“There it is,” LuEllen said. “The one with the brick.”

The door was set at a shallow angle into the wall, surrounded by yellow brick. A brass plate was screwed onto the brick.

“Easy,” LuEllen said. “Not too close to me. Look tired and impatient.”

She walked up to the door, tugged at it, and used the key. The whole entry took five seconds. We pulled the door shut behind us and stopped to listen. We could hear the buzz of the lights from outside. The sound of an air conditioner in the building. Nothing else.

“When did Marvel say the janitor left?”

“Never misses a Cardinals game. He’d have been home an hour ago,” LuEllen said. The hallway was lit by a single dim light. LuEllen led the way past a bank of elevators and into a stairwell, picked out the steps with a miniature flashlight, and led the way up one floor. At the landing she opened the door a crack, watching, waiting. Nothing. Then a sound. A voice. Muffled.

“Shit,” she whispered. “There’s somebody up here.”

We listened some more.

“Two people. Man and a woman. They’re

fooling around,” she said.

“Where’s Ballem’s office?”

“Down to the right.”

The sounds were coming from the left.

“So what do we do?” I asked.

“Let’s go.” She led the way into the hall, holding the door. When I was through, she eased it shut, and we walked carefully down to Ballem’s office. The unseen woman laughed. LuEllen paused at Ballem’s office door, her ear to the glass panel, waited five seconds, then unlocked it. Inside, she stopped me with a hand and disappeared into the dark. A moment later her light flicked on, and she said in a low voice, “All clear.”

Ballem’s personal office was at the end of a railway. LuEllen tried the door, found it locked, knelt on one knee to look at the lock, and grunted.

“Hold the light,” she said. I took the flash, and she dug into her bag, coming up with a cloth roll tied with a string. Lockpicks. She unrolled the cloth, laid it on the floor, and, after a few seconds’ study, selected a pick and a tensioner.

One miserable winter afternoon in St. Paul, with sleet beating against my north windows, we lounged in bed and LuEllen tried to teach me how to pick locks. I failed - I’m not patient enough - but I learned some of the technique and the names of the picks: the half-round and round feelers, the rakes and diamonds and double diamonds, the readers, extractors, mailboxes, flat levers and tensioners, circulars and points.