"And you say there's nothing to steal?" asked one of the cops in uniform.
Topping waved hello to Arty before he answered. "Your office is destroyed," he said blandly. Then he turned back to the police. "What's to steal? Old papers? Blue pencils? Only thing worth stealing is the computers. And they weren't."
Arty stood on the fringe of the group. From his vantage only a small part of the devastation could be seen. Red and green wires stuck out of the archaic three-button switchboard. The old AP teletype had been toppled from its pedestal like a Communist statue, its unfurled roll of yellow paper wound through the office like a strip of cheap rug. Beyond an open doorway, Marge Fogarty could be seen stooped down, picking up shards of a shattered vase.
"Some offices got it worse than others," said the other uniformed cop. "Personal vendetta maybe?"
Topping shrugged, then gestured toward Arty. "Here's the guy whose office got it worst of all. Anybody mad at you?"
The cops' eyes all turned toward him like they were wired to a single hinge, and Arty found he could not speak. Until that moment he had fought against believing that the trashing of his home and the trashing of his workplace might be linked, might be aspects of the same event. He wanted to imagine the series of invasions was just a grim coincidence, a run of stinking luck; now the extreme improbability of that was flooding in on him like cold and slimy water. Something else was flooding in on him as well: the awareness that he could not talk to the police. If he talked to them, he would have to tell them of his dealings with Vincente, and this was utterly impossible. No one could know about their book. That was rule one. Arty had given his word on it. Not that personal honor was the sole crux of the business; as he understood now with shattering clarity, he'd entered into a contract with the Mafia, a contract that, as the Godfather had made a point of telling him, lived as long as the parties to it lived, and infringements would be handled in the Mafia way.
A long time went by without Arty answering the question his boss had asked. At length he tried to force himself to speak; all that came out was a moist blubbering sound.
"City editor," Clint Topping said to the cops. "Very articulate. I think he's trying to say he doesn't know."
This was not good enough for the cop in the suit. He narrowed his eyes at Arty. "I think maybe he's trying to say he does."
Arty swallowed, looked down, shook his head.
The cop in the suit pursed his lips, dissatisfied. "Dust for prints?" he asked Clint Topping.
"How long's it take?"
"Do it right, couple hours."
"Dust the doorknobs," said the editor in chief. "We still got a paper to get out."
The cluster of men dispersed, and Arty trudged to his office. He was tired of messes, and this mess was a bad one. His file drawers had been yanked out and emptied on the floor; brittle clippings were everywhere, leaning against the baseboards, poking out from folders overturned and spread like tiny tents. His crowded desk had been elbowed clear, the blotter flung aside; the Rolodex was upside down and dripping cards, the telephone hung dead at the end of a tangled cord.
Arty sighed, squatted ankle-deep in paper. He spent the morning trying to restore the minimum order that makes life possible and trying to think through just what the hell was going on.
———
The foreskin of the jet-way was not quite snug against the 767's fuselage, and Bert the Shirt d'Ambrosia was hit by his first slap of northern winter before he'd even entered Kennedy Airport.
He labored up the ramp in a dark gray mohair suit that had been gorgeous before the moths found it and before the slow stretch of a decade on a hanger had given it a flattened and distended look, a shape like that of Gumby. His tie was maroon, his shirt white-on-white, with an elegant pattern of interlocked diamonds, a high collar, and French cuffs pegged with gold and onyx links. On his feet were hard black shoes he hadn't worn in years; they made his toes ride up on one another and didn't keep the cold out.
In his right hand he held the carrier with the perplexed and whimpering Don Giovanni inside; from the left dangled a small suitcase packed with toiletries, human and canine heart pills, dog food, simmered flaxseed, and a single change of clothes. A folded overcoat, double-breasted herringbone, lay over his right shoulder, and with each rocking step it slipped down a little, Bert couldn't help noticing that his shoulder was no longer broad or straight enough to hold it.
The airport corridor was packed and endless, its walls curved like a giant keyhole. Bert plodded along; it seemed to him that everybody was moving a great deal faster than himself. Businessmen jogged past, holding down their ties. Flight attendants raced by, pulling their carts like trotters pulling sulkies. Someone ran into the old man's back and caromed off without apology. Bert's arms were getting tired, his knees ached, but he was afraid to stop against the surge of people behind him.