The smell hit Ted as soon as he started up the stairs. Burnt plastic. He was surprised the aroma hadn’t permeated Israel’s office—yet. He held his breath and charged up to the landing. A uniformed patrolman holding one of Ted’s kitchen towels over his mouth and nose blocked the door.

“Hold up,” the cop said.

“This is my apartment,” Ted said, sidling around him.

The cop dropped the towel and took Ted’s arm. He had a grip like a blacksmith. “You wait.” He was convincing. Ted waited. “Detective,” the patrolman called. “I got a guy here who says he’s the tenant.”

Ted got a look around the cop. A second patrolman stood by the kitchen window silently begging the air shaft to grant him a breath of fresh air. Beyond him, two suits, both with wet towels covering their faces, were examining the damage to the rest of the apartment. One was tall, broad shouldered, and black. The other was his partner. Duran and Kasabian.

“Come in, Mr. Molloy,” Detective Duran said. “We were just talking about you.”

Two detectives for an apartment break-in was unheard of in the outer boroughs. Even in Manhattan you’d have to be living on Park or Fifth Avenue to be granted that kind of attention. “What are you guys doing here?” Ted asked.

“When your name pops up in connection with a crime, I take an interest,” Duran said. “And what’s it been? Eight hours? Ten? Can you blame me? Trouble seems to follow you around.”

Ted looked into the kitchen. The oven door hung open, but the heat had not yet fully dissipated. The particular aroma of melted plastic was explained. The remains of his laptop had melted into a blackened goo that had oozed and dripped through the racks with odd bits of metal shining through like tiny misshapen marshmallows in last week’s chocolate pudding.

“It’s not like I go looking for it,” Ted said. The furniture was all broken. Most of it would have surrendered to a good kick from a three-hundred-pound steroidal madman. “Do you know who did this?”

“God’s honest truth, we think we do,” Duran said. “But what gets me is that I think you know, too.”

“I told you to ask Cheryl about the giant.”

Kasabian crowded Ted, standing too close and leaning in. “You know what my ex told me before she left? She said I had gone from discerning to skeptic to cynic. She couldn’t live with that. And she couldn’t understand why. I told her it was the job. Everybody lies to me. And when they’re not lying, they’re not telling me the truth, which amounts to the same thing.”

“I didn’t lie to you,” Ted said. “I told you to check him out.”