We entered the visitors’ foyer through a set of glass doors, came face-to-face with another set that was locked. To our right was a bank of nameplates. The nameplates bore three-digit numbers beside them and there was a phone to the left of the entire bank of names. Just as I’d feared. You couldn’t even do the old trick of pressing ten buzzers at once and hoping someone would buzz you in. If you used the phone, the person who picked it up could see you through a security camera.

All those darn criminals have made it awful hard on us private detectives.

“It was fun watching you get worked up out there,” Angie said. She opened her purse, held it over her head, and dumped the contents on the floor.

“Yeah?” I knelt beside her and we began scooping things back into the purse.

“Yeah. It’s been a while since you got worked up over anything.”

“You, too,” I said.

We looked at one another, and the questions in her eyes probably lived in my own right then:

Who are we these days? What’s left in the wake of all the things Gerry Glynn took? How do we get happy again?

“How many sticks of lip balm can one woman have?” I said and went back to the pile on the floor.

“Ten’s about right,” she said. “Five if you gotta travel light.”

A couple approached on the other side of the glass. The man looked like an attorney, sculpted salt-and-pepper hair and red and yellow Gucci tie. The woman looked like an attorney’s wife, pinched and suspicious.

“Your play,” I said to Angie.

The man pushed open the door and Angie moved her knee out of the way, a long strand of hair falling out from behind her ear as she did so, swinging down by her cheekbone and framing her eye.

“Excuse me,” she said, chuckling softly and holding the guy with her eyes. “Clumsy as always.”

He looked down at her and his merciless boardroom eyes picked up her gaiety. “I can’t walk across an empty room without tripping, myself.”

“Ah,” Angie said. “A kindred spirit.”

The man smiled like a shy ten-year-old. “Coordinated people beware,” he said.

Angie gave it a short, hard laugh, as if his uncommon wit had surprised her. She scooped up her keys. “There they are.”

We rose from our knees as the wife moved past me and the man held the door open.

“Be more careful next time,” he said with mock sternness.

“I’ll try.” Angie leaned into the words a bit.

“Lived here long?”

“Come, Walter,” the woman said.

“Six months.”

“Come, Walter,” the woman repeated.

Walter took one last look in Angie’s eyes and went.

When the door closed behind them, I said, “Heel, Walter. Roll over, Walter.”

“Poor Walter,” Angie said as we reached the elevator bank.