulgently and distractedly, knowing the tiny terror was simply attempting to take her mind off the events of that long and terrible day, which had culminated in a disturbing conversation with The Boss.

Lieutenant Gary Fisk had arrived soon after Jim had gone into surgery, and, after reassuring Christie with an unsentimental directness she found both refreshing and moving, had spent considerable time conferring with the Mayor and a grim-countenanced man who, Karen was to learn, was from Internal Affairs. After Christie was safely ensconced in the dreary waiting room, Fisk had drawn Karen into the hall with a sharp twist of the head. She went, dully, hearing her footsteps reverberating on the linoleum as if from a distance.

“You’ll need this,” she had said bluntly, unclipping the holster at her waist and handing him her gun. This was standard procedure for any officer who had not only fired their weapon but had fired it resulting in a death, but it still gave her a fluttering sensation under her ribs and she wondered, for a brief revelatory moment, if this was how Jim Dunbar felt: unprotected, diminished. Not safe. Not complete.

“Thanks,” Fisk replied, slipping it into his jacket pocket. “It’s just a formality,” he said. “You know that.”

“Am I on leave?” she said, slewing a look up at him and then quickly dropping her gaze.

“Or desk duty,” he offered. “I can go either way on this.”

“I’ll take desk duty.” She folded her arms and stared past him down the hall; the crowd of cops had thinned exponentially with each passing hour. “You know that creep Terry was here?” she said abruptly.

“Jim’s old partner?” He frowned. “He’s off the job.”

“Yeah, well, he heard the 1013 on the scanner in his truck — leastways, that’s what he said when I told him to get lost. He doesn’t belong here.”

Fisk looked sharply at her, noticing the bruised wells under her eyes and the grim, twitching set to her mouth. “You need to calm down,” he said kindly. “I know this has been a bad day—”

“Jim got shot—” she said hotly, and then stopped. “Because he didn't have a gun,” she said in a low voice. “And he should have. I never thought it was that much of a problem — I mean, second day back he drew down on a perp and saved my life — but I respected his decision, to stop carrying. Now—?” she said fiercely. “I wish to God he’d had it.”

“You don’t shoulder this one alone, Karen. We all— dammit!” Fisk said savagely. “We all worried about Jim and that gun.” He sighed. “It never occurred to me, what could happen if he didn’t have one—”

“And needed it,” she finished bitterly. “Well, we know now.”

Shortly after two in the morning Christie finally attained the oblivion she’d been craving, only to be jerked from it by a woman’s hand slapping playfully on her arm. “He’s fine,” a voice announced brightly. She opened her eyes, blearily and hopelessly, to see a slender woman in rumpled surgical scrubs in the adjacent chair. Without preamble the woman tore off her cap and shook out a spill of shoulder-length chestnut hair.

“He’s fine,” she repeated. “Came through a treat. He’s tough, that one.” She grinned and put out a hand. “Maeve Rushmore.”

Christie took Dr. Rushmore’s hand. “He is?” she whispered, then cleared her throat. “He’s . . . fine?”

“Lung’s fine, got the bullet out.” She squeezed Christie’s hand and released it. “Missed a rib by that much.” She put out a thumb and forefinger, a scant eighth of an inch between them. “If it’d splintered? Shit, we’d still be there— oh, that reminds me.” She angled around and pulled a small plastic zip-topped bag from a pocket. “Who do I give this to?”

Christie saw the .38 calibre bullet, smeared with what she knew was her husband’s blood, and recoiled.

“I got it,” said Karen, who had been watching from across the room. “Oh, wait. Let me go get the Boss; he's out in the hall with Miss Mary. I, uh— you should give it to him,” she said. “Chain of evidence and all that.”

“Whatever,” Dr. Rushmore said breezily, and returned her attention to Christie. “They’re taking him up to ICU,” she continued. “You should be able to see him in about twenty minutes or so — someone’ll come get you. Got him on a respirator but only as a precaution. Be off it tomorrow morning.”

“He’s going to be all right," said Christie. "Oh . . . oh." She put a hand over her mouth, rocking slightly as tears oozed weakly down her cheeks. "I don't believe it. You're sure? You're really sure?"

“Far as I know. Next twenty-four hours’ll tell the story.”

. . .

Marty Russo was slumped at his desk, one eye on the hall in case the lieutenant walked in, slowly playing eight-pack Spider on his computer. Three cups of coffee, six orange-flavored Tums and four Advil had barely made a dent in what could only be termed a hangover of monstrous proportions.

Tom Selway strolled into the squad room, coffee in hand. “Hey!” he said. “What’s the news on Jim? Where’s Karen?”

