I ALWAYS GET THE CUTIES JOHN D. MACDONALD
Keegan came into my apartment, frosted with winter, topcoat open, hat jammed on the back of his hard skull, bringing a noisy smell of the dark city night. He stood in front of my birch fire, his great legs planted, clapping and rubbing hard palms in the heat.
He grinned at me and winked one narrow gray eye. “I’m off duty, Doc. I wrapped up a package. A pretty package.”
“Will bourbon do, Keegan?”
“If you haven’t got any of that brandy left. This is a brandy night.”
When I came back with the bottle and the glasses, he had stripped off his topcoat and tossed it on the couch. The crumpled hat was on the floor, near the discarded coat. Keegan had yanked a chair closer to the fire. He sprawled on the end of his spine, thick ankles crossed, the soles of his shoes steaming.
I poured his brandy and mine, and moved my chair and the long coffee table so we could share either end of it. His story was bursting in him. I knew that. I’ve only had the vaguest hints about his home life. A house crowded with teen-age daughters, cluttered with their swains. Obviously no place to talk of his dark victories. And Keegan is not the sort of man to regale his co-workers with talk of his prowess. So I am, among other things, his sounding board. He bounces successes off the politeness of my listening, growing big in the echo of them.
. . .
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