“No; that would have infuriated him. I went to NYU and walked to class every day. By about my junior year, I had decided to go to law school. I didn’t have any real clear idea about what lawyers actually did – neither did a lot of my classmates in law school, for that matter – but, somehow, it sounded good. I did all right, I guess, had a decent academic record, and, in my senior year, the New York City Police Department had a program to familiarize law students with police work. I worked part-time in a station house, I rode around in a blue-and-white, and I just loved it. The cops treated me like the whitebread college kid I was, but it didn’t matter, the bug had bit. I took the police exam, and, almost immediately after I got my law degree, I enrolled in the Police Academy. In a way, I think I was imitating my father’s choice of a working-class life.”
“You never took the bar?”
“I couldn’t be bothered with that. I was hot to be a cop.”
“Are you still?”
“Yes, sort of. I love investigative work, and I’m good at it. I had a couple of good collars that got me a detective’s shield; I had a good rabbi – a senior cop who helped me with promotion; he’s dead now, though, and I seem to have slowed down a bit.”
“But you’re different from other cops.”
Stone sighed again. “Yes, I guess I am. I’ve been an outsider since the day I started at the academy.”
“So you’re not going to be the next chief of police?”
Stone laughed. “Hardly. You could get good odds at the 19th Precinct that I’ll never make detective first grade.”
“What are you now?”
“Detective second.”
“So, you’re thirty-eight years old, and…”
“Essentially without prospects,” Stone said, shrugging. “I can look forward to a pension in six years; a better one, if I can last thirty.”
“Why are you limping?”
Stone told her about the knee, keeping it as undramatic as possible. She listened and didn’t say anything. “Now it’s your turn,” he said, “and don’t leave out anything.”
“My bio is much simpler,” she said. “Born and grew up in Atlanta; the old man was a lawyer, now a judge; two years at Bennington, which my father thought was far too radical – I was wearing only black clothes and not washing my hair enough – so I finished at the University of Georgia, in journalism. Summer between my junior and senior years, I got on the interns’ program at the network, and, when I graduated, they offered me a job as a production assistant. I’m thirty-two years old, and I’m still a production assistant.”
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“But at a higher level, surely? After all, you’re assisting Barron Harkness.”
She laughed. “It’s a nice place to work, if your father can afford to send you there. The perks aren’t bad.” She looked at him sideways. “You skipped something.”
“What?”
“Married?”
“Nope.”
“Never? Why not?”
“Just lucky, I guess.”
“Cynic.”
“Probably.”
“No girl?”
“Not at the moment. I was seeing somebody for a couple of years. When I was in the hospital, she accepted a transfer to LA.”
“Sweet.”
Stone shrugged. “I didn’t come through with the commitment she wanted; she took a hike.” He imitated her sidelong glance. “What about you?”