Adultery When We Were Married by DanielQSteele1

[Ramesh_Rocky]

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2005

“How could I have forgotten all of that, doctor? Am I really crazy?”
Teller leaned forward and puffed on his pipe. She had told him what had happened with her aunt and the aftermath in which the embittered older woman had predicted a betrayal by Bill that apparently had never occurred, but which had sunk into Debbie’s brain deeply enough to color her feelings toward her ex-husband.
He let the redolent smoke out of his lungs and allowed himself to feel a measure of self-satisfaction. He now had a pretty good handle on the forces that had wrecked the Maitland marriage. Most, if not all, of the pieces had fallen into place. Debbie Bascomb hadn’t quite put them all together and he wouldn’t push the pace.
For her sake it was important that they came out at the proper time. She needed to accept and understand what had happened, her role and responsibility and her ex-husband’s responsibility as well. Psychiatry was nothing if not a way to learn to live with the actions and mistakes of the past, to accept the reality of what was done and could not be undone, and to find a way to make a new life.
“No, you’re not crazy, Debbie. This is a somewhat extreme example of a common phenomenon, but it happens often. Memories that are too painful to live with are buried in our subconscious. Embarrassments, disappointments, heartache. They are forgotten over the years and never surface until some event or trauma brings the memories forward.”
She leaned forward and clasped her hands together.
“I could understand forgetting what happened to Clarice, but how could I possibly have dreamed that it happened to me?”
He took his pipe out of his mouth, tamped the tobacco down, relit and took in another soothing lungful of aromatic smoke. The delay was deliberate to allow her more time to think about her question. Pipe smoking was a wonderfully innocent way of working delay into a conversation.
“You’ve told me about the role that your aunt played in your life. You told me that she was your second mother in every important way. In fact, she was a combination of a mother and sister. When you were going through your wild teenage years, she was the woman you trusted with your deepest secrets you couldn’t go to your mother with. She was the person who never betrayed your trust, who always – to use the common expression – had your back no matter what.”


Debbie’s eyes misted.
“She was a wonderful woman. I miss her more now than I did after she died. I guess...I guess forgetting what happened was a way of forgetting how much I lost when she died. If she....if her marriage hadn’t collapsed and she had been around when I started to....fall out of love....with Bill, I don’t think things would have happened the way they did.”
She stopped speaking, feeling for a moment as if Clarice was in the room with them.
“She would....she would have made me get my head straight. I can hear her now. She would have told me to either tell Bill I was leaving him or....to...forgive my language but it was what she would have said...fuck him until his eyes crossed and drag his flabby ass to a gym and get him back into shape.”
Teller saw the raw emotion and wondered if she had ever come to terms with the emotional impact of her aunt’s death. Grief and anger at a cheating husband who had contributed to the older woman’s suicide were other parts of the puzzle that she could not have known were poisoning her mind and emotions about her ex-husband while it was happening.
“Even now it’s obvious how strongly you felt about her. Even more than the emotional bond was the identification you had with her. She was you in a very real way - blonde, attractive, busty. She taught you, you said, to have pride and confidence in your sexuality and your body.
“Without training, she was able to provide the support and encouragement you needed to transcend what was actually early sexual abuse by older men. Women who are initiated into sex at such an early age often fall into a destructive pattern of sexual relationships that mirror those early experiences. With her help and guidance you grew into a strong, sexually aggressive but sexually healthy woman.”
He released another plume of tobacco smoke and observed the tears streaming slowly down her face.
“What happened, psychologically speaking, was that you saw yourself in your aunt as her marriage collapsed and she desperately sought the approval and sexual desire of other men to replace what she had had with her husband. You knew, consciously, that the assault happened to your aunt but, in your subconscious mind, you saw yourself as the victim. Because she was you and you had mirrored her life experiences.”
She nodded.
“I can see that. I told you about my nightmare....the one where I saw myself growing old and my breasts were drooping. I looked so damned old. It was terrifying. I know now that I was reliving the way I felt when I was cleaning her


up in the shower afterwards. She didn’t look that bad, but I couldn’t believe she was that old. She wasn’t even 60, but she had gotten so old...so old. ”
Teller nodded. She was putting the pieces together.
“She had always been so beautiful. When I was a little girl I wanted nothing more than to look like her. Men loved her. Even married men who were friends of her husband were always flirting with her. She told me once she’d never be unfaithful to Frank, but that there was nothing as exciting as knowing another man wanted her. I guess. ”
“What?” Teller asked gently.
“That was the way I was with Bill. I loved him, the lazy bastard, and I never cheated on him after we got together in college, but I loved teasing men. I loved knowing they wanted me and I never really thought there was anything wrong with it. That was Clarice.”
Teller probed a little more deeply.
“In the bad years at the end of your marriage, when you...engaged in manual sex with several men....did you really think that it was acceptable because Bill had betrayed you first, as Clarice’s husband had cheated on her?”
She wiped her eyes with one of the tissues in a box in front of her.
“I don’t know. I’ve thought about it. I told him I never believed it, not really. But...I don’t know. Do you suppose I really always deep down believed it. and

that’s why I’ve been so angry at him?” “I don’t know. What do you think?” She smiled.

“You know, that’s the first time you’ve hit me with typical shrink language, Dr. Teller.”
He laughed.
“I know. I couldn’t resist. To answer your question, it is possible that doubts about your husband’s fidelity, even if you consciously denied it, might have sparked anger at him. Particularly since, just as you identified with your aunt, you probably identified Bill with her husband.”
She looked troubled.
“Maybe...but somehow, I don’t think that would be enough to have made me
....feel the way I did. do sometimes.”
“You’re probably right, Debbie. Why don’t you think about it until our next session. Try to come up with any other reasons for this deep, stubborn, apparently intractable anger.”
He wondered if she would come up with it on her own. She was getting close.
“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about, doctor.”


“We have a few minutes left on this session. What would you like to discuss?”
“I know we talked about this one time before...but....I appreciate your help. I’m not throwing up and I feel a lot better about myself and my life now. It’s just that I can’t help wondering what’s the point of going much further. Even if I find out what made me so angry at Bill, what purpose does it serve?”
She rubbed her hands together in a classic unconscious exhibition of uncertainty and stress.
“I mean, even if I discover why I was so angry, why I wanted out of the marriage...the fact is I’m out. Our marriage is history. He...I think sometimes he hates me and most of the time I can’t blame him. If he had done to me what I did to him, even though I still think he left our marriage first, I’d never forgive him.
“I think sometimes that the only feeling I have left for him is guilt. I know there are times I feel flashes....of something like what I once felt for him. But they’re only flashes, so what’s the point of finally understanding why everything fell apart.”
“I told you once, Debbie, that you could stop these sessions at any time. I think, honestly, that you would eventually figure out on your own the source of the emotions you feel toward your ex-husband. Similarly, although complex, I think you will eventually realize what destroyed your marriage, and he does share a portion of the responsibility for that.
“What you learn about yourself and Bill won’t change the past. What happened, happened. The scars you both bear won’t vanish. Your marriage is history. But, understanding what happened, and why, might make it easier to form a viable relationship with him in the future. You still share two children and eventually there will probably be grandchildren. You will be part of each other’s lives for the rest of your lives.
“No matter what happens between the two of you, you are still a young woman. You will love someone else again. You might yet have more children and start a new life. I can’t help but think you will be better able to forge a new life if you understand what led to the end of the old one.”
She was silent for a moment.
“Thank you, doctor. You’re probably right that we’ll always be a part of each other’s lives. Right now I’m losing sleep worrying about him and that cop, Shawn Smith. I don’t think Bill appreciates just how dangerous he is, just how much danger he is in.”
Teller reached out and took her hand in his.
“I’m aware of the situation, Debbie. I think you underestimate your ex. Bill Maitland might be a driven man who takes risks, but I don’t think from my experience with him that he’s a foolish or reckless man.”


“I hope you’re right, doctor, but nobody is bulletproof - sometimes I don’t think Bill realizes that.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2005 3 P.M.

I have two accounts on my office computer. One is my business account, for anything official. The other is a personal account. I’m on the business account a hundred times a day. I’m on the personal account maybe once or twice a week. My mom still isn’t real ‘hep’ with computers, as she would put it. My kids call me on the phone, and there are very few other reasons for anyone to email me.
Because I almost never go on it, I’ve set up a pinging alarm for any email messages that do come through. If I’m out of the office, it will be pinging when I turn the computer on, and if I’m on, it will give me the same heads up.
The phone had rung five minutes earlier and Cheryl had told me I had Phil Howser, the President of the Fraternal Order of security officer (FOP) union on the line. I had talked with him a number of times over the years and he’d always seemed reasonable and not too hardnosed for a cop and a union rep at the same time.
“What can I do for you, Phil?”
“You really need to ask, Mr. Maitland?” “You too? It used to be Bill.”
He laughed.

“You never can tell. Someone might be listening in. You know they’ve got your picture up on some of the targets at the shooting range?”

“Seriously?”

“No, but it wouldn’t surprise me. You have some guys over here seriously pissed off at you.”

I’m not surprised. I’m told that Smith is popular over there. Somebody prosecuting him is not going to get any love letters.”

He laughed again.

“I don’t know. I think a lot of guys over here would love to screw you.”

“A cop that can use puns. Be careful or they’ll drum you out. You probably read without moving your lips.”

“The only reason I’m not offended about that, Bill, is that I’ve been drinking with you at some of the joint State Attorney/Sheriff’s office functions and I know you’re just yanking my chain. That’s why I haven’t come down on you with my guys, because I can’t see you being the bastard that people are saying you are.”
“I’m a sweetheart, Phil, but I’m not going to back off taking the shooting to the grand jury.”
“When do you plan on doing it?”


“I’d hoped to get it to them this week, but some other things are going on and the foreman and vice-foreman of the jury both had personal crises pop up at the same time. Technically we don’t have to give them time, but they wouldn’t be able to concentrate with that stuff on their minds. They’ve had those positions since the grand jury was convened and they know what they’re doing, besides being good leaders. I decided to wait.
“So it will probably be next week, maybe later in the week.”
“That gives us a little time. Look, Bill, my guys want me to do SOMETHING. They pay their dues and sometimes they get the feeling they don’t get all that much for their money. It would do me good to show them that at least you were willing to meet with us, let us put our two cents in, and maybe, we might change your mind.”
“Never going to happen.”
“You know that and I know that, but they don’t know that.
“I don’t have a problem meeting with you, Phil. When and where?”
“How about Friday, at the FOP Hall on Atlantic Boulevard. We don’t ever do anything official on Fridays because no one will show up, so it’s a good time for the FOP officers and a few key people to meet. Come by and we’ll have some coffee and maybe wings and you can talk candidly with us about what’s going on. Sound good?”
“Yeah. Let me ask you something before you go. I’m hearing rumbles that Smith is coming apart at the seams. He braced me in the sandwich shop across from the courthouse the other day and I seriously wondered if he was going to try something in front of a dozen witnesses, including four or five armed cops.
“My ex-wife was just in here telling me I need to start carrying a gun because she’s hearing the same rumbles over in the PD office. Do I need to start carrying a gun, and if he’s having a breakdown, how come the Sheriff is letting him walk around carrying a Glock?”
There was a silence and then Phil said, “He is getting a little raggedy, I’ll admit and he’s drinking too much. He’s got a lot of friends and they’re watching him, babysitting him really. Knight won’t pull him because he and everybody else thinks if he’s removed from duty, it will just make it certain that the grand jury will decide he’s crazy and indict him.”
Another silence and then: “He’s a good man, Bill. Or, he was. The shooting rattled him...a lot. He’s killed men before, but I think the way it went down...it even got to him. I didn’t say that, if anybody asks, but even his friends know he went too far. Then, afterwards, his fiancée walked away. He, uh...I think he thought she was the one. I don’t think he’s been right since she left him. Maybe you can understand that.”


The computer pinged. I ignored it. I thought about what Howser had said.
Yeah, I could understand a man going to pieces after losing a woman.
“Then, the strain of having this grand jury thing over his head so long, and that civil lawsuit that could wipe him out financially, it’s all played on his mind. That’s why his friends are trying to help him hold it together until this passes, one way or the other.”
“Should I start carrying a gun?” “It probably wouldn’t hurt.”
I’d almost forgotten the email but after I hung up it popped back into my mind. I called up my personal account and typed in my password.
It was an email from adjardin @ aol.com. I just looked at it for a long time.
Eventually I hit the button and opened it. “Dear Bill:
I hope this letter finds you in good health and spirits. Paris in the Fall is even more beautiful than I remembered it. Jacksonville and St Augustine and your beaches are very different, but I know you love them as I do Paris. I hope you are as happy today as Philippe and I are. We have found that being apart has made us cherish our marriage more than we once did.
I have told Philippe how you showed me your home town and the great kindness you displayed to me while I was there. I will never forget the two weeks we spent in your city. By the by, Philippe also thinks the Fleur de Lis pendant you gave me is exquisite and I want you to know that I wear it proudly. He said it is the kind of gesture he expected from you, because that is the kind of man you are.
As I know you will understand, I cannot express the joy that seeing André again has given me. He is my life, and as I have done every year since he was born, I am having to struggle with the thought of ever going back to the Bonne Chance. Perhaps this year, my decision will be different.
Finally, I hope that you have found peace in your personal life. I do not know what decisions you will ultimately make about your marriage but, regardless of what happens with Debbie, I want you to know that after knowing you for such a short time, I have no doubt you will find a good woman to share your life with.
I hope you will pardon me for making such a personal judgment, but you are not the kind of man who can lead a life of aimless affairs. You need a woman in the center of your life, and you deserve one. Once you get past the pain you are currently in, I know you will find one.
Regardless, Bill Maitland, I want you to know that I will think of you often. When I wear your Fleur de Lis, I will remember you on the Bonne Chance, and in Jacksonville and St. Augustine. Philippe, too, sends his well wishes and wants

me to remind you that friendship, like love, transcends distance and time, and that he is your friend.

With deepest regard, your friends, Aline and Philippe.”

I didn’t’ realize until the letters blurred that I was crying.

