Bounce

Rico:

In Miami the heat is dry, like chokin’ down sand. You step out of the airport and for a few seconds it's impossible to breathe. You feel that moment of abject panic, that sudden and irrational terror that you're going to suffocate when there's all the oxygen you'll ever need if you could only get the air into your lungs. And then it passes, the body compensates, acclimatises, starts to need it. And that’s when the heat in Miami gets like an addiction.

In New York, it's a different kinda heat. You sweat, until your clothes are stickin' to every part of you and you have to get inside, into air conditioning that freezes any part of you that isn't clothed. I'd forgotten this.

Bar One is on the corner of 53^rd and 9th. It's a dark hole even on the brightest of days. A long bar runs the length of the warped wooden floor, front to back of the narrow space; a couple of tables lean against the wall opposite with just one at the front, in the bottle-green glass window with its small, dirty panes no one on the pavement outside can see in through. It's the kind of place tourists are too nervous to wander into and locals know to stay out of. It's been on that street corner forever and it always was one of my favourite haunts. I used to meet Rafael there for late night drinks and that special silence only siblings can share. Once upon a time, everyone knew to find me there. Now I didn't know anyone who would try.

Ironically, all the time I'd been in Miami I'd favoured the long, tall drinks; fruity liquids and a salad jungle, with a blue straw and a pink umbrella. Kinda gay but strangely enough no one mentions that when you’re packing a gun and you look as mean as I’ve been told I do. Now I found myself ordering the sorts of drinks my partner had preferred - short shots of bourbon and a fizzy lager chaser. At first the barman had been suspicious, he didn’t know me and he wasn’t certain if I was gonna be trouble. No trouble from me, I didn't want trouble. Just wanted to drown my sorrows and put off deciding what I was gonna do with the rest of my life.

Since I can remember I only wanted to be a cop. Rafael was ten years older than me. His Mom had left his abusing father to marry a New York cop and a year later I'd been born. Already Rafael had accepted his new Dad, a good man who swore he'd never attempt to replace his real one but ended up doing just that without ever trying. At the age of twelve Rafael had announced he was going to be a policeman and me, a kid who hung on his big brother's every word, held the same ambition from before I ever knew what it meant.

My - our - father was shot and killed in the line of duty just after Rafael graduated from the academy. Mom died a year later, from a broken heart one of our aunts told us, but actually from the lung Cancer she'd been diagnosed with before Dad had been killed. I was ten years old. I lived with one of my Mom's sisters - Genie - a lovely woman with no husband or children of her own who nevertheless took the best care of me that she could and loved me like a son. When I was eighteen I went to the police academy. Four years later I proudly joined the NYPD. And twelve years after that, a man called Calderone ordered a hit on an undercover cop and I lost my brother.

The rest, as they say, is history; a vivid, colourful history full of long hot nights crushed into the front seat of a Ferrari or facing off bad guys over the business end of an array of automatic weapons, even longer days filling out paperwork and chasing leads in an oven-like building with struggling air conditioning and coffee with the consistency of mud. But they were the best times. And it was James 'Sonny' Crockett, my Southern crack-pot of a partner, who made them the best.

I can't put into words the depth of my feelings for that man - I never have been able to. Because of him I’d had to leave Miami, and because of him, it was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

Possibly not the brightest of ideas we had in our time together, blowin’ up Borbon’s seaplane. Had we been thinkin' straight, not wired on caffeine, strung out on adrenaline and suffering from three days' straight of heart-stopping scares, high-stress situations and a total lack of anything approximating sleep, we might have made a different decision. We might have decided we liked our jobs, despite the long hours, the shortened life-expectancy and the pitiful wage packet at the end of the month. We might have considered the years we actually had to go before retirement and what we were gonna do with those years if we weren't being cops.
We might have even realised that along with resignation would come the end of us - the end of what for me at least had been the best friendship and the greatest partnership I'd ever been a part of.

But we didn't think about any of that. We were exhausted and hurtin'. And together we swore General Borbon would not be leaving Miami. We were going to go out in a blaze of glory, and we were takin' him with us. I raised my shot glass in a silent toast. Borbon - may you spend the rest of eternity burnin’ in hell.

