William McGivern - Night of the Juggler

The white princess was back in her electronically guarded castle, the Gypsy was thinking. That’s what they would drink to, that’s what they would celebrate.

But who would raise a glass to Manolo and the dead men at the boathouse and the Arsenal? And what did Samantha and Babe Fritzel and Rusty Boyle, with fire in his leg and ribs, what did they have to celebrate?

Could you say that John Ransom had got a break, rotting with cancer and a pair of slugs in his face? That’s what he’d bought tonight. And even the human animal killed, he had to matter. The whole city mattered. Or should anyway.

He snapped on his sedan’s red dome light and turned and looked at Luther Boyd. The men stared at each other for a long, thoughtful moment.

“Some other time,” Tonnelli said.

“I understand, Lieutenant,” Luther Boyd said, and gave him a soft salute.

Maybe he does at that, Tonnelli thought, maybe he does, as he shifted into drive, his car rolling smoothly away from the curb.

Luther Boyd stood on the sidewalk and watched the red dome light of Tonnelli’s car as it flowed away from him into the darkness, turning out of sight at last into Fifty-ninth Street, where the mighty equestrian statue of General William Tecumseh Sherman stood in its full arrogant glory on the Grand Army Plaza.

The irony suggested by that statue was a familiar one to Luther Boyd and perhaps to all professional soldiers. The general, an awesome, idealized figure astride a magnificent horse, was being escorted into heaven by a winged angel holding aloft the palm of peace. But while the general’s tasseled sword was sheathed, his boots were spurred to charge, and he was headed south, forever south toward Georgia.

Standing alone on the sidewalk, Luther Boyd experienced the emptiness that always beset him after battle. Even in victory there was a sense of loss, the dissolution of that inevitable but spurious fraternity generated among combat troops.

He realized then how very much he had wanted to have that drink with Lieutenant Tonnelli.