 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 10: SOMETIMES, DYING IS EASIER

Debbie is gone and even if she was willing to come back to me, I know now I could never take her back. Not with the ghost of Doug Baker in our bed.
And Aline des-Jardins told me as kindly as you can tell an ex-lover that we are history and she is back with the man she was meant to be with.
Myra Martinez is as hot a woman as I have ever seen, even though for some reason I don’t have the feelings for her I had for Debbie and Aline. But I feel like she is a part of my past too. The time is close when I will walk away from all of this.
Maybe I will call Arnold Becker about that defense job. New York? Los Angeles? Chicago. No, not Chicago. Not with Doug Baker’s sorry ass within a thousand miles of me. But wherever I go, Myra won’t be there. She has a life here, so Dallas Edwards’ cutting me loose has closed off that possibility.
I remember Dan Jenkins from the Bonne Chance. He said you can never tell when your life will take you to a meeting with the person who will change your life. But when it happens, you have to take the chance, take a leap of faith.
I wonder if I’ll get that second chance he talked about. I wonder if I’ll have the sense to recognize it if it happens.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2005 3 P.M.
The alarm buzzer went off as I stepped through the security booth at the front of the courthouse. The two bailiffs moved toward me drawing their pistols until they both recognized me at the same instant.
I raised my hands into the air very quickly as all activity came to a sudden stop around me.
The nearest bailiff, an older guy with a few springs of whitish hair still sticking up on an otherwise bald head, put his pistol down but didn’t holster it as he stepped toward me.
“Mr. Maitland?”
I pulled my coat back to reveal the Glock in a shoulder holster.
“I have a special permit in my jacket pocket if you’ll let me get it out, or you can fish it out yourself.”
He looked at the other bailiff, then said apologetically, “I’m sorry, Mr.
Maitland, but could I see the permit. Take it out slowly, okay?”
“Sure, I’m sorry. I meant to take the Glock out and show you the permit before I went through the machine, but my mind was somewhere else.’
I showed him the permit signed by the Chief Judge of the Circuit and Dallas Edwards. He looked at it for a moment, then said, “I really am sorry, but do you


mind if I call up to the Chief Judge’s office. It’s just that this is kind of unusual, even for a prosecutor.
“Sure, go ahead,” I said, noticing out of the corner of my eye women and men who worked in the courthouse and knew me by sight edging away from me. Just another story to add to my courthouse legend. There were already stories circulating throughout the courthouse about several members of the largely Hispanic night cleaning crews refusing to enter my office, the lair of the “Angel de la muerte,” or Angel of Death.
It would have been funny, except they were as serious as hell.
Maybe they had a point. Half the defense attorneys in the building would plead out clients rather than take me on in court and even some of our own people would take the stairs down rather than ride with me in an elevator.
I had asked Cheryl about it a few days before and she had told me, “You probably haven’t noticed Bill but, except for the two weeks when that French woman was here, most of the time, if you’re not involved in a case, you usually walk around with a frown, or you glower at people. Or...you just...shit, Bill, you walk around looking like your best friend just died. It’s kind of a downer.”
I hadn’t realized it. I hadn’t realized it because even before my marriage went south, I hadn’t been the most light hearted of guys. The job kept me from being a happy go lucky soul. But I didn’t know that somber had shaded into gloomy and I knew that today I was probably grimmer than usual.
My mind kept drifting back to Aline’s email. You didn’t have to be a genius to read between the lines. She had managed to patch up her marriage and she had her son back. How could I be unhappy at that? I wanted her to be happy, but that meant I’d never see her again. That made me unhappy.
The bailiff interrupted my musings, handing me the permit and apologizing for nearly drawing on me. I assured him there were no hard feelings and took the Glock back after I’d gone through the screening machine again.
I had gotten the Glock from an investigator, oddly enough the one who’d spotted me with Aline at the restaurant, and was given some minimal instruction in how to use it since I hadn’t had any firearms training in nearly five years. So now I was carrying and it felt awkward as hell, but I remembered Debbie’s words. I didn’t want either BJ or Kelly to come to my funeral until they were a lot older.
I had barely walked into my office when Cheryl buzzed me and I picked up the phone. Mitch McConnell, one of our investigators, was on it, talking so fast that at first I couldn’t make out what he was saying.
Finally I understood and I nearly dropped the phone. “Oh shit. What hospital?”


I barely remembered to alert security as I went out but I had a driver waiting before I hit the street and he drove me in one of the SA car pool to Baptist Medical Center and went to park while I headed to the cardiac section. McConnell was waiting for me as I walked into the waiting area.
“How bad is it?”
“Pretty bad,” he replied. “Pat Peterson, the cop assigned to watch him, heard him gasping and found him lying on the floor in the bathroom at about 2 p.m. He was having a really hard time breathing and complaining of a pain in his right shoulder and arm. I just talked to the doctor examining him and he said it’s pretty obvious he’s had a major heart attack.”
The treating physician, a youngish cardiologist who looked like he had just started shaving, came out a half hour later and confirmed what McConnell had told me.
Wilbur Bell, our star witness against William Sutton, had had a major heart attack. They’d had to go in and clean out four blocked arteries.
“What’s the prognosis?”
“At his age and with his health problems, not real good. I’d give him 50/50 at best of making it through the night - much worse odds of making it a week or two.”
“Shit, shit, shit. Look doctor, the State Attorney’s Office, that is the state of Florida, will be paying for his care. Do whatever he needs to improve those odds. If you manage to bring him back, my office is going to be very grateful and our gratitude can be very profitable or useful in a lot of ways. Understand?”
“Yeah, but you understand he’s an old, very sick man and I’m not a miracle worker. I’ll do the best I can, but it’s going to be a long shot.”
“Sometimes you have to go with what you’ve got and hope for luck.”
Before I left I told McDonnell to arrange with the Sheriff’s Office for an around-the-clock security guard to watch over Bell.
“You really think Sutton would try to get to him in a hospital?”
“I don’t know, but any man who’d do what he did wouldn’t mind throwing the dice if he thought it would save him from the Death Chamber. He or his mother could hire someone. Nature might do his dirty work, but I don’t know if he’s religious enough to rely on God taking the old man out without some help.”
On my way back up to the office, I wondered if I was glowering again. Probably. That son of a bitch Sutton was halfway home to getting rid of his most dangerous witness. Without the old man I wasn’t sure I could nail him, and this was entirely out of my hands. There was nothing I could do to alter events. It was up to the doctor, the old man and God. It was, to put it mildly, irritating as hell.


The only good thing about it was that the anger had driven out the sadness of knowing I’d lost the second woman I’d loved in my lifetime. So far I was batting zero for two.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 3 P.M.

I sat in my chair behind my desk and thought bad thoughts. Wilbur Bell had made it through the immediate crisis, but he wasn’t out of the woods yet. He could still die and the moment he did Barry Macon would start pushing for a speedy trial to keep us from digging up any other proof we could use against Sutton. Not that I had any idea what possible other evidence we could dig up at this late date.

The phone beeped. Cheryl told me, “You have a visitor.” “Is it who I think it is.”

“Yes.”

“Would you remind her that we’re divorced.” I could hear her from outside my office.

“Would you remind Mr. Maitland, whose ego is swelling beyond all belief since he’s lost a little weight, that every woman, particularly every official with the Public Defender’s Office, doesn’t come up to his office out of uncontrollable lust for his body.”
I just grunted. Why the hell did she have to become more like the girl I’d first fallen in LIKE with AFTER we were divorced. If she would just remain a bitch the rules would be clearer.
“Johnny August would just file a complaint with the Big Man if I refuse to see her, so send her in.”
She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. She was dressed in green and white, crisp and trim. She was obviously still hitting the gym religiously. The dress was cut high enough to show off her legs without appearing too slutty. I knew she was still seeing the writer, Clint Abbott, and I wondered who else she was seeing. Looking like this, there had to be someone.
“So what is so urgent from the PD’s office?” “Nothing. I lied.”
I just stared at her.
“Oh, get a grip on yourself, Bill. I didn’t come here to seduce you. I just wanted to see you packing.”
She smiled and I couldn’t help remembering the first time we’d met, all those years ago. She had the same smile.
“I heard through the gbangvine that you took my advice and got yourself armed, a shoulder holster and all. I just never thought of you as a pistol-packing prosecutor and I wanted to see what you looked like.”


Very slowly and deliberately I opened the jacket I wore and let her see the Glock in its shoulder holster. I’d received a little instruction in the easiest way to reach in with my right hand and slip it out quickly.
“Don’t get fancy,” my instructor had said. “Get it out, hold it in a two-handed grip, point it in the direction of your target and start squeezing the trigger. The Glock is a fairly rapid fire handgun. You might get all 10 rounds off in a few seconds. Throw as much lead as you can in the direction of the target.
“Don’t get fancy, don’t worry if you miss with some. Don’t pull it unless you’re in fear of your life and then do your best to kill the bastard.”
“Wow,” she said, grinning that same sexy grin I remembered as well as the smile. “It’s true what they say. A guy with a big rod is really sexy.”
Even as she said it she realized what she’d said and the grin froze. My thoughts probably showed on my face as well.
“I am so damned sorry, Bill...so sorry. We can’t even joke around anymore, can we? You know I didn’t mean. ”
“I know, Debbie. Someday we’re going to have to get over tip toeing around. our history. Someday, But anyway, thank you.”
“Thank you?”
“I’m carrying this Glock because of your warning, which was echoed by other people. I hope I don’t need it, but if I do, I’ll have it because of you.
“I hope you don’t need it either, Bill. But. I’m glad you have it.”
She couldn’t think of anything else to say. She turned around and I remembered once again that she was as nice to look at going as she was coming. I must be getting better, because I suddenly wondered what Heather MacDonald or Meagan Whitcomb or even Myra might be doing this weekend.
Debbie might have broken my heart and Aline might have crushed up what few little pieces were still intact, but at least my manhood had been restored. If Debbie could make me horny again, there was still hope for me.

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 - 3:45 P.M.

As she had walked into her office three doors down from Johnny August she noticed Patrick Leary bending over Annette Nettles’ desk, whispering something into her ear. The red-headed PD – who was usually blonde but appeared more natural with red hair - giggled at something and Debbie could have sworn she reached out to stroke Leary’s crotch.
It was only a second and she could have been mistaken, but she was certain of what she had seen, which wouldn’t be a problem except that Annette was married to a DEA agent and she had heard some hair raising stories about his exploits in the never-never land between law and disorder that was the DEA. He was a dangerous man by all accounts.


And Leary happened to be the best attorney on the staff, second only possibly to Johnny August. She decided she’d have to keep her eyes open and possibly have an informal chat with both Leary and Nettles. While it wasn’t on her list of official duties, keeping your best litigator from being shot by a jealous husband was somewhere in there.
Thinking about jealous husbands, she kicked herself again mentally. It was as if some dark part of her unconscious kept pushing her to say the things that would hurt Bill the most. She really hadn’t meant the crack about “big rods” but she’d known the minute it left her lips what it meant to him and she’d seen it on his face.
Why in the hell didn’t all men come with a one-size dick. It would make things so much more simple. Bill could have handled her falling for a taller, younger, flat-stomached stud more easily than the fact that Doug had a bigger dick. It was something that hit men where they lived, pun intended, and women had to walk gently around comparisons of dick size.
Of course she knew a lot of the damage she had inflicted, deliberately, in hot blood. It didn’t make it any better because she was furious with him for known and unknown reasons. It still had left scars that she knew went back twenty years to when they had first met. He had always been insecure about his size, and like a miserable bitch, she had aimed her verbal blows at his Achilles heel.
But it didn’t do any good to keep kicking herself for what was done. If she could just watch her mouth in the future for similar gaffes, they might one day get to the point where they were just a man and woman who were once married and were still co-parents.
At least, at least she thought with some satisfaction, he had gotten to the point where he could look at her lustfully again. She knew that look and he had been stripping her with his eyes. It had been six months since he could look at her just as a man and not a hurt husband. It was progress.
Leary stepped into her office, grinning like a little boy who had just gotten away with something. Despite herself she felt a tingle where she didn’t want to feel a tingle. Damn, she had promised Johnny August to keep her legs together, and she knew he and Bill were friends, and she was getting regular sex from Clint, but still....
“Just wanted to pass on a little bit of knowledge, Ms. Bascomb.”
Bill had just given her that look and the Irishman was stripping her with her eyes and her nipples were getting hard and scratchy and she suddenly hoped desperately that Clint was home and free tonight.
“And that would be, Mr. Leary?”
“A friend told me Bill is going to pow-wow with the top brass at the FOP tonight at their headquarters on Atlantic.”


“He’s going to go into the lair of the enemy? Is he going alone? Does he have a bodyguard with him?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so, knowing Bill, because, these guys aren’t crazy. Phil Howser, the FOP head, will be there and other top guys. I don’t think Bill’s in any danger.”
“That’s probably what Custer told his top lieutenants before the party at the Little Big Horn.”
The grin faded and he said, “You really are worried about him, aren’t you?
Does he know you harbor feelings for him?”
“This whole damned office is nothing but a nest of frustrated romance writers. No, I don’t harbor feelings for him. But he was my husband for nearly 20 years. He’s the father of my children. Of course I’m worried about him. When is he supposed to go there?”
“I heard 7 or 8 p.m.”
“Okay, thanks for the information. And...” “What?”
“Nothing. Thanks.”
He stared at her tits for a moment before leaving. She decided to let the matter with Annette ride. She’d get some information before getting into that.
She knew Leary was right and Bill’s going to meet with the FOP was no big deal. Nothing would or could happen. Still....
She got out at 5 p.m., headed to her gym where she sweated for an hour and watched lithe young female bodies whose breasts hadn’t started to droop and whose asses were still perfectly firm attract the envious gazes of young and no-so-young men.
She received more than her share of lustful glances, so it wasn’t jealousy of those firm young bodies that hurt. They might be better on paper if you were scoring individual features, but she knew that one on one there wasn’t a one of these young hard bodies she couldn’t walk up to and steal a boyfriend from, without breaking a sweat. Her tits and ass still gave her the edge.
But still, it was depressing. Maybe she was more ripe, more desirable, but it was the ripeness of fruit almost ready to spoil. They had youth and she couldn’t match that. The damned clock only ran in one direction, and for her it would always be downhill.
She couldn’t shake the depression the gym visit left her with. She was alone. Both BJ and Kelly were out, BJ spending the weekend at her parents and Kelly living there full-time now. She had called and talked to Kelly the night before. It had taken time, but she was beginning to repair the breach between them. It would heal.


She grabbed a Lean Cuisine meal from the freezer and microwaved it, then ate it without tasting it. She thought about calling Clint, but for some reason even that didn’t appeal to her now.
It was Bill, she realized. Walking into a building filled with armed cops without a second glance backward. Why the hell would he do something like that when he could have met with them in his office or on neutral ground. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid. For a smart man, he could be so stupid.
She looked at the clock. It was 7 p.m. He was already there or soon would be. She walked into the den and turned on the Television from Hell. She had thought about getting rid of it because every time she watched it memories of her old life would come flooding back. Bill had been like a kid at Christmas when he came home one day to find that she had purchased it and had it delivered without telling him.
They had been walking through the Orange Park Mall one day when he’d come across a display for the largest television in the world, with the most gadgets and whistles in the world of electronic entertainment. He had been entranced. Of course, he’d already turned into the world’s Number One couch potato.
Their marriage had been dying, but there were times when flashes of the old feeling she’d had for him hit her hard, and it had that day. Maybe it was a way of atoning for the things she had already done to betray him, but she had loved the look on his face when he walked into the den.
Thinking about those days, she watched the television without watching it and at 7:30 she suddenly turned it off with the remote, grabbed her purse and keys and walked into the garage. She got into her 2004 Nissan 350Z, opened the garage door, and pulled out.
She’d just sit outside the FOP Union Hall and listen to her PD security officer scanner with channels the public didn’t have access to - just sit outside and never even let Bill know she had been there. It made no sense, but she couldn’t sit at home tonight.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 - 7 P.M.

I pulled up to the one story building that was the Fraternal Order of security officer union hall. The sprinklers had just shut off and I had to step through puddles on the sidewalk walking up. I opened the door and walked in. There was a hallway with a door leading to a large hall where meetings of the membership were held.
I spotted a big bald guy in uniform in the doorway and he waved to me.
I thought his name was Smith or Jones, something like that. He was a Zone Sergeant, the head man for one of four zones the city was divided into for security officer coverage.