Marty winced. “I don’t know. Still at the hospital, I guess. Fisk too.”

Tom set the coffee down on his desk and reached for his phone. “I’ll try her cell—”

“No,” Marty interrupted. “Let it go.”

“Let it go?” Tom took a long hard look at his partner. “You still pissed ‘bout what she said?”

“You mean that crap about how it’s my fault Jim didn’t have a gun? She can’t lay that on me.”

“You did ride him some,” Tom said tentatively.

“Blind guy with a gun. Get real. That make sense to you?”

“Depends,” Tim hedged. “Not like Jim’s an ordinary citizen.”

“Tell me about it,” Marty said glumly. “Big fucking hero. And now that he got shot again? We’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Not like he goes yammerin’ to the press. You know that.”

“What I know is that there’s gonna be hell to pay when it comes out that—” He paused, shutting his eyes against the sun streaming mercilessly through the dusty windows.

“That what?” Tom said, exasperation sharpening his voice.

“Tom,” he said tiredly. “We were up on the rotation — we should’ve taken that call.”

“But you called in sick yester— oh, shit. You weren’t sick.”

It had been the perfect October afternoon, the skies a deep blue arch and the air over the Bronx, for once, as clear and clean as a mountain stream. All the boys had been there: Jeter and A-Rod, that new Chinese pitcher everyone was so hot on, and, just in case — on deck for the worst case scenario — Mariano the Closer . . . .

“I had Yankees tickets,” Marty muttered.

“You what?”

“You heard me.”

“Christ on a crutch,” Tom said disgustedly. “They were playin’ the Devil Rays. You hook work if they’re playin’ Boston, not those lame-ass Devil Rays. Boss ever finds out you’re in for a major rip.”

“He finds out I’ll be in for more than a rip. So be a pal and shut up, okay?”

“Man,” Tom said, shaking his head in disbelief. “I wouldn’t be in your shoes for a date with Beyonce and a Porsche. You better just hope Jim’s gon’ be all right.”

“Yeah. I never thought I’d say this, but Mister Balls of Steel better get his ass back here. Fast.”

* * *

[maggiethecat]

Chapter Three

There were hands in the darkness, strong and swift and skilled, lifting him into place. The noise around him was constant; a low ceaseless thrumming, like the rhythmic pulse of waves breaking on a distant shore. He heard machinery, hissing and beeping electronically as the hands, purposefully and gently, lifted him from a hard surface onto a padded one. The noise around him was overwhelming: chatter and footsteps and that damned beeping, annoying and constant. And through it all, the lifeline of a woman’s voice, educated, crisply commanding and wryly self-amused: “Hang in there, Detective, just hang in there. You done fine.”

Then she was gone and a door whooshed pneumatically and they were off, going down hallways and around corners, carefully and at a moderate pace, as cautious as they were every bump across a threshold sending fire through his chest and across his left shoulder. He kept drifting in and out — arrowing into an even deeper darkness the darkness he lived with and had almost — almost — come to accept — and then resurfacing, struggling for every breath like a drowning man. He wanted to take a deep cleansing breath, clear his aching head and think, but there was something blocking his throat, a tube, taped over his mouth, and the machinery kept hissing and clanking, relentlessly. He wanted to turn his head to see what it was but he couldn’t, and when he tried a hand came down on his shoulder and a man’s voice warned, “Don’t move, don’t try to move.”

Don’t move, don’t you move . . . .

And he flashed — immediately, confusedly — into a dream from a time long passed, a blur of images and panic and shouting. He was stumbling down a hallway and bashing into a bookcase and he had to get to her, had to help her, had to save her. There was a gun . . . he couldn’t see it but it was there, he felt it, felt his hand wrapped around the lovely solid steel weight of the thing . . . and there was someone called Randy but he couldn’t get a handle on it, it was all too fast. Then they came to a stop and a hand slapped against a wall. Another door whooshed open and they bumped into another space. He knew it was small because he could feel people crowded around him, feel their presence and hear the subtle rustle of their clothing and their breathing. A brief sickening jolt and they started to descend.

Elevator, he thought dimly. He caught the coolly astringent reek of disinfectant and it all came together: the noise, the machinery, the smells, the hands. He was in a hospital. Someone got shot, he thought hazily. Was it me?

The elevator lurched to a halt and the door in front of him opened. The gurney he was on slid forward and they were moving, down a long hallway until they slewed into a room where he heard more machinery, more beeping and clanking and hissing. He was lifted again — Jesus! that hurts — into a bed where the slick sheets chilled his blood and made him, for a moment, shiveringly cold. And then he was away, away, fleeing the noise and the hands and his tumbling, fragmented thoughts.

