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that I couldn’t answer the question. I just didn’t have enough information. Meanwhile, there were cold winds blowing out there. Sailing into them made no sense at all.
    I went to my locker for a towel and found the light on in Conrad Stehle’s small office. I wasn’t surprised. Conrad had been subject to periods of insomnia ever since his wife, Helen, died two years before. Typically, he refused to toss and turn between the sheets, opting to stroll the few blocks from his house to his office at the Y. Sometimes he swam laps in an effort to wear himself out, but usually he settled for doing a little paperwork in the hope that one of his buddies would happen along. As I included myself in that group, I stuck my head in the door.
    â€˜Evening, Conrad.’
    â€˜Ah, I thought that was you I heard thrashing around in the pool.’
    Conrad Stehle was closing in on seventy, a tall stocky man with the barrel chest of a true swimmer. He’d been a champion in high school, winning statewide tournaments six different times in three different categories. At one point, the now-defunct New York Herald Tribune had pronounced Conrad ‘a future Olympian’. Those dreams had come crashing down when he returned from the Korean War with a purple heart and lungs too weak to support active competition.
    I peeled off my goggles and cap, then fished out my ear plugs. ‘I caught the David Lodge case. Did you hear about it?’
    Conrad’s green eyes widened slightly and he tilted his chin in the air. A bit of a cop buff, he liked nothing more than to discuss an investigation, and I sometimes used him as a sounding board. Lodge’s celebrity, of course, only sweetened the mix.
    â€˜Just let me dry off,’ I continued, ‘and I’ll be right back.’
    Fifteen minutes later, when I returned, Conrad had a bottle of Cointreau sitting on his desk, along with two plastic cups. He poured an inch of the liquor into each cup, then passed one to me. ‘To crime and punishment,’ he said.
    â€˜Amen to that, brother.’
    I clinked plastic, drained the cup, then drew an outline of the investigation thus far, including my numerous misgivings. Though I’d meant to be brief, I found myself explaining my reaction to Adele’s maneuver with the Lodge file, my pending transfer to Homicide, and my equally pending promotion.
    â€˜The reassignment and the promotion, Conrad, they’re both at the absolute discretion of the bosses.’
    â€˜And that’s what you wish to protect?’
    I shrugged. ‘I don’t care all that much about the promotion, although I could definitely use the money. But Homicide? Even as far back as the Academy, and we’re talking fifteen years here, I wanted to be a homicide detective. Now I’m only a few months away.’
    Ordinarily, Conrad had the listening skills of a psychiatrist, but my whiny complaints, on that night, evoked no more than a slight toss of the head as he removed a stubby cigar from his shirt pocket and ran it beneath his nose. He’d stopped smoking on the day Helen, a chain smoker since adolescence, died of lung cancer.
    â€˜I don’t think you’re worried about this file. I think you’re worried that you can’t control your partner.’
    â€˜Yeah, there’s that, too. But I’m sure of one thing: if I play it by the numbers, I can’t get hurt.’
    â€˜And those numbers include keeping Lieutenant Sarney informed?’
    â€˜At all times, Conrad. At all times.’
    I left Conrad’s office with a happy heart, and carried my good mood back to my apartment where I called Adele. It was a quarter to twelve and I knew she’d be watching the first half-hour of the Letterman show. Letterman was better, she’d told me, than a sleeping pill.
    â€˜Adele,’ I said when she picked up the phone, ‘the Broom is dead.’
    â€˜The broom?’
    â€˜Patrol Officer