Free Investigation by Dorothy Uhnak

a sort of municipal bluish gray as compared to the municipal greenish gray of the squad room. I don’t know where the hell the city buys its paint, but somehow they manage to get a dirty color to swab on the walls so that the room looks exactly the same before and after painting. Tim’s Venetian blinds were gray metal city issue and were some improvement on the squad room’s yellowing heavy cloth window shades. His wife had supplied the custom-made heavy green-and-blue drapes and the heavy flat green-and-blue tweed wall-to-wall carpeting, whereas the squad room has no drapes and we make do on the municipal brownish-gray rubber-based floor tiles. Tim’s medium-size wooden desk came with his job, but his wife had dressed it up with a collection of executive-type furnishings from Bloomingdale’s: a good leather-edged blotter holder; matching green leather pencil cup; silver-framed photo of herself; a couple of gag-type paperweights. The gold-plated pen-and-pencil set had been a presentation gift to Tim from the Sergeants’ Benevolent Association. The rest of the stuff on the desk, metal file trays, battered intercom, four-button black telephone, was standard city issue.
    Tim turned from the window, checked his watch for maybe the tenth time, touched the knot of his tie, then carefully put on his suit jacket. He shook his head at me and resettled the lapels on my jacket. “Joey, Joey, you still dress like a Bronx boy. Where the hell do you buy your clothes, Alexander’s?” He tried to sound casual, but he was as tight as wire.
    Even the District Attorney’s secretary’s office had paneled walls and real leather couches and wall-to-wall carpeting. The secretary’s desk was bigger than Tim’s and she clicked away on her living, breathing new red electric typewriter. She told the D.A. we were waiting, and his loud voice boomed from the intercom over the soft hum of the typewriter. She raised her eyebrows brightly and jerked her head, adding her permission for us to enter the realm.
    The D.A.’s office was not only paneled, draped and carpeted, it was also chandeliered with a huge brass affair hanging from the center of the ceiling, giving off a warm amber glow. There were built-in bookcases along one wall, filled with what looked like real-leather-bound sets of lawbooks. Which looked like no one had touched them since the day they had been installed. The furniture was all dark and heavy. There were a couple of oil paintings on the walls, each with its own little brass light and heavy frame. In one corner of the room, there was an antique mirror framed in dark heavy brass, with a small matching console table on which rested the D.A.’s silver hairbrush and silver clothing brush. They were engraved with his initials, as were his silver letter opener and his outsized silver fountain pen. I knew this because Jerry Kelleher liked to make a public point of the fact that he was used to all this: to real leather furniture, wall-to-wall everything and his initials on old silver. His father had been a judge, so he was a second-generation “successful” and accustomed to the finer things in life.
    The D.A. was winding up his telephone conversation with the kind of reassuring, nonmeaning sounds you make when all the business has been discussed and you’re into the socially required niceties. He leaned back in his tall expensive executive chair, laughed into the receiver of his ultramodern telephone, winked at us as though we were party to the fraudulently good-natured remarks he was making.
    Tim’s face was stiff and cold, accepting as an insult the fact that we had been summoned prematurely and had to wait while the D.A. finished his conversation. Finally, after a hearty laugh, Kelleher hung up. The telephone disappeared on the surface of his huge, cluttered ornate desk: the judge’s desk, as everyone knew. The kind of old desk you can’t buy for love or money anywhere because they don’t make them like that anymore; the