Dr. K-, see? I’m smiling, still.

Dr. K-! Why are you standing there, so stiffly, at an upstairs window of your house? Why are you cringing, overcome by a sickening fear? Nothing will happen to you that is not just. That you do not deserve.

These pages in your shaking hand, you’d like to tear into shreds-but don’t dare. Your heart pounds, in terror of being snatched from your chest! Desperately you’re contemplating- but will decide against-showing my letter to police. (Ashamed of what the letter reveals of the renowned Dr. K-!) You are contemplating-but will decide against-showing my letter to your wife, for you’ve had exhausting sessions of soul-baring, confession, exoneration with her, numerous times; you’ve seen the disgust in her eyes. No more! And you haven’t the stomach to contemplate yourself in the mirror, for you’ve had more than enough of your own face, those stricken guilty eyes. While I, the venomous diamond-head, contentedly spin my gossamer web amid the rafters of your basement, or in the niche between your desk and the wall, or in the airless cave beneath your marital bed, or, most delicious prospect!-inside the very mattress of the child’s bed in which, when she visits her grandparents in the house on Richmond Street, beautiful little Lisle sleeps.

Invisible by day as by night, spinning my web, out of my guts, tireless and faithful-”happy.”

KARMA by WALTER MOSLEY

Leonid McGill sat at his desk, on the sixty-seventh floor of the Empire State Building, filing his nails and gazing at New Jersey. It was three-fifteen. Leonid had promised himself that he’d exercise that afternoon but now that the time had come he felt lethargic.

It was that pastrami sandwich, he thought. Tomorrow I’ll have something light like fish and then I can go to Gordo’s and work out.

Gordo’s was a third-floor boxer’s gym on Thirty-first Street. When Leonid was thirty years younger, and sixty pounds lighter, he went to Gordo’s every day. For a while Gordo Packer wanted the private detective to go pro.

“You’ll make more money in the ring than you ever will panty sniffin’,” the seemingly ageless trainer said. McGill liked the idea but he also loved Lucky Strikes and beer.

“I can’t bring myself to run unless I’m being chased,” he’d tell Gordo. “And whenever somebody hurts me I wanna do him some serious harm. You know if a guy knocked me out in the ring I’d probably lay for him with a tire iron out back’a Madison Square when the night was through.”

The years went by and Leonid kept working out on the heavy bag two or three times a week. But a boxing career was out of the question. Gordo lost interest in Leonid as a prospect but they remained friends.

“How’d a Negro ever get a name like Leonid McGill?” Gordo once asked the P.I.

“Daddy was a communist and Great-Great-Granddaddy was a slave master from Scotland,” Leo answered easily. “You know the black man’s family tree is mostly root. Whatever you see aboveground is only a hint at the real story.”

Leo got up from his chair and made a stab at touching his toes. His fingers made it to about midshins but his stomach blocked any further progress.

“Shit,” the P.I. said. Then he returned to his chair and went back to filing his nails.

He did that until the broad-faced clock on the wall said 4:07. Then the buzzer sounded. One long, loud blare. Leonid cursed the fact that he hadn’t hooked up the view-cam to see who it was at the door. With a ring like that it could have been anyone. He owed over forty-six hundred dollars to the Wyant brothers. The nut was due and Leonid had yet to collect on his windfall. The Wyants wouldn’t pay any attention to his cash flow problems.

It might have been a prospective client at the door. A real client. Someone with an employee stealing from him. Or maybe a daughter being influenced by a bad crowd. Then again it could be one of thirty or forty angry husbands wanting revenge for being found out at their extramarital pastimes. And then there was Joe Haller-the poor schnook. But Leonid had never even met Joe Haller. There was no way that that loser could have found his door.

The buzzer sounded again.

Leonid got up from his chair and walked into the long hall that led to his reception room. Then he came to the front door.

The buzzer blared a third time.

“Who is it?” McGill shouted in a southern accent that he used sometimes.

“Mr. McGill?” a woman said.

“He’s not here.”

“Oh. Do you expect him back today?”

“No,” Leonid said. “No. He’s away on a case. Down in Florida. If you tell me what it is you want I’ll leave him a note.”

“Can I come in?” She sounded young and innocent but Leonid wasn’t about to be fooled.

“I’m just the building janitor, honey,” he said. “I’m not allowed to let anybody in any office in this here building. But I’ll write down your name and number and leave it on his desk if you want.”

Leonid had used that line before. There was no argument against it. The janitor couldn’t be held responsible.

There was silence from the other side of the door. If the girl had an accomplice they’d be whispering about how to get around his ploy. Leonid put his ear against the wall but couldn’t hear a thing.

“Karmen Brown,” the woman said. She added a number with the new 646 prefix. Probably a cell phone, Leonid thought.

“Hold on. Let me get a pencil,” he complained. “Brown, you say?”

“Karmen Brown,” she repeated. “Karmen with a K.” Then she gave the number again.

“I’ll put it on his desk,” Leonid promised. “He’ll get it the minute he gets back to town.”

“Thank you,” the young woman said.

There was hesitation in her voice. If she was a thinking girl she might have wondered how a janitor would know the whereabouts of the private detective. But after a moment or two he could hear her heels clicking down the hall. He returned to his office to stay awhile just in case the girl, and her possible accomplice, decided to wait until he came out.

He didn’t mind hanging around in the office. His sublet apartment wasn’t nearly as nice, or quiet, and at least he could be alone. Commercial rents took a nosedive after 9-11. He picked up the ESB workspace for a song.

Not that he’d paid the rent in three months.

But Leonid Trotter McGill didn’t worry about money that much. He knew that he could pull a hat trick if he had to. Too many people had too many secrets. And secrets were the most valuable commodity in New York City.

At 5:39 the buzzer sounded again. But this time it was two long blasts followed by three short. Leonid made his way down the hall and opened the front door without asking who it was.

The man standing there was short and white, balding and slim. He wore an expensive suit with real cuff links on a white shirt that had some starch in the collar and cuffs.

“ Leon,” the small white man said.

“Lieutenant. Come on in.”

Leonid led the dapper little man through the reception area, along the hallway (that had three doors down its length), and finally into his office.

“Sit down, Lieutenant.”

“Nice office. Where’s everybody else?” the visitor asked.

“It’s just me right now. I’m in a transition phase. You know, trying to develop a new business plan.”

“I see.”

The slender white man took the chair in front of Leonid’s desk. From there he could see the long shadows across New Jersey. He shifted his gaze from the window to his host. L. T. McGill, P.I.

Leonid was short, no taller than five seven, with a protruding gut and heavy jowls. His skin was the color of dirty bronze and covered with dark freckles. There was a toothpick jutting out from the right side of his mouth. He wore a tan suit that had been stained over time. His shirt was lime green and the thick gold band on his left pinky weighed two or three ounces.