Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 129, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 787 & 788, March/April 2007

Hero Time by Andrew Klavan

Copyright © 2007 by Andrew Klavan

Art by Jason Eckhardt

Andrew Klavan is the recipient of two Edgar Allan Poe Awards for his crime novels, and two of his books have been made into feature films, including True Crime, directed by Clint Eastwood, and Don’t Say a Word, which starred Michael Douglas. Stephen King has called Andrew Klavan “the most original American novelist of crime and suspense since Cornell Woolrich.” Mr. Klavan’s new book, Damnation Street, was released by Harcourt in 2006.

Every man, were he to tell his secret thoughts, would confess that he occasionally daydreams about rescuing a woman from danger. One autumn night, Danny Easton got his chance.

It was a Friday night, cool, clear, pleasant. He’d been out with his two best friends from the agency. They had burgers and beer and more beer and parted company around eleven. Danny decided to walk home — get some air, clear his head. He took the avenue along the western edge of the park.

He’d tramped along a few blocks beside the park wall when a girl of about seventeen crossed the avenue at the intersection ahead of him. She was pretty in a coarse kind of way and she had a nice figure. Danny slowed down a little so he could stay behind her, so he could enjoy the sway of her overcoat and the flash of her legs. That was why he was watching when she reached a gap in the wall and turned into the park.

It took Danny by surprise. The park was well lighted, but it could be dangerous at night. He wouldn’t have walked across it himself at that hour. As he watched the girl receding into the trees, he began to have a fantasy in which she was attacked by a rapist and he ran heroically to her aid.

Just then — as if his imagination had overflowed into reality — she actually was attacked. Two men scuttled out from behind some rocks. One of them grabbed the girl around the throat and dragged her off into the shadows under a cluster of plane trees. The other hunched after them into the dark.

It happened in a finger-snap and Danny’s world was suddenly all rush and heartbeat. He was over the wall. He was running tear-ass across the grass. His mind had shifted gears and was racing faster than events so that things seemed to be unfolding in slow motion. He seemed to have time to meditate on every detail.

He was screaming, “Hey! Hey! Let her go! Hey!” This was different from his fantasies. In his fantasies, he always fought the bad guys. In real life, he was hoping like crazy that his shouts would scare the bastards away. That would’ve been more than enough heroism to brag about at the office Monday morning.

As it turned out, when he reached the trees, the attackers seemed not to have heard his approach at all. They were both completely immersed in their business. One of them was holding a knife to the terrified girl’s throat while the other straddled her thrashing body, ripping open her overcoat, pushing her skirt up. They both glanced around, startled, as Danny burst onto the scene.

Still running, Danny let fly with a wild, sloppy roundhouse. It cracked the nearest attacker on the cheek and sent him stumbling to his hands and knees. The other one, the guy with the knife, opened his mouth as if he’d seen Jesus come. The girl slipped from his slackened grip and plopped awkwardly to the earth.

Danny wheeled and threw another big punch. He hit the knife-man in the side of the neck. The knife-man fell back and gagged but he held onto his knife and waved it in front of him, fending Danny off. The other attacker, meanwhile, was scrambling angrily to his feet, ready to launch himself at the man who’d hit him. Danny was a strong, healthy twenty-seven-year-old, but he was only average size and he’d never been in any kind of a physical fight before, not even in school. He suddenly realized that these guys not only could kill him, they would kill him, gladly. The first gibberings of the Little Clown of Fear began to make themselves heard in a corner of his mind.

Just at that moment, though, the girl started screaming. It was an unbelievably loud and piercing sound which Danny had only heard before in horror movies and from his little sister. At the first sustained note, both attackers froze in their positions as if caught in a game of Red Light/Green Light. The next thing Danny knew, they were rocketing at top speed into the darkness and the far trees.

A breath flooded out of him and relief flooded through him. In his fantasies, the damsel in distress usually didn’t do much, just waited around for him to rescue her. The bad guys usually ended up sprawled on the earth unconscious or bound hand and foot. But Danny was no idiot: Reality’s reality. He knew a lucky outcome when he saw one. He grabbed the girl by the arm, drew her to her feet, and hustled her out of the park as fast as he could in case the attackers should decide to come back and slaughter them both.