"Ricardo Tubbs, as I live and breathe."

Back in Miami, most people who greeted me like that in a bar wouldn't have been doin' either for much longer. But I recognised the voice, and when I turned I recognised the face. "Lieutenant Charles Dutton, you old son of a bitch." I meant it. We weren't old friends. But enough time had passed that he couldn't possibly have meant me any harm. "Tell me this isn't a nasty coincidence."

"You know it isn't." He ordered a beer and balanced his now considerable bulk on the red-topped bar stool next to mine. "I heard about what went down in Miami."

"You and every other supervisor this side of the Canadian boarder. Let me guess - Interdepartmental Memo? Read, 'As of this moment, Ricardo Tubbs and James Crockett are unemployable by any and every law enforcement agency in the U. S.of A.'?"

I saw a small smile touch his lips as he wiped away the beer from his chin having polished off one half of it in a single gulp. "Not everywhere is as lucky as Miami. I'm sure there's a long line of recruits just begging to get their hands on a loaded gun, a fast car and an 'access all areas' police badge so they can play pimp for the next kingpin in drug land. Here in New York we don't have that luxury."

I couldn't believe the conversation was goin' in the direction it seemed to be. Next thing I knew he'd be offering me…

"…I'm offering you a job." Surprise didn't come close.

"You did read that Interdepartmental Memo all the way through right?" He nodded. "My partner and I shot down a seaplane carrying a Federal prisoner who was about to turn State's Evidence and give up the names of half of the East Coast players."

Dutton shrugged. "In return for his freedom, as I understand it, after he'd killed… how many people? Been responsible for how many deaths? Besides, you and I both know he'd never have made it to court. He was about to deliver some very influential people to the FBI; people like that don't exist in a vacuum. Friends of friends, bent cops, Government men with their names on office doors. General Manuel Borbon had a limited life expectancy and we both know it. You and your partner saved a lot of people a lot of trouble and for that reason, your partner's probably going to live a long and carefree existence in the deep South."

I almost opened my mouth, almost asked him how he knew… but I realised quickly that he was reachin', guessing. Crockett wasn't with me in New York, it didn't take a qualified psychologist to work out where he'd have headed.

"So we did the world a favour. So buy me a drink and move on."

He smiled into the rest of his beer. Then looked up, caught the barman's attention and ordered another round. "You were a good police officer, Ricardo. It seems like a shame to throw that away just because a twisted general and a ton of muddy politics got in the way of two cops' midlife crisis."

No way was I gonna let him push any buttons. "So what's this job?" I was sure it was a set up, that it wasn't going to be an offer I couldn't refuse; like two years undercover - what they'd given Valerie - just to bring down some drug dealin' lowlife. Not a chance. I wasn't even sure if I could care anymore.

"NY Homicide are short a good cop. Lieutenant Larry Larson's a friend of mine. One Detective Lawrence Jackson was shot and killed in a hostage situation gone bad three months ago. His partner, Tyrone Fox, is a good guy. He's been back a month and he needs someone to work with - someone he can trust."

"He was hurt too?"

"Not physically. But he and Law were close, you know? He went a little loopy for a few weeks. But he's married, got two beautiful children, and they brought him back from the edge. I'm not asking you to work with a mental case. He's fine now, passed his psych exam with flying colours."

"It is. Believe me. We're short handed. Miami might think riddin' the world of a mutinous, murdering bastard is an unforgivable crime, but up here we don't much care about the politics of a place so far away it might as well be on a different planet." I didn't point out that Cuba really wasn't that far away. I already thought he'd lost his marbles. He finished his second beer in three swallows. "You have an answer for me that won't insult my sensibilities?"

"Ricardo Tubbs." I didn't tell him to shorten my name, I was about to but something stopped me. I'd gone by 'Rico' in Miami, I wanted a clean break, didn't want to hear an echo in Sonny's southern drawl every time Tyrone talked to me.

"Tyrone Fox. Welcome to New York - although I hear you're an ex-patriot."

