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department that year and I guessed he didn’t want to take the chance of anything sticking in the heat.
    “Sell short?” That same tired voice I’d heard on the telephone.
    I said nothing.
    “Standing mute?”
    “Conserving energy,” I said. “It’s hot. Guns drawn means I’d have to tell it all over again to a lieutenant or better. It’s that kind of case.”
    “Know the system, do you?”
    “I’ve got cable.”
    “You’re not under arrest. Just detained. So far there’s no law against knocking on a door, even—” He checked himself. “I could be out of date on that. The mail from Washington’s slow this time of year.”
    “I tried the knob, too, don’t forget.”
    One of the uniforms tagged in, a long-jawed officer built like a marionette, loose in the joints, with the eyes of a born bully. He’d popped a couple of seams checking me for weapons. “Let’s house him, Detective. He’s long on smart answers and short on cooperation.”
    “I wish you’d rush it through,” I said. “Tonight’s corned beef at County.”
    Burrough got a dreamy look and slapped me.
    He’d pulled it, but he had a hand like a sap glove, heavy and hard, and I almost lost my seat. I felt a palm-shaped welt rising on my cheek, but I didn’t touch it. This was a variationon an old game: bad cop, bad cop. It told me everything I needed to know about what was in the part of Bairn’s apartment I hadn’t seen yet that afternoon. I’d had a pretty good idea anyway, from the level of tension in the room.
    “You should file a complaint for that,” he said in the tired voice that came from asking questions he didn’t believe the answers to. “Our new lady chief wants a twenty-first-century department, all sharp creases and no blood on the blouse.”
    “Women,” I said.
    “Too much pressure. From the walking scrotums on the street and the brass hats downtown and the cockroaches with briefcases and the assholes from the press and now the Fucking Bureau of Infestation. Enough people tell you you’re shit you start to stink.”
    I touched the welt then, to cover the surprise. It was an apology of sorts, and an apology from a cop is rare and a little pathetic, like watching an old lifeguard let out his belly when he thinks no one can see.
    “I asked for it,” I said, “though I thought it would come from Gumby here. Not bad at all, and without even a running start.”
    “Thanks. These kids huff and puff and waste too much time. You got to be quick if you don’t want to get caught on video.”
    We were friends again.
    “Who the fuck’s Gumby?” said the officer.
    His partner, a solid Mexican whose eyebrows and moustache made parallel bars across his pie-tin face, came in from the living room. At one time or another they’d all gone in there, leaving someone behind to watch me, to return seconds later with no expression. I figured that’s where the attraction was.
    “Shift change in ten minutes,” the Mexican told Burrough. “When’s the inspector coming?”
    “When he comes. Got a roast in the oven?”
    “Well, I got a life, same as everybody.”
    “Speak for yourself.”
    “Inspector,” I said.
    The brim of the Panama came up. “You say something?”
    “I wouldn’t think a downtown stiff rated.”
    Burrough jumped on it. “Who said anything about a stiff?”
    “Okay, ‘horizontal American.’”
    There was a little silence after that. Nothing pregnant; the cast had simply gone up on the script.
    The shift ran out. I heard it in the sudden quiet from the main drag when the escape traffic stopped in midsurge and the people who were stuck in town—stuck because they lived there—popped open the first can of apres-ski Stroh’s and plunked down in Naugahyde waiting for the microwave to beep. Detective Burrough jingled the keys and change in his pocket, the Mexican pursed his lips in a dry whistle, Gumby standing behind me shifted his weight from one noisy new oxford to the other. The grapes of wrath