He didn’t offer to shake hands, but he didn’t spit on me so I supposed that was progress.
“Smith? Jones?”
“Delwin,” he said. “Steve Delwin.”
“Never forget a name,” I said, smiling. He just shrugged. As I walked into the hall I saw about ten men in uniform sitting around a table hitting a coffee pot and three boxes of Ronnie’s Wings. I recognized most of them, having met or worked with them over the years.
Phil Howser was a tall, thin guy who hadn’t put on two extra ounces since I’d met him nearly ten years before. He got up and came around the table to shake my hand, then introduced me to the guys I knew and a few I didn’t.
“Thanks for coming by,” he said, then glanced at me again. I was wearing a light jacket because it was getting cool in the evenings.
“You’re carrying. Did you get armed because of what I said?” “You and a few other people,” I said.
“You wouldn’t have to be carrying if you weren’t being such an asshole about Shawn,” said a big blonde who I recognized as a Narcotics Task Force Lieutenant named Martin.
“Buddy,” Howser said, but I waved him off.
“He has a right to his opinion. I know I’m not popular with a lot of you guys right now. That’s why I accepted Phil’s invite to come out and talk to you tonight. Could I get a cup of coffee before we start talking?”
We talked for an hour and I went through three cups of coffee. Four of the eleven cops were black but they didn’t seem any more irate than the white cops. Maybe it’s true they all bleed blue blood.
“I’m doing what I think is right,” I told one of my harshest critics, a SWAT commander named Meyers. “I know you think I don’t have the right to sit in judgment on the actions a fellow cop took in a moment of crisis that I have never gone through. I know you feel a bond for him. But...I understand what you’re saying and you have to understand where I’m coming from.
“When you’re on the street, when you’re in a crisis situation, you can’t wait around for guidance on what to do, for a consensus to form that will guide your actions. You have to take the action you think is right and hope it works out.”
“That’s where I am. There is no one to tell me what to do. Dallas Edwards is the boss, but I’m the guy that has to make the ultimate decision because he’s delegated that authority to me and I’ve been doing it for five years. No matter what happens, I have to live with the result, the fall-out, and I have to be able to look in the mirror when it’s all over and live with myself.”
I looked over at Lieutenant Martin.


“I know everybody seems to think I have it in for Smith. I have to ask myself, why? They don’t give me a bonus every time I send a cop to prison. I don’t need any more headlines. I can probably coast on the “Angel of Death” crap until I retire. I didn’t know Smith before all this started. We’ve never crossed paths.”
“Maybe it’s because you identify with those redneck crackers and especially that wife-beating sub-human who was married to my fiancée before I rescued her.”
I looked up and saw Smith standing behind Delwin. The two of them had walked into the back of the meeting quietly. As Delwin moved aside I saw the Glocks in each hand. Delwin threw his hands up.
“He caught me by surprise, Phil. I never expected him to show up here.”
Phil put his hand down to his Glock which he carried in a holster at his side.

Smith trained one Glock on him, letting the other one wave back and forth. “Don’t do it, Phil. We’ve been friends for a long time, but if you pull a gun

on me to save this piece of shit I’ll kill you.”

“Shawn, put the guns down. You blow me away and one of these guys will take you down. Look at the odds here. Use your head.”
Smith bounced from one foot to the other, moving the pistols in his hands back and forth rapidly. He was either drunk or high, or both.
“You really think so, Phil? You sure one or more of them isn’t on my side. How’d I know about this little meet ‘n greet where my brothers are plotting with the asshole that’s trying to railroad me into prison. Maybe a few of them are with me, and when you guys start firing, the guy next to you you’re counting on you to have your back is going to blow your brains out. You willing to take that chance.”
The cops sitting around me began to look at each other warily. I could see they were starting to worry.
“Now, Phil, all of you, take your Glocks out of your holsters, with your left hands except for Martinez. You use your right. And lay them down on the table.”
Howser shook his head, but didn’t move his hand.
“I don’t give up my gun, Shawn. Not for you or anybody else. If you want to, you open fire and I’ll do my best to kill you before I die.”
“Looks like a Mexican standoff. Okay, keep your guns but keep your hands away from them and in plain sight. Everybody just stay cool. Anybody moves for a gun, and we all start dying.”
Smith turned his attention to me. His eyes were glazed, fiery, the pupils dilated. He had to be on something strong.
“Now you, Mr. Prosecutor. I hear you’re armed. Open that coat and reach up with your left hand and take it out with just the tips of your fingers.”


I did it, moving very slowly.
“Okay, good. I’m glad to see we’re communicating. It’s too bad it had to come to this, but you just kept coming after me.”
“Shawn, stop,” Howser said. “You’re having a breakdown. With any luck, you’ll get a suspended sentence and have to go into a hospital. It’s not the end of the world. There are other jobs out there. You’d be a good private security guy and it might wind up being a better world for you. It’s not worth being laid in your grave.”
“I’m not going to be laid in my grave. This son of a bitch is. I’m going to walk away from this nightmare and you guys are going to help me.”
“You’re crazy,” Martin said. “Look Shawn, I’ve been fighting for you. But no way are you going to shoot Maitland in cold blood and have the rest of us back you.”
Smith looked at him and said, “In a few seconds, with no warning, I’m going to put a bullet in his head. He’ll be dead before any of you can do anything, assuming you want to. Once he’s dead, what reason do you have to open fire on me?
“You, Martin? You remember five years ago, when we moved in on that Coke dealer in Avondale. You were first in the door when he leveled that sawed-off shotgun at you. It jammed, but I pushed you out of the way before we knew it was going to jam. I’d have taken the blast. I would have died for you, you son of a bitch. Because you’re my brother and we have each other’s back.
“Once this cocksucker is gone, you’re going to forget that and kill me for this scum? He’ll be dead and killing me won’t bring him back.
“Every one of you, I’ve had your back. Martinez, that pretty wife of yours would have divorced your ass and taken your two kids if she’d ever found out about that bitch you kept up in that apartment on 20th Street. But I took the bullet for that and said she was mine and it cost me my girlfriend at the time. But I did it.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

Delwin just shook his head.

“I’ve been on your side, but it’s just crazy, man. No way can you get away with it.”

The security officer radio Howser carried crackled and voices came out of it at the same time that the radios carried by Martin and Meyers did.

“Howser, come back. Answer please.” Smith looked around the room.

“Turn the radios off.” Nobody did.

“Why not,” Smith continued, answering Delwin’s comment, “There are 11 cops here, 12 counting me. You’re the leaders. If we stick together and give the same story, how are they ever going to break it? Is any jury in the world going to believe 12 cops lied?
“I’ve got a throw down that can’t be traced back to us. He came here to talk to you guys and when I showed up to try to talk sense to him he suddenly snapped and pulled it out and was going to shoot me. People will believe it. They know he’s crazy. Everybody at the courthouse knows about how he broke down. They know he’s been out of control since that slut wife of his dumped him.
“That’s why he tried to kill me. He told me in front of all of you that I was just another guy like the one who stole his wife. Only I stole the wife of a white man. That’s why he hated me, because I was another wife stealer. I tell you, people will believe it.”
Howser just shook his head and looked like he’d swallowed something sour. “No, Shawn. You’ve gone so far around the bend you don’t know how crazy
you are. It won’t work. Even if you kill Maitland and throw your gun down, none of us are going to let you walk or perjure ourselves to save your ass.”
The radios continued to crackle with messages ordering the holders of the radios to check in. No one moved to touch any of the radios.
Smith smiled. It was so confident it raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
“You’ll lie for me. Otherwise I’ll tell them that you let me walk in and shoot him and didn’t raise a hand to stop me. You can deny it, but there are 11 of you and one of me. Everyone is going to be asking, how could 11 armed cops not stop ONE man. You may not serve time, but you’re not going to be cops for that much longer and you may wind up serving time.”
He grinned again.
“Besides, you said it yourself. I’m crazy. At worst I’ll go to some nice mental hospital and after a few years I’ll be cured and get out. I might even meet some cute nurse while I’m being cured.”
“A good plan.”
Smith and everyone else looked at me.
“But it has a few...just.  a few flaws the size of the Grand Canyon in it.”
Smith’s smile was frozen on his face.
“Tell us, Maitland, what are the flaws. You going to strike me down with your Angel of Death powers?”
“No, nothing like that, more down to earth. You mind if I take something out of my jacket pocket? I’ll do it slowly.”
“Why not. You’re about to die. The rest of you, keep your fucking hands away from your guns. I might only get a couple of you, but two of you at least are going to die. Get it out, Maitland.”


I reached into my pocket and pulled out a device the size of a cigarette lighter. I held it up very slowly, and as Smith watched I pressed a button. After a few seconds I hit another button.
“....I’ve got a throw down that can’t be traced back to us. He came here to talk to you guys and when I showed up to try to talk sense to him he suddenly snapped and pulled it out and was going to shoot me. People will believe it. They know he’s crazy ”
I stopped the recording and watched his face, then looked around at the others. Howser and a few others who were smart enough looked ahead, like a chess master planning out moves three or four steps in advance. They knew. Even if Smith had planted friends, they’d know.
“I hope you guys won’t take offense, but I always tape conversations like this. No one will ever hear it, unless they need to.”
“So fucking what? You’re going to give it to me or I’ll take it off your dead body and destroy it. No one will ever hear it.”
Moving very slowly and deliberately, holding the recorder in my left hand, I touched two small prongs on the end.
“This is the latest model, Shawn. Maybe you haven’t seen them. They’re great. It records but it also transmits. There’s a relay link in my car which boosts the message and sends it to a recorder in my office, in a locked desk.
“You can destroy this, but Monday morning there will be people listening to this conversation. It’s digital so it’s recorded everything since I walked in here. Unless you guys plan on raiding my office, and good luck with doing that without leaving so much evidence behind that Edwards and my guys won’t need the recording.”
The tone on the security officer radios had turned to desperation before the calls suddenly stopped. The place was very quiet all of a sudden.
I looked at Shawn directly and made myself smile.
“Oh, and by the way, I’m not giving you this. Shoot me and take it.” Before he could react I turned so my back was to him.
“Shoot me in the back, Shawn. You’ve had experience doing that so it should come easy. Try explaining to your fellow officers, and the guys from my office, how you happened to shoot me in the back as I was attacking you.”
“Turn around, goddammit. I will shoot you in the back if you don’t.”
“But that’s not the only flaw in your plan. Just the biggest. There are others.” “Maitland, turn around.”
“Shawn, dammit, don’t, don’t,” Howser shouted.
“Your finger gets one inch closer to that gun and I’m killing you, Howser. Don’t make me. Delwin, Belmont, keep your fucking hands clear of your guns.”
They were keeping him occupied so I continued.


“Actually, the biggest hole in your plan is the simplest and it’s the one that could send every one of you to prison, or jail, or just to another job.
“Say you destroy the recorder, or maybe it malfunctioned tonight and there is no record in my office. Then all of you have to decide if you’re going to lie for Smith.
“If you lie and agree with Smith that I pulled out his throw down piece, the first question from everybody is going to be – why did I pull out a throw down that NOBODY knows anything about when I’ve got a perfectly usable Glock that everybody at my office knows I’m carrying and which I’ve been trained by our people how to use? Maybe you can explain how I pulled out a hidden throw down, but it’s going to stink to high heaven.
“Of course, you could forget about his throw down and fire my Glock after I’m dead and that would make for a simpler story. Of course, that still leaves you with the question of how I got shot in the back while attacking Smith
“But that’s not your REALLY big problem. Suppose you decide to hang together and lie for Smith.
“Get real. Twelve men are going to keep a secret that could send people to prison.
“You’re cops. You know that’s not going to happen. Someone will get drunk, or get an attack of conscience.
“And then it won’t be just being kicked off the force. It will be conspiracy to aid and abet first degree murder. It will be being an accessory after the fact, and they’ll probably nail you for accessory before the fact because they won’t believe a word you guys say.
“All of you, every one, will spend ten, maybe twenty years in prison because Edwards will make an example of you.”
I stopped and took a deep breath, wondering if my world would end in the next second.
“And even if you tell the truth and they don’t charge you for letting a man be murdered in front of you, like Smith said, you’re going to be laughing stocks in your own world. No cop is going to respect 11 guys that let one guy with a gun buffalo them.
“The story ever gets on the street, and it will, expect to find a lot of bad guys trying you. But you won’t be on the street.
“Dallas Edwards doesn’t love me, but you can’t let cops go around killing prosecutors. Bad for business. He’ll pressure Knight and before too long you guys will be gone.”
It was so quiet I could hear men shifting positions in their chairs, their asses stuck by sweat to the plastic. I could them breathing. Smith sounded like he had asthma, couldn’t catch his breath.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I pointed to the table and said, “They have napkins here, Shawn. Maybe you ought to dry your hands. I imagine you’re sweating pretty badly right now. I wouldn’t want your fingers to slip.”

Why I said that, I don’t know. I don’t think I have that big a death wish. I think it was just so after he killed me, the cops might tell my kids that story. They would remember me as not being afraid, able to say something cool in a tight spot.
Unfortunately, as I pointed to the napkins the overhead fluorescent lights had sparkled on the Fleur-de-Lis ring. I didn’t want anything that would make me want to live so badly right now.
“Those are the biggies. But I would understand you guys backing him up.
You are brothers, after all. Yeah, and brothers in blue are loyal.
“Martinez, I know your wife will understand. I saw her at that FOP picnic. God, she is hot. Those tits and that ass, and really pretty. When they send you away for a few years, and your own guys start hitting on her in a few months, I know she’ll be faithful. She’ll understand. When she’s alone in your bed night after night and getting horny, she’ll understand the duty a cop has to a fellow officer.
“And when she can’t stand it and one of your ‘brothers’ or some civilian is inside her one night, she’ll feel guilty because your first duty wasn’t to her, it was to your brother officer.
“How many of your wives will be that understanding, I wonder? Will live with empty, cold beds because they know your first duty wasn’t to them, but the brothers in blue.”
I wondered if I’d have enough time to get the rest out.
“And James, maybe your wife will be one of the loyal ones. But I saw your daughter at that picnic. Really pretty for a 13 year old. Too bad daddy won’t be around to be a male presence in her life and put the fear of God into all those horny 17 and 18-year-olds that will be trying to make babies with her.”
James was a black officer about the size of a refrigerator. I wondered if he’d go for his Glock or just try to take out Smith with his bare hands.
“With any luck, you’ll be a grandpa when you get out, something to look forward to.”
“You are a dead man, Maitland. Walking and talking, but dead.”
“I know you’re going to kill me, Shawn. And your life is going to end here tonight, one way or the other. It’s a shame. You were a good cop. I think you’re a good man who made a bad mistake. Mistakes happen. But you won’t face up to what you did and pay the price.
“We have to pay for our mistakes.”