Her name was Mary. She was a pretty tough kid. She had scratches on her face and neck and chest. The buttons had been ripped off her overcoat. Her top was torn, half of her bra was exposed. She was trembling, all right — hell, so was he — but she wasn’t hysterical or anything. She was barely crying.

When they were back on the avenue, under a streetlight, she took stock of herself. She turned away from Danny to readjust her pantyhose discreetly. Belted the overcoat shut to cover the rest of the damage. Then she faced him again. She took a few angry swipes at her swimming eyes, smearing mascara around her cheeks and temples.

“Bastards,” she said, with a bitter laugh. “You were really brave. Thank you.”

“I guess we oughta call the cops,” said Danny.

“Nah. Just help me get home, okay? I’m a little shaky.”

They rode across town in a cab. Mary stared out the window. She made angry sniffling noises, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex. She didn’t seem to want to talk.

So Danny sat silently. He went over what had happened in his mind, composing the story he would tell his friends, smoothing the rough edges. As his excitement subsided, he began to feel the effects of the business. His knuckles burned and his throat was hoarse from screaming and a sort of retrospective terror had come over him. All in all, though, he felt pretty good — even the pain felt satisfying. He had lived up to his imagination. He was a hero.

“Here it is,” Mary said.

Danny looked out the window. His lips parted in silent surprise.

They were in one of the best sections of town, right next to the museum. They had stopped in front of an elegant stone townhouse.

Mary turned to him and flashed a weepy smile. “Would you mind coming in with me? My folks are gonna be crazed. They won’t believe what happened. It would really help if you were there to back me up.”

When they came through the door, Danny gaped at what he saw. The front hall was vast. A massive chandelier hung high, high above a marble floor. A fantastically wide staircase swept up to the second story with archaic grace. He could hardly believe the size of it all, the opulence. City real estate being what it was, it must’ve cost millions.

Almost at once, a man and woman in their fifties came hurrying down the stairs toward them: Mary’s parents. They were both wearing bathrobes, hers a floral silk, his cotton, plaid. Danny realized they had seen him and Mary via the security camera above the front door and they were already upset. As she reached the marble floor, the woman opened her arms. Mary rushed into them.

“Oh, Mama!” she said. She started sobbing into her mother’s shoulder.

Mary’s father paused. He seemed to study the two women a moment. Then he glanced over at Danny. He was short — a head shorter than Danny was — but thickly, solidly built. He had silver hair; a rough, stony face. His eyes were black and hard. They glinted in the light.

“Was this you did this?” he asked quietly.

In all his young life, Danny had never felt anything like what he felt then. A watery weakness through his whole body, the taste of copper on his tongue, a spasm of pain in his back, a wild, childlike anxiety that he was about to lose control of his bladder: fear — he had never felt that kind of fear. He couldn’t really tell why he felt it now. Something in the older man’s posture, relaxed, unbristled, calm. Something in the thin line of his mouth, in his flinty eyes.

But Mary, still clinging to her mother’s robe with one hand, swung her tear-stained face around to them. “No, Daddy, no! He fought them. There were two of them. They were gonna rape me. One had a knife. Danny was just passing by. He was so brave.”

Her father continued to stare at Danny another second. Then he nodded, satisfied. A smile twitched at his lips. He gave Danny an approving slap on the shoulder.

Danny sagged. He breathed as if he hadn’t breathed for long minutes. Maybe he hadn’t.

“What was it — n—s?” said the older man.

The hateful word came out that casually, as if he used it all the time. Taken off-guard, Danny hesitated. Once, only last year, he’d told a cabdriver to shut the hell up when he started talking racist garbage like that. But he wasn’t going to tell Mary’s father to shut the hell up. He wasn’t going to protest at all. On top of which, he couldn’t exactly lie about the race of the attackers.

