No Dominion The Walker Papers - By CE Murphy Page 0,9

you when I grow up, Detective Walker.”

I followed her out of Morrison’s office, wondering if she just might be.

Forgotten But By A Few

“Forgotten But By A Few” takes place at the same time as SPIRIT DANCES (Book Six of the Walker Papers), while Gary is in San Diego.

I woke up on the plane with the feeling somebody’d been sittin’ on my chest. Ain’t a nice feeling, ‘specially when a heart attack snuck up on you a year or so back. Well, it hadn’t snuck up on me, I’d been witched into it, but when you’re lying in a hospital bed with a nurse who don’t never say more than two words together at once scowling down at you, whether it snuck up or got sent don’t really matter. So waking up with that feeling made me a lot more nervous than it used to woulda, and that was a lousy way to start a holiday weekend.

‘course, it coulda just been the warm humid air in San Diego feelin’ thick in my chest. Not that Seattle ain’t humid, but it just ain’t the same. San Diego’s got no winter, plenty of sunshine, beautiful women hanging out at the beaches, and one of the best zoos in the world. In the long couple years between my wife dying and me meeting Joanne, I’d wondered why I still lived in Seattle. Now I knew, a’course, but that didn’t mean I was gonna miss my St. Patrick’s Day weekend with the boys.

And it was getting important to show up every year. The number of us who could make it was shrinking, and not because we couldn’t afford to come. Whether we liked to admit it or not, none of us were spring chickens anymore. I was one of the youngsters, and my seventy-fourth birthday had been a couple months ago. Korea had been a long time ago, and nothin’ but M*A*S*H re-runs kept it fresh in folks’s minds.

Two of my buddies were waitin’ for me at the luggage carousel. One of ‘em held a sign that said my name in big ugly Army-style stencils: GARRISON MATTHEW MULDOON, with a military rank that hadn’t meant anything to me in fifty years. The other guy, Dave Ackerly, had a sign reading ANDERSON COLVER LEE, MASTER SGT. tucked under his arm. Andy was the guy holding my sign, and I had one in my bag that said CORPORAL DANIEL BAE KIM. Sun would have the next one, and the last guy in would have a sign for Ackerly, the first fella in. That sign would say WHERE THE HELL’S THE LIMO, ACK?

We’d been doing this a while. There were rituals. Sometimes it meant we spent about six or eight hours at the airport, waitin’ for everybody to come in. Truth was, we could spend our whole weekend in the airport and none of us would care much, except for it was hard to get beer at baggage claim. Mostly it was about seein’ each other again, always maybe for the last time. Don’t much matter where that happens, as long as you get to say goodbye.

Andy pounded my back while the sign with my name on it jabbed me in the ribs. “Muldoon! You look good, you look great, you look—” He let me go and took a step back. Andy was a little black guy from Alabama whose skinny bones had gotten him out of more tight spots in Korea than any of us could count. He was strong as hell, made up of baling wire and sprung steel, and every time I saw him his eyes had sunk farther into his head. He looked terrible, though I wouldn’t tell him that to his face.

“You look great,” he said again, except this time he meant it. “What’s going on, Muldoon, you got a new girl?”

“Yeah, Andy, a hot young thing who can’t get by without me.” Funny thing was, it was true, not that he’d believe me. “You’re looking good too, old man.”

“Bullshit, I look like hell, but that’s okay, I been through hell.”

Anything else he said was lost as The Ack-Man elbowed him out of the way to shake my hand, then, who were we kidding, offer up a bear hug as big as Andy’s. I felt his ribs when I hugged him. Dave was closer to my size, couple inches over six feet, but his muscle had withered away over the years until he was tall and skinny and old. We were all old.