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be something, if that's who this is.”
    “I believe there's a word for situations like this.”
    “Yeah?” Norm asked, in a tone that suggested she was awaiting a punch line. “What?”

    “Poetic justice.”
    The woman detective laughed, and moved away again.
    Martina Levin stared at them, shocked at their humor. She fumbled to cover the lower half of her face with her partial gas mask. “I'd better get back to work.”
    He heard how tight and offended her voice sounded.
    “Let me explain something to you,” he said in a tone that brooked no sentimentality on her part. “The victim's husband crusades against the death penalty. He's famous for it. The joke is, what's he going to do now? Protest the execution of his own wife's killer?”
    “Oh, my God!” she responded. “Talk about your moral dilemmas.”
    Sweetheart, you don't know the half of it, Carl thought.
    “Tell somebody else to look for the other ring,” he said to her. “Let's find some shade. I'll tell you a story . . .”

Susanna
3
     
    What am I going to do about Carl?
    What he really said was: “Wing and a Prayer? Too fucking cute.” And what he really said about the victim was: “Nice legs.” He's a tough cop; there've been complaints, one shooting death of a suspected felon, a couple of hearings in front of the Florida Criminal Justice Standards & Training Commission, which licenses and disciplines cops. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement has a disciplinary file labeled “Chamblin, Carl E.” But he has always walked away with nothing worse than a letter warning him to watch his step, as if he were merely a rambunctious kid in high school. Defense attorneys are suspicious of his means, of certain confessions he has obtained, but nobody's ever made any charges stick.
    “I'm not popular with rapists and thieves, or with defense attorneys,” he will tell you, with an aggressive jut to his jaw. “So sue me. They're the only ones who complain I'm too hard on suspects. You won't find any complaints in my files from the victims of crimes. They like me just fine.”
    So do prosecutors, who, to a man and woman, think he's a good cop and a clean one. It was, as I said before, the state attorney for Howard County who recommended Carl—and this case—to me. But if Carl's not brutal, at the very least he's ugly,he's brusque, he's lazy, and he's tired of being a cop; in other words, he's not exactly the heroic figure that readers like detectives to be. Have I softened his rough edges enough to make him acceptable to most of my readers?
    Maybe, though I don't necessarily feel good about it.
    I'm standing in front of my sliding glass doors, staring blindly out at the sunny day, feeling craven. It's not that Carl did a bad job on the case, or that he's dishonest; he's probably just an ordinary cop who's been on the job for too many years. Oh, well. If this book makes it to the movies, maybe an actor like Danny Glover can transform Carl into a gruff but lovable character. Carl's not black, like Glover, but he should be so lucky as to be played by an actor of that caliber.
    At any rate, the manuscript—and Carl in it—is gone now, flying to New York City. Hell, I tried to make him admirable— I threw in stuff about his family, didn't I? And I cleaned up his language. If readers think he comes off like an SOB in what I've written, they ought to see what I left out. For one thing, in real life his every other word is “fuck”; and for another, Carl doesn't loathe only that particular preacher. He hates them all, having been raised by a virulent example of them. To say it soured him on the clergy is an understatement. Nor have I mentioned the prior blots on his police record, the ones that have nothing to do with this case.
    “So sue me,” I challenge myself, sounding like Carl.
    “Forget it,” my kinder, gentler self replies. “Your book's in the mail. You should feel relieved. Try to relax, okay?”
    “Easy for you to say.”
    I live