Q.Well, you texted her that you had to see her. You were helping her with problems she was having. Almost sounds like things a husband would do.
A.I wasn’t Frankie’s husband. I was her friend. That’s all.
Q.Someone saw you at her apartment, Mr. Falk. Wednesday night, around the time she was killed.
A.No, they didn’t.
Q.Your photo was subsequently picked out of an array. Can you explain that?
A.No. But whoever said that—they’re wrong.
Before
Frankie
September 8
I’m legitimately drunk by the time Richard and I leave Las Nacionales. It’s not an accident. I noticed I was getting buzzed an hour in and decided to double down. Had that third glass of wine. Maybe I want to lose my grip. Be too drunk to be fully accountable. I trip on the threshold on our way out and almost take a header.
“Whoa! You okay?” Richard reaches back to catch me, his strong hand grabbing my forearm. It’s sudden and forceful.
“Sorry,” I say. “I think I drank too much.”Ugh.I am a car crash in slow motion.
I was drunk that first night with the Senator. Not drunk enough to have been incapacitated. But drunk enough to let myself make decisions I might not otherwise have made.
This time is different, though. What if thisiseven real—Richard and me? Yes, he’s married. That’s one thing these situations have in common. But love happens. It changes things. People. The curve of the earth.
God, is that what I’m thinking? That helovesme? No. That isn’t it, exactly. I am not that far gone. But there’s a feeling in my body when I’m around Richard—I’m utterly calm and hyperkinetically alive at the same time. It’s a feeling I don’t want to let go of.
We’re halfway down the block before Richard breaks the silence. “I’m sorry if I overreacted back there, grabbing you. When you stumbled, my brain went straight to Van—”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to apologize. It really doesn’t take much for me to think about it,” he says. “My mind just inevitably goes to…”
“I’m sorry. It must be so hard,” I say. “And I know I’ve said I’m sorry a million times before, but I don’t know what else to say.”
“I don’t think there is anything elsetosay.” Richard shrugs. “I was talking to his wife today. She wanted some advice about how to invest, now that the sale has gone through.”
“At least she doesn’t have to worry about money.”
“That’s true,” Richard says. “But she was saying how much she wished she still had the restaurants now. They were such a part of Van, you know. They would have been something of him she had left. It was truly heartbreaking. That’s the thing about being married so long…”
We fall silent then. The talk of marriage has shifted things. Maybe it’s for the best.
“You want to hear something awful?” Richard asks.
“I don’t know—do I?” Not if it’s about his marriage.
“Sometimes I wish I’d seen what happened on the mountain.” He sighs. “Maybe it would be easier to process. Because as it is, it’s just a void. It’s hard not to fixate.”
“I understand,” I say. “I’ve thought that myself. That maybe it would feel more real that way.”
“Wait—I thought you did see it?”
I shake my head. “No, I was in front of Van. Behind Scotty.”
“Oh,” Richard says. He looks puzzled. “I thought somebody told me you were at the back. Maybe Brooks—I don’t remember.”
