Detective

and the office number, waited for the tone, and then punched in the office calling card number.
    Kathy answered with a snarl. “Well, it’s about time.”
    “You just beeped me,” I protested.
    “Today I just beeped you. What about yesterday? What about Mrs. Rabinowitz?”
    “It’s all signed. No problem.”
    “No problem for you. I’ve had it on the books for three days with Richard wanting to know how come it wasn’t done.”
    “Then he’s gonna be real pleased when you tell him it is. And he’s gonna love the accident pictures.”
    “He can love his grandmother, for all I care. I just want the case closed.”
    “It’s closed. Look, did you just beep me to compliment me on my performance, or was there something else?”
    “I have a new case. Any chance you’ll have it done before Monday?”
    “I’ll have it done before lunch.”
    “Oh yeah? Then how the hell you gonna get off charging 3 hours on it the way you always do?”
    “That was a figure of speech. So I have a late lunch. Just give it to me, will you?”
    She gave it to me. 212. Death. 5th Avenue. Not so bad. But a pretty high number. Ten bucks said it’d be above 110th Street. I pulled out the Hagstrom map. Sure enough, I owed myself ten bucks. Right around 114th Street. The apartment number was the kicker. 14G. A project.
    I’ve been in some pretty grungy four-story walkups in Harlem with rotting floorboards and unlit hallways, but I think I like housing projects even less. A friend of mine in the detective business once told me he figured when the city set about to build the low-income housing projects, they got a mugger, a rapist, and a murderer together to help design them. I wouldn’t disagree. Projects have front doors that anyone can get in, long, narrow dead-end hallways to get cornered in, alcoves for unsavory types to lie in wait in. The room numbers are so flimsy and fastened so poorly to the doors that they never last more than a few months, leaving any poor outsider desperately trying to locate an apartment, stranded forever in the aforementioned mineshaft-like corridors, hoping like hell if he rings a doorbell the person who comes to the door either is the person he’s looking for, knows the person he’s looking for or, failing either of these, doesn’t kill him.
    I was in for a surprise. The building wasn’t that bad. The lobby was fairly clean. My client’s apartment number was on her door, which I located easily. She turned out to be a perfectly nice young black woman, who kept a clean, if modestly furnished, apartment and had a five-year-old son who had broken his wrist, not, as is so often the case, through some negligence of her own, but because someone at his day care center had slammed a door on the kid’s hand.
    I felt like a schmuck. I also felt relieved. It was a damn good interview, and the only thing that made me the least bit uncomfortable was when her son got into my briefcase, which I had left open on the floor, and pulled out the receiving unit of my electronic tracking device.
    “What’s this?” he said.
    I looked up, saw it, and realized that today at least it had been business as usual, and the only effort I’d made in the direction of continuing the Albrect investigation had been in sticking the unit in my briefcase.
    The unit was on, of course, primed to inform me of Red’s impending arrival.
    I smiled as I took it away from him. “That’s a tracking device, so my office can keep in touch with me.”
    The young mother frowned. “Don’t they just beep you?” she said, pointing to my belt.
    “Sure they do,” I told her. “But this tells ’em where I am, so if they get a case they can beep the agent closest to the area.”
    “Agent?” she said. “I thought you were a lawyer.”
    I smiled. “No, ma’am, I’m not,” I said, and launched into my “I’m not a lawyer, I’m an investigator” spiel.
    I got out of there with the signup, but I was lucky. The girl was nice, sharp, intelligent. I felt like a fool, but it was good. When you realize you’re a schmuck, you might as well realize you’re a big one.
    But the kid finding the unit really bothered me. Not that he found it, but rather, that it was on and nothing had happened yet. How long did it take to drive from Miami, anyway? How would I go about finding that out? Add up the miles and make an estimate? How would I go about finding out how many miles it was? What kind of detective was I, anyway? I had the answer to