I couldn't help the smile. "Yeah, ten years is a long time but it's good to be home." I wasn't sure I meant that.

He sat down, offered me what I assumed was his partner's old chair as the two desks were pushed together much like mine and Sonny's had been. Could I have worked side by side with someone else if Sonny had been killed in the line of duty? No. But then I'd had the chance to really, seriously think about the answer to that question. "The Lieutenant tells me you've been working Vice down in South Florida."

"Yeah."

"That's wild."

"Yeah." I thought he deserved more from me but didn't seem to need it.

"Law - my old partner - and I knew some guys from the academy worked Vice uptown. They way they described it, it sounded like a really complex gig."

"It has its complexities, everyone's connected to everyone else. It's just a case of picking at the ends until it all unravels."

Tyrone grinned. "See, that's the trouble with Vice! Too much spaghetti. It's all links in chains, suppliers and distributors, barons and lords, dealers, junkies, informants and worms. You take someone out, another snake just slithers in to take his place." I was gettin' lost amongst the metaphors. "Homicide's simple. Someone gets killed, we find out who did it. We put them away."

"That simple, huh?" I liked his enthusiasm for the job. It was kind of refreshing.

"Absolutely. Nothin' complicated in it. And we have a crackin' Crime Scene Investigation team - second only to the gods of Vegas." I'd never ever worked with a CSI department. By the time they'd stepped on to the scene in Miami, Sonny and I had been long gone.

"Tyrone, Tubbs." He looked up at the sound of Larry Larson's voice carrying at normal volume over the buzz in the open plan office and I followed suit. It was something that was gonna take a long, long time to get used to; another Lieutenant's voice and my name linked by that comma to someone else. They say a partnership's a lot like a marriage. Sonny and I, our partnership was a marriage. Except for the sex, our co-workers used to say, and there were plenty of rumours around the department that we were havin' that too. Never bothered us. Sonny always used to say everyone else was jealous of what we had.

"Dead body, Lower East Side, under the Williamsburg Bridge. Probably a suicide, but go take a look."

Tyrone was out of his seat, leather jacket grabbed from the back of his chair. "Yes, Sir."

I followed, feelin' like the new kid at school with an upper class accent, combed-back hair and white socks, the kid who knows he's gonna get beat up before the day is out.

"Car's in the underground garage," my new partner informed me as I followed his bounce at a sedate pace down first the stairs from the third floor to the ground, then through a red door and down two flights of concrete steps to the basement. "I don't like to take the elevator. Don't like cops who let themselves get all chubby on coffee and doughnuts and no exercise day in, day out."

I suddenly remembered the early days, when I'd turn up at the St Vitas Dance with freshly roasted coffee and a bag of doughnuts for Sonny and his pet alligator. No fat on either of them that shouldn't have been there. I pushed away the memory because, oh man, it hurt to have it in my head.

The car reminded me of the old Starsky and Hutch icon - a Gran Torino, except that it wasn't red with a white flash. It was a bronzy brown colour. Same year though, I reckoned. Something in my expression must have given away what wasn't exactly disappointment, but was a sudden jolt back to the real world of policing, because Tyrone stopped with the driver's door open and asked me what was up.

"Don't like the car, Ricardo?"

"Sorry. Just used to something different, that's all."

He smiled. "What? You used to drive Porsches down in that art deco paradise?"

"I had a 1962 Cadillac Convertible, and my partner drove a white Ferrari Testarossa." Tyrone whistled his appreciation.

"Nice cars." Then his smile faded, and he got all serious on me. "So it was the real deal down there?"

I shook my head slowly. "No, it wasn't real. It was a fantasy life; a playground for the most dangerous game of all."

He didn't have to ask. "Hunting people."

"Yo got it."

I dropped into the passenger seat, impressed when he started the engine and it didn't sound like it would leave us stranded half way to the crime scene. It was a cliché, but for the first time in ten years I rolled out with a stranger at my side. Still, at least I felt like I could trust him.

