Scraped off the pavement

"You arrogant bastard!" Magdalen yells. She struggles in my arms and breaks my foothold. The two of us teeter atop the bridge railing in the night breeze. I fight to keep hold of her while I scrabble to catch a handhold, a foothold, anything.

We start to topple. I'm wide open and her knee connects with my chin. Stars. I fall back toward the bridge. Magdalen screams. My head hits pavement. Blackout.

I'm on the ground. A dull ache grips my head. Blue flashes frame blurry shapes in my vision. Then the white blaze of a six-cell flashlight washes them all away in a flash of bright pain.

Professional or not, I can't help from yowling.

"Christ, Clark!" a harsh woman's voice says.

I squint. It helps a bit. I croak, "Do I know you, Officer?"

She coughs. "Can you hear me?"

"Yes," I say.

"OK, what's... what was your last partner's name?"

"Salty Royal," I say. "Light perpetual and all that. And I'm Whisper Clark, it's the end of a nasty damp cold Tuesday, unless it's Wednesday already, and the president is..."

"All right, Clark," she says, "you can't have that bad a bash on the head if you can crack wise."

I still can't see anything much beyond the circle of the flashlight. But the voice places itself.

"Witkowski?" I ask. "Tina, is that you?"

"Yes, Clark." She shifts the flashlight away, probably satisfied my pupils are equal and reactive to light. Valentina Witkowski, six feet one, amateur bodybuilder, last seen at the wake for my police career. Her face had looked kind of blurred and unsteady then too. I think she had been the one to drag me up to my third-floor walkup and dump me in bed.

"Did someone..." I start. "Did someone catch Magdalen Sullivan? I was trying to save her when..."

"Relax, Clark," she says. "Dino and I saw it all. I'll want your statement, of course, but I don't know if it'll go further than the shift report."

"She's OK then," I say.

"Well, aside from a modest case of hypothermia and half-drowning," Witkowski says. "Dino is pissed that she ripped his new uniform shirt. I must say I don't think much of the frails you're playing around with, Clark."

She was entitled, I supposed. Next to Tina Witkowski, almost any woman looked frail. Even a lot of men.

"Let's get you to the hospital," she says. "The sooner I get quit of you, the sooner I can start writing up my shift report."

"You're all heart," I say.

"Look on the bright side, Clark," she says. "No broken bones or teeth. Sullivan won't press charges. Claims it's all her fault. For all I know she wants to kiss and make up."

"We weren't..."

"Tell me another," Witkowski said. "Ups-ee-daisy!" she says, and lifts me to my feet.

My head throbs, but my feet hold me. Witkowski walks you toward her police cruiser.

"So how's life been for you, Ski?" I ask. "On track for sergeant?"

She spits. "Politics," she says. "You know how it is." I figured some youngster with a patron at Headquarters had walked over her head and shoulders to snatch the promotion she was more than due for.

"I hope Phil's been supporting you." Her husband Phil had just retired from the **** a couple of years ago, and had a lot of savvy in playing the game and had plenty of friends still at the P.D. He must be forty-eight by now, but I thought he was a good match for Tina.

She holds up her left hand, sticking up her bare ring finger like an obscenity.

"Damn," I say. "I mean, you don't deserve this, Witkowski."

"I can do self-pity all by myself, Clark," she says. "Ride?" She opens the front passenger door for me. Witkowski should really put me in back, but I don't argue.

She takes me to the emergency room, where the potential head trauma jumps me way up in the queue. A nurse puts me through the same do-you-have-a-concussion routine, gives me a bottle of Motrin and kicks me out.

Witkowski is still in the waiting room, filling out a report form.

"Still here?" I ask.

"Didn't want to leave a frail like you to find his way home after midnight," she says. She scribbles something final on the form and stuffs it in an envelope. She stands. "Ride?"

"I never got my dinner," I say. "And I'd say I owe you one. You hungry? Can I stand you to a midnight snack?""