I stood there and waited for the sounds I expected. I really had no idea if his fellow cops would actually kill him to save me, and even if they fired on him, he’d probably kill me anyway.
I should have been terrified. I pray to whatever God is out there, but I don’t really believe. I think when I close my eyes that’s it. The ‘me’ that wakes up every morning will be gone, like a candle blown out by the wind.
I can’t make myself believe in the fairy tale of a gracious heaven where I’ll be re-united with my father. I wish I could. It would make things a lot easier.
Thinking of my father, I wondered what went through his mind in his last seconds. Undoubtedly he’d had time to hear the creaking and thundering of rock and timber giving way and he’d been a miner long enough to know what it meant. A second cave-in in that weakened shaft was it. No more rescues.
Had he thought of me and my mother? Had he had any second thoughts at the last minute about the cost of his last decision? Had he regretted that he wouldn’t see me grow up, not being around for his grandchildren? I was already regretting not seeing what Kelly and BJ’s children would look like, what my two children would be like as adults.
But I couldn’t do anything different than what I’d done. Every step, everything I’d done in my life had led me to this moment. And I could wish I’d done things differently, never lost Debbie, but I knew I wouldn’t have done things differently unless I’d been gifted with foresight and just never took the SA job.
Thinking of Debbie made me think of Aline, and of all the images that I carried with me the one that flashed into my mind was her standing in the night rain and the darkness in the forward tower on the Bonne Chance looking back at me across a hundred feet as we rode the white caps. If you could love someone before you knew them, I had.
And as she was the darkness, Debbie was the light. The picture that was in my mind as I heard the first gun blast was Debbie smiling at me as I walked in the door of our home one day – I don’t remember when. I remembered my heart hurting with the knowledge that this woman loved me. Thinking that I’d never see that smile again, I wasn’t too unhappy about the way things had gone.
Sometimes, dying is easier.
Debbie pulled her 350Z into the parking lot at the front of the long, one story building marked with a big FOP sign. The security officer scanner had crackled with terse messages with numbers and codes unlikely to be understood by civilians, but she knew that a half dozen security officer cruisers had been scrambled and would be pulling in any second. The Under-Sheriff and Zone Commander were on the way in


separate cars because someone had reported that Shawn Smith, drinking heavily and armed, was on his way to the FOP Union Hall.
Frantic calls to any of the officers known to be at the FOP meeting, and to FOP President Phil Howser, had gone unanswered. One tense voice let discipline slip and growled, “What the hell is the matter with those guys. Why aren’t they answering?”
Another had answered, “Not good. Get the hell over there.”
Then another voice with an air of command had ordered both of them to switch over to another, private, security officer channel. It hadn’t had to order them to shut up. That was understood.
Somehow she had beaten them all and when they questioned her, the only answer she’d be able to give them was female intuition. As an educated woman, a professional, she’d always scoffed at stories of female intuition, of hunches about children or loved ones in danger. There simply was no scientific proof and nothing close to anything like a scientific theory that could account for such supernatural information.
Even if it couldn’t be explained, how else could she explain why she’d left her home to race to a building with no reason to expect any danger.
However, inside her, she couldn’t deny it. When she heard that Bill had shown up there, even before knowing that Shawn Smith was also headed there, she’d simply known she had to go. Maybe it was nerves, fear for her ex knowing the animosity most cops had for him, residual guilt over how she had hurt him. She could not have foreseen that Smith would show up, but it might have been a fear in the back of her mind.
As she took her first steps toward the building across the carefully maintained lawn that fronted Atlantic Boulevard the thought came to her – how the hell would she explain to Bill showing up if Shawn Smith wasn’t in there. What if nothing more was going on than a spirited debate over the wisdom of filing charges against Smith.
She knew he would look at her and he’d KNOW.
He had been so clueless for so many years, but when he wanted to, he could look into your soul. As Lew had told her months before, he had never looked into her and sniffed the odor of a decaying marriage and her lust for another man, but it had been because he had trusted her.
And when he looked into her eyes he’d see past the lies and the defenses she had put up and would see something else, and he would misunderstand.
She wasn’t still in love with him. She had given that up the morning she had called and told him she wasn’t in love with him anymore. But...as he had said to her, you can’t turn off love that easily, or caring, or affection - whatever word you wanted to use.


She knew now you could hate someone, or at least be angry enough to want to hurt them badly, and still love them, or the memories you had of them. That was all it was. The memories of a better time when they had been young and she had been the center of his life and not an afterthought.
She heard the gunfire erupt from the long low building in front of her and even through the walls of the building, the shouts of pain and fear.
In one timeless moment she had a vision. She knew it was a vision and it felt like a true vision, not just a dream-like picture in her mind’s eye. She was standing with Kelly and BJ dressed in black and looking down into an open casket. His face was still and calm and composed. He really looked as if he were only sleeping.
She had leaned over and pressed her lips against his and knew then that he was gone and never coming back.
She wanted to scream. This wasn’t fair. No matter what had happened, no matter what she had done to him, no matter what he said, no matter how many times he pushed her away, he would always come back to her.
He had told her one night not long after they married and she had told him of the nightmares that had started coming in which he had died after the fight in the frat house instead of recovering, “That will never happen, Babe. I will always come back to you. No matter what. No matter where I am, I will always come back.”
Only he had lied and left her behind.
Then she was racing across the damp grass, kicking off her shoes in an instant, running as the hot tears of a young girl streamed down her cheeks.
 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 11: AFTERMATH

SEPTEMBER 23, 2005

My name is William Maitland. Officially I’m an Assistant State Attorney in Jacksonville, Florida. Unofficially I am THE State Attorney as far as day to day functioning goes, or I was. I think I must be dying. I’ve been shot by a crazed cop among a whole gaggle of other armed cops who weren’t able to save me.
I’m pretty sure the cop who shot me, Shawn Smith, who has made an unfortunate habit of shooting men in the back, got in a head shot because I’m bleeding like crazy, I can’t see for the blood running in my eyes and I’m down on the ground. I’m trying to move but it feels like I can’t move my arms and legs.
I wonder curiously how long it takes to die and whether you really know what’s going on as your life drains away.
I remember, somewhat incongruously, a great movie called “American Beauty” I saw a few years ago, which ends with the main character shot in the head and dying and he says the moment of dying lasts for an eternity.
In the movie the main character says that moment of dying is the afterlife and you spend an eternity reliving your life before the lights go out forever.
I wonder if that’s somehow the truth of it and when I will start the long journey back through all the moments of my life.
It must have started already. Through a blood red haze, I see the features of the woman I have loved for 20 years, who convinced me she loved me and then destroyed me by giving her body and love to another man. It would be alright if I could relive the days when we met and when we had a happy marriage.
It’s too bad I don’t believe in reincarnation or second chances. If I could go back and learn from my mistakes I would never have taken a job in the prosecutor’s office.
A man I respect told me once that we are all tools in God’s hands and that I had served a greater purpose as a prosecutor by alleviating human suffering and balancing the scales of justice.
In God’s eyes, he indicated, that role was greater than that of a husband to the beautiful Debbie and father to Kelly and BJ. I had sacrificed the chance of mere happiness to serve God.
I don’t really believe in God and less in Heaven, but if I’m wrong and I wind up on a cloud somewhere staring up at the face of the Almighty, I already know I’m going to tell him to go fuck himself and just give me back the life he took from me. And, if he’s going to punish me for blasphemy, well let him try to hurt me more than he’d already done.
I don’t think even God could do that.


I know he can’t as Debbie’s beautiful face comes closer. Tears stream down her face and I wonder if somehow I’m dead and watching from heaven.
As memories war within me, I know I hate her. God, how I hate her, but for now I’ll just love her and her memory for a while. Maybe I’ll just do it forever, if that “American Dream” flick has it right.

SEPTEMBER 23, 2005 -- 8:12 P.M.

“Let go of me, you bastards, let me go.”
She struggled against the two men grabbing her arms and trying to keep her away from the bloody scene on the FOP floor. One was black and one was white. She was crying; watching the figure she knew so well covered in blood and spasming on the floor under the grip of two or three cops trying to hold him down.
There were bodies all over. Bill lay there with his head covered in blood. A figure that must be Shawn Smith lay sprawled on the floor a few feet away. He was bathed in blood oozing from what appeared to be a dozen places. Fortunately, he lay face down because there was a large hole oozing blood and white stuff from the back of his skull.
A big black man sat on the floor to the right of Bill and the men with him. A white cop was holding him as he leaned back and another pressed his hand down over the black cop’s hand pushing down on his abdomen as blood flowed out around their fingers.
A tall, thin cop with thinning brown hair was being held up by two men. He breathed in and out with gasping sighs. A big bald cop was saying, “Breath in and out, don’t force it, Phil. You’re going to pass out if you panic and you need to stay awake. Hang in there. Rescue will be here in a couple of minutes, no more.”
Debbie tried to kick one of the cops holding her in the balls but he turned so her kick glanced off the side of his leg.
“Let me go you sons of bitches. Let me go. That’s my husband.”
The cop holding her left arm stared at her and for just a moment relaxed his grip on her and that was enough. She wrenched her arm out of his grasp and jerked hard enough to pull free of the other cop. She threw herself down on Bill’s bloody body.
There was so much blood, so much damned blood.
Two of the cops that had been holding his lower body down fell back and she pulled his head toward her. She felt the mass of blood that made the back of his head slippery to the touch but she forced herself to pull him until his head rested against her shoulder.
“You idiot,” she screamed in anger and fear. “Why? Why?”


“Just....stupid...I guess.  ”
She almost dropped him, bouncing his head off the concrete floor, but she managed to recover and put her arms around him to cradle his head, letting him lean back so she could see his eyes open through the film of blood that covered his face.
“Bill, you’re alive!”
“Jesus Christ,” said one of the cops that had been holding his legs down. “Jesus H. Christ I thought you were dead. I though the twitching was your last dying. ”
Bill looked straight at him and incredibly a faint smile flickered on his bloody lips.

“Reports....of....my... ”

He took a deep breath and blew out bloody bubbles. “....death.....were..... ”

Somehow she read his mind and knew what he was trying to say. Being married and together for 20 years made it nothing magical. She just knew him and how his mind worked.
“Greatly exaggerated.  ” She said.
He smiled at her and somehow that made the tears flow even harder.
A black cop moved her hands away from the back of his head and held a handkerchief to the bloody mess there. Patting away the blood revealed a long gash almost deep enough to put a finger into, running from near the right side of the back of his skull to near the right temple.
She couldn’t make herself, but the cop pressed in and a moment later said, “It’s deep but it didn’t penetrate the skull. No messy brain stuff leaking out. Maitland, you’re the luckiest bastard that ever walked the earth.”
“Then why...” she asked, unwilling to believe yet, to hope that what she saw wasn’t the reality of it.
“There are more blood vessels and they’re closer to the surface around the head, neck and face than anywhere else in the human body. You bleed a hell of a lot when you have a bullet put a groove this size in your head, but I don’t think he’ll bleed to death. We need to mop up the blood. I’ll get some rags from the bathroom. We need to clean him up enough to make sure there aren’t any more bullet holes in his head, or anywhere else. Can you keep him supported until I get back.”
She didn’t answer, just held him tighter in her arms. Even now, there was a part of her that was pissed off at him. Why the hell had he risked his life, risked the life of his children’s father, the life of his ex-wife’s ex-husband so cavalierly. It was as if he didn’t care what he was risking, as long as he was “doing the right thing.”


But those were only words. She had talked with him often enough about his last memories of his father’s leaving to know why they resonated so deeply in his mind and heart. For good or ill, they had scarred and shaped the man he’d grown to be.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

But, goddammit, she thought, at some point you have to grow up. You couldn’t be a crusader going out to battle evil and not caring if you lost your life in the process. You could when you were single, but when you married, when you brought two lives into the world, you lost the freedom to throw your life away in grand gestures and it seemed like he’d never grown up enough to realize it.

She had only been halfway sarcastic when she referred to him as “Saint Bill,” to her mother and children. She had thought sometimes that it was like being married to a secular saint. Everybody looking in from the outside would ‘oooh’ and ‘aaahh’ about how wonderful it was to be married to such a noble creature.
But what it meant in reality was that she had never had more than a portion of him. No matter how much he swore he loved her and their children, actions proved more than words. When it came to the way he lived his life, for the last ten years he’d shown over and over again that he cared more for living up to the mythic legend of his father than he cared for the welfare of the people he said he loved the most.
She held him tight to her chest, cradling his head against her breasts, and she knew that if they hadn’t torn each other’s hearts out he’d have joked about the chance to feel her up making nearly dying worthwhile.
But they’d never joke like that again. She could still hold him against her and be glad that she wouldn’t have to call Kelly and BJ and tell them their father had died in her arms.
He was trying to twist in her arms and she tried to hold him still. She understood why the cops had been trying to hold him still. There could be other injuries, damage to the spine and the general rule was to keep victims as still as possible in such situations, but he kept twisting.
“Bill, try to stay still. Even if the bullets didn’t hit anything vital” - and here she couldn’t help smiling down at him “and if they only hit your brain they didn’t hit anything vital - you shouldn’t be moving. Stay still till rescue gets here.”
He returned a weak smile and managed to raise one trembling hand and wiped at the blood in his eyes.
“I feel....like shit....and I’m dizzy  but I’m not dying.”
She let him twist around and he saw the cops holding up the man they’d called Phil.
“Oh shit!” he said softly. “Phil! Phil!”

His voice was still weak but the big bald man helping to hold Phil up heard and pointed to Bill. Phil looked up, saw him and his eyes widened in surprise.

“I thought you were dead.” His voice whistled as he spoke and then he coughed up blood. He was gasping for air.

“What?”

The bald headed guy said, “One of Shawn’s bullets must have collapsed a lung. At least he didn’t hit his heart. He’ll make it. We all thought you’d bought it.”
Bill looked over at the black cop whose skin was starting to go a shade of pale gray while a current of blood kept gushing out around the white and black fingers trying to hold it back, now pushing hand towels against the growing tide of red.

“James?”

The black cop looked over at Bill and shook his head.

“You know you’re a real pain in the ass, don’t you Maitland? Or a pain in my gut, anyway.”

“...I’m sorry...”

James took a deep breath, then spit on the floor. “It’s all on him, and he paid for it.”

“What...”

The big bald cop glanced over the bleeding corpse on the floor, then at Bill.

“You’re alive because of Phil. I think his shot hit Shawn in the neck, enough anyway to where the bullet that was going to splatter your brains all over this room hit the back of your skull and skidded. But Shawn would not go down. He turned and hit Phil while I was pumping into him along with a half dozen others.
“He turned his gun on me and I thought I was dead when James hit him. We must have stopped firing because we didn’t hear anything until Shawn stuck his Glock into James’ fat gut and fired. When James fell back we unloaded and he finally went down. Son of a bitch. We had to put two into his brain to finally bring him down.”
The bald cop looked at the body leaking body and brain matter onto the floor and Debbie thought for a minute a hint of sadness flashed across his face.
“He was a tough son of a bitch. Stupid but tough. Anyway, that’s what I remember happening. Things were popping kind of quick.”
Bill turned his head slightly and looked up at Debbie. She had grabbed a couple of paper towels and was wiping the blood off his face. He swallowed hard.
“Damn...I’m dizzy, Babe.”
She made herself not respond. He was still in shock. ‘Babe’ didn’t mean what it once had.

“You’re going to be okay, Bill. You’ve got a hard head, but that bullet must have shaken you a lot.”

He closed his eyes and then they snapped open as he stared into her eyes. “What. what are you doing here, Deb?”

Her heart flipped in her chest. This was the question she feared. How could she answer it?

“I......Patrick Leary told me you were going to meet with the cops here tonight.”

“And?”

He was slipping back into that damned interrogator frame of mind. “Why are you here?”

He wouldn’t let it go.

“You remember I said you don’t have the sense to be afraid of things you should be afraid of. I guess. I just wanted to be close by.”
“And you were going to be my bodyguard?”
“No, you bastard. I. I was worried about you. You happy now? You got it out
of me. I was worried about you. You’ve got two children that love you and you don’t have sense enough to protect yourself for them.”
“So you were here for our kids?”
“Why do you have to be a prosecutor right now, Bill?”
“I’m just trying to understand. Why are you crying for someone you don’t love anymore?”
She closed her eyes and when she opened them the room was swarming with cops and rescue EMTS and firefighters and high level Sheriff’s Office officials. Two rescue types were leaning down and trying to separate her from Bill but she held him tightly.

“I said I didn’t love you that way anymore, Bill, not that I didn’t love you.” They were pulling him away from her and she had to get out the last words. “I came here tonight, Bill, because I know you. I know you better than

anyone else. You did what you always have done because you’re the kind of man you are. I just....forgot........................................ who you were. For a while.”

She released him, pulling her bloody hands away while two techs leaned him down on a rolled up blanket. She leaned over and kissed his bloody forehead.

“I’m sorry I forgot, Bill.”

He looked up at her and for once she couldn’t read him. “So am I, Debbie.”

