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mannerism so common to her generation—an upward lilt at the end of the sentence, turning it from a statement into a question.
    There followed more banter between Jenna and Mike. Then, to my amazement, the van dropped back and away.
    “How do you know that guy?”
    “He’s Janet Bui’s boyfriend.”
    Janet is a third year associate. I had a vague recollection of a bearded guy who sometimes hung around Janet’s office late in the day and on weekends. Must be this Mike guy.
    “So Mike did you a favor?”
    “More like he backed off now in exchange for an implied promise of some tasty tidbit later.”
    “What difference would it have made if they’d filmed me this way?”
    “Being filmed in a moving car makes you look like prey.”
    “Oh.” This constant obsession with image was going to take getting used to.
    We were exiting the freeway onto the streets of downtown and making our way toward our office building. That was when I learned that the Blob has a downtown cousin. Because a Blob that would have done the one in my driveway proud was milling about at the entrance to the building’s parking garage. In fact, it was blocking the way.
    “Okay, now what, Jenna? I can’t not look. They’re right in front of us.”
    “Look right at the cameras and give them a big thumbs up.”
    I did it. It seemed to work, because the Blob parted and let us through. But it felt truly and utterly stupid. I never learned if it looked truly and utterly stupid, because I resolved then and there that I was not going to watch myself on television.
     
     

CHAPTER 6
     
    The garage was blessedly empty. No cops, no crime scene tape, no people. We parked on B-Level without incident, got in the elevator and rode up to eighty-five. As the elevator doors opened, I was seized by a slight panic. Was just walking past reception and then down the hall to my office going to be an ordeal?
    I need not have worried. Our stolid, mannish, but extra-friendly receptionist, Christine Mulcahy, greeted me with a cheerful “Hi, Mr. Tarza!” Like a lot of Marbury Marfan staff, Christine is a fixture. She’s not the first receptionist since I arrived at the firm, but she’s been there at least fifteen years. Maybe twenty. And we like each other, to the extent you can like someone you never actually talk to other than to say hi.”
    Some people, by the way, think that Christine is a cross-dresser whose real name is Christopher. But I’ve always just put that down to the rumor mill that runs its mouth in all law firms. A mill in which speculation about everyone’s sexual proclivities seems to be a topic of intense interest. Maybe it’s like that in all big organizations. But then again, I’ve never worked anywhere else.
    I was apparently just standing there, running those disjointed thoughts through my head, because I suddenly noticed Christine staring at me. A little poke in the small of the back from Jenna got a “Hi, Christine!” out of me and a start down the hall toward my corner office, with Jenna following.
    A corner office is, of course, what my seniority commands. One of the few perks it’s hard for them to take away without causing the whole pecking order to tumble down. As we entered, the snowcapped San Gabriels were breathtakingly on display through the windows. They were not obscured by smog, like they are so many months of the year. Maybe, I thought to myself, the smog is good, because it keeps even more people from pouring into our city.
    I was wandering again. And I was again just standing in one place, not moving anywhere.
    “Robert, sit down, will you?”
    I went behind my desk and sat down in the leather chair, as instructed. Jenna continued to stand, looking at me intently.
    “Robert, you are, I think, still a bit out of it. Not surprising. First you find a dead body. Then your picture gets in the paper as a suspect. It would unnerve anybody. But you have to get a grip.”
    “I’m trying to get a grip,” I said.
    “Well,