Detective

you could use your talents. Wouldn’t you rather be doing something like that?”
    I discovered I was tying my shoelaces faster than one would have thought humanly possible. “They all require experience,” I said.
    “And where do they expect you to get experience, that’s what I’d like to know? It’s Catch 22. You can’t get a job without experience, and you can’t get experience without having a job.”
    Fully dressed, I fled for the foyer. Tommie was already there. I straightened his shorts, which he always manages to tug up crooked. He put his glove back on, took my glove out of the gym bag we use for equipment, and handed it to me, along with my baseball cap.
    “Here, Daddy,” he said.
    I put the glove and cap on. I’m originally from Massachusetts, so we wear Boston Red Sox caps, a bold move in New York City. I picked up the bag and opened the front door. Tommie went out and rang for the elevator.
    My wife followed us to the door and stood there, holding it open and looking out into the hallway.
    “I just feel so sorry for you,” she said, picking right up as if the conversation had been continuous, a habit I find disconcerting. “Working such long hours and not getting paid for them. I don’t know how you can take it. I mean, am I wrong, or how do you feel about it?”
    The elevator arrived. I ushered Tommie in.
    “Really,” she persisted. “How does that make you feel?”
    “Useless,” I told her, and stepped into the elevator.

4.
    I R EAD THE N EW Y ORK P OST on the subway on my way to the office the next morning. I take the subway to the office because there’s no place to park in midtown Manhattan, at least no place cheap. I read the New York Post for the sports—they have the late baseball scores. At least, that’s what I tell my wife. Actually, it’s the closest you can come to reading the gossip mags without actually buying one. My wife buys the New York Times and makes fun of my taste, but the hell with her. She watches the soap operas, for Christ’s sake.
    I was squashed against the express-side door of the Broadway downtown local by a large black man smoking a cigarette, and a fat woman with a handbag the size of a steamer trunk, when I found it. It was on page four, but that was just by luck. If a fairly prominent TV star hadn’t died the same day it might have made page one.
    “BUSINESS EXEC MURDERED AND MUTILATED,” ran the headline. “The body of Martin Albrect, executive vice president of Fabri-Tec Inc., a prominent Manhattan firm, was discovered late last night in a midtown Manhattan parking lot. The body had been mutilated.”
    The article did not elaborate on the specifics of the mutilation, but I could guess. The N.Y.P.D. must have been tactfully withholding the information that Mr. Albrect’s penis was in his mouth. That fact alone could have pushed the story up to page one. After all, the TV star had merely died of cancer and, in all probability, with his genitalia intact.
    Despite the fact that I was crowded unmercifully in a stifling, non-air-conditioned subway car, I suddenly felt very cold. I also felt nauseous. I also found I was having trouble breathing, and it wasn’t just the clouds of cigarette smoke the large black man was spewing out in my direction. I also felt incredibly claustrophobic, and the fact that the article about the demise of Martin Albrect was continued on page thirty-two didn’t help. Getting from page four to page thirty-two seemed a Herculean task. My fingers felt numb and useless. Useless. I riffled the corners of the pages, located number thirty-two. I steeled myself for the effort of refolding the paper. I raised my arms aloft above the crush of shoulders, and began jockeying for the room to open the paper and fold it in on itself again.
    The train pulled into the Times Square station, shoving me into two young businesswomen, one of whom said, “Hey!” and the other of whom said, “Shit!” I grunted, “I’m sorry,” as the express doors opened and the surge of commuters thrust me out the door onto the platform. Automatically, I turned and followed them up the platform toward the 42nd Street exit, folding my paper to page thirty-two as I went.
    The police hadn’t released many facts about the incident, but there were some. The body had been found in a parking lot on Tenth Avenue near 47th Street. It was found around 2:00 A.M. by a young man and his date returning from a disco to pick up their car. The parking lot had