Then the room descended into organized chaos as rescue personnel swarmed the three wounded men and tried to shoo away the men who’d been caring for them. Debbie stepped back and looked at her hands and dress. Jesus Christ she was a mess. In minutes she knew the television crews would be swarming


outside. She needed to call Kelly and BJ. If they heard the first reports that their father had been shot and she showed up on a newscast covered in blood it would not look good.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

As she watched the techs clean off his head and face, turn him gently and inspect him for other injuries, she could see that there appeared to be only the deep gouge from the right back side of his head running almost to his temple. It was a flesh wound. He’d live, and she realized she was just now letting out the breath she seemed to have been holding since the second she’d heard the first shots.

So the vision was false. It had seemed so real but it was just her mind playing tricks on her.
They had brought in rolling stretchers, lowered one and, with three men helping, lifted him onto it. Then they raised it to waist level and while talking on their radios began pushing him toward the entrance. She started to walk toward him then stopped.
When it was happening, when everything seemed to have changed forever, she had held him without thought. It was as if the last six months - the last four years - had never happened, but they had.
Now, as she thought about walking to him and holding his hand, she found herself wondering how that would look to the men around her. If they knew what had happened, would they think the spectacle of the cheating wife holding her wounded husband’s hand was just a show for the crowd?
She walked beside him without touching him.

“Do you want me to ride with you - in the ambulance - to the hospital, Bill?” He looked back at her walking slightly behind the stretcher.

“No, that’s okay.” She’d expected it, but...

“I’ll be okay, Deb. I want you to find Kelly and BJ. Let them know I’m okay.

They’re liable to say I’m dying on the television and radio casts.” He focused in on her eyes.

“I’m good, Debbie, really. I’ll be alright. I won’t be quite as cute as I used to be, but...”
If she had said what was really in her mind, she was afraid she’d break down again so she forced a grin and said, “Well, no great loss then.”
He grinned back.
“Bye Deb. Kiss the kids for me.”
Then they were pushing him out the front door and she was alone with a host of strange men. They were checking her out and, for the first time in her memory, it made her feel uncomfortable, but she walked over to where the big bald cop stood.


“I wanted to thank you, and tell your friend Phil thanks for me too. In case you weren’t aware, I’m Bill’s ex.”
He stared at her and took in her breasts but the smile on his face didn’t reach his eyes.
“I know who you are. I’ve seen you with him around the courthouse, before you screwed around on him.”
“We got a divorce. It happens. But I still want to thank you for what you did.”
He shook his head.
“I’m divorced. Most cops wind up divorced. Fact of life. But Maitland wasn’t screwing around on you, best I hear. You screwed his head. I kinda blame you for this. If you hadn’t messed him up, I don’t think he would have come down on Shawn like the wrath of God. He might have been more of a human being.”
She stared him down.
“Doesn’t matter what you think about me. He has two kids that didn’t do anything to your friend. Thank you for them.”
She turned and walked out. If he had said anything in reply she didn’t hear and didn’t care.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

SEPTEMBER 24, 2005 -- 6 P.M.

I lay back in a hospital bed in the St. Vincent’s Medical Center trauma ward. I was laying on my side which was not all that comfortable, because a fairly good plastic surgeon had stitched up the back of my head last night after they had brought me in.
The bullet that Smith had tried to put into my brain had come just close enough to breaking through my skull - about as close as the width of a sheet of typing paper one doctor had said - that they felt duty bound to run CAT Scans and MRIs and all that other crap to make sure there wasn’t any damage up to and including possible swelling of the brain as a result of the trauma.
Then there was the little matter of a concussion and a coma after my defense of Debbie had nearly gotten me killed the first time. I hadn’t thought about that in a long time and it had never caused any residual problems except for a tendency to get headaches if I spent too much time reading or didn’t get enough sleep. But that’s what they invented Tylenol for and I’d never worried much about it.
Another ongoing effect has been what they called painless migraines, where brightly colored light flashes migrate across my field of vision. These were also triggered by exhaustion or overuse of my eyes and I’d had doctors tell me they might be inconvenient but not dangerous.


However, the doctors who examined me in the St. Vincent’s emergency room and the specialists up in the head trauma ward were concerned that brain damage could have been caused by the compound effects of the old and new traumas.
So, for the last 24 hours, they’d put me through every damned diagnostic test I’d ever heard of and some I hadn’t. They’d sewed up the back of my head after implanting some artificial cow bone to fill in the large groove so I wouldn’t look like a real freak, and kept me from having more than half an hour of uninterrupted sleep at any one time.
I kept drifting off from time to time. In snatches of dream pieces of the previous night and today came drifting in and out of my consciousness.
NOON
“Dad. Dad.”
BJ and Kelly walked quickly across the private room that the Big Man had procured for me. Debbie walked behind them. Three nurses hovered around. My head was covered in bandages where the plastic surgeon had tried to repair the damage from Smith’s bullet. The drugs they’d given me kept me flashing in and out.
I could read the looks on both their faces so I smiled at them.
“It’s okay. I look a hell of a lot worse than I really am. I just got a graze across the back and side of my head and they went and sewed it up.”
When they reached me, BJ grabbed my hand, the one with a needle stuck in it, while Kelly stood behind him and grabbed the other.
I couldn’t help tears appearing in my eyes.
“It’s okay, guys. It’s lucky your mom was there last night. Everybody thought I was dead until she showed up and brought me back to life.”
Both of them looked back at her where she stood silently. I read the glances and I could almost feel sorry for her. She’d ended her life with me and she’d done damage I hadn’t realized to her relationship with the children. I’d wanted her to pay for what she’d done, and only now did I realize that she really was paying for her actions and might for a long, long time.
There was a time I would have loved it, but those emotions had been growing more muted as time went by and I realized that I wanted her to have a good relationship with them. It didn’t take away or change anything between us, but they needed a mother.
“Dad, you gotta stop doing stuff like this,” BJ said, “I got enough flak about you when they started calling you the Angel of Death, but now - I’m never going to get any action if every girl I try to hook up with is afraid that Heaven’s going to be watching us every step of the way.”
Kelly half-heartedly slapped him on the shoulder.


“He’s such an idiot Dad, but he’s right. You gotta stop getting into situations like this. I’m supposed to worry about keeping gold diggers and whores away from you, not letting them take advantage of you because you’ve been out of the scene for so long, without having to worry about whether some cop is going to shoot you.”
I’d been able to stem the flow of tears without looking too stupid. I shook my head as much as I could and said, “I’m sorry guys. I never expected things would turn out this way but it’s what I do. Nothing like this will probably ever happen again.”
“He’s right,” Debbie said, the first words she’d uttered since entering the room, as she walked up to my bed. “We were married for nearly 20 years and he’s worked as a prosecutor for more than 10 years - nothing like this has ever happened before. It probably won’t ever happen again.”
We exchanged glances that the kids didn’t pick up on and I knew she knew about the Welaka Cannibal and his threats, and probably other things I’d always foolishly thought I’d protected her from. I’d come to realize she knew more about my life than I’d ever thought. Maybe if I hadn’t tried to protect her...
I shut the thought off. What was done was done and I couldn’t change the past.
The phone rang. They were supposed to screen my calls and leave messages at the front desk because the damn thing had rung almost continuously most of the night until the hospital administration let the nurses on call know to hold ALL calls and simply give me a list every few hours, and that only because I’d insisted. Ninety percent were media calls, a few were from people at the State Attorney’s or Public Defender’s Offices and one was from Sheriff Knight. Nothing that I couldn’t call back on.
A moment later an attractive brown-haired nurse, who looked to be in her late 30s or early 40s, walked in quickly and leaned over, whispering in my ear.
“The call was from a gentleman who said you would know him as The Old Man.”
She stared at me with the first beginnings of alarm on her face.
“He told me my home address, what music my daughter is listening to on her IPOD in her bedroom, and. ”
Tears welled up in her eyes and she leaned in closer, whispering with a glance at Debbie and the kids.
“He......told me.....about the affair I’m having with a friend of my husband. We’ve only met on Fridays when my husband is out of town. Nobody in the world knows about it except...the man and myself. The....Old Man said if you didn’t pick up his next call my husband will receive photographs of  my friend
and I. ”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

She stopped.

“Please take the call. I love my husband, no matter what you might think. I can’t...he would...”

“I’ll take it. Get out and don’t worry. He’s... he likes cruel practical jokes. He

won’t do anything to you. Trust me. I’ve known him for a long time. He was just trying to get my attention.”

Debbie had heard part of that and her eyes showed her alarm. I motioned to her and the kids.

“I’m sorry, guys, I have to take this. Give me a moment, but don’t leave.”

In thirty seconds the phone rang again. I picked it up. There was a brief silence, a clicking sound and then a faint static and I heard his voice.

“Hello, Mr. Maitland.” “Hello.”

“I trust you are recovering. Our sources within the hospital’s medical department said your wounds were not believed to be life threatening but they are taking no chances.”

“That was a cruel thing you did.” There was a dry laugh.

“You might have heard, I can be cruel if the occasion calls for it.”

I knew he had killed many men and women, had watched men tortured to death, had men and women torn apart in front of him by other men and animals in medieval torments.
“As far as I know, those have all been for business, for matters that you considered crucial to your survival. Tormenting this poor woman wasn’t worthy of you.”
“What did I do, Mr. Maitland? I did not threaten her family or herself physically. I merely let her know that her betrayal of her husband, that poor, blind, hardworking idiot of a husband, has not gone unnoticed. Do you think that if I, through my contacts, could not discover her adultery in a few minutes, that her poor, blind husband will never stumble upon it?”
There was a short silence. Again the static on the line and the clicking.
“You think that was cruel? To give her a chance to save her marriage, to possibly spare her husband from...the pain that you know all too well? Tell me what I did that was so terrible?”
He was as intelligent as he was cold blooded and possibly even a little more dangerous because of all that. When you have almost limitless power and no moral compass at all, there were no limits to what you could do.
“Why are you calling?”
“Just to check in. When we heard that you had nearly been killed, I was notified and we investigated. This appears to be merely the act of an unhinged


man so there is nothing for me to do. I am glad that you came through mostly untouched. I am told the bullet wound should leave no appreciable scar.”
“As always, your sources are impeccable. I’m grateful that you are continuing to watch over me.”
There was another silence, longer this time.
“You know that I have never loved anything in this life, except for one person. And now there is nothing I love because he died without heir and my line died with him. But he died with dignity and in peace because of you. You didn’t know who he was and had no reason to treat him as you did, but you did because of the man you are. I can never repay the debt I owe you in this life, but I can try.”
There was another long silence and then I said, “I’m sure you’ve heard of the Mexican Cartel whose man is scheduled to be tried in the U.S.”
“Yes, and the Cartel has already moved against anyone they think will take part in that prosecution. I think I know more than you do.”

“Yes?”

“They are already planning ahead and there is one thing they fear.”

When I didn’t respond, he said, “That is you. The Angel of Death has acquired mythic status among many of the poor in Mexico and nearby countries. The Mexicans are queer for anything having to do with death, and the Angel of Death overlays the pre-Columbian myths about death gods. The Cartel leadership is hoping the trial doesn’t come to your office.”
“They’re frightened of a media myth?”
“Myths are real to those who believe in them and, if the trial does come to you, the Cartel faces a very real danger.”
“They face a danger?”
“They cannot allow you to prosecute their man. They would lose so much face rivals would pop up because the myth of their invincibility will have been shattered.”
“If they kill me that would solve that problem.” “True, but if they try and fail. ”
I thought about that, then, “It’s still a long way between here and there, but it brings up a point we need to discuss.”

“You need say nothing. If they move against your family, they will pay.” “And I will be your man and you will own me.”

“Yes.”

“Acceptable. If they hit my family, my life is over anyway. And if they hit me. ”

“Protection of your family is guaranteed if we have to kill every last one of them.”

“Then it is agreed. I’d appreciate your keeping an eye on things for me. And if they take out my family and myself. unleash hell upon all of them.”
“To the last drop of my blood and all who follow me.” “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye, Mr. Maitland.”
I hung up the phone softly. Whenever I had spoken with him, on the few occasions it had occurred, I always felt like I had crossed over into another realm of being, as far as you could get from the real 9-5 world that most people live in. It wasn’t a pleasant experience but it wasn’t anything I’d asked for. I had simply showed mercy to another human being and wound up being ensnared in a dark and deadly world that I wanted no part of.
But the Old Man who felt he owed me a debt couldn’t be persuaded or threatened into leaving me alone. It was like walking through a dark wood and finding a huge and dangerous wolf dogging your tracks and leaping to engage anything that threatened you. You might not want or need his protection, but how did you call him off? It was a trick I hadn’t figured out in more than seven years. Maybe I never would. Until he died, and hopefully those who followed wouldn’t feel the obligation he did.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

But for right now, that presence of a huge, dark and dangerous criminal organization that had my back, as I glanced at my ex-wife, son and daughter, made me feel better about my life.

As I gestured and they walked back toward my bed, Debbie said quietly, “Who was that?”
“Just a.  man who was concerned about my welfare. He’s a friend, of sorts.”
“I think everybody in the world must have heard about what happened,” BJ said excitedly. “I tuned into a French broadcast channel I caught on my friend’s Direct TV universal channel and caught a news broadcast. I couldn’t understand what they were saying…"
“You would have if you’d paid attention in your French classes,” Kelly interjected. As usual, BJ ignored her.
“The only class you paid attention to was Sex Ed.,” BJ said, continuing, “Anyway, they showed Dad’s picture and some of the shots of people being taken out of the cop shop and I heard what I thought was ‘The Angel of Death’ in French and I know I heard his name—William Maitland. France! They were showing it on French television. Can you believe that?”
“Yes, I can believe that and I am sure that there are people in France who will be fascinated to hear about your father’s brush with death - some people in particular.”
All of us picked up the ice in her voice. The two younger Maitlands couldn’t help smiling. I kept my face neutral. I’d known she was jealous of Aline, but I


hadn’t realized how jealous.
The timing of what came next couldn’t have happened again in a million years. It was impossible, but sometimes impossible coincidences do happen.
The phone rang. I ignored it, but a moment later the attractive nurse stuck her head back in the door.
I guess after the last time she wasn’t taking any chances.
“Mr. Maitland, there’s a lady, French I think, on the phone. She says her name is Aline. You want to take her call? I’ve got her on hold.”
“Send her call through.”
It was as if Debbie and I were the only people in the world.
I remembered the last time she had looked at me like that. It was when she had walked in on Amy Sunderland and me screwing on CC’s yacht. I had felt guilty for no good reason then but I didn’t feel guilty now. I just played back the memory of her going to Doug’s aid the night of that UNF ceremony and made myself feel what I’d felt then.
I held her gaze while I said, “Hello, Aline.”
There was a terrible hurt in her eyes but I made my heart a stone. She had no right to be hurt by anything I did anymore.
“Bill, are you alright?”
I had thought the pain of losing this woman had gone, but it was as if the morning she had left me alone had never happened. It didn’t help that she sounded like she was in the next room.
“I’m good, Aline. Better than good since I’m alive. My son just told me the shooting was on the news in Paris. I couldn’t believe it was that big a story.”
“As always Bill, you underestimate yourself. The attempted murder of The Angel of Death, a shootout between a rogue security officer officer and a whole room full of armed officers, has been around the world, I believe.”
“What did Philippe have to say about my brush with death?”
“I.....I don’t know, Bill. He is...he is still at his office. I heard about what they are calling The Massacre when I logged onto the news. Andre is with friends so I took the subway into downtown Paris and found a public phone.”
“You didn’t want to call me on your home phone or cell? Why?” There was a long silence.
“I....you must have known that Philippe was with me when I wrote you that email. It—I would have written it differently if I were alone and not afraid he would find it.”

