Shallow Graves

roll-your-own approach to data processing around here.“
    “So?“
    “So the company they buy the equipment from goes belly-up out in Silicon Valley , and now there’s nobody who can keep the things on-line or find parts for them when they go down. It’s not like you can just change a tube here and there, you know.“
    “Which means…“
    “Which means that nobody can find anything because nobody can retrieve anything. The equipment breaks once, it’s like the Arabs with their tanks, you just shoot the fucking thing and leave it in the desert to rot. I’m telling you, John, every department in the company, every regional office, has a bad case of the shorts. Most of the hard-copy paperwork’s been shipped to New York , and we’re down to only six floors here.“
    I hadn’t checked the directory in the lobby. “I’m sorry, Harry.“
    “Yeah. Thanks.“ Mullen sank deeper into the chair, which balked as he pushed it back to open a drawer. He pulled out a towel and offered it to me. “John, do me a favor?“
    “What, give you a rubdown?“
    “No, no. Just run this under the door, like a draft protector.“
    I got up, took the towel, and wedged it under the door. A college freshman afraid the scent of marijuana would leak into the dormitory corridor. As I turned back around, Mullen was plugging in a small black appliance that had appeared at the center of his desk. The appliance had a front grille like an electric space heater but was no bigger than a clock radio. Harry flipped a switch on the side, which started a humming sound. Then he took out a pack of Marlboros and a lighter and fired up.
    Mullen held the smoke inside him, like marijuana, then blew it into the grille on the little machine.
    “Harry?“
    “Yeah?“
    “What the hell are you doing?“
    “Another new policy. After they bought the computers they started worrying about some kind of disease you’re supposed to get from being in front of the screens too long. Then Ex -pire Insurance gets so damned worried about its internal liability in general that it makes all us coffin-nailers go outside the building to smoke.”
    I’d seen it in front of banks and other employers along the major streets. “You thought about quitting the habit?“
    “No. Too late for me. And who’s got time to make the trip every time I need one? But this little gizmo sucks it right up, so if I ration myself to eight, ten a day, I can get away with it.“
    “What happens if they catch you?“
    “Three strikes and I’m out.“
    “Fired?“
    “Uh-huh. Third violation and it’s the axe.“
    Harry Mullen. Overweight and overwrought, worn down trying to do the job I left. Never a smoker, I thought about what the booze might have done to me by now if I’d stayed.
    Sending my eyes toward the folder next to his black box, I said, “That the file you want me on?“
    Mullen filled his lungs, nodded, and blew into the grille, spreading the stream of smoke around it like a suburbanite spray-painting patio furniture. “Model. The one got herself killed.“
    “When?“
    “Week ago Friday.“
    “I was out of town.“
    “You wouldn’t have heard much about it, anyway. Strangled in her apartment, looks like a burglary gone sour.“
    “We got the landlord?“
    Harry took a small draw and held it. “No. We got the modeling agency. Key employee policy.“
    “Model as key employee, the owners of the agency as beneficiaries?“
    “You got it.“
    “What’s the face amount?“
    Mullen pursed his lips again, then expelled the smoke into the grille. “Five hundred thousand.“
    Could have been worse. “We—Empire going to coordinate with the family on this?“
    “Family?“
    “Of the model. They’re going to sue the landlord, right?“
    “No.“ Harry finished the cigarette, which had burned down almost to his fingernails.
    “How come?“
    Mullen took a liter-sized Coke bottle from the cigarettes drawer, unscrewed the cap, and dropped the butt into a sludge of brown water and other filters bobbing near the bottom. “You see, John, the family is the landlord.“
    “She was renting from her family?“
    Recapping the bottle, he put it away, but let his smoke-catcher hum a while longer. “Family realty trust.“ Harry slid a stapled document from the file over to me.
    It was the application for insurance, completed by the “Lindqvist/Yulin Agency“ as the applicant. The model’s name was listed as “Dani, Mau Tim.“
    I said, “How do you pronounce the