“Well… they were black guys, yeah,” he said finally. Instantly, he felt his evening of courage stained, diminished. He’d been a hero before, but he felt like a coward now. He wished the night had faded away at its high point like a movie scene. Why couldn’t it be like that? Why the hell couldn’t life ever play out like daydreams?

Mary’s father nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Danny, huh? You did a good thing, Danny. I’m grateful. Tunny’ll drive you home.”

Danny’s gaze followed the older man’s gesture. He saw the shadow of another man in a corner of the foyer. The man must’ve come out of the door under the stairs. He was very large: tall, broad shoulders. Standing with his hands folded in front of him — just standing there, waiting. Tunny. What the hell kind of a name was Tunny?

Danny didn’t want to get in a car with the guy. He didn’t want Mary’s father to know where he lived. He didn’t want to be with these people at all anymore. He just wanted to get out of here.

He licked his lips. “Great,” he said. “Great. Thanks.”

Tunny met him in front of the townhouse, driving a black monster of a Lexus, the same kind of luxury sedan his boss at the agency drove. Danny moved to get in the front seat, but only the door to the back was open. Tunny sat behind the wheel, waiting, until Danny got in the back.

All through the silent drive downtown, Danny’s mind was working, his imagination working. He hadn’t had a good look at Tunny’s face yet. He tried to catch glimpses of it in the rearview, but he couldn’t see much in the dark of the car. He had a sense of the man’s features as thick, brutal, and sardonic, but he might have been making that up. He was making up all kinds of things, all kinds of scenarios. Maybe Mary’s father was a mob boss or an international criminal or something. Maybe he didn’t want anyone alive to know his daughter had been “dishonored” in the park. Maybe Tunny was driving him out to some swamp across the state line where he’d make him kneel in the mud and put a bullet in the back of his head. Danny resolved he wouldn’t kneel, but he remembered that watery feeling in his muscles when Mary’s father had simply looked at him and, for the first time, he began to understand that you might not always have a choice about such things.

Danny kept his eye on the streets outside, watching to see if they turned off the wrong way — toward some swamp across the state line. They didn’t. Tunny guided the Lexus straight down the avenue, then over to Danny’s apartment building. The Lexus pulled up alongside the row of parked Toyotas and Hondas.

“Thanks for the lift,” said Danny.

“No problem,” Tunny answered in a deep, dull voice. “You made a good friend tonight. I’ll be seeing you.”

When he was standing on the curb, Danny tried again to get a look at the driver’s face. He thought he saw acne-scarred skin, a smirk. He wasn’t sure. Then the Lexus was gone.

At work on Monday, Danny told the story of his daring rescue and showed off his bruised knuckles to his friends. He played down the part about Mary’s father. He made a joke of it. “I wanted to say, ‘Hey, you’re welcome, you racist scumbag.’ ” His friends laughed. Gina praised him for his courage. Ellis obviously envied him and tried to tell some old hero stories about himself. It felt good — especially Gina’s praise. Gina was small and slender with short black hair and cute, impish features. She was smart and ready to work hard with the guys, but she wasn’t afraid to be frivolous and vulnerable and girly either. Danny liked that. Ellis liked it too. It was pretty well understood among them that she was going to choose one or the other of them after a while.

The three were the agency’s hot team right now. Their work on the Wingdale account had made them up-and-coming stars. They were currently putting together a proposal for Paulson’s, the national grocery chain, which was in play after leaving Michaelson & Fine. Bringing them into the agency would be a huge coup. That’s what they’d been working on that Friday night when Danny had walked home by the park.

They were at it again all that week, brainstorming, putting the finishing touches on their pitch. By Thursday, they had it pretty well nailed down. They were in the tenth-floor conference room rehearsing and tweaking the last details when the door opened and Wally Harris poked his head in.

“Brad Spinker landed Paulson’s,” he told them — just like that.

The three charged into Spinker’s office, Danny in the lead.

