Gregg Hurwitz - The Crime Writer

Or maybe, if you're lucky, you go to sleep. Which is what I was finally going to do.

I took two steps into my bedroom and froze.

My brain tumor was gone. Save my clock radio and bedside lamp, the nightstand was empty. No glass jar, not even a lingering drop of formaldehyde.

My skin tingled with electricity.

The last time I could remember seeing it was just after I'd come in from smoking a cigar on the deck. Had I hidden or disposed of it while in my foot-cutting trance? Panic congealed at the back of my throat, constricting my breathing. I ran my hands through my hair, hard, feeling the ridge of scar tissue against my left palm.

I threw back the comforter and looked under the bed. The nightstand drawers held only their usual contents. I searched the cabinets of my bathroom next, flinging bottles and cold-medicine boxes onto the counter. I tore apart my office, tugging and slamming drawers, digging through the trash can. The guest room downstairs was next, then the living room. Charging into the kitchen, I caught sight of a gleam in the sink.

A curved wedge of thick glass.

I drew near. The familiar screw lid, a collection of shards. No ganglioglioma.

I'd been in the kitchen today only to grab the can of almonds. Had I glanced in the sink? Probably not. How about last night, after I'd followed my own bloody footprints around? Had I looked? Not closely.

I picked out the glass debris and set it on the counter. After staring at the rubber mouth of the disposal for a moment, I shoved up my sweatshirt sleeve and pushed my hand gently through. Keeping a nervous eye on the light switch that could set the chopping blades in motion, I groped around, dreading what my tumor might feel like. Slick and firm? Moist? Kernels of glass pinched my fingers. I explored thoroughly but found the disposal empty. Had I run it last night, flushing the tumor for once and for all? Or had my stalker kidnapped it to drive me further into the state of paranoia in which I'd taken up residence?

From its latched wooden box, I took a twenty-year Warre's, resting in its place the remains of the shattered jar. Then I gave last rites, pouring the full bottle of port into the maw of the garbage disposal to which the tumor may have been committed.

Exhausted and mystified, I trudged back upstairs, crawled into bed, and finally dozed off.

At 4:00 A.M. my house imploded.

The boom jerked me upright with a cry, and then I heard a screech of heavy objects, the shriek of broken glass. A deluge of manpower rushing inside. Pounding boots up the stairs. In my post-slumber haze, the intruders seemed like rising devils, I like a dumbstruck Faust. For a moment I was back in my cell, phantom voices drifting up to me.

Stupefied, I stared at the door, which flung violently open, admitting a stream of figures decked in black and armored with goggles, vests, and assault weapons of some kind. Dark gloves seized my right wrist and ankle and ripped me from bed.

"Stay the fuck down!"

"See the hands, see the hands!"

My limbs spread as if by their own volition, and hands frisked me, not hard to do since I was wearing only boxers. A ghost imprint of white block lettering floated in front of my eyes, though my face was mashed to the carpet. LAPD SWAT.

I jerked my head to the side so I could breathe. Detective Three Bill Kaden appeared offset, Ed Delveckio peering over his shoulder. Kaden pushed a finger into my cheek until it ground against my teeth.

"You're fucked now," he said.

As Kaden led me, cuffed and hastily dressed, past the cops already rifling through my possessions, down the stairs, over the scattered shards in the entryway from the front-door glass insets, I registered a certain foolishness, a retroactive shame about how screwed I'd been before I'd even known it. While I'd drooled obliviously on my pillow, scenarios had been drawn up, positions chosen, a battering ram readied. My heart was still jerking in my chest. Being on the wrong side of a raid? Not as much fun as you might think.

I saw newspapers spinning in to fill the screen, headlines shouting NEW EVIDENCE IN BERTRAND SLAYING. But wasn't I protected under double jeopardy?

I said, "I assume you have a warrant."

Bunched beneath Kaden's fist, the document appeared before my face. I was being arrested for murder, though the warrant didn't name names. That would be, I assumed, my job.

Kaden threw me in the back of an unmarked sedan and climbed into the driver's seat. Delveckio sat in the passenger seat. My neighbors were on their front steps or at the windows.

"You could have just called," I said. "I would've driven in. I've always cooperated." A few more blocks in silence. My alarm was finally ebbing, giving way to outrage. I cleared my throat. "I say, 'What's this about?' and you say, 'I think you know, punk.' Then I say, 'I want to talk to my lawyer,' and you say, 'As soon as you're booked.' "

The backs of their heads did not respond.

We were on the freeway now, flying toward downtown. The first time I'd ever been on the 101 without traffic. The freeway, usually bumper to bumper, was deserted, postapocalyptic.

I was not surprised, some fifteen minutes later, to see the Parker Center through the windshield. Home to Derek Chainer. And to LAPD's elite Robbery-Homicide Division. A glass-and-concrete testament to fifties architectural cost-effectiveness, Parker's rectangular rise blocked out the emerging sun.

I was steered upstairs to an interrogation room. They kept the door open, cops coming and going with papers and whispered updates. Once again I felt disoriented, nervous, shoved out of my rightful place. I knew these halls. I knew this building. I'd researched men like these and written about them in flattering fashion. After my first book came out, I'd taken the buddy-buddy tour with the public-information officer, watched a real-live interview from the other side of the one-way mirror. What a distance between that side of the glass and this.

"Why am I here?" I said.

Kaden said, "Take your clothes off."

"Okay, but it's fifty bucks up front, and I don't kiss on the mouth."

"Off."

I glowered at him. "Not until I talk to my lawyer."

"After we search you."

"In case I'm secreting a bazooka up my ass?"

"You can keep your boxers on."

I kicked off my shoes, and Kaden stared at my bare feet and said, "Stop. Band-Aid off, please."

I complied. He snapped his fingers at the door, and a guy came in with an oversize Polaroid and took a picture of the slice in my flesh while I stood on one foot.

I finished pulling off my clothes, and they made sure I had no other scrapes or slashes. As I dressed, the photographer withdrew and closed the door, leaving me with Kaden, Delveckio, a table and chair, and a shiny mirror on the wall. The lights were hot, and someone had brought me coffee. My job was to drink it and get jittery and have to take a leak and spill all my secrets so I could get to the can. I could've been more compliant if I knew what my secrets were.

Delveckio nodded at my foot. "Looks to be a fresh knife cut, wouldn't you say?"

"You talk, too?"

"Answer the fucking question," Kaden said.

"Yeah," I said. "It looks like a fresh cut. Now, what the hell's this about?"

"Got a little careless?"

"Doing what?"

"You tell me."

I palmed sweat off my brow. The hot overheads were working. "I might have had an intruder two nights ago. I think someone broke in when I was sleeping, cut my foot."

"Sure thing," said Delveckio. "Easter Bunny maybe?"

I glared at him. "Not in January. I was thinking tardy elf."

"Why didn't you call the police?" Kaden asked.

"You guys haven't exactly been sympathetic."

"And this… mystery assailant cut you and you slept through it?"