“You wouldn’t kill him,” Langdon said, after that statement had hung in the air. “Not permanently.”

“No,” Katie agreed. “But it would hurt like hell.”

“Explain,” Langdon said.

“It’s complicated,” I said.

“That much I get. But explain it anyway.”

We were at a Greek restaurant on Damen, close to the Alberts’ apartment. We came in two minutes before closing and the owner made the universal gesture for “kitchen’s closed.” Langdon flashed her badge, ordered two coffees and pointed to a booth. The owner sighed, nodded, brought coffee to the booth, and got back to closing up the rest of the shop.

I fiddled with my cup. “I didn’t think Katie would still be that pissed at me.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Langdon said. “Otherwise you wouldn’t have tried so hard not to come with me when I asked you to. I’m pretty sure you knew she would still be that pissed with you and would try to blame you.”

“Yeah, fair enough.”

“Is she right?”

“That it’s my fault?”

“Yes.”

“No.”

Langdon gave me a look.

“Probably no,” I allowed.

“I think you need to go back to the beginning of this for me,” she said.

“I told you that private gigs are a legal gray area.”

“Yes, you did.”

“Well, some of them are more gray than others.”

“Give me examples. Start with something only sort of gray.”

“All right. So, let’s say I take a gig working for a film crew here in the city, which is something that I’ve done before. They’re filming a complicated stunt, and I’m on hand in case something goes wrong. This part is totally legal and above board. The studio and the insurance company and the producers all want me there so they don’t have any fatalities on set.”

“Not gray at all.”

“Right, until it all goes wrong and the stunt person breaks their neck. The injury is serious—that stunt person isn’t ever going to walk again—but they’re not going to die from it. My job is to prevent fatalities. To dispatch the people who are clearly going to die if I don’t intervene. It’s not my job to dispatch people who are critically, horribly injured but aren’t going to die from it.”

“I sense a ‘but’ coming on.”

“The ‘but’ here is this: No one in this situation, not the studio, the insurance, the producers, the director, the union or especially the poor bastard it’s happened to, wants this guy to go on living like this. It’s bad publicity for the movie, the stunt person will never work again in their chosen field, and the union’s insurance will have to pay out hundreds of thousands in medical bills, and ultimately someone somewhere’s getting sued.”

“So what happens then?”