Toward dawn he was awakened by voices. The woman he had heard before said, quite close to his ear, “Detective Dunbar?”

He opened his eyes.

“Don’t try to talk, you won’t be able to,” she said, noting the unfocused gaze and non-reactive pupils with clinical dispassion. “There’s a tube down your throat. Blink, once, if you can hear me.”

Jim blinked.

“Good,” she said. “You’re in the ICU, Detective. You’ve been in surgery. You’re doin’ great, so we’re going to try to take you off the ventilator. We need you to start breathing on your own, okay?”

He felt a slight tug as the surgical tape holding the ventilator in place was removed from his face.

“On the count of three, I want you to cough and breathe out, exhale, push out hard. Got that?”

Again, he blinked.

“Great. One . . . two . . . three . . . now cough.”

He coughed, strongly, and a searing pain snaked up his bruised throat as the tube was extracted. He kept coughing, drooling and gasping and turning his head from side to side, and then, amazingly, he could feel his lungs expand normally as he started to breath on his own. Something was hooked over his ears and into his nostrils, and then he could breathe evenly, really breathe. Relieved, grateful, he sank back into the raised bed and the lumpy pillow.

“That went well,” she said smugly. “Keep up the good work.”

“Who are you?” he rasped in a hoarse whisper.

“Dr. Rushmore, your surgeon — and a damned good one if I do say so. How do you feel?”

“Thirsty.”

He felt a straw poke into the corner of his mouth and he sucked on it greedily, the metallic city water coursing down his bruised throat as luxuriously as a well-chilled longneck from the fridge, and he heard the woman laugh in a pleased way.

“Doc?” he whispered after a moment.

“What?”

“You blew it. I can’t see.”

Maeve Rushmore snorted. “Very funny," she said, and smacked him lightly on the thigh. "Try to get some rest.” He heard her heels snicking across the linoleum floor to the door and she was gone.

“Here,” said another voice, and something was inserted into his clenched fist — it felt like one of Christie’s lipsticks — and his thumb was placed on the end of it. “Feel this? This is your morphine pump. Just push down on it whenever the pain gets bad.”

I don’t need that shit, he thought, anger surfacing briefly, but unwittingly, reflexively, his thumb pressed down on the button and he heard a click. Suddenly, with a bizarre clarity, he remembered an old movie with Paul Newman and Elizabeth Taylor, something about a guy who had to drink until he “heard that click.” Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, he thought. You and me, Brick, just waitin’ for that click. The seconds ticked by . . . and then it was there, flooding into his very marrow with a blessed warmth that made his limbs vanish and his throbbing head levitate above the pillow. Morphine. Good stuff, that. I like this, he thought . . . and then he sank, contentedly, into the weightless void.

Morning came and he knew she was there. Knew, somehow, that she’d been there through the night. Drifting in and out he’d caught a faint effluvia of Cristalle, the Chanel perfume that was her signature scent and which was always a safe gift at Christmas, on her birthday, or to appease her when he’d screwed up.

“Christie?” he murmured.

One light step from the chair to the bed and her hand was on his, cool and reassuring.

“I’m here, Jimmy. I’m here.”

“What happened?”

“You got shot.”

The anger was back, red-hot and consuming, and he scowled. “That bastard.”

“Who?”

“Terry. Had a clear shot . . . I told him.”

Her grip on his hand tightened. “Jimmy,” she said firmly. “That was years ago. This happened yesterday. You and Karen—”

“Oh. Right. Karen. She okay?”

“She’s fine. She’s the one who called for the bus and got you here.”

He smiled, and then started to frown again but Christie was one step ahead of him. “Hank’s fine, too. It’s all taken care of — all you have to do is relax, and let everyone take care of you, and get well.” She leaned over and kissed him, then drew back at the puzzled expression on his face.

“Christie!” he said accusingly. “Have you been smoking?”

“No,” she said, a bit evasively, and then softened it with a laugh. “Just hanging out with Miss Mary.”

Jim started to laugh and then winced — laughter was not the best idea right now — and said, “She was here?”

“All night. Karen, too, and your lieutenant. He’s such a nice man.”

He gave her a ghost of his old grin, one corner of his mouth lifting briefly. “I can’t believe I got shot. Again.”

“That—” Christie’s voice caught and she cleared her throat. “That makes two of us,” she finished brightly.

“Shit,” he groaned. “Oh, shit.”

“What is it?” she said worriedly. “Are you in pain, do you want me to ring for the nurse?”

“No,” he said sourly. “This is all they need down at One P. P.”

“For what?”

“To finally get me off The Job.” Jim Dunbar smiled, grimly. “Here we go again.”

* * *