The night with Macy Francis kept bothering me for the next couple of days. It was like a sad song that played in my head. I hadn’t expected it to turn out that way. I hadn’t liked what I’d seen, or felt.  The look in Macy’s eyes stayed with me: a terrible mixture of hurt, vulnerability, and anger that would be hard to soothe.  I grabbed Sampson on Thursday night after work. We agreed to meet at the Mark for drinks. The bar was a couple of streets down from Fifth. Local hangout. Tin ceiling, wideboard pine floors, long, worn mahogany bar, ceiling fan turning lazily.  ‘Sugar, damn,’ Sampson said when he arrived and found me sitting by myself, nursing a Foggy Bottom lager while studying the old Pabst clock on the wall. ‘You don’t mind me saying, you look like shit, man. You sleeping all right? You still sleeping alone, aren’t you.’
‘Good to see you too,’I said to him.’Sit down and have a beer.’
Then Sampson wrapped one of his mammoth arms around me.  He hugged me as if I were his little kid. ‘What the hell is going on with you?’ he asked.
I shook my head. ‘Don’t know exactly. The manhunt on the West Coast went real bad. I mean, it dried the hell up. There’s no word on Betsey Cavalierre’s murder either. Had a date the other night. Just about has me swearing off dating for the rest of my life.’ Sampson nodded. ‘I know the words to that sad song.’ He ordered a Bud from the bartender, an ex-cop we both knew Tommy DeFeo.
‘The case I was working on in California ended real badly, John.  The killers just disappeared. Thin air. So. How are you doing? You look good. For you.’
He raised an index ringer. Then he pointed it right between my eyes. T always look good. It’s a given. Don’t try to change the subject on me. We’re into something here.’
‘Oh hell, you know I don’t like to talk about my troubles, John. So tell me about yours.’I started to laugh. He didn’t.  Sampson just looked at me, said nothing, waited me out.
‘You’d probably make a decent shrink,’ I told him.  ‘Speaking of which, have you been to see the go............