A Night at the Operation by JEFFREY COHEN Read Free Book Online Page A

discs had been taken out of the boxes and strewn around, so that repairing and replacing them would take at least twice as long, assuming they hadn’t been damaged beyond repair. And some of those titles were irreplaceable.
    The miserable little futon I was pretending was a sofa had been slashed with a very sharp blade, perhaps a box cutter or a razor. Stuffing was everywhere. If there had been other furniture in the room, I was sure it would have been equally ripped apart. Even the answering machine—a cassette-tape relic I’d inherited from my parents when I took over their house—was ripped from the wall and dashed to the floor.
    My eyes searched frantically for Harry Lillis’s guitar, which the brilliant comic had sort of left me when he died, but thankfully it was still on a guitar stand in a corner of the room. It had not been damaged.
    I didn’t know what someone had been looking for, but it sure seemed like they hadn’t found it.
    And immediately, I began to worry about Sharon.

6
     
     
     
     
    THE New Brunswick police officers who arrived at my town home at eleven thirty at night were used to dealing with gang violence, armed robberies, the occasional murder, and at the very least, drunken college students. So a DVD collection in disarray did not especially excite them.
    They did, however, ask me the same two questions (“Was this the way you found the room?” and “Can you think of anyone who might do this?”) until past three in the morning, and were threatening to do so until three the next morning, when my phone rang.
    I hadn’t called Dutton at home, but had left a message for him at Midland Heights police headquarters. Clearly, the chief didn’t have much need for sleep, or had been out late, because he returned the call just as I was calculating how many hours in a row I had been awake.
    I asked the two cops to excuse me and picked up the phone. “Get me out of here,” I hissed into the handset.
    Dutton took a second, then said, “How did you know it was me?”
    “I didn’t. Get me out of here.”
    “I don’t have any jurisdiction there, Elliot. I can’t tell the officers to leave. Now, what happened?”
    Much more loudly, I said, “I can’t come to the station now, Chief. The New Brunswick police officers aren’t done with me yet.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece and looked at the two cops. “It’s Barry Dutton from Midland Heights. Do you know the chief?”
    They shook their heads, no.
    Back into the phone, I said, “How urgent is the matter, Barry?”
    “Barry?” I heard Dutton ask. “When did I give you permission . . .”
    “That bad, huh?” I asked.
    “All right, Elliot,” Dutton sounded tired. After all, he’d probably been up five or six hours longer than I had. “Put them on.”
    I gestured to one of the cops. “He wants to talk to you,” I said.
    “Me?” the cop, who was maybe twenty-five, asked.
    “Yes,” I told him. “He asked for you specifically.”
    The cop appeared flustered, but took the phone out of my hand. He listened for a good few moments. “Yes sir, Chief,” he said, and handed me the phone.
    “Hello?” I said.
    “You owe me big time,” Dutton said. “You’re lucky I was due at the office in three hours anyway. They’re going to drive you over. Now, tell me why it is I want to see you.”
    “I think you’re wrong,” I told him quietly. “I think Sharon is in danger.”
     
     
    THERE aren’t a lot of cars on the road at three fifteen in the morning, so the New Brunswick cops got me to Dutton’s office before Dutton himself arrived. They spoke quietly to the overnight dispatcher, a Latino who looked like he’d been doing this job a long time and was still appalled at the hours. He nodded slowly, said something to them out of my earshot, and then the two cops left.
    “Chief Dutton is on his way,” the dispatcher said. He gestured toward one of the molded plastic chairs lining the waiting area, and I sat.
    There wasn’t