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other. I got transferred to the Hollywood Division, but I heard about it when he killed himself. That’s not what they called it, they said he was cleaning his gun and had an accident, but it’s funny how so many cops’d have a few drinks and decide they better give their gun a good cleaning.
    That must have been around 1955. And it wasn’t more than one or two years later that the husband died in prison. It seems to me somebody stuck a knife in him, but I may not be remembering that right. Maybe it was natural causes.
    Then again, in a state joint, getting a knife stuck in you is pretty much a natural cause.

Charles, is there anything more you want to say?

    All these years I kept this strictly to myself. There were stretches when it was on my mind a lot, and other times I’d go months or years without thinking about it at all.
    But I never said a word to anybody.
    And maybe I should leave it that way.
    Same token, all of these people are gone. I must be the only man alive even remembers any of them. Why do I have to keep their secret?
    Thing is, I don’t even know what I know. Not for certain.

Uh, Charles—

    No, this is what, oral history? What you call it?
    Only way to say it is to say it.
    When I’m in the living room, what I hear is a snapping sound. Like a twig breaking. It’s faint, it’s coming from the back of the house, and if I’m outside where I’m supposed to be I most likely don’t hear it at all.
    And after the twig snaps, there’s like a little sigh. Like the air going out of something.
    “I think she’s gone.” That’s what he said, and as soon as I heard the words I knew she was gone, and I realized I knew it from the moment I heard the twig snap.
    The twig?
    Easy to call it that, but I don’t remember seeing any twigs in that bedroom.
    I didn’t say anything, and Lew didn’t say anything, and then one night he did. Slow night, quiet night, and we’re in the car. I remember he was driving that night.
    Out of the blue he says, “There’s people in this world who never have a chance.”
    I knew he was talking about her.
    I just sat there, and a minute or two later he says, “Say she pulls through. So he kills her next time, or the time after that. Or the twentieth time after that. You call that a life, Charlie?”
    “No.”
    We caught a red light. More often than not what we’d do is slow down enough to see there was no cross traffic and then coast on through it, but this time he braked to a stop and waited for the light to change.
    And while he was waiting he took his hands off the wheel and sat there looking at ‘em.
    The light went to green and we moved on. Two, three blocks along he said, “This way she’s in a better place. And he’s where he belongs. You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you, Charlie?”
    “No,” I said. “No idea.”
    It wasn’t that much longer before they moved me to the Hollywood Division, which was an interesting place to be in those days. Not that you didn’t get domestics there, too, and every other damn thing, but the people were a little different. The same in many ways, but a little different.
    Where was I?

Uh, the Hollywood Division.

    No, before that. Never mind, I remember. It was maybe another month I was with Lew, before the move to Hollywood. And he never brought up the subject again, and I for sure never said anything, but there was one thing he kept doing, and it made me glad when they transferred me. I’d have been glad anyway, because the move amounted to a promotion, but it gave me a particular reason to be glad to get out of that particular radio car.
    What he would do, he’d go silent and look at his hands. And I couldn’t see him do that without picturing those hands taking hold of that woman’s head and breaking her neck.
    I guess he saw the same thing.
    And is that why he sat up late one night, all by himself, and gave his gun a good cleaning? Maybe yes, maybe no. The things he supposedly did during the Zoot