They get to a door in the hallway. Werth knows where it goes: the wine cellar. Candlefly puts a hand on the knob, but doesn’t turn it. “A business can live by men and their specialties, but it can also die that way. For instance, you have an employee who can do one thing really well. He’s a gifted contract lawyer. Or he knows the ins and outs of your software. Perhaps he folds laundry with great elegance. While you have him, he improves business. But if you lose him? He takes that knowledge with him. This hurts business. You must spread out the knowledge. Create a little redundancy.”

Werth clears his throat. Nods at the door. “We going downstairs?”

Thinks, Soon as he opens that door, I’m going to kick him down those goddamn steps.

But Candlefly ignores him. Keeps holding the door closed. “What we have here in the Organization is a business. But we have those with specialized knowledge. Effective while they’re here, but…”

“You mean Mookie.”

“I do mean Mr Pearl, yes, yes. He runs his own crews. He knows where the veins of Blue are. He knows and does so much in this business.”

“He’s just a soldier. I know everything he does.”

“Do you? Really? Twenty years… I’m sure by now he does things his own way. Without your prompting. And when was the last time you went… downstairs?” He doesn’t mean the basement. “Been a while, hasn’t it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You let him handle things. That OK. It’s a scary place.”

“I’m not afraid of shit, pal.”

But he is. He is afraid. Candlefly knows it somehow. Candlefly laughs.

“Oh, I’m afraid of it, too. It’s perfectly normal to be frightened of the Great Below. You know, I have a theory. It’s because of the Underworld that we – we as in mankind – are afraid of the dark. Because down there, the dark is real. Tangible. Isn’t it? Horrible things, unknowable things, hiding down there in the shadows. Sometimes those things come up. Sometimes they eat. Sometimes they kill. Sometimes they…” A cruel twinkle in his eyes – he doesn’t have to finish the sentence: Sometimes they rape young women who end up having little goat babies just before dying. “You come from that place. Part of you. And you hate it. And that’s OK.”

Werth is shaking now. He’s trying not to but he is. He tells himself it’s the Vicodin wearing off, that he needs a hit of Blue to calm him.