“Her? That’s Detective Melendez. Bitch!” she whispered, loud enough for me to hear.

We both smiled at that.

I drove to Bordeaux In Brooklyn, our store in Brooklyn Heights. Situated on the lower floors of a lovely old brownstone on Montague Street, it was my favorite of our three locations. With its gilt lettered signs on green pane glass, globe fixtures, and intricate woodwork, the place had a distinct nostalgic feel reminiscent of the Jahn’s Ice Cream Parlors that used to dot the borough. There were many reasons to love that store: the weird customers it seemed to attract, its proximity to the Brooklyn Bridge, the breathtaking views of lower Manhattan from the Promenade. I can remember a hundred spring days when I felt as if I could simply reach across the East River and rake my fingers along the ridges of the Twin Towers, or take a running jump and land on the South Street Seaport.

In my heart of hearts, I know I loved that store best because of Klaus. Klaus, the store manager, had been with us for years. He knew more about music and fashion and popular culture than anyone I had ever met. Born out west somewhere, Wyoming or Utah, I think, Klaus came to New York to escape his family, or maybe it was to let them escape him. The two thousand or so miles between son and family served both parties well. The distance made it easier for his folks to deny his gayness, and he could love his folks back without constantly chafing against their beliefs.

When he started with us he was a total punk. He was all ripped clothes, piercings, weird haircuts, and attitude, but he made it work. Klaus spent more time at Dirt Lounge, CBGBs, and Mudd Club than at work. Yet he was never late, never called in sick, and learned how

“Excuse me, mister, you got any Ripple?”

“Hey, boss!”

Klaus came around the counter and hugged me.

“Please, I’m a married man.”

“Oh, yes, and how’s that working out for you?”

He knew what he was asking; Klaus had become one of my closest friends. He was familiar with the rough spots in my life. It’s odd, but it seemed that I had spent the last dozen years shedding most every old friend I’d ever had. That’s what aging is, I think, shedding your old lives like snake skins. And what represents a man’s life better than the friends he’s made and lost along the way? Along with Klaus, there was Kosta, Pete Parson, Yancy Whittle Fenn, and Israel Roth: a gay, a Greek, an old cop, a drunk journalist, and a concentration camp survivor. Not exactly the A-Team, I know, but men who I could trust more than Larry McDonald.

“How’s it working out?” I repeated. “We’re still married. That’s how.”

“That bad.”

“Worse.”

“If you want my opinion, it’s not Katy.”

“No?”

“No, it’s you.”

“Can we go back to that part about wanting your opinion?”

“You’re bored,” he said.

“Thank you, Dr. Freud, but that’s not exactly breaking news.”

“Alan, he’s my lover, he-”

“I know who Alan is, for chrissakes! You don’t need to tell me that every time you mention his name.”

“Okay, boss, put your claws back in. He’s a psychologist and he’s about five years your senior.”

“Yes, I know. We’ve met. Is there like a point to this or are you gonna make me wish I had gone to the Manhattan store and let Aaron aggravate me instead?”

Klaus ignored that. “Well, before me, Alan had been in a ten-year relationship, and he said when he hit forty and he’d been with his partner for a long time. . he just lost it. He felt bored and lost and wanted to jump out of his own skin.”

“Did he buy a red 911 and start sleeping with cheerleaders?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes. Why, don’t you think a gay man can have a midlife crisis?”

“I wouldn’t know. I figured you’d tell me when the time came. So, that’s what you think this is, a midlife crisis?”

“Why, did you think you were immune? Being aware of the phenomenon is no protection against it.”

“I suppose.”

“Okay,” he said, “I can see it’s time for a change of subject.”

“Nice segue.”

“If you prefer, we can go back to-”

“No, that’s fine.”

“So what are you doing here? There’s a rumor that we have a new store and that you’re supposed to be there now.”

“Christ, you’re starting to sound like my brother.”

“Bite your tongue!”

Aaron thought the world of Klaus in a business sense, but they weren’t the same kind of people. It wasn’t Klaus’ being gay that bothered Aaron so much, though I don’t think he was completely comfortable with it either. It was that Klaus was obsessively plugged in, so much an animal of fashion and music, of what was coming next. Without really trying, he tended to make you feel out of it, passe. And Aaron was very much his father’s son, a traditionalist. My big brother was old when he was young. He felt way more comfortable with Elvis Presley than Elvis Costello and couldn’t have imagined any set of circumstances that would have allowed for the words sex and pistols to be in close proximity in the same phrase. As Klaus had once said of Aaron, he was more a fugue than a frug kind of guy.

“Sorry,” I said. “But I took a few days off.”

His face lit up. “You’re working a case! But what are you doing here?”

“Kenny Burton.”

“Sorry, you’ve lost me.”

“We used to work together when I started out as a cop. Now he works for a private security firm that has a contract with the Marshal Service over at the Federal Courthouse on Centre Street. I’m going over there to talk to him in a little while.”

“So, you’re killing time.”

“Couldn’t think of anyone I’d rather kill it with.”

“Yet another sad commentary on your life.”

“Fuck you, Klaus!”

“Ah,” he said. “There’s the Moe I know and love.”

Ten years my elder, Kenny Burton had the old-cop look, somehow grizzled and clean-shaven all at once. Except for my recent phone call, we hadn’t spoken or seen each other in many years, but I was unlikely to miss him. Everything about him, from his get-the-fuck-outta-my-way strut to the you-don’t-want-a-piece-of-me manner with which he blew cigarette smoke into the faces of oncoming pedestrians, screamed asshole. Or maybe I saw that in him because I knew him a little bit from when I had started on the job in the late ’60s.

Priding himself on things most other cops would hide like a crazy aunt, Kenny Burton was a brutal, thick-skulled prick who was trained in the ways of pre-Knapp Commission, pre-Miranda Rights policing. He never paid for a meal, a cup of coffee, or a blow job until word came down from on high. He never arrested anyone who wasn’t guilty or didn’t deserve to have the crap beat out of them. His motto might well have been: Why use your head when you can use your fists instead?

“Caveman Kenny Burton, is that you?” I said, walking up to him outside the courthouse. He flicked a still-burning cigarette at the open window of a waiting cab. The cigarette barely missed, bouncing harmlessly off the cab’s door.

“Who wants to know?”

“Moe Prager wants to know.”

Burton grunted, one corner of his mouth turning up. From him this was a hug and a kiss on the lips. “What you doing around here?”

“Waiting for you. Can I buy you a drink?”

“Sure. There’s O’Hearn’s on Church.”

O’Hearn’s was your basic New York version of an Irish pub. What did that mean? It meant it was just like any other shithole bar in the city, only with cardboard shamrocks on the walls in mid-March and the occasional barman who understood that hurling had meaning beyond vomit.

Burton’s malicious blue eyes pinned me to my chair as we sipped at our drinks. We were boxers staring across the ring before the bell for round one. He was doing the silent calculations. I could hear the gears churning nonetheless. The mistake people make about judging brutes is to assume they’re fools. Kenny Burton was no fool. We had never been close, even during the few years we served together. Larry Mac, on the other hand, always considered Kenny a pal. Only after I’d come to know Larry well did I figure out that odd coupling. Kenny Burton appealed to Larry’s ambition, not his heart. Ambitious men are like baseball scouts-they can spot everyone’s special talent and how that talent can serve them. Frankly, I didn’t want to know how Caveman had served Larry’s ambition.