The Fallen Sparrow

November, 1940. The son of a retired NYPD officer, John McKittrick - Kit to his friends - who has been in convalescence on an Arizona ranch after being rescued as a POW in the Spanish Civil War, he held captive and tortured for two years after the end of the war, rushes back to New York City upon reading that Police Lieutenant Louie Lepetino, his long time friend and rescuer, died one month ago in a fall out of a Park Avenue high rise apartment window. Inspector Tobin, who led the Lepetino investigation, ruled the death accidental, while Kit believes, unspoken, that Louie's death is tied somehow to his own incarceration in Spain. The "accident" apparently occurred during a party hosted by Kit's former girlfriend, Barby Taviton, she and her and Kit's mutual friends socializing with some people associated with the Refugee Committee: wheelchair-bound Norwegian historian Dr. Christian Skaas, accompanied by his nephew Otto Skaas, and Prince François de Namur. Of those at the party, no one i