Invasion of Privacy

came back to me. “You got anything to add?”
    “No.”
    “Why are you checking into things at the university?”
    “Confidential.”
    “That doesn’t count for shit here, Cuddy,” said Braverman. “You’re not licensed in Vermont .”
    “All I did was try to get a record. I don’t need a license for that.”
    “Then you don’t need to keep it confidential, either.”
    “I’m not. I told you what I was doing, just not why I was doing it.”
    “That doesn’t explain you trying to beat the registrar out of a record with a forged letter.”
    “I wasn’t trying to beat anything. I’d have been happy to pay a reasonable copy charge.”
    The cruel smile. “Pity this isn’t thirty years ago. We’d save ourselves a lot of time.”
    I said, “Chief, Ms. Tasker already mentioned the old-fashioned way. Living in the past wouldn’t be good tactics for either of you.”
    The smile died a little. Braverman brought one hand up to rub his chin. He blinked twice, then turned to the desk. “Gail, I got a bad feeling about this gentleman, but I don’t see what all we can do about it.”
    Tasker reddened a bit. “Pete, he forged a request on a dead man.”
    Braverman said, “Yeah, but that just means Cuddy here didn’t know the boy—shit, he’d be what, in his forties now?—was dead. That doesn’t sound like much ground for prosecution to me.”
    Tasker reddened a bit more. “So, what, we just let him walk?”
    “It’s either that, or we’re up to our mutual asses in paperwork only to see him get less of a slap on the wrist than a jaywalker down on Main.”
    Tasker didn’t seem to like the way Braverman was handling the situation. Frankly, I didn’t blame her. In his shoes, I’d have put me someplace while they had this talk, then come back to me with a united front. Maybe the “don’t-you-ever-again-on-my-beat” sort of warning from both of them, even if they’d decided to cut me loose.
    Tasker heard him out, though, before saying evenly, “It’s your call, Pete.”
    Braverman turned back to me with a cruel smile. “Well, now, since I’ve got my car out front, why don’t I save Gail and Dave here the trouble of giving you a lift back to yours?”

    “Major reason I’m the chief here, nobody could stand to partner up with me. Can you guess why?”
    As soon as we’d gotten in his older, unmarked sedan, I nearly gagged. The stale cigar smoke was as much a part of the car as the upholstery it’d invaded. The sensation was like Mo Katzen’s office being reduced to a five-foot cube of tainted air.
    Braverman took a thick, half-gone one about three inches long from the ashtray and used a Bic lighter to coax it back to life, the smoke puffs almost covering his face. Then he turned the ignition key and started off.
    “Major reason I keep this junker is the headroom for my hat. Only one I’ve—”
    “There a ‘major reason’ you let me watch back there too?”
    Braverman seemed to bite down hard on the cigar. “Let you watch what?”
    “You pulling rank on Tasker. She thought she smelled a skunk, and you made a show of kicking the woodpile, but it seemed to me you didn’t really want to find out what might be in with the logs.”
    A heavy drag this time, and a cloud of smoke as we turned. “Gail called me, only told me her people were bringing over some wiseass—her expression—who was making a fuss at the registrar’s and would I swing by, have a look. After she explained the problem back in her office just now, it doesn’t seem exactly like capital murder, somehow.”
    When Braverman didn’t continue, I said, “And so I’m free to go.”
    A variation on the cruel smile, lip winching over the cigar. “Unless you’d rather be booked. I could still arrange it.”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “Good.”
    “I mean, I don’t think you’d book me.”
    Braverman made another turn, wagging his head. “And you seemed so smart earlier.”
    “I get the feeling, Chief, that you want me the hell out of Dodge instead of in it, defending myself on Tasker’s idea of charges.”
    “And why would I want that, Cuddy?”
    “I honestly don’t know.”
    We arrived at the Administration Building . “Which one’s yours?”
    “The silver Prelude.”
    Braverman came to a stop behind my rear bumper. “You like the older ones, too, eh?”
    I just looked at him.
    “Cuddy, there something still eating you?”
    “Curiosity.”
    “Bad emotion, curiosity. Remember what it did for the