LITMIR.BIZ

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Folger parked in front of a slender brownstone shouldered against a line of others similar in style. Hers stood out, the only one with flowers sprouting from window boxes. It looked like a place with a nice personality, a house that liked walks in the park and tea on Sunday afternoons.

      We stood on the stoop as she dug in her purse for keys.

      She said, “You’re lucky I drove today.”

      “What’s usual?”

      “Running. I’ve made two arrests on my commutes, one a pickpocket, the other a bike thief. The bike booster was so surprised he dropped a boltcutter on his foot and broke two toes. Made my week.”

      “No doubt.”

      “You look like you might work out a bit, Ryder. On your better days.”

      “I live on a beach. I enjoy running the shoreline. I also kayak and swim.”

      “Aha. That explains where the shoulders come from.”

      Inside, I saw spare and sleek furnishings designed in Sweden or Denmark, much like in my own home. There were enough plants to stock a small jungle, including a wide-fronded palm that owned an entire corner of the room. Light through the living-room window drew a golden parallelogram on the polished wood floor. I was taken by the sense of harmony.

      “This is a nice place, Lieutenant.”

      “Don’t sound so surprised. It’s a small place, but it’s in Manhattan. I rent out the top floor, live here.”

      Looking down a small hall, I saw two doors beyond what was obviously the bathroom. “Two bedrooms? That’s nice.”

      “One’s like an office. Or maybe a hobby room.”

      I glanced out the window. A pretty view of trees and the brick rowhouses across the way. Most cars on the street were upscale: Saabs and Audis and Beamers.

      “I thought Manhattan was an expensive place to –” I caught myself, winced.

      Folger kicked off her shoes, pushing them to the edge of a long blue couch. She tossed her purse on a counter separating the living room and kitchen nook. “To live? Too expensive for an NYPD dick, right? That’s what you were thinking? Level with me, Ryder.”

      “You nailed me. It’s exactly what I was thinking.”

      She walked to the window, stood beside me, hands on the sill, looking out. A wistful look crossed her face. “It’s freaking insanely expensive to live in Manhattan, anywhere halfway decent. I have an angel.”

      “Pardon?”

      She turned from the window, went and sat on the couch, crossing bare feet beneath her. I sat in a matching chair. A table of some blonde wood rested between us, on it a stack of National Geographics and a couple of magazines called Weather.

      “Six years back a lawyer comes to the door of my thousand-buck-a-month rathole in Brooklyn. Shows up out of nowhere. He’s an ancient Jewish guy, stooped over, carrying a briefcase that folds like an accordion. He offered me half a million dollars. Free money.”

      “Get to the punchline, Lieutenant.”

      “The working day’s over, you can call me Alice. And it’s no joke. There was just one catch. Mr Ancient Lawyer said it was a conditional grant. I had to use the dinero to improve my living conditions. Not buy a car, not invest in alpacas. No Dior gowns. I had to buy a home, and it would be purchased under his supervision to make sure I got it right.”

      My skepticism was blatant. “How much is it you want for the Brooklyn Bridge?”

      She smiled gently. It was so pretty as to be disarming. “I still don’t believe it myself sometimes. But that’s exactly how it went down. After taxes, I ended up with enough to make a heavy down-payment here. Plus I get rental income from my tenant upstairs, Julie Chase, an accountant who’s even quieter than me. The upshot is I own a home for less than the rent on my old apartment, where steam pipes knocked and greasers smoked dope on the fire escapes.”

      “Any idea who made the grant?”

      She pursed the full lips, thinking, like the question was something she puzzled with a lot. “I’d just made detective after four years in uniform, doing my damndest to nail ’em and jail ’em. I figure somehow I impressed or helped someone rich. He, she or they wanted to move me out of my former shithole, pardon my Iroquois.”

      I’d heard of such munificence. Though, in general, folks helped by cops made donations to the department or a specific unit, like a kidnapping squad who’d returned a family member. It was rarer for a gift to be made to an individual. Rarer still for it to be anonymous.

      “You told the department about the grant, I hope?”

      “From nowhere a brand-new detective gets a half-million bucks dropped in her lap? God, yes. I’d have been suspected of being on a pad for either the Mafia or Donald Trump. Turns out the lawyer, Mr Solomon Epperman, esquire, was a heavy hitter in his day, still is when he wants to be. Mr Epperman had a talk with the brass, convinced them the giver would remain anonymous, no strings.”

      “Not someone who could pop up one day and pressure you.”

      “Yep. Like, ‘Look, hon, I laid a half mill on you, now fix my parking ticket.’” Folger slapped her forehead. “Duh, I was going to make you some hot syrup with tea in it. Fix up your tum-tum.”

      “Beer is remedy of choice for the Southern male.”

      “I can do that.”

      She bounced from the couch, went to the kitchen area, yelling at me over her shoulder. “Bathroom’s first door down the hall if you want to wash up and gargle. I’d advise both.”

      I headed to the bathroom, shoulder-tight, with all the usual fixtures. I turned the hotwater faucet, let it run. A mirrored medicine cabinet was over the sink. My eyes were veined from upchucking, my hair in disarray. There were several disturbing flecks sticking to my chin.

      I filled the sink with hot water, palming soap into it, slapping the froth on my face. I emptied the sink, did the same bit with cold water, sans the soap, my rinse cycle. I fought the impulse for a ten-count, then, under cover of running water, opened her medicine cabinet, scanning. All typical stuff, over-the-counter analgesics and nostrums, a couple of prescriptions I recognized as a stomach-acid reducer and an allergy relief med.

      Two hard knocks hit the door a foot from my ear. “Ryder!”

      I whipped the cabinet closed. The magnetic latch clicked, sounding as loud as a pistol shot. I saw my grimace in the mirror.

      “Uh, what … Alice?”

      “There’s nothing interesting in the medicine cabinet. But there’s a new toothbrush in the closet. You can have it if you promise to buy me a replacement.”

      My heart pounding with childish guilt, I turned off the water and started to respond, but her footsteps were moving away. I gratefully accepted the brush, using toothpaste and mouthwash in deluge quantities.

      When I emerged, much refreshed, she was in the kitchen area. The last few feet of the hall was bookshelves, books of all sorts. I looked closer and noted the two bottom shelves, ten running feet altogether, were devoted to meteorology. I slid one out: The Physics of Climate Change. It seemed the sort of text one studied in college, maybe even post-grad. I slipped it back, pulled another. A biography of someone named Carl-Gustav Rosby.

      “Who’s Rosby?” I asked.

      She turned and saw me with the book. Her neck colored. “He, uh, was a pioneer of high-atmosphere meteorology.” She walked over, hiding embarrassment behind a sip of wine. “I really like reading about weather. I know it seems weird.”

      I took a bottle of Sam Adams from her hand and nodded toward the shelves. “Makes perfect sense to me. I fish and kayak in the Gulf. The last surprise I want is high surf or lightning. I’m a Doppler devotee. Did

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