Lost Light

someone start screaming and the van’s engine begin revving. The smell of spent gunpowder invaded and burned my nostrils. By the time I had a clear, safe shot the robbers were to the van. One threw his satchels through the open door and then turned back, drawing two pistols from his belt.
    He never got a shot off. I opened up and watched him fly backwards into the van. The others then dove in after him and the van took off, its tires screaming and the side door still open, the wounded man’s feet protruding. I watched the van round the corner and head toward Sunset and the freeway. I had no chance of pursuit. My Crown Vic was parked more than a block away.
    Instead, I opened up my cell phone and called it in. I told them to send ambulances and lots of people. I gave them the direction of the van and told them to get to the freeway.
    The whole while the background screaming never stopped. I closed the phone and walked over to the screaming man. It was the younger man in the suit. He was on his side, his hand clamped over his left hip. Blood was leaking between his fingers. His day and his suit were ruined but I knew he was going to make it.
    “I’m hit!” he yelled as he squirmed. “I’m fucking hit!”
    I came out of the memory and back to my dining room table as Art Pepper started playing “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To,” with Jack Sheldon on trumpet. I had at least two or three versions of Pepper performing the Cole Porter standard on disc. On each one he always attacked it, tore its guts out. It was the only way he knew how to play and that relentlessness was what I liked best about him. It was the thing that I hoped I shared with him.
    I opened my notebook to a fresh page and was about to write a note about something I had seen in my memory of the shoot-out, when someone knocked on the door.

5
    I got up and went down the hall and looked through the peephole. I then quickly came back to the dining room and got a tablecloth from the cabinet against the wall. The tablecloth had never been used. It had been bought by my ex-wife and put in the cabinet for when we entertained. But we never entertained. I no longer had the wife but now the tablecloth would come in handy. There was another knock on the door. Louder this time. I quickly finished covering the photos and documents and went back to the door.
    Kiz Rider had her back to me and was looking out at the street when I opened the door.
    “Kiz, sorry. I was on the back deck and didn’t hear the first knock. Come on in.”
    She walked past me and down the short hallway toward the living and dining room areas. She probably saw that the sliding door to the deck was closed.
    “Then how did you know there was a first knock?” she asked as she went by.
    “I, uh, just thought that the knock I heard was so loud it must’ve meant that whoever was out there had -”
    “Okay, okay, Harry, I got it.”
    I hadn’t seen her in almost eight months. Since my retirement party, which she had organized and held at Musso’s, renting out the whole bar and inviting everybody from Hollywood Division.
    She moved into the dining room and I saw her eyes run over the rumpled tablecloth. It was clear that I was covering something and I immediately regretted doing it.
    She was wearing a charcoal gray business suit with the skirt below the knee. The outfit took me by surprise. Ninety percent of the time we worked together as partners she wore black jeans and a blazer over a white blouse. It allowed her freedom to move, to run if necessary. In the suit she looked more like a bank vice president than a homicide detective.
    Her eyes still on the table, she said, “Oh, Harry, you always set such a nice table. What’s for lunch?”
    “Sorry. I didn’t know who was at the door and I just sort of threw that over some stuff I have out.”
    She turned to face me.
    “What stuff, Harry?”
    “Just stuff. Old case stuff. So tell me, how are things down at RHD? Better than last time we talked?”
    She had been promoted downtown about a year before I split the department. She’d had trouble with her new partner and others in RHD and had confided in me about it. I’d had a mentoring relationship with her that continued after she transferred to RHD. But it ended when I chose retirement over a reassignment that would have put us back together as partners in RHD. I knew it hurt her. Her organizing of the retirement party had been a nice gesture but it was also the big good-bye from