My office is in the Languages Building—excuse me, the Randall J. Simonson Foundation Languages Building. You lose points if you forget to name the benefactor. The university knows which side its bread is buttered on. Oh, you bet it does. When there’s butter. Hell, when there’s bread. By the time I got to the bar, I needed a beer a lot more than I had when I set out. Somebody a couple of blocks from the campus side of Mandelbaum’s had walked in front of a car. Not just any car, either. A Lincoln Navigator. Dead, of course. Never knew what hit him, I hope. Cops and paramedics couldn’t have pulled up more than half a minute before I walked by. They’d thrown a sheet over him, but it was still pretty bad. Worse than you see on the news, ’cause the news cleans up the gore or cuts away. You didn’t only see it there. You could smell it, all thick and rusty. Made my stomach turn over. A couple of little animals or birds were scurrying around the edge of the pool. I couldn’t tell what they were up to—maybe scouting for chunks of meat in the soup.
