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Then I wasn’t on my way home.
It just happened.
The way a lot of things just happened, starting last night, when I’d opened the door and there Billy McGee had been, drunk out of his mind.
If Detective Ben Cantor was surprised to see me when he openedhisfront door, he hid it pretty well.
“I was just wondering if you’re a fan of the local football team.”
He smiled.
I thought:Still a good smile.
Dammit.
“As a matter of fact, I do check in on them from time to time around my busy work schedule. Especially this late in the season.”
“Well,” I said to him, holding up the bottle of red wine I’d brought with me from Danny’s suite, “it turns out they won a pretty big game tonight.”
“Speaking both as a member of the law enforcement community and as a die-hard Wolves fan,” Cantor said, “it seems to me that it would be practically criminal for you to even attempt to celebrate something like that alone.”
Then he smiled again and said, “Would you like to come in and celebrate with me?”
“I would.”
When we were inside Cantor opened the wine and poured. We were sitting on his couch by then. I could hear jazz coming from two speakers in the corners. It occurred to me that this was the first time I had actually made it through the front door. Previously, that was as far as we’d gone.
In all ways.
Cantor raised a glass.
“To the Wolves.”
“To the Wolves,” I said, before adding a toast I used to hear sometimes from my father.
“Here’s to them, and screw everybody else.”
I told Cantor then about Billy McGee and the condition he’d been in when he showed up at my front door the night before and how it was a minor miracle that he’d gotten on the field at all.
“You want to keep talking about football?”
“Not so much, now that I think about it.”
“Same.”
“I’m glad I came.”
“Not nearly as glad as I am,” Ben Cantor said.
I curled my legs underneath me and turned so I was facing him on the couch.
“I’m sorry for the way I acted at dinner that night.”
“So am I.”
“But I was the one acting defensive. And treating you like one of the people coming after me.”
“I have been after you,” he said, smiling again. “Just not as an intrepid crime fighter.”
