Free Black Orchid Blues by Persia Walker

together.
    Amend that.
    As the paper’s society reporter, I was out and about, running from one function to the next. As its city room editor, he was a fairly permanent fixture in the fishbowl of his office. So we couldn’t actually spend that much time together. Our roles precluded it. But like most in the newsroom, I thought of him as the paper’s anchor. His was the first face I sought whenever I walked in the door, and I often sensed him seeking me out too.
    Why was I hesitating?
    Sam was waiting. But how long would he wait?
    Selena Troy, our very pretty obit writer, wasn’t waiting. She wasn’t just the youngest member of our reporting staff, she was also by far the most ambitious. She’d made more than one play for Sam and no doubt would make plenty more. She would persevere until one day she got him, until she brought him down, like a lioness taking down her prey. Then she would make sure that everyone knew about her conquest. Subtlety and discretion were not among her concerns. Selena was one of those women who enjoy the hunt as much as many men do. Sam knew that. Maybe that’s why he’d apparently found it so easy to resist her charms—so far.
    I glanced up to see if his lights were on. They weren’t, but instinct told me that he would be awake. Instinct and the dark circles he often had under his eyes said Sam went late to bed and maybe sometimes not at all. Without giving myself time to think about why I was there or what I wanted, I got out of the car, ran up to his front door, and rang the bell.
    And waited.
    There was no answer.
    I raised my hand to ring again, then lowered it. Disappointed in a way I wasn’t ready to admit, I ran to the car, hopped back in, and drove on.

C HAPTER 12
    E ver since his divorce, Blackie had pretty much lived at the station house. He couldn’t stand the thought of being alone. Once, when he’d been especially exhausted and sad, he’d been blunt: “The house is so empty without her. I don’t know how you do it, Lanie, living in that big house all on your own. I only have two rooms and it’s too much for me. Way too much.”
    So I thought it was likely he’d be at the station now, working the case, glad to have something to take his mind off his troubles.
    He was in all right, sitting at his desk with a thick file open before him and stacks of papers on either side. His shirt was rumpled, his tie askew. The harsh light of the station house threw shadows that revealed worry lines I hadn’t seen before and new streaks of gray in his black hair.
    He was hanging up the phone as I walked in.
    “So, you are here,” I said.
    “I belong here. What are you doing at this time of night?” His Irish brogue was heavy, thick with fatigue.
    I shrugged, gave a half smile, and plunked down in the chair next to his desk. “You know how it is. Reporters … we don’t keep regular hours either. We follow the story, like you guys follow the case.”
    “Actually, I think it’s the other way around. We don’t follow the case; it follows us.”
    “And when it catches you?”
    “We’re goners.”
    I chuckled at that and so did he.
    “A bit of melodrama always helps, me ould da used to say,” he added with a crooked smile.
    “As if this case doesn’t have enough.”
    His smile faded. He looked at the file before him, already two inches thick with notes and reports and photographs. “That Harvard boy’s family, they’re breathing down the mayor’s neck. The mayor’s breathing down the commissioner’s neck …”
    “And the commissioner’s breathing down the captain’s—”
    “And the captain down mine. I feel like I’ve got a herd of bloody elephants on my back.”
    Despite his complaining, I knew that the Cinnamon Club massacre was the kind of case that Blackie lived for. It had clear, straight lines, just bad guys and good guys and no in-between. But the expectations that went with cases like this were crushing, from the public to City Hall, the brass, and on