#

I handed over the keys to the Caddy along with my gun and my badge. I thought Sonny had done the same with the Ferrari keys. So when I turned up for a last goodbye at the marina, I was surprised to see him gettin' ready to leave in that snow white dream machine.

"Can I offer you a lift to the airport, in my stolen car?"

I had to laugh. The sheer bare-assed cheek of it was breathtaking. At that moment I think I loved him more intensely than ever before.

We said our goodbyes at the airport. He pulled the Ferrari up just shy of the Domestic Departure terminal and for a long while we just sat in silence. Then he turned to me and I saw his eyes were wet. There is a no more heart breaking sight than seeing a man you love more than life cryin'. I reached over, wound my arms around his neck and he hugged me so tight I thought he'd crush me.

"Take care, Sonny."

It was a minute before he answered and I knew he was trying to find his voice. "You too, Rico. Don't forget me, man."

Like I ever could. Ten years of practically livin' each other's lives, of seein' each other at our worst and our best, of trusting one another with our next breaths. I had to force myself to let him go, to sit back, open the car door and get out. I grabbed my bag from the trunk where the engine should have been and leaned back in for a last look at the man who'd changed me so much I no longer recognised myself.

"Goodbye, Partner."

And that was it. I closed the door on the best, the wildest ten years of my life and watched my heart and soul drive away with the roar of that engine and a single red flash of those brake lights. Then he was gone and I walked into the airport to catch my flight up here - back home.

# # #

Sonny:

South from Miami takes you to Key West and then it's on down to Cuba. That didn't strike me as the friendliest place to set down roots, besides, the last time I'd been there things hadn't worked out too well. So initially I drove north, took I95 to Port St Lucie, drove up to Kissimmee and straight through Orlando, got on I75 then jumped off at Live Oak and Lake City and onto Interstate 10.

I didn't stop anywhere for longer than it took to fill up the petrol guzzler I was drivin' until I reached Tallahassee. I knew an old friend who'd lived there once, owned a garage in Lafayette, but asking around I found he didn't live there any more and I wondered where he'd gone. I'd lost touch with so many people over the years. It made me think about Rico, and wonder if I was gonna lose him too.

I swore to myself I wouldn't let that happen. He'd promised to call Gina with an address once he settled, and I'd made the same promise, so through Gina we'd each know where the other had landed. It had seemed like an important thing to do at the time, now that arrangement felt like my only remaining lifeline when I'd cut every other one.

I left Tallahassee after two days and dropped down to Alligator Harbor, spent a night getting drunk in this rustic little bar close to the marina. I had a couple of shots for Elvis, my own druggy alligator who'd passed away from natural causes over four years ago. I sifted through some old memories, storing some away for safe-keeping, letting others remain for the time being at the forefront of my mind. I made some decisions too. I wanted a boat. Couldn't live on dry land for long, it didn't feel right. I thought perhaps if I could find some good fishing I could invest in a fishing boat and eek out a living that way, maybe take tourists on trips during the season.

I recalled Izzy bemoaning the busy city one day, and asking us, 'if it's tourist season, man, why can't we shoot them?' It brought a smile to my face, sitting in that bar on the hard wooden stool, getting splinters in my ass as the sun went down. I'd bet eight to five it didn't have the same effect at the time.

The next day I took Highway 98 and drove south until I reached a place called Apalachicola. I slowed down to read the Welcome sign; established in 1831, Gulf of Mexico Fishing Port. Perfect. I tooled into town.

I'd only come three hundred miles, but it was like crossing into another time. I found a rental place downtown and paid a deposit for a five night stay in a beach hut, which turned out to be a wooden cabin on the edge of the sand, overlooking the bay and St. George Island beyond. It was small but functional; open plan lounge and kitchen on the ground floor, with the toilet off the kitchen, double bedroom and en-suite shower upstairs. Parked outside, the Ferrari looked as wide as the cabin. But it was all I had left of almost twenty years being an undercover vice cop in Miami, no way was I givin' it up without a fight, and besides, no one had asked for it back.

