“Maybe you need to focus your attention on work, get your mind off what’s happening at home. What you’re going through isn’t any different than what every other parent goes through. We all worry about our kids, but we have to let them live their own lives, you know.”

“Sure.”

“So, when you’re writing, doing your work, doesn’t that help get your mind off other things? Isn’t that a good way to reduce your anxiety level?”

I nodded. “For the most part.”

“So, what are you working on now? Another book?”

“Well, I’m back with a paper now, The Metropolitan, doing features. You can’t exactly make a living writing books.”

“I liked that one you did, about the guy goes back in time to kill the inventor of those hot-air hand dryers in men’s rooms before he’s born. That wasn’t a bestseller?”

“No,” I said.

Harley looked surprised. I continued, “I’m doing a feature right now on this private eye, and the last few nights, I’ve been with him on this, like, well, a stakeout I guess you’d call it, hoping to catch some gang that’s been smashing into high-end men’s shops, making off with hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stuff.”

“Sounds interesting,” Harley said. “But I trust it’s not the sort of thing where you’re exposing yourself to any real risk. You’ve had enough of that.”

I smiled tiredly. “Don’t worry. From now on, I just write about stuff, I don’t get personally involved.”

“That’s good,” he said. “And what about the pharmaceutical option? You want a scrip for anything?”

I shook my head. “Naw, unless there’s anything else you can recommend.”

Harley got up, opened one of the stainless steel cabinets that held cotton balls and gauze and tongue depressors and bandages, rooted around in there and came out with a bottle of what appeared to be very expensive Scotch. He set it on the table next to him, found two small paper cups, and poured a couple of fingers’ worth into each.

“I find this works well,” he said.

Chapter 2

2

“I’m bored,” I said.

Lawrence Jones ignored me. We’d been sitting curbside in his rusting ten-year-old Buick for nearly three hours now, on Garvin Avenue, half a block down from Brentwood’s, the expensive men’s shop owned by Arnett Brentwood, who had pooled his resources with some other proprietors to hire Lawrence and some other detectives to find out who was busting into their places of business at night and making off with their inventory. This was not some “lame-ass security gig,” Lawrence had assured me. Arnett Brentwood and his fellow clothiers not only wanted to stop these guys, but find out who they were and get their merchandise back.