She bit some clown and I got hit with a $100,000 lawsuit, so she had to run away from home. She never had a license and I’m about as judgment-proof as a man can get, but this lawyer I refer cases to sometimes told me that I should give my next dog a name that wouldn’t sound so negative. I thought of naming her the Neapolitan Homicide and calling her Homo for short, but the lawyer told me you never know who is going to be on a jury, especially in New York-so I compromised and called her Pansy. A lot of my clients don’t like the dog, but that doesn’t amount to a whole hell of a lot of people.

When Pansy came back downstairs, I shut the back door and got out her food. I only feed her the dry stuff, but she still slobbers like a politician near money. That’s why I have the floor covered in Astroturf-it handles anything, you just wash it off. A lot of my clients think that’s low-class too, but, like I said, there aren’t enough of them to make a difference.

I told the dog to stay where she was and went to check the other office. Actually, it’s just the next room, but there’s no connecting door and the outer door was sealed shut years ago. I just use it when people I don’t want to see knock on my door-once I stayed there for three days. It has a private john, a fridge, a hotplate, and even a TV with earphones. Not bad-but the only ventilation is the little window that opens off the fire escape where I climb in so I don’t use it too much.

I don’t make a lot of money at what I do, but the overhead is no problem-I have my own form of rent control. By accident, I once found out that the landlord’s son did something to some people and they’ve been looking for him ever since. I found the kid too, but his own mother wouldn’t recognize him. The landlord bought him a new face, got him started in business, and the kid was golden-except that I knew about him and I told the landlord I did. I haven’t paid rent in about four years. There’s no ethics problem-nobody ever hired me to find the little weasel.