"Oh, for God's sake." She sat back. "Nobody's going to read the addendum."
"I read it."
"You know what I mean." She took a butterscotch out of the jar and unwrapped it and did not eat it. "Mr. Eckles is telling everybody in the building you caught the package thief. He's very excited. Do you know how many calls I've had since last night? Seven. Seven residents calling to say thank God, finally. That letter? The eleven signatures? Three of them have already called me to say they're renewing." She held up three fingers. "This is good, Kurt. Whatever happened in there, people think something got done. If the Lowrys want to make trouble about it, they're the ones who were in that room without authorization, and that's a conversation I'm happy to have with them about their lease."
He looked at her. He looked at the butterscotch in her fingers, unwrapped, the cellophane crackling. He thought about Isaac Lowry in the doorway with his hands held out open from his sides.
"Nothing got done," he said. "I didn't catch anybody. The packages that got stolen in August and September, the knives and the shoes and Mrs. Dunning's groceries, I don't know who took them. Nobody does. That girl was putting food into an old woman's bag. She wasn't taking anything out. I grabbed a twelve-year-old for putting food in a bag."
"I understand that."
"I don't think you do. If you go up to the third floor and talk to Isaac Lowry about his lease, I'm going to tell OPA you did it, and I'm going to tell them why."
Shirlene looked at him for a long time. Then she put the butterscotch down on the wrapper on her desk, very precisely.
"Your addendum is up for renewal in January," she said. Not as a threat. She said it the way she said everything, warmly and practically, like a weather report. "I'm going to have to tell the owner something about the Courtesy Officer Program, Kurt. And I don't know right now what I'm going to tell him."
"Tell him what happened," Kurt said, and got up, and went to work.