The box spring squealed in protest, echoing the complaints of his own body. According to the battered wind-up alarm clock on the night table, it was 5:47, much too early, he decided, for a sixty-year-old …. He stopped, automatically corrected himself: for a nearly sixty-year-old man to be up and about. BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ “I’m comin’.” He looked back to see if the buzzer had awakened Betty, then remembered that she wasn’t there, that she was in California with Marilyn, that a man named Jilly Sappone lay in his immediate future, that he had a dozen things to do. “I’m comin’,” he repeated. He lurched to his feet, threw on a robe, padded off down the hall to open the door for his former partner. “What happened, Jim? You finish early?” Tilley stepped into the apartment, held out a copy of the Daily News. “Finish?” he said. “No such thing. I still have to generate tonight’s paperwork. The whip tells me I haven’t met this week’s quota. Check out the headline.”
