Political Suicide by Michael Palmer

they spoke on the phone, Bryzinski had seemed eager enough to meet.
    Now?…
    Another five minutes. Lou fingered the disc, sleeved and wrapped, in the pocket of his jacket, and thought about leaving. He was about to do just that when the door to the inner sanctum of the station opened and a bowling ball of a man motioned him in. He was five-six or -seven and seemed close to that wide across, huge-headed and balding. His brown suit coat, buttoned at the middle, failed to hide the bulge of his shoulder holster.
    “Detective Bryzinski,” he mumbled, not bothering with a handshake.
    So much for impressions over the phone.
    “Lou Welcome,” Lou said, matching mumble for mumble.
    He followed the detective past a NO SMOKING IN THIS BUILDING sign into his office, a featureless, wildly cluttered space that reeked of stale coffee and possibly Bryzinski himself. Stacks of folders and loose papers covered virtually every square inch of desk, as well as a portion of a laptop and an ashtray shaped like Florida, filled with loose change.
    Without being asked, Lou took the steel-armed institutional seat on the guest side of the desk. Bryzinski settled into his high-backed Staples standard, looking immediately like an overindulged pooh-bah. A diamond ring cut into the flesh of his right pinkie, and a narrow gold band did the same to the wedding finger on his left. Lou tried briefly and without success to form an image of the wife who awoke each day next to the man.
    “Sorry to keep you waiting,” Bryzinski said after a time. “We’re short two men—one home sick and the other shot.”
    “Shot?”
    “Don’t ask.”
    Lou didn’t. “Well, thanks for seeing me,” he said.
    “I don’t have a lot of time.”
    Why am I not surprised? This was a man who was chronically inconvenienced.
    Bryzinski pursed his lips in a gesture that said, Okay, let’s get this over with. “So now,” he said, “you told me who you were over the phone, and I checked you out. Let’s skip the ‘friend of Gary McHugh’ part and cut to the chase. What’s going on, and how does it affect my case?”
    And remember, I don’t have a lot of time.
    Lou hesitated, seriously considering simply bolting from the toxic office. After a few empty seconds, he put the CD on Bryzinski’s desk, beside a tower of files and other papers that looked on the verge of collapse. He reviewed his visit with Jeannine Colston, and his inspection of Elias’s office, carefully choosing his words to avoid any implication that Bryzinski and his cohorts had underdone their jobs.
    The detective seemed to be listening with one ear, occasionally looking out the window and not bothering to take any notes or to record Lou’s statement. It was not the least bit difficult for Lou to imagine the cop forming a conclusion before the investigation had actually begun, and tailoring his inspection to support what facts he had.
    “Did you bring the frame?” Bryzinski asked when he had finished.
    “The frame?”
    “Yes, the frame.” Irritation replaced the ennui in the detective’s voice. “The thing that might have fingerprints all over it.”
    Lou began to feel dumb. He wanted to snap back something like, How about you try to spend an hour running a busy inner-city emergency room?
    “I’m sure it’s still in Colston’s study,” he said instead.
    “Look,” Brezinski countered as if he were lecturing a third-grader, “I bet you think that you’ve cracked this case wide open. Well, take it from me and twenty years as a cop: You haven’t.” He patted the stack of papers closest to him. “You see these? These are from other people—lots and lots of other people. People who also think they’ve cracked the case wide open. Get what I’m saying?”
    “I think this is more than just a random tip,” Lou said.
    “Do you know what I’ve got to do?” Bryzinski continued on as though Lou had not even spoken. “I’ve got to go through each and every one of these. And guess what