True-Life Adventure

interest in my karma.”
    So that’s how Blick got revenge. Probably I’d tipped him to a great opportunity when I called him. So it was partly my own fault, but that only made me madder. I vowed to break his jaw if I ever saw him again.
    I got my chance at eight A.M. the next day, Wednesday, when once again I opened my door to his ring. But, hell, my mother brought me up right. I asked him in and offered coffee. Some people never learn.
    “Jeez, Mcdonald,” he said. “You got a hell of a gut. You ought to take up racquetball or something.”
    What a prince. I thought I cut quite a figure in my blue jockey shorts, which I had pulled on upon rolling out of the rack. I also thought any jerk who got me out of said rack at that hour had a nerve running down my conformation.
    “Blow it out your ass,” I said.
    He didn’t miss a beat. “You have the right to remain silent. You are not required to say anything to the police at any time or to answer any questions. Anything you say can be…”
    “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
    “I’m arresting you, asshole. Insulting an officer, using obscene language, and indecent exposure.”
    “Indecent exposure! This is my house, douchebag.”
    “Anything you say can be used against you in court. You have the right to talk to a lawyer…”
    “Okay, Howard, I’m sorry. I apologize, okay?”
    “That’s better.”
    “You want coffee or not?”
    “I want the file on Birnbaum’s case.” He shoved a search warrant in my face.
    “Why didn’t you say so, Inspector? Glad to help out. Dee-lighted. Any time I can be of service don’t hesitate to call on me.”
    I was delighted. The file wasn’t going to help him one whit, and I’d made him go to the trouble of getting a search warrant and making an extra trip and that was payment for calling me an asshole the first time. Now all I owed him for was the remark about my torso, two more “assholes”, and the sympathetic assistance of Partridge and De Silva.
    I went to my file cabinet and started rooting around. I looked between Bank Statements and Brochures. No joy. So I looked in front of Bank Statements and behind Brochures.
    No Birnbaum.
    “Just a second, Howard. I guess I’ve misplaced it.”
    I went through the whole goddam drawer, but I knew I wasn’t going to find it. I could remember putting the file back, just so, after Stanley Smith left with Jack’s body.
    “Howard, we’ve got a problem.”
    “You got a problem, Mcdonald. I got a search warrant.”
    He started pulling pillows off the sofa, books out of the bookcase.
    “Howard, wait a second…”
    He opened the trunk where the TV used to be. He started throwing papers on the floor— pages of novels that hadn’t been published. The editors of the world didn’t like them, but they were all I had to show for my life.
    He was making me mad. And when I get mad, I get stubborn and childish. I know because sixty or eighty women friends have mentioned it in passing.
    So I let him rip.
    I could have stopped him, reasoned with him, told him about the Koehlers, let him go look up Jack’s copy of the file, parted friends. But I didn’t. I let him tear my house apart because I knew he wouldn’t find the file and it would frustrate the hell out of him.
    One day maybe I’d grow up. If I did, that would entitle me to call all the women in my past who’d said they might consent to, say, have lunch or something when it occurred. It could have been a real boon to my social life. But it didn’t happen that day.
    Blick wasn’t the soul of emotional maturity himself. There was simply no need to empty Spot’s litter box on the kitchen floor.
    Naturally, he didn’t find the file because it wasn’t there to find. If I’d gotten a little more cooperation on my burglary, I might have pointed out the obvious— that whoever had taken my TV had done it only to make the thing look routine.
    The point was to steal the file.

CHAPTER 3
    Whoever had stolen it apparently hadn’t known about me until McGonagil’s story came out in the Examiner, identifying me as Jack’s assistant. And then he hadn’t wasted any time. So it looked a lot like Blick was right, after all— the murder had something to do with the Koehler case.
    But maybe not. There were about eight other cases in the file. How could I be sure the Koehler reports were the ones the murderer wanted?
    And why should I care, anyway? I was thinking like a journalist, a habit I thought I’d