“I got the word,” the cabby said as we drove through the night. “It was ‘pooch.’ ”

BACK AT THE DOUGHNUT PLACE, once again behind the wheel of my car, it occurred to me that, as a staffer with the biggest newspaper in the city, I had some obligation to notify the city desk about what was going on.

I got hold of Dan, working late on the city copy desk, who generally feels that I am a total fucking idiot, stemming back to an incident before I joined the paper. Because he mostly worked nights, our paths had rarely crossed since I’d started my new job.

“Hey, Dan,” I said.

“Zack. Sarah’s not here. She’s at that retreat where all the management types went.”

“I know, Dan. She’s my wife. She tells me things.”

“So, what can I do for you then? Pretend to fall down the stairs again?” Some things end up haunting you for a very long time.

“I thought you’d want to know that a Metropolitan employee, in the course of conducting his journalistic duties, found the subject of his feature nearly stabbed to death.”

I could hear Dan’s breath intake. “Which Metropolitan employee?”

“Me, Dan. Is there time to write anything for the replate?”

“It’s like, ten minutes to deadline. Best I could do would be to get a brief in or something.”

“What do you think? I’ve got a hell of a story here, about a private detective by the name of Lawrence Jones, who’s been investigating a series of robberies and ends up getting stabbed in his own apartment. I was doing a whole takeout on him.”

“You found him?”

“Yes.”

“And called the police?”

“Yes, Dan.”

“What’s the address? At the very least, we can get a photog out there so we have crime scene pics to run with a story for tomorrow.”

The thing was, there wasn’t that much we could print even if we’d had more time. Lawrence, it was clear, might already be dead on the operating table at Mercy General, and we couldn’t go naming him in the paper before the police had made their attempts to contact members of his family. Nor could we say, with any certainty, that the smash-and-grab at Brentwood’s was related to the assault on a man who lived above a hair salon. Nor would we want to say, in a two-paragraph story, that the injured man had been found by a Metropolitan reporter, thereby tipping the competition and undercutting that reporter’s exclusive for the following day’s paper.

So Dan decided the best thing to do would be to run a bare-bones item on the Metro page, tucked into the digest, that police were investigating a violent attack on an unnamed private investigator, but details were unavailable at press time.

“You’ll have to come in tomorrow and write something major,” Dan said. “I’ll leave a note for dayside to expect you.”

I slipped the phone back into my jacket, feeling chilled and exhausted. It was only now, sitting in the Virtue, that it occurred to me that there was a chance that the car was not going to start. I prepared myself to dig my auto club emergency card out of my wallet. I slid the key in, turned it, and to my astonishment, the engine came on just like that.

“You are one unpredictable piece of shit,” I said, backing the Virtue out of the doughnut shop parking lot.

On the way home I detoured by Mercy General and went to the ER to find out how Lawrence was doing. There was a cop there, just standing around, who told us Mr. Jones was still in surgery, but he was either not at liberty to say anything more or simply didn’t know.

A man who looked like the guy in the photo pinned to the bulletin board in Lawrence’s was pacing in the waiting area and, when he heard me ask the cop about Lawrence, approached.

“Are you the one who phoned the restaurant?” he said.

I nodded. “You must be Kent. I’m Zack.”

He extended a hand to me. “Kent Aikens. Thanks for letting me know.”

“I didn’t know who else to call. Has Lawrence got family?”

“Not local. I think his parents are dead, but he’s got a sister named Letitia out in Denver, I think. I’m going to try to locate her, let her know. And when…” He hesitated, not sure whether the word he was looking for was “if.” He composed himself and continued. “When Lawrence wakes up, I can find out from him who else he wants me to call.”

“Sure,” I said. “Have you spoken to the doctors?”

“They don’t want to tell me much. I’m not, you know, family.” He shook his head angrily. “I’m just the faggot friend, the only one who’s even fucking here. But they did tell me that the knife punctured his lung, among other things. They said something about his lung filling up with blood. I spoke to him, like, yesterday. He phoned me. We were going to get together this Friday night, go to a club or something. He mentioned you, that you were some reporter?”

I nodded.

“And that you were hanging out with him. He had good things to say about you.”

I half smiled. “He’s a good guy.”

Kent swallowed, turned away so I wouldn’t notice his chin quivering. I gave him one of my own business cards. “If you need anything, or can let me know how Lawrence is doing, please let me know. That has my work and home numbers on it.”

Kent took the card without looking at it and slid it into the front pocket of his jeans. “Okay,” he said. “I thought, once he was through being a cop, there’d be less chance of this kind of thing happening. Working for himself, not chasing people down alleys, how could something like this happen?”

“It happened at his apartment,” I said. “Someone came looking for him, most likely these people he’d been investigating. They killed another detective a couple of nights ago.”

Kent took that in, said nothing.

I said, “You have any other idea who might have it in for him?”

He shook his head. “It just doesn’t make any sense. Lawrence is a good guy.”

The sliding glass doors to the ER parted and in strode Detective Trimble. Kent caught a glimpse of him and turned away, muttering, “Oh, great. Our hero has arrived.”

“What?” I asked. “You got problems with Trimble?”

“I know the history,” he said. “Lawrence nearly died a few years ago because of that asshole. Look, if I find out anything, I’ll give you a call, okay?” And he walked over to one of the vinyl and chrome waiting-room chairs and took a seat, studying the pile of outdated magazines on the small table next to him.

Trimble strode past me, nodded, and kept walking in the direction of the operating rooms.

It was about one in the morning when I got home. The Camry was in the driveway, pulled up close to the garage. Angie had returned from Oakwood some time ago, I guessed, considering that Sarah had spoken to her when she phoned home from the retreat. I wondered whether my daughter might still be up, but when I came in and did a walkabout, it was clear that both she and her brother were asleep. All manner of interrogations could begin tomorrow, should I choose to conduct them.

I phoned Sarah from the kitchen phone.

“God, I’ve been waiting up for you, hoping you’d call,” she said from her hotel room. “What’s happening?”

“It’s Lawrence,” I said. “Someone tried to kill him in his apartment. I found him. He’s pretty bad. I don’t know whether he’s going to make it.”

Sarah waited a moment, and said, “Tell me everything.”

I gave her the basics, that Lawrence’s attacker was unknown, that it might or might not be related to the smash-and-grab at Brentwood’s, that I had a major story to write first thing in the morning.

“Do you want me to come home?” she asked. “I can bail on this thing. I don’t have to stay. We won’t be learning anything. It’ll all be bullshit, the way these things always are.”

“No, no, it’s okay, there’s not much you could do if you came back.”