“What do you have to be afraid of, Aline?” “I...Bill...it’s different. I...”

“What is it, Aline? What aren’t you telling me?”

For the first time since the shooting I wasn’t thinking about myself or Debbie.
“Bill....it’s just that....you remember I told you that I wouldn’t know if our marriage would survive until I could look into his eyes. I have looked into his eyes. We have talked. I have been honest with him and I still don’t know. For the first time in our lives, I look at him and his eyes are closed to me.”
“You were honest with him. About...everything?”
“I was too honest. I know he is hurt, although he hasn’t said anything. Both of us have been with others. I thought - I hoped - that we could move beyond. my time with you. He has no reason to be hurt.”
For the first time I heard anger in her voice.
“God knows, he has been with many other women and, although he claims to have been discrete, I know who they are - many of them. I’ve seen them, seen the look in their eyes when we are together. I’ve lived with that because I’ve had to. And now - now - because I have been with one man he knows, he is acting the wounded martyr.”
“I’m sorry, Aline. I didn’t mean for...what we had....to damage your marriage.”
“It’s not your fault, Bill. None of this is your fault. Philippe and I set the ground rules. We agreed, without many words, but we had an understanding. And he is the one who has broken that agreement! I will not feel guilty for doing what he has done times beyond number.”
There was a long silence. I looked up and saw BJ and Kelly exchanging glances. They could only hear my side of the conversation—much of it—but they were old enough to put the pieces together. I looked beyond them to Debbie. If looks could kill I would have been only a radioactive spot on the bed in which I lay.

“So....what….”

“Is going to happen? I don’t know, Bill. I do not wish to hurt you, but I still have feelings for him. We have made a life together and there is Andre. I cannot just walk away but, I do not know if he wants to be with me. Perhaps only time will tell.”
She was silent again. Then:
‘I have no right to ask. I am with another man. I have told you that I love him. I am in his bed. You owe me nothing at all, but....If....I know I hurt you when I left that morning. But I could not say goodbye and leave. I took the coward’s way out.
“I have done nothing but cause you pain on top of what your Debbie has done to you. Still, if. ”


“What I feel for you hasn’t changed, Aline. I can’t say what will happen if you decide to come back, but I know what I feel right now.”
“I love you, Bill Maitland. I am in another man’s bed and his life, but I love you. Take care. Don’t take foolish chances with your life, because it is precious to me.”
“I love you too. Take care. Au Revoir.”
I met the eyes of my children and I knew something important had changed in an instant. They looked at me very differently than they had when they’d walked into the room minutes before. Their mother and I were divorced and they were old enough to understand what that meant. They had seen Aline in the flesh and the way I looked at her, but there must have been something in the back of their minds, some memory of when our marriage had been good, that left a faint hope.
And now it was gone.
I looked into Debbie’s cold eyes and saw that they glistened. I remembered the look of contempt she had shown me as she stood with her tall young stud boyfriend in the UNF Arena. I remembered how small, old and alone I had felt in that moment. Only a stubborn core of anger had pushed me not to walk away with my tail between my legs.
I remembered her telling me to pay someone for sex because it was obvious I was not man enough to attract any woman on my own merits.
I remembered the first nights I had spent on the River listening to cars in the night, lying alone in a strange bed and knowing the woman I’d loved for half my lifetime was in another man’s arms. And there was nothing I could do about it.
There was a part of me that wanted to comfort her. Maybe I couldn’t kill it out. Maybe I would always love her, but there would be no comfort now. She had brought all of this on herself. I had pulled myself out of the pit with no help from her. Let her find her own way.
We stared at each other until she finally lowered her eyes and walked out of the room. BJ and Kelly looked at her as she left and then Kelly bent down to kiss me on the cheek and BJ squeezed my hand.
“We’d better go,” Kelly said, gesturing toward the doorway.
“Yeah, go on. All this has been a shock for your mom, too. She thought I was dead or dying last night.”
“That’s not what she’s upset about,” Kelly said.
“I know but, anyway, I’ll probably be out of here by tomorrow. I’ll call you guys and keep you up to date. Okay?”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 12: THE SECOND CASUALTY

SEPTEMBER 26, 2005 -- 12:30 P.M.
They had already checked me out. A young doctor and an old doctor had given me the results of all the tests that they’d tormented me with for 48 hours. Boiled down, they couldn’t find anything wrong with me. Other than a lingering headache and a slight ringing in my ears which they said was to be expected when someone fired a high powered pistol at your head from a few feet away, bouncing the bullet off your head.
The headache would probably go away in a day or two and the ringing might last a week or two but it would go away, said the older balding doc with a fringe of white hair running around the back of his head between his ears making him look like a wise old Greek philosopher.
The tall dark-haired young doc, who the nurses couldn’t keep their eyes off, had stepped in after the old doctor and warned me, “Apparently you’ve managed to avoid all of the bad effects of having your brains rattled twice in a lifetime. You could have died 20 years ago and there’s evidence on the CAT scan of some residual scarring from that old injury, but nothing serious. And you got past this one.”
“But,” he said, stepping close to me and lowering his voice as if we were the only two people in the room, “I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you that anytime you start shaking up the brain you’re messing with things you shouldn’t mess with. I was told that you’ve been doing some amateur boxing.”

“Yes.”

“I won’t tell you that you can’t keep doing it, but I’d strongly suggest that you ALWAYS wear headgear. And if you ever drive a motorcycle, never, ever get on one without a helmet. You’ve been a very lucky man, Mr. Maitland, and you might stay lucky, but I wouldn’t bet it all on staying that lucky. Understand me?”
I thanked him and asked him in passing how Officer Howser and James were doing. I knew they’d both been admitted, but I hadn’t heard anything about either one since Saturday.
I knew in the instant that I asked the question - I just didn’t know which one it was, but his face closed up. The old doc stepped forward. I guess he’d had more experience at it than his younger colleague.
“Sergeant Howser appeared to be responding well to treatment. His system suffered stress from the bullet wound and the collapsed lung was a strain on his heart. He had some problems that had never surfaced but they would have responded to medication. His physicians expected he’d been able to leave today.”

“But?”

“Apparently, his wound resulted in a blood clot forming in his lung and it made its way to his brain last night. There was no warning - no way to really anticipate it or take action until it was too late. He suffered a major stroke at 2
a.m. It was....quick....if that makes a difference. I hope it did, for his sake. It is possible that it happened in his sleep and he was never aware of what was happening.”
I felt myself sitting back on the hospital bed. The young doc stepped forward and grabbed my shoulder.
“Are you alright, Mr. Maitland? Sit back and take a few deep breaths. You can lay back on the bed for a moment if you’re dizzy.”
Phil Howser was gone. Why the hell had I agreed to meet with him, when I knew I was never going to change my mind about Shawn Smith. He’d still be alive today if I hadn’t agreed to help him with a little internal politicking to keep his members happy.
It wasn’t my fault, I knew. None of us had any idea what Shawn Smith was going to do. But, yet - he had saved my life, and it had cost him his.
“I’d like to see his room.”
“His body was removed early this morning.”
“I’d still like to see it. Is another patient in there?” “No,” said the old doc.
I stood at the entrance to the semi-private room where Phil Howser had breathed his last. The hospital bed he had died in was fresh and the sheets were tight and starched. I remembered the way he’d looked in the last moments before Shawn had burst in, relaxed and happy and holding court with his buddies.
“He liked you, you know.”
I didn’t want to turn and face her, but I made myself. She was a little shorter than me, a heavy set brunette with brilliant blue eyes and a normally ruddy complexion. Now she was pale and bloodless.
“I’m sorry, Ms. Howser. God, but I’m sorry.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Mr. Maitland,” she said, looking around the room with the same expression I’d probably had. As if we neither one could believe that he still wasn’t around here somewhere.
“He knew Shawn was wrong. He needed to pay for what he did. He just couldn’t say it because they were both cops. But...he told me a few times that guys like you were the only good thing about those ‘candy assed pencil pushing shysters in the SA’.”
“That sounds like Phil. Are you...are you okay? Is there anything I can do?” She looked back at me and licked her lips.
“No, I’m not okay. Both our kids are out of town. Bert is in the Army on a tour in Iraq and Molly is working at Jackson Memorial in Miami. She’s an

emergency room nurse. She’s flying home tonight. I think Bert will be coming in in a couple of days. So it’s just me.

“Used to be me and him. “Now it’s just me.

“It feels... wrong.”

“If there’s anything I can do.... ”

“There’s nothing anyone can do, nothing.”

When she turned away and began to shudder silently, I stepped away from her and left the room. I could hear her crying as I walked to a nurse’s station and rang up Cheryl. Two of our female ASAs would be at the hospital within a half hour and would stay with her until her children showed up. She wouldn’t have Phil, but she wouldn’t be alone.
I was going to go by and visit James anyway, but I found that I had a bad feeling about him because of what had happened to Phil. I found out where he was and went up to his floor, in the intensive care unit. I know a gut shot is dangerous, but I wasn’t sure why they’d have him there three days after the shooting.
As I approached the room a nurse moved to intercept me. “I’m sorry, visitors aren’t being allowed to see Mr. James.”
“My name is Maitland. I’m the Assistant State Attorney who was shot Friday. James saved my life. Could you let me in there for just a moment to say hello?”
An older nurse stepped toward us and had heard me.
“You can go in, Mr. Maitland. His wife is in there with him, but we can bend the rules for just a moment. But. ”

“What?”

“He’s not well. He’s running a high fever right now. He might not be too coherent.”

“Why?”

“I won’t bore you with the full name, but it looks like he’s infected with one of the two or three super-resistant strains of bacteria that you find in a lot of hospitals today.”
“Resistant? That means-“
“Only that it’s going to be hard to knock down. We’re hitting him with super doses of antibiotics. It will kill every bacteria in his body, hopefully, which will leave him vulnerable to anything around him for a few days or weeks until his natural resistance builds back up. If we can keep him alive, and if he’s tough enough, he’ll make it.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

I noticed the ‘ifs’. She wasn’t being super-optimistic. I had known that bullets to the stomach or abdomen are bad news because they are good sites for all kinds of opportunistic infections. But a super bug on top of that? I decided I’d have somebody light a candle for him beside the ones I’d had lit for Dunleavy and O’Collins at the downtown Catholic church.

And I’d say an extra prayer. Most of the time I think it’s just praying to a fantasy. But on the one in a million chance there was somebody or something up there actually listening, it couldn’t hurt, and he deserved it.
I walked in behind her. He was a horse. He seemed to dwarf the bed, but he was tangled in cord and tubes. His skin still had that sickly gray sheen. A pretty black woman about a third his size held a cup with a straw up to him holding the straw to his mouth.
“C’mon baby, you need to drink. Just sip a little.”
She didn’t notice I was in the room until I had approached James from behind her. Sweat covered his face and there was the smell of male sweat in the room. He must have soaked through his hospital gown. And he was a big man so he could sweat a whole bunch.
I didn’t register at first. I imagine so many doctors and nurses streamed through here that she was used to strangers walking in. But then she recognized me.
“You haven’t done enough?”
Something about her tone roused the big man and he forced his eyes open.
There was almost a smile on his lips. “Maitland. God damn.”
She was a very pretty woman. Deep, black eyes, lips that didn’t look natural with the hard line that had frozen them now. Hair straight and down her back. She was petite but everything was there in abundance. James had been a lucky man until he ran into me.
“Mrs. James, I’m very sorry for what happened. I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“I’m glad to hear that. I’d hate to think that you meant to put my husband into this hospital bed while you walk out of here.”

“Elexus.”

James managed to put a little strength into his voice.

“Baby, don’t be that way. Maitland didn’t shoot me. It was all Shawn. If the asshole hadn’t been screwing around with that white woman...”
He started to cough and then spit up green slime. Elexus James put the cup down and grabbed a cloth. A nurse behind me bustled toward him and helped him sit forward. He coughed and spit for a moment and then calmed down. The nurse helped him lay back on the bed.

After a moment he opened his eyes again and said, “Got to tell ‘ya, Maitland.

I feel like shit. Probably look like shit too, right?”

I smiled at him and said, “You’re still a fine figure of a man, James. I imagine the wife has to beat the nurses off you with a stick.”

He lay back and closed his eyes, “...only in my dreams.....only in my....................................................................................... ”

And then he apparently drifted off and I could hear him snoring in a moment. I stood there but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Elexus James just continued to stare at me with a look that would have skewered me to the wall if it

had had physical force.
Finally, I said, “James. I hope you feel better.”
I reached over and took one his huge hands in mine. His skin was clammy and warm. I squeezed it twice, then let it go.
“ Mrs. James, if there’s anything I or the State Attorney’s Office can do, call us.”
I turned to walk out. She caught me before I hit the door, touching me on the shoulder.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Maitland. I know....I know you didn’t do this. You didn’t put
him here. But, we’ve been together since I was 13 and he was 16. I used to sneak out to meet him after my parents fell asleep. We’ve been together 20 years. Never been another man in my life. Never wanted anyone else. And they’re not saying it, but - he could die. I never been so scared in my life. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know - if I even want to live if he goes. But we have a daughter. I can’t leave her. I’m so damned scared.”
“I know you’re scared. The only person I’ve ever lost was my father when I was a little boy and I didn’t know enough to be scared, but I know what you’re feeling.”
“The thing is - they thought I was dead and I survived. James is a big, strong guy. The nurse told me they’re hitting him with every antibiotic they have. It depends on his will to live and he’s got you and his daughter to live for. I think he’ll make it. That’s not much, but you have to have faith that he’ll walk out of here. He’s a good man. If there’s any justice, he will.”
I left her there holding his hand and wishing to God that my words would turn out to be true.

SEPTEMBER 26, 2005 -- 3:45 P.M.

I walked back into the floor where my office was located and noticed the hush that swept through in my wake. Secretaries stopped their telephone conversations and stared at me. A couple of Assistants stepped out of their offices to stare at me also.


As I approached Cheryl’s desk she stood up and I stopped. She came around the desk and hugged me - hard!
She was wetting my shirt, my black shirt. The Big Man had insisted on black a while back and I’d given in. I bought all my outfits in black, except for a couple of casual wear things, shorts and that kind of thing. Today I was dressed in black slacks, a black button down shirt and a black dress coat.
Finally I pushed her away.
“What is this, Cheryl. You’re acting like I almost died or something.”
Funny, but I felt tears welling in my eyes. I was turning into a damned woman myself.
She sniffed.
“Don’t make jokes, Bill. You could have died.”
“I could get hit by a car crossing the street from the parking lot on my way into this building. It was pretty dramatic, I’ll grant you that, but it’s over, Cheryl. Now I just have to survive the media onslaught.”
“God, tell me about it,” she said, pulling back and checking out the bandages that wrapped the back of my head in a swath. “We’ve had over 200 calls from media outlets all over the world. There hasn’t been much time to get any work done today. Of course, Mr. Edwards isn’t TOO unhappy.”
I grinned at her.
“As long as they spell his name right, right?”
I didn’t wait for her to answer, but headed for my office. I opened the door and stopped. There was a tidal wave of paper on my desk, telephone notes and post-its. I pulled up the first few - New York Times, Sky News, the U.K. Guardian, then I started wading through the rest of the pile.
Six months ago I’d been an unknown Assistant State Attorney in a big/little Florida City/Town. My fellow lawyers here and there might have known me, but as far as a public presence, I was happily unknown. I had never wanted to be famous. Oh, I had the stray daydreams of fame and fortune but I’d never really needed that.
I had a wife I loved, two kids who were turning into insufferable pains in the asses as they were supposed to in their teens, a job I believed in and sufficient income. Who needed more than that.
Now I was the Angel of Death and people around the globe were apparently vicariously living my life for me. I knew I’d have as much luck withdrawing back into my personal world as I’d had of convincing the Old Man to leave me alone.
Cheryl stuck her head in my door.
“We have another call. It’s CBS in New York. You want to take it?”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“No, hold all my calls, all of them. If you think it’s one I might want to take, stick your head in the door.”

