Casebook 4: A Score Settled - 4.4[index]
I listened for another hour, but it never said anything new to me.
As the weeks went by, the unfulfilled expectation began to weigh heavy on my shoulders. Each time our agent called in with nothing to report, I felt the disapproval swell like white noise. Eventually, it reached a crescendo and the commissioner summoned me into his office. I walked past the empty desk of our Vienna agent. As I shut the door behind me, I caught the eye of the detective who had first questioned my request. He was suppressing a smirk. Inside, I didn't hear anything I hadn't heard before. A nonsense. An embarrassment. The Sweetheart Club had made a fool of me again.
It was early June almost a year later – a light and balmy morning on the first true day of summer. On that day my heart becomes a little lighter. I put on thinner socks, dust off my short sleeves, sit in the park to eat my sandwiches:
I listened to the pretty, structureless twittering of the birds above the low baseline of the midday traffic. The insistent staccato of tapping feet broke me from mindless daydreams. The sound of polished shoes running across concrete.