“Who’s that?” Logan asked.

“Might be the wrong house, sweetie. Let’s rinse off the soap and get you dry and warm before we go downstairs.”

Again the shrill ring of the bell.

I lifted Logan out of the tub and wrapped a large bath sheet around him, carrying him in my arms and rubbing him as I walked through the hall to the master bedroom, to see if there was any other car parked in front of the house.

Now there was a pounding on the door-an impatient, insistent knock that seemed to get louder.

“Who’s that?” I never ceased to be amazed at how often kids could be repetitious.

“I don’t know yet, Logan. Why don’t you get into bed so I can go see,” I said, crossing down the hall to his room. I thought it would be smarter to leave him there while I explored the situation at the door.

“I don’t want to get in bed,” he said, kicking before I could set him down and start to get his pajamas on.

“Logan, you’ve got to get ready-”

The brass striker hit the door again just as my cell phone rang. I stood Logan on his bed and pulled the cell out of my rear pants pocket.

“Yes,” I said brusquely into the mouthpiece.

“Jeez, I was afraid you took my godson and ran out the back door when I rang the bell,” Mike said. “That’s me freezing my ass here on the front steps, waiting for you to open up. All you see is the bogeyman, waiting for you everywhere you go. You better get a life for yourself, Coop.”

TWENTY-FIVE

There was no corralling Logan Wallace. He idolized Mike and was ecstatic about the surprise visit, squealing and laughing like he’d never stop.

“Lo-lo-lo-Logan,” Mike said, stopping for a high-five before he marched a shopping bag into the kitchen while the kid tried to keep up with him. “What are you doing still awake, m’man? It’s eight o’clock. I’m gonna fire your babysitter.”

“No, you can’t,” he said as Mike put the bag down, grabbed the boy’s pajamas by the waistband, and began tickling him. “It’s Lexi.”

“I thought Lexi was your date.”

Logan buried his face in Mike’s thigh, still laughing. “Logan have no date.”

“You had your stories yet, little guy?”

“No.”

“I was just about to start reading to him.”

“Go on upstairs with Lexi,” Mike said. “Get in bed and I’ll tell you a good one.”

“Three good ones, Mikey. I can have three.” The child grabbed my hand and started pulling me away.

The moment Logan turned his back, Mike removed his gun from its holster and stowed it on top of the tall refrigerator. It was the first thing most cops did when they spent time in a house with kids, but that particular hiding place would only work until Logan got a little older, when he’d be able to climb up on the counters to explore all the hidden surfaces.

“Let’s gather your animals and go on upstairs,” I said, stopping in the den to retrieve the stuffed brontosaurus and ragged teddy bear he slept with every night.

“Wait just a minute,” Mike said, coming in behind us, scooping the boy up and hoisting him onto his shoulders. “Lexi, put on the TV, will you?”

Logan was clapping his hands from his new perch.

Mike’s timing was impeccable.

“When we come back from the commercial break,” Alex Trebek said, “we’ll see which of our contestants has the right question. Who’ll become our champion tonight? Remember, the Final Jeopardy! category is MYTH OR MADNESS.”

“Who’s the champion, Logan?” Mike asked, letting the child ride him like a bronco.

“Logan! Logan is!”

“What do you give me, Coop?”

“Whatever it takes to encourage you to put my guy to bed.”

Myths, especially the classics, were among Mike’s specialties, full of warriors and heroes whose legends and exploits captivated him. I was the resident expert on madness, a popular theme of literature and art.

“We’ll hold at twenty, right, Logan? You my partner, pal?”

“Yeah.”

“We gonna beat Lexi?” Mike asked. “Dudes rule?”

Logan’s clapping and laughing were almost at a fever pitch.

“And the answer is, Contraband in America-for almost a hundred years, this liquid was reputed to drive men mad,” Trebek read from the board. “MYTH OR MADNESS.”

“Was there a liquid opium?” Mike asked.

“If that’s your question, then you lose,” I said. “What is absinthe?”

“How did I miss that? The bartender in me should have known. But what’s the myth?”

“Supposedly it’s what Van Gogh was drinking the night he cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute. Poe, Baudelaire, Wilde-a lot of far-fetched stories about how dangerous a liquor it is.”

In Le Zinc, the chic bar in Luc’s restaurant in the charming village of Mougins, he had a vintage poster of a madman drinking the green spirit, with the warning: L’Absinthe Rend Fou-absinthe makes you crazy. It had been banned in this country in 1912, and only legalized again in 2007.

“Lexi wins, Logan. Got to brush your teeth and get ready for story time.”

Mike flipped the child over his head and sent him running back to me. We went upstairs and after cleaning up, Logan went directly to the shelf in his room to grab a fistful of books and threw himself onto his bed.

“Which one do you want me to start with?” I asked, sitting beside him as he put his head on the pillow and snuggled against me.

“You’ve probably read that one a gazillion times,” Mike said, walking into the room. “Don’t you want me to tell you about the time your daddy and I had to battle the dinosaurs in Central Park?”

Logan was clapping his hands, so wired that I doubted he would ever sleep. “Yeah, tell that one.”

He was at the age when everything about the prehistoric creatures fascinated him. He could recognize the shapes of each species and knew their names, but couldn’t quite get the timeline that made Mike’s tales so outrageously fanciful.

Mike pulled up the rocking chair and placed it directly in front of Logan so the child could see every expression and gesture. There was no better storyteller I’d ever seen than Mike, as he primed the background for Logan-the “good guys,” Mike and Mercer-who were rookies in the Police Academy, setting out to protect the city from the invasion of the dinosaurs who had been hiding for centuries in the Rocky Mountains.

The story was complex and colorful. In addition to the wide variety of predators Logan knew, Mike made up dozens of others, colored them with stripes and polka dots, and crafted them to graze on favorite foods-the detectosaurus on police officers, the toddlersaurus on kids who didn’t go to sleep on time, and the Lexisaurus on babysitters who weren’t any fun to have around.

Fifteen minutes in, I was squished into the corner where the bed met the wall. Logan had laughed at the funny parts and practically crawled over my head when he was scared by the final confrontation near the zoo inside the park.

“Let’s not set up any night-m-a-r-e-s, Uncle Mike,” I said, spelling out the second half of the word. “There’s enough adrenaline going here to keep my guy up till dawn. I’ll really lose my job.”

“We always close happy,” Mike said. “Don’t we, Lo-lo-lo-Logan?”

The story ended with the dinosaurs agreeing to help Mercer patrol and keep the bad guys in line, with the swat of a long tail or the threat of a velociraptor claw.

“ ’ Nother one, Mikey. ’Nother one.”

Logan was exhausted but fighting the end of his happy evening.

“No way, my friend. That was a two-book extravaganza. Lexi has to read you something about bunnies or balloons,” he said, leaving me to calm the child. “I’ll be right downstairs, making sure your mom and daddy don’t come home while you’re still all wild and wooly.”

“And whose fault would that be?” I asked.

Mike leaned over for a hug and Logan locked his arms around Mike’s neck. When he straightened up, Logan came along with him. They kissed good-night as I scrambled out of the bed and smoothed it for the little boy to get ready for sleep.