I grew up in suburbia. We had cats, dogs, hamsters, guinea pigs, parakeets, and fish. Never a monkey. A monkey was a new, sometimes disturbing experience.

Diesel drove down Weatherby Street to Pleasant, Pleasant turned into Lafayette, and Lafayette took us to the bridge that crossed into Salem. We followed traffic through the center of town, cut off to the north side, parked behind a police cruiser on Braintree Street, and made our way over to where a small crowd was gathering.

This was a mixed neighborhood of commercial and residential. Cop cars, a truck belonging to the medical examiner, and an EMT truck were angle parked in front of a seven-story, yellow brick condo building that looked like it had been built in the seventies. Crime scene tape cordoned off an area in front of the building, and a makeshift screen had been erected, preventing gawkers like me from seeing the body sprawled on the rain-slicked pavement. Thank heaven for the screen. I didn’t want to see the dead guy.

“Do you know his name?” I asked Diesel.

“Gilbert Reedy. He’s a professor at Harvard. My source tells me Reedy came flying through the air and crash landed with a handprint burned into his neck.”

I felt my breakfast roll in my stomach, and my upper lip broke out in a sweat. “Oh boy,” I said. “Damn.”

Diesel looked down at me. “Breathe. And think about something else.”

“How can I think about something else? There’s a dead man on the ground, and he has a handprint burned into his flesh.”

“Think about baseball,” Diesel said.

“Okay, baseball. Am I playing or watching?”

“You’re watching.”

“Am I at the park? Or is it on television?”

“Television.”

Diesel tipped his head back and looked up at a shattered slider, leading to a postage-stamp-size balcony on the fourth floor. I looked up, too.