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coming out of his pores.
    “I’m sorry,” he was saying. “I didn’t mean it, it was an accident, I don’t know what happened, I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry.”
    Same thing, over and over and over.
    Lew led him inside, and I was surprised as to how gentle his hands were this time, as if all the anger had faded away, with sadness taking its place. He put the man in an armchair, found a bottle with a little booze still in it, and gave it to him. The man took a drink, then clutched the bottle to his chest, as if to shelter it from the world.
    Or to keep us from taking it away from him.
    We didn’t see Millie right away, but we checked out the rest of the house, and she was in the bedroom. She was sprawled on the floor next to the bed, blood all over, and her head at an odd angle. Lew knelt down next to her, tried for a pulse, put his lips to her mouth, shook his head.
    “Oh, you poor baby,” he said. “You were dying by inches and now you’re gone for real. Ah, Millie, you couldn’t listen, could you? You just couldn’t, poor baby. By God, you deserved better than what you got.”
    He stood up and looked surprised to see me there. Like for a minute there it was just the two of them, and him talking to her, and no one else in their world.
    To me he said, “Well, we got the fucker now, Charlie. We get to slam the barn door on him now that the horse is miles away and gone forever. If they don’t give him the gas, he’ll spend the rest of his life in a cell. The one good thing that comes out of all this is the world’s through with him.”
    We were talking about that, and speculating about his chances of winding up in the gas chamber, and what difference it made one way or the other, and then there was a sound from where she was lying, and we stopped talking and turned to look at her.
    And she opened her eyes. She said, “Lew?”
    Her eyes closed.
    And opened again. “Where’s Joe? Is Joe okay?”
    Her voice was very faint, her eyes unfocused. Lew drew a breath, let it out. “Jesus,” he said. It was somewhere between a curse and a prayer. Then he said, “Charlie, go get on the phone. Call in, get an ambulance out here on the double. Go!”
    So I went back to the other room, where Joe was passed out in the chair where Lew had put him. I didn’t have a number for a hospital, so I called the operator and gave her the address and told her to arrange for an ambulance.
    In the bedroom, Millie looked as though she’d been crying. Tears down her cheeks, along with the blood and all. I told Lew I’d made the call, and he lowered his voice and said he didn’t know if she would make it. “She goes in and out,” he said. “You’d better wait outside so they’ll get the right house. Flag ‘em down before they fly right on by.”
    I was on my way, but I stopped in the front room to look at the husband. He’d slipped off the chair and was sitting on the floor with his head on the chair cushion. I thought to myself that this piece of garbage was one lucky son of a bitch. He was sitting on a one-way ticket to Q, and then she opened her eyes and set him free.
    Free to do it all over again.
    The front door was open, and I’d hear the siren in plenty of time, so I stayed where I was. And I sort of heard something from the bedroom, or half heard it, and while I was trying to figure out just what it was, I heard the siren of an ambulance maybe three, four blocks away.
    So I went outside and stood on the front step, and I motioned to the ambulance and pointed out where they could park, and then Lew was beside me, hanging his head.
    “I think she’s gone,” he said.
    Joe went to prison. There was no trial, his court-appointed lawyer had him plead it out, and that way he beat the gas chamber. The sentence was twenty to life, and Lew said that wasn’t long enough, and swore he’d turn up at the guy’s parole hearing and make sure he didn’t get out early.
    Never happened. Lew and I pretty much lost track of each