“Hey, look who’s here!” he called, leaning back. The desk chair screeched on its base. “It’s the handyman! Albrecht keepin’ up his service contract, huh?”

“You’ll have to ask him,” I said. The blond man curled his lip, whether at me or at his fellow guard I couldn’t tell. Seeing that, I tried a shot at random. “Is that a blackjack in your pocket, or are you just excited about working with this guy?” I said to him.

The curl became a full-fledged sneer. He turned to the red-bearded guard. “I gotta go, Shoe. Got a date out at the pier.”

“Tell him hi for me,” I said to the blond one’s departing back. Shoe thought that was funny.

Good. Down to one; now to move him around. “You want to call up to Mr. A. and let him know I’m here?”

“Let him know who’s here, boy?”

“D. W. Griffith,” which was the name Albrecht knew me by. “Tell him I’ve got the one he wants.” In my hand was an unmarked box, something nobody would identify as a container for a videotape. Just like always. Everything had to be just like always.

“I bet you do,” said Shoe. He went through a door behind the desk. There was a little pane of glass in it to watch me through, but the door kept me from hearing whatever he might choose to say to the person upstairs.

I dropped the videotape. Swearing, I went to my knees in front of the desk and bumped it farther under. Then I reached beneath the desktop and twisted the door camera’s coaxial cable loose from the wall jack, where it connected to the monitor upstairs. I was careful not to break the connection entirely; I wanted streaks and snow, not a blank screen. Frances came through the door like a patch of black fog, under the guard’s window, and around the corner to the elevator. I popped the coax back on. Never use quick-connect jacks on security equipment, I thought as I came up smiling from behind the desk with the unmarked box in my hand. I had time to dust off my knees and straighten my collar before the guard came out.

“So, what’s in the package?” he said, and my bone marrow turned to brine.

“You’ll have to ask Mr. A. about that, too, won’t you?” I hoped my voice was firm and pleasant. Hadn’t I been passed? Did they know somehow that there would be a break-in? If that elevator moved without authorization, hell, in condensed form, would break loose.

“Maybe I will. You’re supposed to get your ass up there. You know the way.”

The release of fear was almost harder to bear than the onset. I couldn’t answer him, snappily or otherwise. I walked at what I hoped was a leisurely pace down the hall and turned the corner.

Frances materialized from whatever surface she’d adhered to. I poked the button, and the scarred bronze doors in front of me opened. There had been lots of elevators there once; the sealed-off openings for their doors were all that were left. Frances stepped in next to me as I pushed the button for the top floor.