“And how can I prove I’m worthy of your trust, Manny?”

He crossed his hands over his belly. “You can start by telling me why you’re carrying a gun.”

He was good. My gun was in a holster clipped to the waistband at the small of my back. I’d worn a loose, European-cut suit under a black topcoat as part of my ad exec look, and none of the clothing hugged the gun. Manny was very good.

“Fear,” I said, trying to look sheepish.

“Ah! I see.” He leaned forward and wrote “fear” on a piece of lined paper on the desk. In the margin above it, he wrote “Deforest Doohan.”

“You do?”

His face was noncommittal, flat. “Any specific fear?”

“No,” I said. “Just a general sense that the world is a very dangerous place and I feel lost in it sometimes.”

He nodded. “Of course. That’s a common affliction these days. People often sense that even the smallest things in such a large, modern world are beyond their control. They feel isolated, small, afraid they’ve become lost in the bowels of a technocracy, an industrialized world that has sprawled well beyond its own capacity to keep its worst impulses in check.”

“Something like that,” I said.

“As you said, it’s a feeling of fin de siècle common to the end of every century.”

“Yes.”

I hadn’t said fin de siècle in Manny’s presence.

Which meant the accounting offices were bugged.

I tried to keep that realization from flickering in my eyes, but I must have failed, because Manny’s brow darkened and the heat of sudden recognition rose between us.

The plan had been to get Angie inside before the alarm system was engaged. She’d trip it on her way out, of course, but by the time anyone official arrived on the scene, she’d be long gone. That had been the theory, but neither of us considered the possibility of an internal bugging system.

Manny stared at me, his dark eyebrows arched, his lips pursed against the tent he’d made of his hands. He didn’t look much like a sweet, big man anymore, nor like a counselor in grief. He looked like one mean motherfucker who shouldn’t be messed with.

“Who are you, Mr. Doohan? Really?”

“I’m an advertising executive with deep fears about modern culture.”

He removed his hands from his face, looked at them.

“Yet, your hands aren’t soft,” he said. “And a few of your knuckles look like they’ve been broken over the years. And your face—”

“My face?” I sensed the room going deeply quiet behind me.

Manny glanced at something or someone over my shoulder. “Yes, your face. In the right light, I can see scars along your cheeks under your beard. They look like knife scars, Mr. Doohan. Or maybe from a straight razor?”