I sat down at my familiar desk and put my head in my hands, then buzzed Cheryl and asked her to get somebody to go down and get me a Starbuck’s Cappuccino, mostly foam, and then tried to collect my thoughts.
Twenty minutes late my door opened without a knock and I looked up curiously. There was only one person who did that and I didn’t expect him.
Dallas Edwards walked in carrying my Cappuccino and handed it to me across the desk.
He sat down in the chair across from me and we looked at each other curiously for a minute or so. In the meantime I sipped the foam and licked it off my upper lip.
“Are you trying to steal my job?”
“That’s been the plan for the last 10 years. When did you figure it out?”
“It’s pretty obvious, based on the media interest and the calls I’ve been getting. I think some people want to put you in for Sainthood. Others just think I should abdicate, walk away and leave the office to that heroic Angel of Death who has no fear.”
“It is kind of overwhelming. I feel like I’m going down a mountain with no way to stop.”
“Get used to it. Calvin Coolidge and Teddy Roosevelt became public heroes and look what happened to them. You should start practicing your speeches.”
“Not going to bother. Look, Dallas, this is your bag. You’re the guy with the ideas of making a better world, serving the public and all that other crap. All I am is a lawyer who knows how to talk and deliver a final argument. I like what I do and I think I’m pretty good at it. I’d be out of my depth doing anything else.”
“Like they say, if you can learn to fake modesty, you can do anything.” I gulped more steamed milk.
“Do I have to move up my timetable for looking around for another job? Since there won’t be a trial, I could start sending out resumes anytime. At your pleasure.”
He shook his head and looked down at his fingers, which he’d steepled in front on him on my desk.
“No, whether you stay or not is up to you. Maybe you’d be uncomfortable working with me now. I won’t ask you to stay on if things have gone too sour for you to be able to keep working here.”
“Not up to me, Dallas. You told me when this was over you wanted me to move on. Odds are you’re still going to be hurt by this, so what’s changed?”
He stared into my eyes. I felt the old awe come over me for a minute. I’d been a fledgling prosecutor when he had hired me, mentored me and finally gave


me a chance to do something that very few men or women my age and with my experience got to do. He’d been the man I looked up to and tried to model myself after. Even now, I thought that in a lot of ways he was a better man and a better attorney than I’d ever be.
“You know, I hope you know, that it was more about my opinion of the case than pure politics. I really thought there was serious doubt about whether we should be pursuing him. I honestly thought you’d gotten your personal problems mixed up in this case and the thing - with Debbie - had made you harder than you used to be.”
“You know as well as I do the power we wield. We can crush people if we want to, and get away with it. I’d always thought you’d done as good a job as anybody I ever saw in using the power of the office the right way. After Debbie, I really thought you were just pissed at life in general and that was coloring the way you thought and your decisions. Now...”
He looked down at his hands, then back at me.
“I need to know, for my own peace of mind, that you know I wasn’t willing to sell my soul to reach the Governor’s Chair. It wasn’t all political calculation.”
“I know that, Dallas. I knew it was a close call and that an honest man might come down differently than I did. I knew the political end of it bothered you, but it was more than that. If it had been simply that I thought you were trying to cover your ass, protect your run next year for Governor, I would have walked, right then, and gone public, because I couldn’t have kept working for you. But I know you better than that. You forget, I’ve worked for you for 10 years. I know the kind of man you are. You’re more than just another politician.”
“So you want to stick around?” “Until you ask me to leave.”
I finished slurping the rest of the Cappuccino and licked the foam mustache off my upper lip.
He stood up.
“By the way, I’ve already had a preliminary poll run and it matches the calls I’ve had. There are a lot of African Americans in this community who are happy we didn’t let a cop get away with murder, regardless of his color, and what Smith did shooting at his own fellow officers has pretty much eliminated all of the support he had at the Cop Shop. The general public just thinks we prosecute bad guys no matter who they are or where they work, and that’s what they want.
“The only problem I see is that more people are starting to know your name than mine."
But he smiled when he said the last. “So doing good paid off?”
“Looks like it.”


“Who would’a thought?”
He was almost to the door when he stopped and looked back at me.
“A little birdie told me that you rode to the hospital without Debbie, who was there somehow when this was going down, and I think she was kind of wanting to ride with you.”
I nodded.
“And I believe your French girlfriend called you in the hospital. Is she flying back to your side?”
I just shook my head no.
“So you’re in between romantic entanglements?”
“On the administrative chart, where does being nosy about your subordinates’ romantic lives fit?”
“A good administrator is always concerned about his staff being happy and content. A happy and contented staff is a productive staff. Managerial science 101.”
“If it will allow you to rest easier at night, no, I don’t have anybody in my life right now. As far as important relationships go, I’m batting zero for two.”
He put his hand on the doorknob.
“I just thought you should know that a female member of my staff has been very interested in your personal life since your—blowup—with Debbie occurred. She waited patiently for you to get past Debbie only to see Aline des-Jardins swoop in and grab you. Now that you’re between women, I thought you might think about at least asking her out for a coffee or something.”
“Do I know this lady?”

“You see her every time you come up to my office.” A couple of things kept me quiet for a moment.

“Are we talking about-“ “Yes.”

“Dallas...I...we....she...” He just waited me out.

“Okay, Dallas, assuming you’re serious. One, why in the hell would she need to have you run interference for her. Every male in this building would give his left nut, or both, to have a chance at her. She probably is wined and dined every night. She sure as hell doesn’t need me. Secondly, why didn’t she pick up the phone or come by here. And lastly....what about...I mean....you. ”
“First. Yeah, any male with normal hormones and equipment would like to be with her. But she doesn’t go out with every male who wants her. Secondly, why the hell do you think? Most women don’t like chasing men. You think she does? Somebody that looks like her doesn’t want to chase a man. And lastly ”
He gave me a small smile.

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“And lastly, things aren’t always the way they seem. Think about it.”

He walked out the door leaving me with my mouth gaping open. Before I’d had the chance to do more than shut it, he stuck his head back in and said, “By the way, how about letting Brandon and Hennessy handle the day to day stuff for the rest of the week while you focus on doing as many media interviews as you can humanly fit into your schedule. At least for the rest of the week. You’re hotter than hot right now. Let’s strike while the iron is hot and get those television, radio and newspaper interviews done, AND, be sure to mention how the driving force behind the office, the guy who pushes you to chase these bad guys, is Dallas A. Edwards. Okay?”
I just grinned at him. Why in the hell he wanted the headache and aggravation of the public spotlight and the demands of public life I’d never understand. But if it made him happy...
“You got it boss.”

SEPTEMBER 27, 2005 - 3 P.M.

I walked up to the desk in front of Dallas Edwards’ office with feelings I’d never had before on that walk. She looked up from a document and smiled.

“Good morning, Mr. Maitland, or should I say, Mr. Angel........................................................................................ ”

“Don’t say that Myra.” The smile vanished.

“I’m sorry Bill. I heard about that security officerman. I shouldn’t have tried to joke about people dying. I just thought............................................. ”

“It’s okay, Myra. Everyone can’t walk around in sackcloth and ashes forever. It’s the past. I’m just glad I’m standing here right now. I might not be anywhere.” “I’m glad you’re here and...Mr. Edwards said you guys have. you’re going to

stay on.”
“For the foreseeable future.” She looked at his office door.
“I don’t have you down to see him. You want me to call or you could just go in.”
“I didn’t come to see him.”
It only took her a second, then her smile changed. “Then why are you here?”
“I generally take a coffee break at Starbucks about this time of day. Is there any chance you could take off for a few minutes and let me buy you a Cappuccino or something? You do like coffee, right?”
The professional secretary smile vanished and a smile that made me suddenly begin to stiffen flickered on her perfect lips.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“We worked together for six years and you’ve never offered to buy me coffee before, much less a Cappuccino.”

“For most of that time I was married. Might look bad, a married man taking the hottest woman in Jacksonville down for coffee, much less a Cappuccino.”

“The hottest woman in Jacksonville?” “Alright, Northeast Florida.”

She took a deep breath and I marveled. “Why now?”

I took a moment.

“I’m divorced and free. No entanglements. There’s nothing wrong with a single man asking a single lady to have a coffee with him.”
“No entanglements?”
“None at all and why, if I may ask, am I getting the fifth degree about a Cappuccino?”
She took another deep breath and watched me as I watched her.
“A woman has to be careful who she goes out with—even for something as simple as a cup of coffee. Something simple can change your life.”
I tore my eyes away from her bosom.
“Well, I understand that. It’s okay. If you’re busy we can do it another-“
“I’m free. Let me buzz Mr. Edwards and let him know I’ll be out for 15 to 30 minutes.”
We went down the elevator and out to Starbucks, running the gauntlet of amazed stares. Nobody but Dallas Edwards was ever seen with Myra Martinez in the courthouse, much less a man in black with a bandaged head. I tried to walk behind her a little because her movement was a symphony.
We had three people in front of us but the male barista on the left hand side of the counter somehow maneuvered to wait on Myra before anyone else and grudgingly took my order as well.
There were only five stand-alone tables for the Starbucks crowd and they were all occupied but, as we stood with our Cappuccinos, four young men at the nearest table decided they had business elsewhere, motioning to Myra that she could have their table. They got up but it took them a long time to leave the area.
“I wonder what it must be like to be you?”
She looked beyond me and I saw Debbie standing with Patrick Leary and a female PD across the entrance to the courthouse. Leary was staring at us, trying his best to conceal a smile and Debbie followed his gaze to our table.
“You lived with someone like me for 20 years. You ought to know what my life is like, except I haven’t had anybody like you in my life.”


A parade of emotions ran across Debbie’s face, Leary said something to her and she shook her head and started walking toward us.
Myra just smiled sweetly. “Hello Bill. Ms. Martinez.”
“Hello Ms. Bascomb. You’re looking very, professional, today. I admire a woman who knows how to - mute - her female assets for her job.”
“I’m sure you do. You might think about it yourself - just a suggestion. Bill, I’m glad to see you’re feeling better. Has Aline called you since Saturday. I thought it was very touching when you told her you still loved her in the hospital. Don’t you feel a little guilty about keeping the poor girl hanging like that?’
“Not that it’s any concern of yours anymore, but I haven’t talked to her, Debbie. And yes, I’m feeling better. Thank you for your concern.”
Leary walked up behind her and tapped her on the arm.
“Ms. Bascomb, we have that meeting upstairs. I don’t want to rush you, but...”
“You’re right, Patrick,” she said, turning and running her hand down his arm and giving him a smile that should have roused erections for miles around. “Thank you for reminding me.”
She looked back at Myra and I and said, “Well, have a good day, both of you.
I’m going to.”
She walked away ostentatiously twitching and Leary looked back at me and winked, then followed her.
“She is so damned jealous she could spit,” Myra said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have deliberately antagonized her like that.”
“If she’s going to work around here and stay under my ass, she’s going to get used to seeing me with other women. Speaking of which, what about the Big Man?’
“What about him?”
“I don’t understand what’s going on. I thought you and he...” “Have I asked you about Aline? Or that security officerwoman?”
“No, and there’s nothing going on with Aline, if you’re interested. She’s back with her husband and son. I don’t expect to ever see her again. But, I thought, everyone thinks.  ”
“That I’m his private brand?” “More or less.”
“What I do, and have done, in my personal life is just that - personal. But the fact that everyone thinks we are an item cuts down on the distractions. I don’t have to spend half my time fending off every horny attorney and cop in the downtown area. If there’s somebody I like, I see them away from here.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

“Well, I’m glad to know you haven’t been a nun.” “Not quite,” and she grinned.

She picked up her Cappuccino and sipped. I did too and because as usual mine was mostly foam, I had a milk mustache when I put it down. Before I could move she leaned forward and ran her finger along my upper lip, collected the foam, popped the foam and her finger in her mouth, and licked it off.
I just stared at her and wondered if I’d be able to get up and return to my office in less than a couple of hours without starting all kinds of rumors.
“You shouldn’t do things like that.”
“I didn’t want that delicious foam to go to waste.”

“Don’t be offended, but I’m not going to be able to stand up anytime soon.” “I’d be disappointed if you could.”

Then:

“I know we’re just flirting here but, Bill, I just wanted you to know up front, this is just playing. I’m not a wham bam kind of girl. I like to know guys before...anything happens.”
“You don’t know me after six years? Not that I have anything against going slow.”
“I know the office Bill, Mr. Maitland, the Ice Man. I’d like to know the other you.”
“That works for me. The next couple of weeks are going to be hectic, anyway. Dallas has me lined up for media interviews all week and I’m actually going out of town for a couple of days. And next week won’t be too much better. He says we have to strike while the iron is hot, that we may never have this much media exposure again. So...”
“So why today?”
“I just wanted to let you know I’d like to see you when time permits. My life has been a roller coaster the last seven months. I don’t know from one day to the next what’s going to happen, but I don’t want to lose the chance...to ...get to know you away from the office.”
“Take another deep drink,” she said, pointing to my Cappuccino.
I had no idea why, but I did. When she used her finger again to stroke the foam from my lip and work the finger in and out of her mouth with sucking sounds and a few sighs of enjoyment, I had to fight to avoid making a mess in my pants.
She took the finger she’d been sucking like a professional porn actress and rubbed it against my lip.
“We’re going to take it slow, but I just wanted to let you know it will be worth your while when we do get to know each other.”


‘I never had any doubt,” I said as I looked around and tried to think of the dullest book I’d ever read to make it possible for me to get up from the table and walk her back to her desk.

OCTOBER 1, 2005 -- 11:55 P.M.

“oooohhhhhhh...” she said, letting out a long shuddering breath. She lay against him, her breasts flattening against his chest, feeling his hard maleness beginning to soften.
“That was nice,” he said, laughing. “Only nice?”
“On a scale of 1 to 10 in niceness, that was a 200,” he said, catching her lips with his and she let their tongues tangle for a minute. Then, as he was sliding out of her, she let herself fall to his side and rested there comfortably. They hadn’t been together that long, but already he felt comfortable and - safe. That was the only way to describe it. She felt like she’d known him a lot longer than the brief period since that first day at UNF.
He wasn’t Doug. Hell, she wondered if Doug had even been human. She sometimes thought looking back that he must have been half Satyr. He could go and go and go. She had sometimes thought he would literally fuck her out of her mind. But Clint Abbott was...
She kissed the side of his jaw and he glanced over at her with a small smile. He’d never have been able to read her mind but, while he wasn’t Doug, he was a nice guy with a really, good, hard cock and he knew how to use it. He wasn’t superman, but he was a good, hard man. Like the song said, they were hard to find, and harder to hold onto.
“Have I told you lately how glad I am I bumped into you that day?” she asked, licking his face and ending up tangling tongues again.
“Likewise, Debbie Bascomb.”
He ran a hand down to her breast, hefted it in his and let the flesh run through his fingers, squeezing the nipple as it filled and milking a groan out of her.
“You ready for another round? Keep that up and I will be.”
He reached down and pulled his limp, wet cock up, then let it fall against his stomach.
“Hell no, you’ll have to call in reinforcements.”
She gave him a glance without thinking and he just shook his head and kissed her.
“I was teasing, Deb, teasing. Someday you’re going to have to stop being so sensitive about it, The day will come when you and Doug and Bill will be old news, old gossip, and no one will care anymore. The Scarlet ‘A’ will fade.”


