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gotten."
    I went upstairs to use the bathroom. When I came back down, Bethany was standing at the living room window staring across the street at the shop. "Ellie …"
    "Yeah?"
    "He's still down there."
    "Huh?"
    "It's been ten minutes and he's still in front of the shop."
    I walked over to the window. Sure enough, Romandetto's car was idling in the parking lot in front of the shop.
    I walked down there. A couple of cars passed by. Bethany stood at the front door watching me.
    He was sitting in his car, cigarette in his mouth, smoke wafting out the open window. The only thing wrong was the son of a bitch had dropped dead.
    * * *
    The whole business took hours. Nate came home to a circus of a fire truck, an ambulance and three cop cars. The 911 folks apparently sent every first responder who wasn't otherwise engaged, all to pick up one dead guy in a car.
    The EMT team was made up of a woman and a man who looked so much alike I think they might have been siblings. They both were stocky and had gapped teeth and curly hair, and when the woman leaned over Romandetto and muttered, "That's a heart attack if I ever saw one," her brother nodded curtly.
    The cops talked to me and Bethany and a couple of the neighbors. We all told the same story, of course, and the cops seemed content.
    It was all about to wind down when an unmarked car with a siren on the dash pulled into the driveway. The cop driving was someone I knew, a detective named Lafaye Jones. When she got out of the car, she strode over and gave me a forceful handshake.
    Lafaye only stood about five foot five, but you'd swear she was six feet tall. The woman had presence. She had the easy glide of an athlete, but her eyes told you there was nothing easy about her. Lafaye had seen the shit—she'd stared right at it, and she'd beaten it back. Meeting her for the first time, you'd accept her as an authority. And when you found out she was a cop, you'd think "Well, of course she's a cop."
    Dressed in a silver pantsuit, she looked sharp. Her hair was relaxed, cut short, and dyed a rust red. Her skin was the color of mocha, and she had just a dab of lipstick to complement her hair. The only jewelry she wore were some small silver studs in her ears. The black broads in Eastgate used to say that "black don't crack." I don't know how true that is across the board, but at fifty years old Lafaye could still pass for a well-kept forty.
    Seeing her, I felt a pang of envy. And it wasn't about aging well, either. If I was honest with myself, I'd always wanted to
be
her—to be a cop, composed and professional.
    Didn't quite work out that way.
    "Lafaye," I said.
    "Ellie. You okay?"
    "Sure. Better than Romandetto."
    "What happened?"
    I told her.
    "That's too bad," she said.
    "They always send this many people out for a heart attack?"
    She smiled. "You know, Ellie, I've always liked you. So I'll tell you the truth, when a PO dies while visiting one of his parolees, it attracts a little extra attention."
    I nodded. What was there to say to that? It didn't surprise me.
    "You just got out a couple of days ago, right?" she asked.
    "Yeah."
    Lafaye said, "Well, I hate these circumstances, but it's good to see you, anyway. You look good."
    "Thin. I lost weight."
    "Well, I think it looks good on you."
    "Thanks. How's the crime fighting going?"
    "It's steady work, I guess."
    "Yeah."
    We both smiled politely.
    By this time, everyone was gone. Romandetto's car was taken away. The cops had left. Bethany and Nate had gone inside to feed the kids.
    Lafaye said, "Well, I'm sorry about Romandetto. I guess they'll reassign you to a new PO."
    "Sure."
    I walked her to her car. As I did, I remembered Alexis talking about Lafaye one night in Eastgate, something about how she was pretty decent for a cop.
    "Hey," I said. "You've been on the force for a while."
    "Twenty-six years," Lafaye said in a mocking tone. "1986. Uh."
    "You remember a case you worked involving Alexis Kravitz?"
    "Sure, I remember Alexis.