Mulrooney stood in his living room toweling off his peeling, sunburned skin, which appeared to be reproducing. A short while earlier, Janet Glenn had called to alert him and Clarke that the sting on Flint was going down that day, so he had once again cut short his sleep.
After several minutes, Mulrooney surrendered in the battle against his epidermis and tossed the towel on his easel, which had become a bulletin board for the sordid notes, facts and figures of his cases. Suddenly the fine hairs on his neck stood up, and his eyes darted back toward his easel. There, impaled on the wood frame with a push pin, was Houdini. The lion fish was staring at the floor with lifeless, bulging eyes. Mulrooney"s still life, slashed to shreds, lay on the floor behind a stack of papers.
He reeled around
