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them had in mind in the first place.
    He strapped on his service weapon, a heavy Smith & Wesson 4506. The PPD was changing over to Glock 17s. Lighter. More accurate. In McCabe’s mind a better choice. Though he hadn’t made the switch yet. He pulled the sweater down over the gun. He considered his choice of outerwear. Either a lined army field jacket. Warm, but it’d look ridiculous over the sport coat. Or the old black cashmere that’d come with him from New York. Not warm enough for this kind of winter, but it’d have to do. Next year, if it was cold again, maybe he’d trade it in on a fleece-lined parka. Maybe not. He still preferred dressing like a grown-up.
    Frigid air smacked him full in the face as he stepped out of his condo. Even so, he decided to walk the mile and some to the North Space Gallery on Free Street. The snow wasn’t supposed to start until after midnight, and the idea of being picked up for drunk driving wasn’t appealing. He didn’t feel like messing with a cab. Besides, a good dose of cold fresh air might be the best way to clear the buzz in his brain. He didn’t want to look the clown for Kyra’s opening. Even if he might be. If he walked fast enough, maybe he wouldn’t succumb to frostbite.
    A steady wind was blowing in off the bay. Force five or six on the Beaufort scale. McCabe’s mind played with the words. He didn’t have a clue what the Beaufort scale was, but he always liked the sound of it. It was the kind of thing David Niven might say before sending a squadron of Spitfires out to confront the filthy Hun. McCabe sometimes wondered if his own secret life might be a little too much like Walter Mitty’s. Is that why he became a cop? To live out his fantasies? Freeze, asshole! Easy to do in this weather.
    McCabe turned right and headed down the Prom, pulling the coat more tightly around himself. Dating back to his early days on the NYPD, it looked and felt its age. Worn elbows. Fraying cuffs. Maybe Kyra’d take him shopping to Boston again. He turned right on Vesper. The wind was at his back now, which felt better. He passed a couple of dog walkers, identities and gender hidden under heavy hooded parkas and boots. Great night for a mugging. What did the mugger look like, ma’am? Well, Officer, he was wearing this heavy parka with a furry hood out front. Nanooks of the North. More than ready to tackle the tundra. He remembered reading Endurance. The British explorer Shackleton spent a winter on an Antarctic ice floe with only a lined Burberry for warmth. Stiff upper lip? Absolutely. Not because Shackleton was British. The lip was just frozen in place. He turned left on Congress and headed west down Munjoy Hill. In spite of a decade of gentrification, the Hill still retained the look and feel of its working-class roots. Smallish wood-frame houses built sometime around 1900. Most divided into apartments. Tonight they were all closed up tight, curtains drawn. He continued down the hill, passing a few couples heading for one or another of the bars and restaurants that were sprouting like weeds. The Front Room, the Blue Spoon, Bar Lola – and, of course, his home away from home, Tallulah’s. All crowded on a Friday night. Each with a few intrepid twenty-somethings hanging out front, desperate enough to brave the cold just to suck up their daily ration of nicotine.
    His mind went back to Kyra. To the fight, if that’s what it was. Why was he so hot to marry again? His marriage to Sandy had been a disaster. Except, of course, that it produced Casey, who was, without question, the best thing that ever happened to him. Amazing how such a great kid could ever have come out of that selfish bitch’s body. All she said after nine hours of labor was ‘Never again.’ Didn’t even want to hold her new daughter. Breastfeed? Not on your life.
    So why go through the marriage thing again? Well, for one thing, Kyra wasn’t Sandy. They were about as different as two gorgeous, sexy women could