But heroes, at least real-life “role model” type heroes (as opposed to such mythic figures as Hercules and Davy Crockett), are human beings; and human beings, even the best of ’em, sooner or later, each and every one, wind up dead. My hero was dead in a bathtub; drowned, apparently. He’d been drinking heavily, earlier that night. He’d been dead drunk when I walked him up to his hotel room. And now he was just dead. A few hours before, he’d been vocal—embarrassingly vocal—sitting in the cocktail lounge downstairs. We were in Chicago, in the Americana-Congress Hotel, and it was October. “There hasn’t been a goddamn mystery writer worth reading since Dashiell Hammett died,” he slurred, at a table of mystery writers. Tomorrow was day one of the Bouchercon, the annual mystery fan convention. “You’re worth reading,” I ventured, smiling, trying to keep it light. Roscoe Kane, the shoulders of his plaid shirt flecked with dandruff, his patched brown sports jacket slung sloppily over the back of his chair, looked at me with disgust lining every wrinkle of his basset-hound face, his rheumy china-blue eyes like nasty lasers.