“I feel like crap about this, guys, really, I swear,” said Spinker. He was tilted back in his chair. He had his feet up on his desk. He didn’t look as if he felt like crap. He looked as if he felt great. “It was a casual thing. Y’know, a party. Paulson started unloading on me. So I was telling him you guys were working on something terrific — I was. But, you know, I threw in a couple of casual suggestions of my own along the way and…” Spinker was wearing a silk burgundy tie and had a burgundy handkerchief in the pocket of his pinstripe suit. His father ran a huge consulting firm. He’d probably gotten him the intro to Paulson.

Danny went into a rage. He didn’t hold back. He started cursing at the son of a bitch right there in his office, pointing his finger at him, calling him names. It started to sound as if he’d actually punch him — which he probably wouldn’t have. But the fury felt like bubbling acid in him and there was no question he would’ve loved to knock Spinker and his burgundy tie right over the back of his chair.

Finally, Ellis got in front of him, between him and Spinker’s desk.

“It’s over,” Ellis kept saying to Danny, holding up his hands as if to push him back. “C’mon. Let’s get out of here. It’s over.”

What could Danny do finally? He let Ellis maneuver him out of the office, still cursing over his shoulder, still calling the smirking Spinker names. Then they were out in the hall and he had nothing but his anger and his disappointment. It was the same for all three of them. They had nothing else left. They went to sit in the coffee shop on the corner where they’d done some of their best work on the proposal. They stared into their coffee concoctions and shook their heads and cursed the unfairness of it. They blamed Avram, their boss, for encouraging the agency’s “cutthroat culture,” and they fantasized about what they’d like to see happen to Spinker. All the while, they felt like losers because that’s what losers did: blame and complain and fantasize and curse the unfairness of things.

But the Japanese have an expression — at least, Danny thought it was the Japanese. They said: Sit by the river long enough, and the body of your enemy will float by. If it was the Japanese, they sure knew a thing or two. Because, one week after Paulson signed on with the agency, Spinker underwent some kind of nuclear head explosion or something. One day, he just didn’t show up for work. Next day, same thing. Then after he was AWOL almost a whole week, he called in — and he was in St. Louis. St. Louis, as in Missouri. When he got put through to Avram, he started babbling about too much pressure and a change of priorities and “a major reevaluation” and this, that, and the other. The bottom line was: He was gone, he’d quit, he was history. Suddenly, the agency had the Paulson’s account and no one to handle it — except they did have someone because Danny, Ellis, and Gina had done nothing but work on Paulson’s before Spinker pulled his double cross. So not only did Avram give them the account, within two weeks they were able to sell Paulson on all the stuff they’d been planning to sell him on in the first place. And because they’d rescued the agency in a crisis, they were even bigger stars than they would’ve been had they simply won the client over from the start.

From cursing in the coffee shop, they went to clinking beer mugs in their favorite bar.

“The gutter to the stars nonstop,” as Ellis put it.

And Danny thought: Life was funny. You could never give up. There was always a chance that something good would happen.

Of course, now they were working practically around the clock, getting the campaign ready to go. It was tiring, but it was fun. Also, Danny and Gina wrote most of the copy, so there were a couple of times when they worked late together, without Ellis. That gave Danny the chance he’d been waiting for.

He was careful about it. He didn’t try anything at the office. Women could be sensitive about these things, Danny told himself sagely. Instead, he waited until they were at his apartment one night, doing a mind-meld over pizza. Gina was at the desk, at his laptop, Danny was leaning in toward the screen over her shoulder. She smelled like roses. The scent seemed to draw him in. After a while, his face was so close to hers, it was nothing to lean just that much closer and let his lips brush not even her cheek but only the soft, soft down on her cheek.

Gina jumped — jumped as if a spark had leapt between them. She twisted in the chair, rolled the chair an inch or two away from him. She gazed up at him with her big, tender brown eyes.

“Oh God. Oh God, Danny,” she said sorrowfully.

Danny felt a terrible heaviness in his chest. “What? No good?” he said. “I thought…”

“No, no, no, it’s not your fault. I should’ve said something. I kept meaning to, it’s just… me and Ellis, we…”

“Oh. Oh jeez…” Danny straightened away from her chair. Threw his hands up like a basketball player pretending he hadn’t committed a foul. “I’m really sorry, Gina.”