I could have sold it, could have found someone who would pay upwards of a hundred grand for it. Not that I needed the money; Catie's death had left me with a small fortune - I hadn't touched a cent of it. I was used to seeing money, lots of it, used to being around cash that wasn't mine, and it had never held any real interest for me. If it had, I'd probably be dead or in jail by now. There were things far more valuable to me, and the Ferrari - while not exactly one of them - was a reminder of a fair few of those things.

Within a week I'd found a more permanent place to rent on St George Island. Getting to it by car was easy in theory - across John Gorrie Memorial Bridge to Eastpoint, and then across Bryant Grady Patton Bridge, which was almost too narrow for my expensive, flashy car. I'd bought a boat too, not a particularly impressive thing but I knew I could have it looking more like a fishing boat and less like a derelict ruin within a month or two.

I had no idea if either of these things would make me happy or contented. I didn't know if, after those months of working my magic on the wooden wreck tied to the mooring behind my rented home, I would be so mind-numbingly bored I'd have to use it to ship drugs from Cuba into Florida. I mailed my address to Gina, didn't write my name - just in case - although I did add a note about missing her, about hoping everyone was fine and that I sent my love. I had planned on calling her but when it came to it, I knew if I heard her voice I'd get straight back in the car and drive all the way home.

I didn't give a phone number either. There was a landline, but for the same reason I couldn't call her, I didn't want anyone calling me. The only person I gave that number to was my son Billy when I rang him on the cell phone number he'd given me last Christmas - a present from Bob, the guy I wouldn't let adopt him. Billy told me once he loved me all the more for that. I'd made one decision right in my life at least, it wasn't bad going. He asked all about Apalachicola, about where I was living, checked I still had the Ferrari he hoped I was going to give him for his eighteenth birthday.

"Not a chance, son of mine," I told him with a smile in my voice.

"I've time yet to talk you in to it." Two years by my reckoning. He was studying mathematics, physics and computing at school with a view to getting into the University of North Carolina to study Engineering. If I hadn't by then, I might have to sell the car just to pay his tuition fees. "Dad, what happened in Miami?"

I told him - not everything, not the details - but as much as I could. I'd always tried to be honest with him. And after I'd told him, all he said was, "Won't you miss Rico?"

I missed Rico more than I could cope with some days. I tried not to think about him, although I'd relented slightly in my determination not to bring my old life to this new one. I'd propped three photographs up on the mantelpiece above the open fire grate in the living room; a new one of Billy Caroline had sent me just before I'd left Miami, an old group photo taken on the boat back in the good days - me, Rico, Gina, Trudy, Stan and Zito - and one Gina had taken about a year ago, of Rico and I at a rare celebration of a job well done, at a quiet bar out of town.

I worked on the boat relentlessly, keeping busy, rising early and working long after there was enough light left to do so. It took seven weeks to finish it to the standard I wanted it finished by, but it was worth every hour I'd put into it. Twenty by ten, fitted with a Yanmar 50HP shaft driven diesel with fixed prop and a Mariner 10HP auxiliary outboard engine, just in case. It wouldn't outrun anything if someone came after me, but it could get me back to shore at a fair rate if I needed it to. It wasn't in the same class as my old cigarette boat, but it was mine, I'd restored it, and I was uniquely proud of it.

I called her 'The Ricardo'.

# # #

Rico:

Life in New York, as it turned out, wasn't too bad. Soon enough I found myself eatin' breakfast at a tall, round dining table in Tyrone's airy kitchen, with his wife feedin' me pancakes and his two beautiful young daughters asking me about life in Miami and if the diamond I wore in my ear was real.

Tyrone asked about it too, one hot day sitting in morning traffic trying to cross the Manhattan Bridge. Neither of us resided in Brooklyn. "I heard Kimberly askin' about your diamond but I didn't hear what you said. Is it for real?"

I hesitated, but in the four months we'd been working together we'd become friends and I trusted him. If not quite with my life. "Yeah, it's real."

"What was it, a gift or something?"

"Yeah, a birthday gift, couple of years ago, from my partner."

I watched his face. "Wow. That's some partner. I ain't never had a partner I liked enough to give a diamond stud to, not even Law, and we were close."

