Nobody was owning up. Croon shovelled spoons of sugar and tea leaves into the sink, discovered the pollution sank as far as the china floor of the bowl.
<<Christ!>> he said. Some of the telephonists turned their heads at this. <<It's all... contaminated. And you know I need five teaspoons of sugar for my coffee.>>
Bäbel Thorgarten, the token azure, came in for her morning glass of ginseng and gingko biloba. She said: <<If you didn't have five glasses of coffee a day, you wouldn't be so highly strung.>>
<<Listen up>> Croon said. <<I'm requisitioning this sugar bowl for an investigation. I'm>> - raising his voice so everyone in the office, plus selected clients of the German telephone network could hear him - <<going to spring the culprit who did this. I'm on the fucking case!>>
Hmmm, I'm on the fucking case! was kind of like Cassius Croon's catchcry. Except he had two cases at the moment... well, three if he counted the tea leaves. His prime objective, of course, was to befriend Bäbel Thorgarten. To get close to her he'd taken a job as a nuisance call investigator at her telephone company. And he'd renamed himself Marc Spoon after some DJ he saw in Frankfurt once.
Locking the sugar bowl in his desk, forced to make do with flat Coca-Cola, Croon logged on to his workstation and appraised today's dispatch from the complaints board.
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