Free Revolver by Duane Swierczynski Page A

checks the caller ID, tells him it was 215-744-5655. Right. Same number that’s been beeping him all day. Calling his home now, too, huh? Cops’ homes are supposed to be sacred, but people have all kinds of ways of glomming numbers and addresses. Jim should call the guy back, but he’s pissed at the intrusion. Let him wait. There’s real work to be done.
    Jim begins assembling the murder book while Aisha puts together an interview list. Close to eleven, Aisha decides she’s had it—she needs to go home, freshen up, tackle this one with clear eyes first thing in the morning. This is the cue for Jim to go home, too. But he’s too wired. “Gonna stay and work at this a little while longer,” he says.
    “Whatever, man, you’re the mayor’s best friend.”
    “Very funny.”
    But after a while it all becomes a blur. He needs rest but heads over to the Palm for a nightcap—Stoli martini, dry. The bartender slides it across the wood and says, “You ever leave last night?” Jim nods and smiles, takes the drink, downs half of it in a single go. Pulls the green olives from the toothpick with his teeth, one by one. Chews them, thinking about Kelly Anne. Imagining her down in the concrete stairwell, neck twisted up like that. Jim orders another martini. The bartender nods, sets about pouring the ingredients into the silver shaker. Just two. A respectable nightcap. Any more and we start getting into should I really be driving territory. But twenty minutes later, Jim orders one more anyway. Thinking about all those clothes on Kelly Anne Farrace’s couch.
      
    Jim arrives home at Unruh Avenue well after midnight to find a black man sitting on his stoop.
    A second later he’s going to hate himself for reaching for his gun. The guy must see the tension in the moment because he immediately throws up his hands and says,
    “Hey, man—it’s me!”
    Jim pauses.
    Jesus Christ, it’s George Wildey, Jr.
    Jim hasn’t seen him since this past May, outside that bar at Seventeenth and Fairmount, looking all shivery and cracked out.
    “George,” Jim finally says. “Sorry. You kind of startled me there. How’s it going? You been out here long?”
    Jim looks up to see if the front bedroom light is still on, but no. Claire’s gone to sleep. Good thing Junior here had the good sense not to knock.
    “You got a minute?” George Junior asks. “I didn’t mean to scare you, but I’ve been trying you on that beeper all day.”
    Ah, so this is 215-744-5655. Jim remembers slipping George Junior here his professional courtesy card back in May. So maybe the guy is in real trouble. Again. Why else would he be sitting out here on a front stoop on a cold November night?
    “You want to come inside?” Jim asks.
    George Junior blinks. “Naw, I know it’s late. I just wanted to make sure you saw this.” He reaches under his jacket and for a strange moment Jim thinks, He’s got a piece under there.
    Turns out, it’s just a newspaper. Today’s Daily News, folded in half.
    “What’s this?”
    Jim figures George Junior’s in some kind of jam and he’s reaching out for help. Back when their dads worked together they would be forced to play with each other, but it was clear neither boy liked the other. Jim remembered the Wildeys coming over sometime around the holidays, and he was pretty sure George Junior broke some of his new toys out of spite. And Jim absolutely hated being in the Wildeys’ neighborhood. Lots of eyes, staring you down.
    “They’re letting him out,” George Junior says.
    “Who?” Jim asks, taking the paper.
    “Page five,” George Junior says.
    Jim squints in the dim light and scans the page until his eyes find the name buried in the six-inch piece. There it is. The name. That horrible name. It hurts him even to look at it. He hasn’t seen that name in print for a long, long time.
    Terrill Lee Stanton, fifty-two years old, sprung early from his supposed life sentence through some kind of new amnesty program