Inside, the office was dark save for the sickly glow of a computer monitor that Peter Haas, the restaurant reviewer, had neglected to turn off. His screensaver had flying toasters on it and these annoyed Tarzan Abramowitz. He smashed the computer with his crowbar. The toasters shattered along with the glass and left behind a fugitive green glow that seemed to come from nowhere, that hovered in the air like fog then flashed and faded like a lightning bug smeared against a sidewalk.
He turned his flashlight on and tried to determine which desk belonged to the woman who could not live.
On one desk he found a cupful of cigars; he cleared the surface with his elbow, monitor, smokes and all. At another he found drawers full of old Playbills, which he dumped out on the floor. Finally he turned his beam on a desk that was topped with little stacks of invoices and proofs of ads. He scanned it quickly for a note pad, an appointment book. Finding nothing that gave an immediate hint of Suki's whereabouts, he started stuffing things— business cards, receipts, her Rolodex—into the leather satchel.
Then, without particular hurry, he headed for the sundered door. Halfway there he stopped, like a man who's forgotten his hat. He'd decided to smash one more computer. He cocked his crowbar and savored the shatter, then walked unharassed down the metal stairway and around the corner to his blue Camaro.
Chapter 30
"Look," said Officer Carol Lopez, "it's just a break-in. Why you wanna talk to homicide?"
"Just a break-in," Donald Egan murmured.
It was morning. He'd arrived at work with a double Cuban coffee in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. He'd seen the front door hanging open just a crack, and his first thought was, Good, someone came in early for a change; he wouldn't have to rearrange his hands, he could simply push through with his shoulder. That's when he noticed that both halves of the lock were sticking to the door, and the door frame had been hollowed out.
"It isn't just a break-in," the editor went on. "That's the point."
Lopez was a woman but she had the same flat but spreading ass that male cops always had. Maybe it was the pants they made them wear, or maybe the weight of the holster on the hips. "If it's not a break-in—" she began.
"There's nothing here worth stealing," the editor interrupted. "No cash, no drugs, no television sets—"
"A grudge then?" said the cop. "A controversy? Like a white trash letter to the editor?"
"Getting warmer," Egan said.
"Still. A grudge, I don't see where that's homicide."
Egan patted the empty pocket of his shirt. He badly wanted a cigar. He squatted down and combed through the rubble around his desk—the papers and folders and dangling wires—until he found one. Straightening up, he said, "I think it's connected to an unsolved murder on your books. Lazslo Kalynin."
Lopez used her forearm to push her hat back farther from her brow. "Lazslo Kalynin. I saw that stiff. Wasn't pretty. But the connection, there you lose me."
Donald Egan lit up, pulled cigar smoke deeper down his lungs than cigar smoke was supposed to go. He looked around his trashed premises as the vapor hit his bloodstream. Smashed monitors glowered back at him like vacant eye sockets, and he knew his leveraged business was going down the tubes. Yet in that moment, with the rank nipple of tobacco tickling his gums and the narcotic sting of smoke scratching at his passageways, this failed and disappointed man was almost happy. This was the beauty, the near-salvation, of addiction. With sudden calm, he said, "I know I lose you there. This is why I want to talk to homicide."
Officer Lopez frowned. People tended not to take her as seriously as she thought she should be taken, and she didn't know if it was because she was a woman, or because she was only a patrol cop, or because she was a woman patrol cop in a town where people didn't take much seriously. She sighed and raised a clipboard.
She started filling out a form. Egan smoked. He narrowed his eyes, clamped his throat shut to hold the precious cargo in his chest. The universe shrank down to that wet red horizon where the welcome poisons rubbed against his membranes.
"A report," said Lopez, tearing the top sheet off a triplicate and handing it to him. "You'll need it for insurance."
Egan blinked at dead computers, battered furniture. "I don't have insurance."
"Boy, you really should." She reached into a back pocket and came out with a pamphlet. She handed it to Egan.
"Victims Rights," he read. He spit a fleck of tobacco onto the littered floor. "Bet you hand out more of these than I distribute papers."
"Better reading maybe," Carol Lopez said. "I'll ask Lieutenant Stubbs to stop by later."