“So you figure you’re just a token?” I said. “That’s why Teale won’t make you chief?”
He’d survived twenty years in Boston. He might survive this.
He got to his feet and gave me a fussy gesture. Wanted me to join him at the window. We peered out together at the people on the street, seventeen floors down. He pointed at a guy in a suit, hurrying along the sidewalk.
“But I can’t stay in here,” he said. “I can’t stand it.”
“Last I heard, he worked for the Treasury Department,” I said. “Doing what, I’m not sure.”
My shoulders were hunched and I was pumping up my neck to resist the strangler. He was wrenching hard. I was losing it. I reached up and broke his little fingers. I heard the knuckles splinter over the roaring in my ears. Then I broke his ring fingers. More splintering. Like pulling a chicken apart. He let go.