I thought maybe he'd drop the subject, especially as we started to move forward. But we made it maybe five feet and stopped again. "Tell me about him. You guys still in touch?" I didn't answer at first, and he took my hesitation as silence and held up his hands, "Hey, it's cool. I know some bad shit went down and if you don't want to talk about it…."

"His name's Sonny. And yeah, we're still in touch. Kinda." Kinda in that I'd called Gina, given her my new address and phone number in Soho, and she'd given me Sonny's address in a place called Apalachicola somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico. It sounded just like him yet at the same time, it didn't. Sonny had obviously settled with his more harmonising side, his spiritual side, rather than the player inside him, and I wondered how long it would be before the boredom meant he was trafficking coke from Cuba in a stolen speedboat just for the thrill of it. There was no number for him, and I hadn't got around to writing. Neither had he, and although the thought of losing touch with him wasn't a welcome one, I was starting to realise that we were living utterly separate lives now, and our paths were never going to naturally cross again if we carried on like we were doing.

"'Sonny', sounds like a white boy's name."

"More tanned than white, but yeah, he is." White, with sandy blond hair, emerald green eyes and a smile that could light up Manhattan. Something deep inside me started to hurt.

"And he gave you a diamond."

I looked at Tyrone sharply but he wasn't meaning anything by it. He was interested. I admit it seems a little odd looking in from the outside, but Sonny and I… it wasn't odd. It was something he gave to me because he knew I would love it and I did - I do. It's a permanent fixture. It wasn't like he'd given me a diamond ring or anything…. Like I said, I could see how it looked from an outsider's point of view. No one who knew us had questioned it. Maybe they'd just known better. Or they'd been expecting it. "We were close."

"So why did you leave?"

"You know why I left."

"No, why didn't you leave together?"

I was relieved that whatever had been blocking our progress was finally shifted, and the traffic started to move. Not that I didn't want to give him an answer, I just couldn't.

Within minutes of entering the sweltering building we were exiting it again with relief. The air conditioning had quit for what seemed like the hundredth time that summer and although thankfully the heat wave had broken, it was still officially too damn hot. I hadn't realised at first how acclimatised I'd become in Miami - Ricardo Tubbs does not like to sweat, not in his clothes - and it was starting to wear down my determination not to give in, give up, and drive south.

It had crossed my mind so many times I'd lost count. Middle of the night, late in the evening, early morning, I'd stand with the keys to my 1982 Lincoln in my hand and wonder if it would make it as far as the sunshine state. Believe me, that name don't mean nothin' until you've lived there, but it's such a perfect description just thinking it made me seriously homesick. Everything in New York is primary colours - vivid reds, blues, black and white. Everything in Miami is pastel shades, camp as a drag queen and I loved it. I tried to explain it to Tyrone one evening over beers in a bar NY Homicide had long ago adopted as its secondary headquarters.

"The place is so alive, man, it breathes it into you."

He grinned at me. "That's all the pot in the air, Ricardo."

"Yeah. You're a joker, Ty."

"Seriously, you're tryin' to tell me New York ain't alive? You lived here long before you went south and turned native, Bro', you're tellin' me you can get more alive than this?" It was a different kind of life and that's what was so impossible to put into words.

And so I'd stand there, staring at the car, wishing I'd kept the Caddy and trying to talk myself out of the crazy notion of finding my partner - my ex-partner - and spending the rest of my life fixing boats and fishing. Something always stopped me; a simple yawn as my body tiredly told me to go to bed, a call from the Lieutenant telling me my day was far from over, or a wrong turn that would take me over the bridge into Brooklyn. I didn't have the courage and I've never considered myself to be a coward. I missed it so much - missed him - that perversely it made me all the more determined to stay and make it work again in New York, work like it once had done. There were some painful memories, but with Sonny gone there would be even more in Miami. What's the old cliché? You don't know what you've got 'till it's gone? I think I always knew what I had in Sonny; I just wasn't brave enough to hold onto it.

