"Go get your father."

"Yeep!" says the kid and he closes the door. His father is not forthcoming.

Course not. He can hear the conversation if he concentrates enough to filter the city out.

"Daddy there was an Elf at the door."

"Oh really."

"Yeah but he wouldn't sing a song."

"Isn't that the point of Elves?" laughs his dad.

"Yeah! And then he yelled at me."

"That wasn't nice."

"Nuh-uh."

"I wanna watch Imperial Warriors."

"I think you are behind on your chores."

"Am not."

"I remember having to open a package yesterday 'cause my little package-opener didn't really want to watch Imperial Warriors."

"Nooooooo!"

"But I'll let you go play at Daho's and maybe his parents'll let you watch TV there."

"- okay." Kid scampers out into the hall of the apartment building past uncooperatively nonsinging Elf and makes for the elevator.

Elf catches the door and goes inside.

Dad is in the kitchen up to his elbows in dishes.

"I didn't invite you into my apartment," he tells Macalaurë.

"And what kind of world would it be if people could sometimes get away with crimes just because they were more important than whoever they'd decided to harass?"

"I want you to leave."

"That's good to know."

He rinses soap off his arms and reaches for his pocket everything.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," says Macalaurë pleasantly.

He grabs it anyway.

He tugs it out of his hands, tosses it into the sink with the dishes.

"You've got the wrong guy. They sent me home, see?"

"It did not escape me."

"Anado just wants to get me in trouble."

"And you refused to let them check your electronics because -?"

"I don't want strangers sniffing around my history. Intrusive. Are you going to pay for that pocket everything?"

"I will mail your next of kin a check. Unless you've got a lot more to say for yourself than that."

"I was falsely accused and the court sorted it out and now you're going to break into my home and murder me while my wife is asleep in the next room and my kid's downstairs?"

"Several of those statements were true, we're making progress."

"You've got the wrong guy. Go shake it out of Anado, he admitted it, he'll know who really went and fucked your pet turd."

"No, see, he went to jail. Not for very long, but he did. And he admitted it, and named the rest. I'm angry with him, but I'm not murderously angry with him. But you did it, and the cops know it, and they decided not to fucking bother."