Animal Appetite

use,” I said. “I suppose it provides an ideal nesting spot for—”
    “Rats! And the foolish thing is that George was as upset about them as anyone else! He called the city. I did, too! But the little man I talked to was far less responsive than one might have wished. It really is ridiculous! We’re asked to believe what is patently false! If you listen to the city, these rats are barely the size of a mouse. And George himself saw one that he swore was the size of a full-grown woodchuck!”
    “He didn’t try to poison them, did he?”
    Still laboring for breath, Lydia said, “Well, the truth is, we did discuss it, but—”
    The sirens drowned out the rest of her sentence. The first official vehicle to arrive was a cruiser. Almost as soon as the uniformed officer reached the front door, a big emergency medical van pulled up, and a second cruiser followed.
    “In the kitchen,” I said to the first officer, a handsome blond guy with blue eyes and pale New England skin. I gestured to the open front door. “Through the dining room, then through the swinging door.”
    Tearing past Lydia and me, the cops and the EMTs rushed to save a life far beyond earthly salvation. In almost no time, the first officer returned. “Relatives?” he asked.
    I shook my head.
    “I’m a neighbor,” Lydia said, “and a friend.”
    “I was supposed to have tea with Professor Foley,” I reported, forgetting that we hadn’t even said who the dead man was. “When I got here, the newspapers were lying here”—I pointed to them—“and the mail was in the mail slot. I kept ringing the bell, and I didn’t get an answer. Then I tried the back door. Finally, I got worried, and I went next door and asked—”
    “Lydia Berenson,” the woman said. “I had George’s key. We went in and found him.”
    Pulling out a notebook, the young cop took down information: Professor Foley’s name, mine, Lydia’s, our addresses. Professor Foley’s next of kin, Lydia reported, Was a son who taught economics at Berkeley. “I have his number,” she said. “Shall I call him?”
    “We’ll take care of that, ma’am,” the cop replied. “We’d appreciate the number.”
    It is not in my nature to keep my mouth shut. “Kevin Dennehy is my next-door neighbor,” I announced. “Is he going to be...?”
    “I don’t have that information at this time, ma’am.” The cop sounded as if he were reciting a line he’d memorized at the police academy, where, I have concluded, students are drilled in uttering the phrase “at this time” and flunk out if a simple “now” passes their lips.
    “Are you assuming that this is a natural death?” I asked.
    “Ma’am, at this time we’re not assuming anything.”
     

Eighteen

     
    Lieutenant Kevin Dennehy’s name carried less clout than I’d imagined. Or maybe his colleagues suspected me of exaggerating the extent of our friendship. “Kevin keeps his beer in my refrigerator!” I testified. That’s true. His mother is a Seventh-Day Adventist. She won’t allow alcohol in her house. Meat, either. I was about to say so, but censored myself. Kevin might be ever so slightly irked at me if I tattled in detail to his brothers and sisters on the force about all the things Mommy wouldn’t allow. Anyway, I got stuck hanging around George Foley’s house, first in the cold outdoors, then in a warm cruiser that stank of stale fast food and fresh bodily fluids.
    Official vehicles arrived in great number, as did neighbors, joggers, fitness walkers, dog walkers, and ghouls attracted by a hullabaloo. The crowd on foot and on wheels grew so dense that the police blocked the street and tried to disperse the onlookers. The barricades, of course, aroused new curiosity and attracted yet more passersby. Waiting around, I learned frustratingly little about Professor Foley’s death. He’d been seen alive late yesterday afternoon; Lydia Berenson had exchanged a few words with him. He’d seemed in his usual good health and excellent spirits. Since Lydia had said something about his heart, I asked her whether he’d had a history of cardiac problems. On the contrary, she replied. He’d had a physical a month earlier and had been elated to find himself suffering from nothing worse than minor arthritis.
    If I’d felt useful, I wouldn’t have minded waiting around. My uselessness was, however, my own fault. When questioned, I limited myself to factual replies and reserved for Kevin my speculations about the