The body we'd been sent out to had washed up in the wake of the Statton Island Ferry. A couple of Japanese tourists had spotted it while making a home movie of their New York experience. That's one experience it doesn't mention in the holiday brochures, although it probably should. CSI and the coroner were there long before us and we got some strange looks as we made our way over to the yellow tape cordon, but we managed to get a look at the body in situ before it was efficiently shipped off to the morgue. In ten years I think I visited Dade County morgue exactly twice. I've been to New York's morgue at least once a week for the last sixteen.

A young crime scene officer was processing the body - 'Mac', they called him - and he gave us chapter and verse on the cause of death despite it being obvious even to an ex-vice cop. Or maybe particularly to an ex-vice cop. I remembered a witness once telling us what he saw - 'M16s, lots and lots of M16s'. I recognised the mess one of those things could make. The body had more holes than Swiss cheese and he was white, white like a body that had bled out into the ocean. Then an older crime scene investigator joined us, and handed me a little transparent plastic evidence bag - sealed - and we found out what all those strange looks in our direction had been about when we'd first arrived.

"This was in his hand, Detectives, all scrunched up."

The water had got to it and there were a million creases in the paper, but it was without a doubt a photograph. Two men standing against a bright blue sky, arms thrown casually around each other's shoulders. Me, and my partner, Sonny Crockett.

#

The Coroner gave us an estimated time of death - somewhere between eight and midnight. When I'd asked him about water temperature and the cool nights despite the hot days (as I said, I'd attended too many dead bodies in too short a time) he told me he'd meant eight in the a.m., not p.m. Still, it ruled me out as a suspect before anyone had even mentioned it as a possibility. I'd been with Tyrone all day - breakfast with his family, work from eight until eight, then a beer and a steak at his favourite brew pub. I dropped him home at just before twelve. It was starting to feel like that second marriage all cops have with their partners. The problem was, I felt like I hadn't yet got a divorce from my last one.

We sat in the same traffic - I swear - that we'd sat in on the way to Brooklyn only a couple of hours before. I hated the traffic in New York. I'd forgotten how bad it was. Sure, Miami has traffic, but it never all seemed to be in the same place at the same time. Tyrone drove and I sat in silence, staring at the screwed up photograph though the sacred CSI seal of the plastic bag. Eventually Mac would work out I still had it and he'd break something getting over to the bureau to retrieve it. I didn't want to lose the guy his job, but it was the first time I'd laid eyes on Sonny in months, albeit just a picture, and I couldn't tear my stare from it.

"Never seen you smile like that, Ric," Tyrone observed as he waited for the lights to turn red about a thousand cars in front of us. What could I say? I used to be a happy person? Even when things were at their very worst, I had a smile for Sonny?

"You're imaginin' it, man. I'm a smilin' kinda guy."

He shook his head as we started forward. "You smile, sure, Bro'. With my kids, with Rachele, but like that?" He nodded at the photo in my hands. "Nah." I didn't know what to say so I said nothin'. I could see the rise of the bridge in front of us. "Tell me something; of all the places to go, why did you come back here?"

"Where the hell else would I go, man?" This line of questioning was guaranteed to wind me up and he knew it.

"Hey, easy. I'm just askin'."

"You're always askin'."

"I'm tryin' to understand my new partner, you know? The guy whose hands I put my life in every day? The guy whose life's in mine?"

I knew I needed to apologise. I was over-reacting. He'd called me 'Partner' once and I'd gone ballistic. I hated the idea of having a partner who wasn't Sonny, because he'd made the word mean something else, something more, something other than just the guy I hit the streets with. 'Partner' to me meant 'best friend', 'confidant', 'shrink' and 'sounding board'. Someone who knew me better than I even knew myself. And once in a while it had meant a whole lot more than Tyrone, than anyone, would ever be again. Sonny and I had given our own, private answer to that often-posed question, 'what are partners for?'

Sonny and I had been partners in the word's true sense and staring at his photo I was starting to realise exactly what that meant.

"Ric?"

"I'm sorry, Ty. I'm just rattled, that's all."

"Yeah, well, I guess findin' a photo of yourself in a dead guy's hand will do that."

Finally we were on the bridge.

#