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    The chief’s king of clichés. What next , I wondered? Soft as a baby’s bottom?
    His office, I knew from prior visits, was the size of a tennis court, his private bathroom big enough for Ping-Pong.
    On the coffee table in front of me were a number of magazines, including the New Yorker , with its stupid highbrow comics, and Architectural Digest . No cop, gun, or sports magazines. Four news and two home decor periodicals.
    Next to me was a lamp stand with an eight-by-ten photo of the chief, his wife, and presumably his teenage daughter. What it was doing out here I didn’t know, but maybe it was a statement: “All this is my turf.”
    I studied the photo of the Lennox family. The chief looked noble, refined, confident—right down to the perfect triangle of the handkerchief folded in his suit coat pocket. He looked far better in the picture than in real life. Maybe somebody had altered his face in Photoshop. Or maybe it was his makeup.
    His wife, prim as her husband, had the smile of a woman who’s looked at more cameras than books. The teenager had too many rings in her face. Beneath the hardware she was pretty but looked miserable. Her face screamed, “Let me out of this picture!” If I had that much metal in my skin, I’d feel lousy too.
    If this is the picture they chose, I’d hate to see the rejects .
    It made me think of Kendra, my younger daughter. When she was a little girl, she couldn’t get enough of me. That all stopped as a teenager. She’s thirty now and lives in Beaverton, on Portland’s west side. Fourteen miles away. Might as well be Neptune, which as far as I know is still a planet.
    When she turned fourteen, Kendra became an explosive compound of hormones and acne, replete with habitual eye-rolling and a terminal case of protruding lip. At fifteen, she was a walking melodrama. She lived in two modes: despondency and rampage. Whichever she was currently in, I always longed for the other. I lost her at sixteen. I was told it was just a phase, that she’d come back. She never did.
    This couch had known a thousand posteriors, and so far it had spent forty minutes getting to know mine. This was Lennox World, and I was but a bit player in it. He strutted around his office, in front of the framed awards, trophies, and VIP photographs visible from the hall. One with Clinton, one with Bush. He had his bases covered.
    Why the open door? He had to have an audience. People kept passing by, glancing into the inner sanctum. They could remark at the dinner table, “I saw the chief of police today. He smiled at me.”
    I crossed and uncrossed my legs, trying to invent a new way of doing it. Why was I here? Students get called to the principal for two reasons. One I’ve seen in a Hallmark commercial but never experienced: The boss wants to congratulate you. The second reason: You’re in trouble. That one I know. I felt like a fly called to meet with the spider.
    Ten feet away, Lennox’s voice rose, dripping with disdain. Apparently some minion was daring to question him. “There’s no way that’s going to happen. Learn to live with it. No pain, no gain. Am I clear on that point?”
    He had little hair but plenty of jaw, which is more important in police work. I’m talking Jay Leno jaw. And teeth that had more man-hours invested in them than the Hoover Dam. Why not? Teeth are a politician’s greatest asset, and the chief was a PR man. He’d grinned his way to the top.
    Our police department doesn’t exist merely as an arm of law and justice. We exist to further the chief’s reputation, make him look good, and allow Portland to be a stepping-stone toward his lifelong dream of being Chicago chief of police.
    At that moment, two cameramen and a television reporter walked by. They slowed outside the chief’s office. He smiled broadly and waved to them. One of the cameramen gave him an “okay if I shoot?” look. The chief nodded and smiled warmly, oblivious to the poor sap on the other end of