“No, Danny. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know.”

“I should’ve said something. I was going to. I just…”

“Sure. Sure. No, that’s okay. It’s, you know, you and Ellis — it’s great. Bad for me, but great for you guys. Really.”

He meant it. He didn’t blame Gina. He didn’t blame Ellis. He liked them both. He was just sad, that’s all. He was surprised how sad he was. And disappointed. And jealous, too — he had to admit that. It wasn’t only that Danny had imagined sleeping with Gina. He imagined sleeping with every cute girl he met. But he had also imagined waking up with her, holding her after the radio alarm started playing, sitting with her on a Sunday morning and talking over coffee while they read the paper. It hurt like hell to think that Ellis would be doing all that instead.

Again, though, the message life sent him was: Never despair. Hang tough. The opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings.

For a week or so, he was very depressed about Gina. More depressed than he would’ve expected. At first, he thought it was the ego-blow of losing her to his friendly rival Ellis, which was worse somehow than having some stranger come along and snap her up. Soon, though, he realized it was more than that. It was Gina herself. He told himself that other girls got teary-eyed over baby pictures and made mischievous jokes and were generous with their help and got silly about clothes and movie stars. Plenty of girls were like that. But somehow, none of them added up to the whole Gina package. One morning — one morning when it was very bad — he looked at his half-shaven face in the mirror and whispered the truth to his own image: “You dumb dick. You’re in love with her.” Great time to figure it out.

Then, that very morning, at just about his darkest hour, he went into his office and there was an e-mail waiting for him from his boss. Avram wanted to meet with him before lunch. The way he was feeling — as down in the dumps as he was — his first thought was that he was going to be fired. But that didn’t make sense. And, in fact, when he entered Avram’s office, the roostery little man came out from behind that ten-square-acre desk of his and greeted him with a smile and an outstretched hand.

It got better from there. When Danny was seated on the sofa and Avram was enthroned in his armchair, one arm slung over the back, his legs crossed at the knee, the boss actually apologized for what he called “the Spinker cock-up.” Danny could afford to play it generous now. It was past history, he said, with a little bygones-be-bygones shrug.

Avram went on in his strange style, at once fatherly and watchful. Danny always thought of him as a cross between a Dutch uncle and an assassin. When you were his friend you were his best friend and when you weren’t his friend, you were dead meat.

“You’ve been doing such a great job on Paulson’s, I want you to oversee the other division campaigns as well. Think you can handle that?”

Danny heard himself spluttering, “I… you mean, like, division manager? Isn’t that Kane?”

“It was Kane. Now you’ll be Kane. What do you think? Bigger office, bigger paycheck, bigger headaches, the whole deal.”

It was such a shock that Danny was at the door, pumping Avram’s hand, before he managed to wipe the stupid look off his face and say thank you.

“It’s good for you here, right, Danny?” Avram said. “I mean, no complaints, right? Things are going great for you, aren’t they?”

Great hardly covered it. Danny was going down in the elevator before he even began to comprehend the scope of his bounty. He was twenty-seven. Replacing Kane, who was old — forty, at least. At practically double the pay. With bonuses. Which practically made him rich.

He thought about what it would be like to tell Gina. That made him realize: He was going to be her boss now. He was going to be Ellis’s boss too. He couldn’t hide from himself that there was a certain amount of satisfaction in that. Not that it could make up for losing Gina. A stubborn misery haunting the pit of his stomach even now made him suspect that nothing would ever make up for that. But as consolation prizes go, this was a pretty good one.

Danny came out into the lobby. The revolving doors carried him onto the street. He had been so depressed when he entered the building that morning, but now he was in a sort of golden haze of happy confusion, gladness spreading in him like rays of rising sun, changing the aspect of everything it touched. He gazed around at the traffic and the skyscrapers and the autumn light — at the city which had suddenly become the backdrop of his success. He was so absorbed in it all, it was a moment before he realized what he’d seen: the black Lexus gliding past in the noonday rush, the pitted skin, the sardonic smirk on the face of the large man behind the wheel.

Was that Tunny?

