True-Life Adventure

Spot.
    So I told him all about being Jack’s ghostwriter and nothing about the Koehler case. Then, since I didn’t have any clients to work for, I went back to Chapter 10 of my latest unpublished masterwork.
    However, the muse did not sit on my shoulder. I sat there for two hours trying to get my hero out of a jam. It wouldn’t have been so bad except that I couldn’t think of a jam to get him into.
    Normally I don’t smoke, but I went out for cigarettes. While I was at it, I decided to grab a bite, and while I was at that, I read the Examiner, which was hot off the presses.
    McGonagil’s story was on page 1, and I was in the fifth paragraph, describing how poor Jack had rolled back his eyes and fallen over. My mench wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for, though. McGonagil said I was Birnbaum’s “assistant.”
    No doubt he thought I’d get a kick out of it, but it wasn’t going to sell any client reports.
    I was still brooding about it when I got home. I parked on Chenery Street across from my house, admired its terra-cotta paint job, and wondered how I was going to make the next mortgage payment.
    Spot met me at the door and I turned my mind to his future health and welfare; I even bent down to pet him, I felt so guilty about being a lousy provider.
    But I told myself at least he had a comfortable place to live, with a blue-green sofa to curl up on and lots of sunny places to take naps in. The living room opened right onto the dining-room/office, which had French doors opening onto the garden, so it was always bright inside unless it was foggy outside. My combination dining table and desk stood in the center of the second room and it was the only piece of furniture in there. Otherwise, the room was a greenhouse— a perfect little jungle for a medium-sized black cat.
    I surveyed it smugly. And that’s how I happened to notice that a pane in one of the French doors was broken.
    I made a rapid-fire assessment of the living room. The blue-green sofa was there, and the rocking chair and the bookshelf. The Maynard Dixon painting still hung over the fireplace. The stereo was still on the little low table I’d made for it. The old wooden trunk that I’d refinished was in its accustomed corner, but there was a nice clean square on top with lots of dust around it.
    My TV had been in that square an hour ago.
    Quickly I went upstairs to check my camera. I was betting it would be there— if the burglar hadn’t bothered with the stereo, he probably wasn’t going to go look through a bunch of drawers. I was right.
    It was a hit-and-run burglary, and it was yet another example of the way my life was going. I couldn’t help thinking that, even though I ought to have been grateful about the stereo and the camera.
    I called the cops and waited. And waited some more. After about half an hour I grew restive. But I waited another twenty minutes.
    Then I couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t know anyone in burglary, so I called Blick.
    “Howard? Mcdonald here. I’ve been burglarized.”
    “So call burglary.”
    “I did, dammit. About an hour ago. Nobody’s turned up.”
    “And you want me to goose them.”
    “I’m not asking for any special privileges. I just thought you’d want to know.”
    “Maybe if you’d cooperated a little better this morning, you wouldn’t be having this problem.”
    “Are you saying this is deliberate?”
    “I’m just saying people get what they deserve. Probably someone else in Glen Park has an emergency, but maybe the other emergency wouldn’t have happened if you’d been a better sport, you know? It’s like karma.”
    I hung up and waited another half hour. And then Officers De Silva and Partridge turned up. They looked at the undusty square and the broken French door.
    De Silva spoke: “Kids. They’ll probably sell the TV to some relative for about ten bucks. Zero chance of recovery.”
    “Well, how about prints?”
    “Prints?”
    “After they broke the glass, they had to reach through the door and turn the knob. There might be prints on it.” Partridge walked over to the door, grabbed the knob, and opened and closed it a few times, obscuring any possible prints. “Yeah,” he said, “I see what you mean.”
    “You guys must be pretty good friends with Inspector Blick.”
    “He said you were a real true-blue friend to the department,” said Partridge, “and we should do anything we could to help you.”
    “Thank him for me, will you? For taking such an