She buried her face against his chest. Her emotions were all over the place. Bill’s near death experience had stirred up memories and feelings that had been strangers to her for years. It hadn’t made her fall back in love with him. There was still too much anger there. And seeing him flirting with that miserable cow at the Starbucks had left her pissed for the rest of the day.
But it had reminded her of why she’d loved him in the first place.
More than anything else, she felt sorrow. Sorrow that they’d both changed so much, lost what they had had long ago.
She wondered if she’d ever have that again. Clint was...Clint was a friend, a good guy, a man she admired and liked, but there was no fiery, burning love. Not what she’d had with Bill in college and after. She had never for a second felt for Clint what she’d felt in Bill’s bed in that shabby apartment the first night they’d made love.
Lying there naked, her skin against his, caressing the cast of his mangled right hand, she’d felt like someone who’d been blind from birth and suddenly could see. After months of being friends, of spending hours and hours with him, he had suddenly become a stranger.
She had looked over at his familiar face, the half-smile on his lips, and felt an emotion she could only guess at. It felt like what she’d known as love, but it was different. And it was only when he opened his eyes and smiled at her, and she felt a fear she’d never experienced before, that she realized for the first time what real love felt like.
She had never really cared about guys before. They came and they went. New ones would always come along and the bittersweet pain of crushes was enjoyable, coming and going. But this was.  she realized this boy could hurt her.
Hurt her more than she’d ever been hurt before.
Her first impulse was to roll out of the bed and get away from him, get the hell out of there and find two or three or more guys to screw. To screw and suck and screw again until she forgot all about this night.
But when he reached for her, she went to him.
Clint brought her back to the present by rolling away from her and sitting up on the side of the bed.
“I need a beer. You’ve dehydrated me, woman. You want some wine, or a beer?”
“Wine will do.”
When he came back he handed her a glass of white wine and sat down naked and cross-legged on the bed.
“You going to spend the night?”
“I should probably go home. I have some things I need to do to get ready for Monday. Kelly is at my mom’s and BJ is with friends, as usual, but I should go

home.”

He sighed theatrically.
“I know. I’m just a piece of meat to you. You use me and then want to spend the night in your own bed. It’s so degrading.”

[Ramesh_Rocky]

She reached over and grabbed his limp cock, squeezing it and finding a sudden tension but then it went soft again. Hell, he’d cum twice in the last several hours and he was in his late 40s. She was amazed she’d left him with any life in it.

“And that’s a prime piece of meat, my friend, no doubt about it. But I don’t want to break it. Besides, there will be plenty of other times when I’ll be happy to abuse and degrade you. Trust me.”

He gave her an odd look. “Actually...”

She thought about it for a second.

“Don’t tell me. Are you breaking up with me? You’ve bedded the campus sex symbol and now you’re moving on?”

He took a sip of his beer and looked her square in the eyes. “I’m not breaking up with you, but I am moving on.” “What are you talking about?”

He put the beer down on the side table and slid down to lie beside her.

“I was planning on telling you, but you were so hot tonight, as you always are, that I just - put it off. I’m taking an early leave from my contract with the university. It was going to expire in April anyway, but my contract was written so either side could break it without penalty. I’ll inform the university on Monday and they should be able to get a lecturer in to replace me for the rest of the six months or so left on the contract. There are always writers who want a place to hang their hat and a regular paycheck for awhile.”

“But why?” “Something’s come up.”

“Just like that - something’s come up?”

“You know I alternate between fiction and freelancing articles. Well, about two weeks ago the company that has given me a fair number of longer freelance articles contacted me about another assignment.”
“You couldn’t wait until your contract expires? You told me once there are always new assignments coming along. You’ve got a good reputation and you’re not hurting for cash. Why this one? And why give up a cushy writer in residence assignment?”
“I couldn’t wait out my contract. Not for this one.”
In answer to her unspoken question, he said, “There’s not a lot of time to waste on this one and it could mean really big bucks. There’s this little piece of


hell tucked away in central Africa. It’s claimed by two or three countries. There are some mineral rights, some diamonds, maybe some oil. There are three or four government armies and about a half dozen private armies tangling with each other on any given day.”
“The worst of the worst, they say, is a local warlord. Some say he’s a former French mercenary, others that he’s a Brit. Whatever, he’s a son of a bitch. They say he eats babies, but that’s probably just propaganda he puts out. For sure, his favorite execution method is tying a man’s hands and putting him over a sharp pointed spike anchored in the ground. The point of the spike is....aimed right at the...asshole. It’s high enough that you can’t touch the ground with your feet. You can try to hold yourself up with your hands, or use your thigh muscles to keep a grip on the stake. But eventually gravity does its dirty work.”
“Oh, God.”
“Exactly. He’s covered whole fields with dozens, some say hundreds, of men
—and women—planted on those spikes. A real class act.” “But what does that have to do with you?”
“Here’s where the story gets interesting. As you might expect, the poor bastards who live in this little corner of hell have been human fodder for every gang of marauders passing through. They eat the locals’ food, bang their women, and enlist their men and boys in their armies. Like something out of the 12th century. Naturally, the local residents are sheep. Their resistance was broken a long time ago.”
“Until a couple of years ago. Stories started coming out about this Saint who had shown up out of nowhere. The people are primarily Roman Catholic going back to the 17th and 18th centuries when Catholic missionaries were active in the area. The stories said this Saint, a woman, could heal the sick, raise the dead, calm storms. All the typical Saint-type stunts. But - and this is where it gets good
- they said that wherever she passed, flowers bloomed. Whole gardens of beautiful flowers. Now that’s something you don’t hear about too often.”
Debbie just stared at him.
“You believe this? Flowers grow where this woman walks? Sounds like something out of a fairy tale.”
Clint rubbed his hands and took a chug of his beer.
“Of course. Can’t be true, but the people there believe the stories. They believe it enough that they’ve started resisting the top warlord and the other asshole mercenaries working the area. They’re refusing to cooperate, killing mercenaries who get caught away from their buddies. They’re letting themselves be tortured and killed rather than give any information about the resistance.


“It’s driving the tough guys crazy. Nobody’s ever stood up to them, and then this WOMAN of all things shows up and suddenly the natives develop backbones. So every army there has a bounty on the head of the woman they’re all calling ‘The Saint of the Flowers’.”
“What does all this have to—“
He just looked at her and she knew. “No.”
She sat up and without realizing what she was doing slapped the beer bottle and it sailed across the room spraying beer in its wake. She swung at his face with an open palm and he barely caught it.

“Debbie...”

“Damn you, Clint Abbott. You stupid bastard. Is every man in the world a moron with a death wish?”

He enveloped her with his arms and held her while she tried to hit at him. “Debbie, don’t go crazy on me. It’s not what you think.”

“Let go of me, let go of me before I scream bang and get your sorry ass thrown into jail. I should do that anyway. Keep you from killing yourself.”

But he wouldn’t let her go and finally she stopped struggling. “You’re going to do it, aren’t you?”

“The company has contacts and they think they can get me into the country with an experienced war correspondent/journalist. The guy is good, from what they say, and has been in and out of a dozen war zones without getting a scratch. If we can interview ‘The Saint of the Flowers’ and her followers, get pictures, we can write our own tickets. It’s a joint enterprise. He’ll have his clients for short articles and I’ll be contracted to get a book out of it. It could make me a pile of money. Enough so I wouldn’t have to work again if I didn’t want to.”
She pulled away from him and the vision of Bill covered with blood filled her mind.
“Or you could end up a rotting corpse in an African field with a spike up your ass and crows eating your eyes out and hyenas fighting over what’s left. Are you insane?”
He reached out and touched her face gently.
“I know part of this is because of what happened with Bill, but I’ll be with experienced people and people get murdered on the streets of Jacksonville. I don’t intend to die in an African field. I intend to walk away with a book that will get me on The Morning Show and Today, and probably Oprah.”
They held each other in the center of the bed and she could hear cars faintly as they roared past on the highway. It was hard to believe there was a world that could hold butchery and Saints outside this room, but it was real.

After awhile he said, “I shouldn’t be more than a few weeks or a month or two but, whatever happens, I’m not coming back here.”

“Why?”

“You remember when we talked about you and Bill and not having closure. You reminded me that I seem to be hung up on a woman who cheated on me and died nearly 20 years ago. I got to thinking about it and you were right. It’s been almost two decades and I’ve never had a serious relationship with another woman. There’s something wrong there.”
The moment stretched out.
“When I come back, and I will come back, I’m going back to Palatka. I never said goodbye properly. I was too hurt. I’m going to put a really nice tombstone up in her memory and try to say goodbye. And then look around for someone I can love - the way you loved Bill.”
He just smiled at her.
“Don’t say it. We’re friends. We’re good friends, but that’s all you feel for me and all I feel for you. I want more. I want what I had. I’m going back to Palatka and I’m going to put up a tombstone that reads, ‘Here Lies A Most Beautiful Lady,’ from the Masefield poem, and I’m going to move on with my life.”
They were lying together and after awhile she told him, “Turn the lights out. I changed my mind. Do you mind if I stay the night?”
As they lay together in the darkness and she eventually felt him relax in sleep, she wondered how it had happened.
She’d always had men in her life, attracted them without effort. And now the man she’d loved for half her life was in another bed, the man she’d left her husband for was halfway across the country, and a man who was probably the best friend, male or female, that she’d ever had was going to go off a half world away and get himself killed.
In the darkness she wept quietly for everything that had been lost and would be lost.
 

[Ramesh_Rocky]

CHAPTER 13: THREE FUNERALS AND A GOODBYE


My name is William Maitland. I am 42 years old. I almost died a few days ago. I almost lost my job a few weeks ago. I lost the second woman I’ve loved in 20 years a month ago. I lost the first woman I ever loved and my family and my marriage six months ago.
I have gained a new nickname, international fame, and I’m having sex with women I never could have imagined approaching six months ago and I think I will be having sex with the sexiest woman with the biggest breasts in the Western Hemisphere within a not too distant length of time. That thought frightens and yet exhilarates me at the same time.
I have learned the basics of boxing and beaten the crap out of the man who stole my wife, albeit having the crap beaten out of me at the same time. I have repaired the rupture in my family due to the example of a man who died trying to make the world a better place, and a man who is a savage killer rescued my family and myself from a terrible and legitimate threat.
I have hurt a friend who has been cheating on his wife for years, that I know of, and possibly destroyed his marriage, while a man who has killed hundreds and ordered the murder of thousands has promised to watch my back against a drug cartel that might be coming after me and my family.
It’s been a strange six months.

OCTOBER 2, 2005 --SUNDAY 10:35 P.M.

I looked out over the sparkling galaxy of lights that was the New York skyline and almost had to pinch myself to make myself believe I was really here. I was 60 stories above the city, in a prime suite, all expenses paid by CBS. I held a glass of really good champagne, not sure what the exact year was but I was never really a Champagne connoisseur. I sniffed the goblet in my hand and let a few of the bubbles rise to tickle my nose.
The beautiful blonde standing behind me tapped me on the shoulder and I looked at our reflections, standing together in front of the glassed window.
“It is something, isn’t it?” I nodded.
“I love Jacksonville and I’m a Florida boy, born and bred, but I have to admit, you could get addicted to this view.”
“I know what you mean, Bill. It’s why so many men and women scramble and bleed and bust their asses to get to this city. You can’t compare it—I don’t think—to anyplace else on earth.”
I turned to look up slightly into the deep blue eyes of Celestial Madonna, now Jane to me as I was Bill to her, and said, “Actually, I might have had this,


but I turned it down.”
She gave me a curious look.
“A few months back, before I became the ‘Angel of Death’, an attorney offered me a shot at a defense position in a firm with offices around the country including New York.”
“You turned him down?”
I looked back out at the New York night sky and said, “He asked me the same day that my wife told me she was divorcing me. I was kind of off balance and wasn’t ready to make any big moves in my life.”
She put one slim hand on my right arm.
“That must have been terrible. I’ve been divorced, twice, but the first time we just grew apart. At the end we were just two friends sharing a place and there was no real pain there. The second time was harder. I’ve heard that she really broke you.”
“That would about describe it. She tore my heart out, tore my balls off, wrecked my confidence in my manhood. She did a number on me.”
She ran her hand up and down my arm. I had dressed for the 60 Minutes interview in my trademark black, only this time a black tux with a black shirt and dress pants. Following the interview, Jane had taken me as her guest to a restaurant I’d never heard of before which looked like a hole-in-the-wall dive and served the best French food I’d ever tasted, here or in Paris.
I had agreed to do a series of interviews for a number of CBS and other network operations, but Jane had basically taken over showing me around the city and getting me from one interview to another. Her bosses let her because they figured the bond would get them the best long term results for their dollar.
It was easy to forget that she was Celestial Madonna with the ever-so serious delivery of fluff pieces about the very important life events of very unimportant celebrities. She was funny, charming and didn’t seem to be aware of just how unbelievably hot she was, with tight, taut firm C cup tits, a tiny waist, and an ass to die for when she wasn’t dressed in her television uniform. This was the real woman, Jane from Pahokee.
“You recovered well, Bill. I’m thinking your ex is kicking herself in the ass right now.”
“No, she found a young stud to play with and then an older guy who turned out to be an alright type. I couldn’t hate him even when I wanted to. I think she might have some regrets, only because we were together for twenty years. But. ”
“Trust me, she’s kicking herself in the ass.” I turned to her and couldn’t help grinning.

“It’s okay Jane. You don’t have to keep selling. You’ve already got most of the taping you needed and before I leave the city you’ll have some good stuff.”

She stepped in toward me until our faces were almost touching. “I’m not selling the show, Bill Maitland.”

“Then what are you selling?” “I’m buying.”

She leaned in and we were kissing, first with closed lips and then open mouths and her free hand dropped to my rising erection and began rubbing and squeezing it.
I pulled away from her and said, “Are you sure this is a good idea?” “I think it’s a great idea.”
Then she was dropping to her knees, her long legs in sheer stockings visible crouched underneath her, unzipping me and she took almost all of me in one fluid motion. I looked down at her and still couldn’t believe the woman I’d watched on television for a few years was on her knees sucking me off.
She pulled away and held my wet dick in one delicate hand and said, “I’ve wanted to do that since that day in the courthouse. I don’t know what it was but, God I was hot, probably because I could almost smell that detective’s pussy that was with you. She was dripping. You guys were so damned obvious. Everybody around you knew what the two of you were going to do. I heard you and she did the dirty deed in one of your empty offices. Is that true?”
“A gentleman never tells.”
She squeezed, sucked and jerked and I finally broke down and said, “Yeah.
Yes. We did it in one of the empty offices.” “Was she good?”
“I don’t know. If you’re starved and you’re eating the best steak in the world so fast you don’t even chew it, you don’t know if it’s good or not. You just know you have to have it.”
She sucked hard and then let it go and looked up at me, smiling. “Are you starved now?”
I pushed her down and knelt beside her, running my hand under her panties. She was dripping and my fingers came out wet. I started coming out of the tux and trying to get my pants down at the same time.
“The dresser,” she said, pointing to a dresser near the entrance to the suite. I went over and opened it, finding a packet of condoms.
‘You little slut. You were ready for this, weren’t you?”
“Since you got to town. I’ve never slept with an Angel before.”
“I hope I’m not a disappointment. That’s a big rep to live up to. And as you can tell, I’m not the biggest guy in the world.”
She reached down and squeezed.