“Come inside,” Grace said, and tugged me toward the door.
I took one sideways step, a lurch almost, away. I realized I was heading down the alleyway to kick Clark in the head. But Grace put her arm around me, catching me and stopping me. I clutched her, weaving, and my hand left red smears on her shirt. His blood had painted the tips of my fingers.
She took me in and made me sit in the office. A few minutes later, I heard sirens coming, and that sounded good to me as well. It sounded like order, like my old good friend, the law, wailing on a righteous pathway to me, through my city.
McGwiggen’s back office was a white-walled, windowless hole that I suspected had begun life as a closet. I was waiting there when Birdwine burst in, wild-eyed and panting. He took in the scene, me sitting in the only chair, a wheeled black cheapo thing in front of an IKEA desk that housed an old computer.
“Hi,” I said, hoarse from that weird bellowing. I’d never been so glad to see him.
“Oh, hi,” Birdwine said, drawing up short. He wavered there, uncertain, then shoved one catcher’s mitt of a hand through his wild hair as he tried to get himself in hand. When he spoke next, it came out elaborately casual. “So, you know, I’m here to rescue you. Ta-da.”
That made me grin, but as soon as I could make myself look serious, I told him, “I’m sorry I called you an asshole.” I wanted to take it back before the building collapsed in on us, or the sun went nova, or some final, tenacious chunk of Skylab fell out of space and killed me. That message I’d left, angry and unforgiving, could not be the last words I ever said to him. He looked puzzled, so I added, “On your voicemail? I called you an asshole.”
“Oh, right. De nada. I got your message, maybe fifteen minutes ago. I heard that man talking as you hung up, and there was something in the tone. I knew it had gone all kinds of wrong. I called you back, four times, and it kept going to voicemail. So I came down here, already wound up, and the lot was full of cop cars. People were saying your name, talking about gunshots, an attack. You calling me an asshole has fallen pretty far down on my list.” He looked sick, in fact, recounting it. “Grace told me you were back here, gave me the twenty-second version. Are you really okay?”
“You should see the other guy,” I said.
“I’d like that very much,” Birdwine said darkly.
I slid my feet into the neon-orange Crocs Grace had loaned me from her locker. The cops had bagged my shoes. Then I stood up, wincing, and we looked awkwardly across the small space at each other. “Do your rescuing services extend to an escort home?”
That set him back. He looked at me, eyebrows beetling suspiciously, trying to get a read on me. All at once, he was so wary that it broke my heart for him. But all he said was “You can leave?”
“Yeah, I was waiting for a uniform to drive me,” I said.
An EMT had cleaned my scrapes and looked me over, but I didn’t let him get too handsy. I was fine, barring a spectacular set of deepening bruises from landing in the trash cans. A tech had collected samples from under my nails, while a detective named Martinez took an abbreviated statement, probably because I had been drinking. He wanted me to come down to the station tomorrow to give a longer one, and so they could get more pictures. They had a better witness in the tapes anyway. The hallway’s camera showed Clark following me out. The alley camera got most of the fight, and they’d retrieved the gun, too.
By then I’d calmed down a bit, and my lawyer brain was parsing all the ways I was going to screw Clark Winkley to the wall. Try to shoot me dead, would he? That opening salvo of a settlement agreement I had written earlier was looking like a kindness. I could fix that. Ye gods, how a jury would love this, though I doubted his lawyer would let this stinker go before a judge, much less a jury. They’d settle, fast, so Clark could focus on his criminal case, and my inevitable civil suit against him.
Birdwine said, “My car is in the deck across the road.”
“I’d rather walk,” I told him. “Work the kinks out.”
That made him draw back even farther, not sure how literal I was being.
We had to exit through the big front room, since the back alley was blocked off as a crime scene. I thanked Grace, Wes, and Billy, and I let Martinez know I didn’t need the ride after all.