In answer, Hazard jammed the button harder.

“I’ll call the super,” Somers said. “He’ll let us in, and we can go upstairs and knock on his door. Maybe he’s not answering because he’s scared. Maybe he just needs to hear your voice.”

Hazard jabbed at the button. For a man so ruthlessly pragmatic, he seemed suddenly incapable of varying his behavior. He just drilled into the button again and again.

Somers found the number he wanted, placed the call, and listened to the phone ring. He wrapped his hand around Hazard’s wrist again. Hazard tried to twist free, but Somers held on, and after another moment, Hazard staggered away from the intercom panel, breaking Somers’s grip.

“Son of bitch,” Hazard swore, spinning and coming back at the panel, fists coming up. “You cock-swallowing fucking whoreson piece of shit.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Somers murmured, stepping into his path, cradling the phone against his shoulder.

“I’m not going to do anything.”

“Ree, just take a breath.”

“I’m just going to rip that fucking intercom panel out of the fucking wall and use it to break down the fucking door.”

“Maybe one more deep breath.”

In Somers’s ear, the phone continued to ring. No voicemail. No sign that the call would ever connect to anything. In the darkness, with the flutter of the streetlights like moth wings, that seemed very real. Maybe he was calling a number that didn’t connect to anything. Maybe it went all the way out to the end of the universe.

“No answer,” Somers said.

Hazard spun away. He paced to the end of the block. Fists at his side, back arched, head thrown back, his whole body was an arrow aimed at the sky. Then he let out another vicious string of swears and came back.

“I’m not going to do anything,” he said, and this time, he sounded like he even knew what he was saying. Taking Somers’s arms, he moved him a yard to one side, and then he approached the panel.

“I’m not feeding you if you break your hands,” Somers said, disconnecting the call. He placed a new call to Dulac, wondering why he hadn’t heard from the younger detective yet, and added, “I’m definitely not wiping your ass. You can look forward to itchy, stinky months all by yourself if you break your hands.”

Hazard pressed the button again. It took Somers a moment to realize that it wasn’t Mitchell’s, but it was the unit next door. Hazard held down the button as he had the first time, but this time, he released it after thirty seconds.

“—fucking kill you, you fucking moron, I’m trying to sleep and if you buzz me one more time, I’m going to fucking—”

Hazard jabbed the button again. And again. And again.

“Ah,” Somers said, while the call to Dulac went to voicemail. “The old catch-more-flies-with-honey routine.” Then, “Gray, call me. Where the hell are you?” To Hazard again, “Elevator.”

Hazard released the intercom button and moved to stand in front of the lobby doors. The elevator indicator ticked down the floors, and a moment later, the stainless-steel doors opened. The man who emerged was balding, probably in his late forties, and wearing what Somers thought might be Teddy Ruxpin adult pajamas, threadbare from an estimated thirty years of wash and wear. He was carrying a baseball bat.