Almost marching music. She got out her phone and thumbed through to her Shazam app.

This improbable method of audio detection—the aged warbling of an ancient device decoded by the algorithmic genius of a modern device—worked. It was “What Now My Love” by Shirley Bassey, featuring Nelson Riddle and His Orchestra. Shazam put the release date at 1962.

The orchestration and vocal performance built to a frenzy and then ended suddenly. A snippet of patter from an old-school disk jockey started but was quickly shut off.

Then—white noise.

And then nothing.

She zipped forward, afraid the tape would snap. But the rest was blank.

Someone testing the machine? In 1962?

She examined the deck, eventually lifting it up. On the underside, burned into the plastic chassis with some kind of hot tool, were the initials ES.

Earl Solomon. That anticlimactic revelation—that the tape deck apparently belonged to the FBI agent whose office desk she found it inside—seemed to end her investigation.

He probably stuck it in the bottom drawer and forgot all about it.

Odessa returned to the office manager. “What am I supposed to do with the agent’s belongings?” she asked.

The office manager shrugged. “Any personal items should be returned, I guess? We need the office. Let me see if I have an address…”

Odessa found an empty carton in the printing/burn room and put everything inside.

Odessa cabbed over to Flushing and lugged the carton into NewYork-Presbyterian Queens Hospital. She bounced from visitors desk to visitors desk trying to locate Earl Solomon. She was tempted to use her badge but it didn’t feel right, being on desk duty. Eventually she learned that he was out of intensive care, and Odessa made her way to the patient care unit.

The door was open. It was not a private room, but the first bed was empty. She stepped quietly around the half-drawn curtain. A black man lay sleeping, looking all of his eighty-six years. Tubes ran from the back of his hand and his forearm to pumps and monitors working in a hushed symphony. His breathing was shallow, his hair mostly silver, curly, and short.

Odessa set the carton down on the wooden arms of a chair. She had hoped there’d be family members holding a vigil, which would give her an opportunity to explain herself, hand off the possessions from his desk, and politely exit in a matter of minutes. She felt like a trespasser now. She didn’t dare wake him. Maybe he was sedated. She might have to use her badge anyway, in order to get information from the nurses’ desk, or else wait for the attending to come by on his or her rounds.