Good. Keep the baby blues closed tight, pal. Don't look at me, and especially don't look down. In fact, I think I'll take that advice myself.

  "What do you think you're doing, you fool?" he snapped. "If you try to manhandle me back inside, I will simply jump, and take you with me."

  Oh, would you? If only…

  "I wouldn't dream of it," I lied. "But I really want to understand your pain, your desperation, and I feel that I can only do that if I share this with you."

  God, I'm so full of shit, I'm surprised it isn't coming out my ears.

  Arms spread wide, palms flat against the concrete wall, I started edging toward him.

  "But why should you care?" he said.

  "Maybe I once fell in love with the wrong woman," I said. "And maybe, just maybe, I lost her forever. We may be more alike than you think, Butch."

  "You have rare understanding, for a human," he said.

  Another foot. Another. Almost there.

  "I understand more than you know," I told him.

  Mistake. He realizes my voice sounds too close. He opens those big blue eyes that they all have, stares at me in disbelief.

  "You idiot! What are you–"

  No point in stealth now. I shuffled toward him a couple more feet, then grabbed his wrist where it was pressed against the wall behind us. Butch gave something like a gasp.

  Then, after a quick mental prayer, I stepped forward into nothing – taking the screaming, flailing fairy right along with me, all the way down.

I never did get to Luigi's, but, on the plus side, I arrived for work ten minutes early. Who says clouds don't have silver linings?

  My partner was even earlier than me, for a change. Karl was absorbed in something on his computer monitor, but when I came in he glanced up, then did a double-take.

  "Jesus, Stan, what the fuck happened to you?"

  "Went flying with a fairy," I said. "Trouble is, neither one of us had wings."

  He looked at me for a couple of seconds. "OK, you don't get to dangle something like that in front of me without providing the details. So, spill."

  "Yeah, all right. I'll tell you as much of it as I can until McGuire sends us out on a call."

  "Oh, that's right," Karl said. "You haven't heard yet."

  "Heard what?"

  "Start of our regular shift is gonna be delayed for an hour or so. A couple of Feebies are in town, and they're putting on some kind of dog and pony show for us. McGuire says the detectives on every shift have to sit through it."

  "Oh, great. That means the FBI wants something from us."

  "It always does," Karl said. "One of them's kinda hot, though – in a hard-ass sort of way."

  "I hope you're talking about a woman here," I said. "Not that there's anything wrong, you know, if you're thinking about changing teams."

  "Hey, you're the one who was goin' on about flying with the fairies. Now, let's hear it."

  "All right," I said. "I left the house early tonight, with the idea of having a leisurely dinner at Luigi's…"

  We weren't interrupted by Lieutenant McGuire or anybody else, for a change, so I was able to tell him the whole thing.

  "Holy shit," Karl said, about eight minutes later. "You just grabbed him and jumped?"

  "Sure. I knew the fire department was going to set up some of those big, semi-inflated air bags they use at fires, in case somebody falls from a ladder. I saw them do it once for a jumper, too – about three years ago. I made sure they did it this time, too."

  "So, how'd you get all banged up?"

  "Aw, I hit the fucking bag face first. I don't do this kinda thing every day, you know. The impact got my nose bleeding, although it's not broken, they tell me. And they make those air bags out of pretty rough fabric – that's where the facial abrasions came from. It'll all heal in a few days."

  Karl shook his head. "What I don't get is why you even bothered, man. I mean, if the dude, uh, fairy's choices are either jump into an air bag or go back inside, he'll make up his mind by himself sooner or later. Either way, no harm."

  "I'm not so sure," I said. "If he was determined to off himself, he could've found a section of asphalt the air bags didn't protect. They don't have enough to cover the whole front of the building, you know. That's why I was glad he kept his eyes closed – he didn't see the air bags deployed down below until we were on our way down. And, besides…" I shrugged.

  "Besides what?"

  "I hate to see city resources tied up for hours over bullshit like that. That fire truck and those black-and-whites had more important things to do than wait for Butch to make up his fucking mind. It offended my sense of… I dunno, efficiency, I guess."

  "My partner thinks he's Batman," Karl said in mock despair. "And I thought I was the vampire on this team."

  "You are, and besides–"

  That was when McGuire came out of his office and yelled, "All right, everybody head to the media room. Let's go, people."

  There was a general shuffling of chairs and feet as detectives got up, most of them grumbling a little.

  "Time for the dog and pony show," Karl said.

  I walked with him to the door. "Didn't you tell me that you saw one of those once, in Tijuana – a dog and pony show?"

  "Nah, that was a donkey and a midget. A couple of chicks were involved, too, although it turned out one of them was a dude."

  "Hope this exhibition's gonna be better than that," I said.

  "It could hardly be worse."

  How wrong we were. How fucking wrong we were.

We sat in darkness for maybe half a minute. If we were watching old-tech VHS, I would have figured it was just leader tape we were looking at. But this was a DVD, which doesn't need blank space at the beginning. I guessed the darkness was part of the program – a way to build suspense, maybe. If so, it was working.