Too late to tell — the car had already disappeared around the corner. It probably wasn’t Tunny. Or maybe it was, but so what? Why should that bother him? He hadn’t thought about the driver in weeks.

Still, the idea sank into him. It was weird. It felt like a drop of ink falling into all that golden happiness, a black drop spreading, darkening everything.

He was still thinking about it a few nights later. It kept nagging at him. He was in his apartment, scanning his laptop, trying to familiarize himself with the other projects that would soon be his responsibility. He only had half a mind for the work, was still excited, savoring his promotion, thinking about the future. Then, every now and again, he’d find he was thinking about Tunny, too. About the black Lexus driving by and that night he’d rescued Mary in the park and taken her home to her parents. And something else, something Avram said, the way he said it, something in the tone of his voice.

It’s good for you here, right, Danny? I mean, no complaints, right? Things are going great for you.

Danny hadn’t noticed it at the time, but when he thought back on it, it didn’t sound like Avram. Avram, the self-made man, who fought his way up from the mean streets, who always knew what he wanted, who wasn’t cowed by anyone or anything. He’d sounded uncertain. As if he needed Danny to reassure him. As if…

“As if he were afraid,” Danny murmured.

It was ridiculous. Avram wasn’t afraid of anything. Lawyers, journalists, the IRS. He’d told them all to go to hell at some point or other. What would he have to be afraid of?

Danny licked his lips. He thought about the black Lexus driving by and Tunny’s smirk and the glinting, hard eyes of Mary’s father. He thought about the photographs on Avram’s desk, photographs of his five-year-old daughter and his eight-year-old son and his pretty wife who was pregnant again with a new baby. Everyone had something to be afraid of…

Danny shut himself up with a puff of laughter. His brain was a freaking nonsense factory once it got going. Remember that time he thought Tunny was going to drive him to a swamp somewhere and shoot him? Then there was that day he opened the Post and saw the headline Police Seek Two Missing Teens, and, for a second, when he looked at their pictures, he thought, Hey, those are the guys from the park. But, of course, they weren’t. He could barely remember the attackers’ faces anymore, but he was almost sure they weren’t the same guys.

He shook his head and laughed at himself again.

Then there was Spinker taking off for St. Louis like that…

The door buzzer sounded. Danny checked his watch. After ten. Puzzled, he went to the intercom. Ellis.

Ellis was a big, broad-shouldered, blond, good-looking guy. Track and field at Stanford. Girls galore. Not the Great Brain of the Age or anything, but a sure feel for the markets and an expert way of befriending clients and intimidating them at the same time.

When he stepped into Danny’s apartment, though, he looked unsteady — not his usual shambling, cheerful self — gray, uncertain. Danny gave him a bottle of beer and he knocked back half of it in one swig. He plunked himself on the sofa and looked at everything in the room except Danny. Danny watched him from his desk chair.

“Look,” Ellis said. “I think I screwed up. Gina and me — that never made sense. She should be with you, man. We both know it.”

“What are you talking about?” said Danny — all at once, he was a chaos of emotions. Confusion, dark thoughts, his heart soaring with unexpected hope. “You always wanted Gina. We talked about it a million times.”

“Yeah, but you know me: I want everything in skirts that’s not a Scotsman. And that’s the other thing. Let’s face it: Gina’s a mommy waiting to happen. I’m not ready to go there. That’s always been more your thing than mine.”

Danny had to admit that was true. Ellis was the lover-boy, he was more the family-man type. “So — what? — you’re dumping her?”

“Already did,” said Ellis — and he drained half of the half of his beer that was left. “I told her right out, too. ‘Danny’s the one who’s right for you.’ I said it to her just like that, those words.”

“Hey, if Gina wanted me, she’d…” But Danny glanced at his friend halfway through the sentence and the sentence died on his lips. What was that look on Ellis’s face? That sickly look, his eyes all eager, his mouth all quirked up like that — what was that?

“I mean, this is good, right?” Ellis said. “I mean, this is what you want. We’re good here — blood brothers like always — right?”

