I’m not complaining, though. At least I’m still alive, which is more than I can say for some other people who made the mistake-or simply had the misfortune-of playing a part in this lurid and tragic tale. And even though I’m sitting here in my aqua chenille bathrobe at my yellow Formica kitchen table in my grubby little Greenwich Village apartment on a forced eight-week convalescent leave from work-my shattered leg in a plaster cast and my wounded shoulder strapped tight in five layers of gauze and adhesive tape-I can still inhale, and exhale, and think, and talk, and move all of my fingers.

Which means I can still type-as I’m doing right now-and put all of my dreadful experiences down on paper. Which means I can now try, once again (with the help of my trusty baby blue Royal portable and about a thousand packs of L &M filter tips), to live up to my corny name and turn my most recent Daring Detective story of sex, greed, deception, and murder into the shocking, thrilling, full-length page-turner it was born to be.

My best friend and next door neighbor, Abby Moscowitz, is pushing me into this. She’s so bossy it’s cruel! My first and only novel-the extended, true-but-slightly-fictionalized account I wrote about the Babs Comstock murder-hasn’t even been published yet, and already she’s badgering me to write another one. She says I’ve got to strike while the story’s hot. And while the details are still fresh in my brain. Ha! That’s another cause for big snorts and belly laughs. Abby refuses to acknowledge it, but my brain is as broken as the bones in my leg and shoulder.

Still, I’m going to be out of work for eight long, lonely, desperately boring weeks. And I can’t walk without crutches. And I can’t use crutches because it hurts my shoulder too much. So I’m kind of stuck here in my dingy, dwarf-sized, fifty-dollar-a-month duplex with nothing to do but eat, and drink, and sleep, and smoke, and gobble aspirin, and hope that Abby will come over with a pitcher (or two) of martinis, and that Dan will forgive my latest “misconduct” (that’s his word, not mine!), and stop by for a quick make-up smooch between homicide expeditions.