There was no question in his mind that it was suicide. There was the note, on Karp's desk and in his pocket and right up there on the still-glowing screen of the computer monitor. And there were no injuries inconsistent with a fall from a great height, although he agreed that the fall itself would have erased evidence of an earlier blow to the head, or indeed of anything less obvious than a gunshot wound.

I said, "I wish the note was handwritten. Who on earth types out a suicide note on a computer?"

"It's a new world," he said. "You get used to a computer, you want to use it for everything. Pay your bills, balance your checkbook, keep your appointments straight. Here's a guy ran his whole business by computer. He wants to get the note right, he can tinker with it, phrase it just the way he wants it. Then he can print out all the copies he wants with one keystroke, plus he can save it on his hard drive." He was around thirty, part of the computer generation himself, and he was eager to tell me how the computers in the station house speeded up the paperwork and took a lot of the unpleasantness out of it. "Computers are great," he said. "But they spoil you. The trouble with the rest of life is there's no UNDO key."

I went to Karp's office, now occupied by an attorney specializing in patents, a man about my age with a drinker's complexion and the sour smell of failure clinging to him. He'd had the office for less than two years and knew nothing of its history. He let me look out his window, although I don't know what either of us thought I might see out there. I didn't tell him a previous tenant had taken a dive from that very window. I didn't want to give him any ideas.

Karp's widow, Felicia, lived in Forest Hills and taught math in a middle school in South Ozone Park. I phoned her at home around dinnertime and she said, "I can't believe the investigation's been reopened. Does this have something to do with the insurance?"