They waited at the elevators as Hannah whimpered in Decker’s arms.

“Cry louder, pumpkin,” Decker told her.

“Peter—”

“Scream a little. Wailing’s okay, too.”

Another elevator ride. By now, Hannah was complaining of nausea. She reached out to her mother. Rina took her and marched over to the first person she saw. A fifty-plus woman with short clipped brunette hair and hoop earrings. She had round brown eyes and wore bright red lipstick. Over her black sweater was chunky jewelry. Half-size reading glasses sat on the bridge of her nose.

“I’m looking for Britta,” Rina announced.

“That’s me.”

“They’re looking for Mr. Hershfield.” Rina cocked her finger in the men’s direction. “I’m looking for the bathroom. She’s got to go, and apparently this floor has the only public bathroom in the entire building!”

“Lenore didn’t let you use the forty-third-floor one?”

“No, she did not!”

“What a peach!” Britta stood and extracted a ring of keys. “I’ll take you, sweetheart. Poor thing.” She looked at the men. “Is one of you Rabbi Levine?”

“I am,” Jonathan said.

“Third door on the right. Mr. Hershfield’s expecting you. Just knock. I’ll get you coffee in a moment.” To Rina, Britta said, “Come, dahling. I know what it’s like to be captive to a small bladder. After I had my last child, I ruined outfits every time I sneezed.”

Decker watched the women disappear behind the sacred door known as the women’s rest room. Then he and Jonathan found the office. A gold doorplate told them that Hershfield was a legal corporation. Jonathan knocked. A stentorian voice bade them enter.

His office was the size of a secretary’s reception room. Then Decker realized it was the secretary’s reception room. The desk held a name-plate that said MS. MOORE. The person behind the desk definitely wasn’t a female. He was Ichabod Crane, alive and well and practicing law in the city of New York. His cheeks were so sharp that they almost poked out of the thin skin. His forehead was high and bare, with thinning dark hair combed straight back. His lips were two slash marks, his eyes were sunken in his brow. Still the orbs held a spark of mischief. He was superbly dressed—black wool crepe jacket, white shirt with French cuffs, and patterned tie of horses and gladiators— probably a two-hundred-dollar Leonard tie.

Hershfield looked up at the standing figures. “This is my receptionist’s office. I get my best work done here at six in the morning when no one’s bothering me… buzzing me every twenty seconds. Of course, that’s her job… to buzz me, and to organize my professional life. I don’t know why, but I find her desk much more conducive to work. Maybe because it isn’t filled with my own garbage.”

Gathering up his papers, Hershfield stood, then took out a key ring. He opened an adjoining door. “Come in.”

Good-size place, Decker thought. Not cavernous, but the plate-glass window view opened things up—an endless snapshot of steely, gelid air and rooftop machinery. The office itself was paneled in warm red mahogany. Sharing the wall space with the abstract oils were lots of diplomas and certificates. He had a small bookcase in back of his desk, the shelves holding just as many Hebrew books as tomes on American jurisprudence. Of course, the firm had its own law library, so the references he had were the ones he probably used the most. His desk was rosewood and brass, his desk chair tufted oxblood leather. Two client chairs sat opposite the desk, upholstered in a subtle hunter green and maroon floral. In the middle of the room sat a sofa in the same pattern and two more client chairs, the arrangements separated by a sleek rosewood coffee table framed in brass. A corner leather wing chair rounded out the atmosphere. The parquet wood floor was almost entirely covered by a fringed, ornate Persian rug.