“Well… sure,” Danny said. He was trying to keep his imagination from going haywire with all these nutso dark thoughts of his. Still, he couldn’t help asking, “Hey, did anyone, like… say anything to you? About me — or Gina? You know what I mean? Did anyone, you know — give you a hard time about it or anything?”

It seemed to Danny there was a pause then, a strange beat of silence during which Ellis, with his wild stare and his twitching mouth, was about to burst out with some unbelievable news. But he didn’t burst out with anything. He laughed his cynical Ellis laugh. He looked down at the tabletop. He said, “Don’t be an idiot. I’m telling you, I screwed up. It happens. We’re good, right? I mean, we’re good, Danny. Aren’t we?”

Gina had a studio on the West Side. Her parents helped her pay for it so she wouldn’t have to live in a bad neighborhood. The next day, Saturday, Danny set out, meaning to walk over there. Somehow, though, he drifted north. Before he even knew it, he found himself up near the museum. He found himself outside the elegant stone townhouse where Mary lived with her parents and with Tunny.

He passed by slowly, looking up at the large windows. He could see the chandelier in there, burning above the foyer. When he reached the corner, he went around the block and passed by the townhouse again.

He didn’t know what to think anymore, what to believe. He did know, and then he didn’t. He did believe and then he told himself it was ridiculous. After a while, he couldn’t think straight about it. He went around the block yet again, passed the townhouse yet again. As he walked, he slipped into a daydream. In his daydream, he charged angrily up to the front door. He rang the bell firmly. Inside, he looked Tunny right in his smirking face and demanded to see Mary’s father. When Mary’s father came down the sweeping staircase — wearing one of those fine, silvery suits Danny had seen crime bosses wear on TV — Danny stepped up to him and looked him in the eye.

He did not imagine himself yelling at the man or pointing his finger or talking tough in any way. That was too unrealistic even to daydream. Instead, he was reasonable. He said, “Look, sir, I want to be clear with you. Please — don’t do anything for me, okay? I did you a good turn. Now you can do me a good turn by leaving me alone, leaving my friends alone and the people I work with.”

“Sure, kid, sure,” the older man said in his daydream. “Whatever you say.”

“No offense or anything,” Danny told him. “I helped your daughter because it was right and — it’s all ruined if something wrong comes out of it. I don’t want to scare anyone or hurt anyone. I just want to live my life and do what’s right. That’s all.”

By the time Danny reached this point in his daydream, he had moved away from the townhouse. He was still working the daydream over, refining it, as he crossed the park towards Gina’s place.

They sat on her sofa side by side, close but not touching, shy in spite of all the time they’d spent together, all the working and the jokes.

“I feel pretty stupid,” Gina said. She said it with a laugh, but her eyes grew watery.

“No, no,” said Danny. “Ellis is a nice guy, he just…”

“…figured I’d make a good one-night stand. Or one-week stand or whatever.”

“No, no. He likes you. He really does. He’s told me that a million times. He’s just… not ready to make a commitment yet, that’s all. It’s not you, Gina. Really.”

She turned her face to him, her pert, pretty face. She gave him a crooked smile. “You’re a nice guy, Danny. Really. You are.”

The thing about Gina’s eyes was you could see through them right into her. You could see how tender-hearted she was and vulnerable. She didn’t try to hide it. Danny could fashion whole imagined lifetimes out of that look she was giving him right now. He imagined how he would protect her and keep her from the harsh things of the world so that she wouldn’t become harsh herself and would be able to give him that look forever, even when they were old.

“All right, pity party’s over,” she said suddenly. She reached over and clapped her hand down on top of his. “Let’s talk about how well you’re doing. Division Manager. At your age. I mean, how awesome is that? I’m so glad for you, Danny. Things are going so well for you.”

Danny turned his hand so that he could take hold of Gina’s. Their fingers intertwined. Her hand was warm and the warmth seemed to travel from her up his arm and all through him.

“And they’re just going to get better and better,” she said, with her tender eyes on him and her warm hand squeezing his. “I can feel it.”

Danny looked at her with all his love. “I can feel it too,” he said.